The spell of individualism

And the need to re-enchant ourselves to interdependence and care

evanmcohen

A post shared by @evanmcohen

I'm a witch. As such, I think of the ways the world operates in this context -- spells and curses, metaphor and magic.

And right now, I see we are under the spell of individualism, and everyday we don't actively counter it, we recast tiny spells to make it stronger.

We have been ensorcelled into this critical thought pattern that maintains capitalism, and all the oppressions that uphold it. Sorcery comes from the latin soratarius -- literally "one who influences fate or fortune". And we have been influenced, by those with capitalist power, to believe that we are separate from one another, separate from the world, separate from the Whole of existence. Because this separateness empowers capitalism — it allows it to not only continue, but to grow stronger as we become more and more isolated from each other, and see ourselves as more and more separate from our non-human kin.

This spell that we are under is reaffirmed everyday -- in the ways that we self-isolate, the ways that we don't know our neighbours, the ways that we don't smile at strangers, or care that there are people dying of cold on our streets. The spell is reaffirmed through personal car culture and consumerism, through solo living and the myth of "independence". It shows up in the ways we don’t put the effort in our relationships to work through conflict and the ways that we isolate children, teens, and elders from “adult” spaces. Individualism is woven into the fabric of Western lives so intricately it is sometimes hard to see the threads, let alone unravel them.

That’s because the spell has been working for centuries. It was violently enforced on Europeans, at the advent of capitalism, who brought it around the world, to violently impose it through colonialism, on the rest of the world.

All the fighting, all the revolutionary mass actions, will not change anything if we do not break this spell. If we remain enchanted by individualism, any "revolution" will just reenact the same violences as before. Because any system we build that is founded on the idea of our separateness and independence can only lead to violence.

The good news is that our nervous systems weren't made for individualism. We are a social species. We are a communal species. Empathy, sharing, caring, and kindness are wired into our nervous systems. This is humanity's natural state. Which is telling how powerful the spell of individualism actually runs, how enchanted we actually are.

But we can break that enchantment. We can unspell individualism in our lives. Instead, we can cast the spell of interdependence and weave the magic of mutual need into our lives. Instead, we can challenge ourselves to care more, to confront the ways that our minds have been enchanted towards independence and carelessness. We can start learning to see each other, and all our non-human kin, as critical parts of ourselves -- critical needs in our lives.

Only when we do this, only by breaking the spell of individualism, will we be able to build the loving and just world beyond capitalism that we imagine.

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With care

Amelia