Trigger Warnings #2
They Go to Space Whilst The Country Is Just Too Full
CW: homelessness, abuse, financial insecurity, suicide, drug abuse, COVID, slavery, traveller prejudice
This article is part of the Trigger Warnings series, examining environmental factors that effect mental health. To get early access to the next articles as they are released, please support Ollamh Counselling through their Patreon. All articles will become available to everyone through Medium, in the interests of accessibility.
It is difficult to write this particular chapter of Trigger Warnings without becoming impassioned and angry. The intention of these articles is to find the bridge between the conservative status quo found within therapeutic professions and the more radical philosophies that inform my practice; to do this requires a level of understanding and repose that I fail to keep a complete grasp of as I look at these kinds of figures. With the advent of the billionaire — in the more cultural capacity, not just in the financial — it is hard to remain focussed on the mental health affects such environmental shifts create. It feels crass to work to better the mental health of the homeless, rather than to fight for an absence of homelessness.
The Final Frontier
Richard Branson recently went to space[1]. His wealth, accumulated through tax avoidance, has allowed him the pleasure of being able to scrape the sky, for no other purpose than to prove that he can. After asking the government for a hand-out[2], acting as if he is too poor to survive in this economy, he comes out and says he can build spacecraft. Alongside him, Elon Musk (whose wealth comes from his father’s inheritance, a fortune from Emerald Mining) and Jeff Bezos (whose wealth encapsulates the oppression of the working classes) are planning on following suit, so all three can boldly go where no man has gone before. But this is not Star Trek, a future possessing (an albeit Western) impression of Utopia, but rather more akin to that of Elysium. But this is not the reality, nor the philosophy, of the real world. Rather, there is a direct correlation between the increase in wealth of the top 1% and the lost wages of the working classes[3]; it is not as simple as the films make out, that they are up there, and we are left below. They can go to space, because they leave us behind.
This is quite an on the nose[4] living metaphor for a greater concern on our Planet Earth. Whilst oil companies set the ocean on fire[5], Ghanaian labourers are blamed for the CO2 Crisis, even though the entire African Continent only accounts for 3.8% of global greenhouse emissions[6]. This constant displacement of responsibility — that black people are boiling the planet, not Exxon; that Branson is taking us all to the stars, and not just those who can afford it[7] — alters the consciousness of entire nations, and with it their mental health.
With the poor growing poorer, and the rich richer (with the first trillionaire on the horizon[8]), it is only a matter of time that these huge disparities in wealth overflow into national psychologies. Although I bemoan the behaviour of the England Fans after Euro2020[9], I expounded on their ridiculous behaviour as a response to the pains they have been suffering these last years[10]. A government denying the English people basic human rights, a death toll higher than WWII in regards to COVID-19[11], and now watching our very own ‘home-grown’ billionaires literally leave the planet they have laid waste to, it is only natural that people will process this kind of powerlessness in a form of uninterrupted, meaningless violence.
This is the English emotional landscape as it stands, and one of the greatest evils to be birthed from this disparity of power, of wealth, is the homelessness crisis, and the cultural significance of land ownership that comes with it. It is not lost on this counsellor that whilst the billionaires struggle to go to the abstract void of space, we are left to fend for the very land we walk upon.
Homelessness
Any socialist, communist, or anarchist will tell you that every human being on this planet has an inalienable right to a home. As a socialist, this many manifest as state-provided housing for every member of the population that government represents, and for the anarchist it comes in the form of a solid community working together with their local federations to make sure no one in that community is cold, hungry, and alone.
According to the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, “62,250 households were initially assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness”[12] at the end of 2020 in England. In Los Angeles, makeshift dwellings are destroyed by local government, spending money that could simply home those they continually displace[13]. During COVID-19, we saw hotels being converted into temporary living arrangements, indicating that our governments have the potential to begin finding hold-over solutions to the “crisis” of homelessness, but merely possess none of the motivation to try. For counsellors and therapists today to recognize anxiety[14] as something that comes entirely from within the client is tantamount to abuse-by-ignorance. How can our clients even begin to find security when the numbers of those without fixed addresses was as high as it was during a global pandemic of unprecedented proportions from a surprisingly new biology?
“I assumed that there would be more psychotic illness, schizophrenia, drug induced psychosis and it shocked me how much really is trauma” says one mental health practitioner in A Review of Crisis Skylight’s Mental Health Services[15]; this is a crucial distinction to be made in regards to homelessness. In many instances it is presumed that the poor level of mental health precedes the loss of housing, or the social capabilities to maintain their place in the social order, i.e. that the poor mental health creates the circumstances of homelessness. However, when one loses their home for whatever reason, the trauma of being abandoned by a nation that so evidently longs to support the Lord Sugar’s[16] and Richard Branson’s of this world must be palpably dangerous. And yet, the mental health profession continues to focus on the inner workings of the client, rather than the environment that causes such distress. In the same manner as abolishing the police (see Trigger Warnings #1[17]) alleviates the trauma triggers for ‘criminals’ and police officers alike, so would a heavy taxation of the rich[18] alleviate the struggles of the precariat[19].
It is too simplistic to assume that this is merely a relationship between stolen profits and precarious living. Homelessness is specifically designed to continue this fraught relationship between the worker and the employer. England is fuelled by this anxiety.
Landlordism
I quote Lord Sugar’s tweet in the footnotes for illustrative purposes[14]. As a landlord, his wealth is dependant on rent. If people stop paying that rent, he will lose some of that wealth. This is not to say that Lord Sugar will cease being wealthy, but that one of his sources of income to continually expand that wealth would be diminished, cut off at the source. During COVID-19, we all learnt the value — especially on our mental health — of working from home, and the enterprising capitalists did not approve of this realisation — e.g., that perhaps being able to work alongside our families is beneficial for everyone involved.
It only takes a quick glimpse at millennials & Generation Z on social media to see that they distrust the system of landlordism & rent. Many individuals have infiltrated facebook groups where landlords share the secrets of their practice, including Ilona Baliūnaitė[20], only to uncover memes mocking the precarious living situations of their renters, and finding ways of denying people housing if they use service animals. If this is the landscape that is constructed by landlords it is no wonder that we live with anxiety prevalent throughout the generations. Even if our landlord is ‘one of the good ones’, it is impossible to discover this until it is perhaps too late. The existential dread that at any point we may become one of those 62,250 households without a home11 is impossible to ignore — let alone treat — when the system that creates it is perpetually in place. As counsellors, we may be able to navigate the anxiety with the client, and allow them to live with that precarity, but the only way we can truly benefit those who come to us with a fear of losing their homes is by adjusting, if not removing, the system that creates that precariat class.
This is not a crisis that can be resolved with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Although such systems might benefit a client in managing the anxiety they possess for a very real threat — homelessness — it will never be able to balance the equation of that which causes the threat. As a Buddhist, I follow the teaching of dukkha[21], often translated as “suffering” — life will forever come with sufferings and hardships, and it is our ability to live in the present that alleviates that pain. This zen-like acuity can be applied to the housing crisis, to accept that we may have to live precariously in an unjust world, and certainly it would help, but why should we as therapists focus exclusively on the client in such a manner. All the tools in the world may alleviate the anxiety of a stressful situation, but what of the situation in and of itself? Is it not our ethical duty to not just treat the symptom, but the cause?
The landlords in these groups seem to believe their renters should use the entirety of their wealth — accumulated through hard work rather than merely the ownership of land — to pay for a roof over their heads, the meme used above illustrating they deem mobile telephones, sustenance (the coffee), and entertainment systems as unnecessary. And yet we know that internet access is imperative for survival, for without it we cannot apply for the very jobs the landlords require us to have to pay their rent, that sustenance — even fast food — is required to work in these occupations, and finally that a life without any form of entertainment[22] creates a dangerous cocktail for suicidal ideation, drug abuse, and depression.
People may note if they have read my other work that I am being harsher on landlords here than I am on police officers. In Trigger Warnings #1 I offer a theory that police abolition would be beneficial to the police themselves as much as those they oppress. And yet here you find little from me in regards to how abolishing landlords would benefit them. The problem here is a question of power and ownership; the very idea of landlords — the word itself, Lord of Land, evoking a feudal era[23] — is inextricably tied to keeping the people scared. Rather than the people owning their own homes, or homes being offered as something immediate to all individuals of a society, a few individuals keep hold of the very land. My only response in terms of landlord mental health is that providing a service to your society benefits mental health; possessing purpose is a key factor in benefiting a low mood, and so, with the abolition of the landlord system, replaced with state-financed homes for all, or anarchistic community living, I only suggest landlords get a job.
Trespassing & Squatting
Hayes points out[21], “[i]f you are doing something that is not illegal (photography, dancing, playing the flute), while doing something that is not criminal (trespassing) you can be automatically arrested, and liable to six months in prison.” And with the new Policing Bill being brought in by Priti Patel, this level of criminalisation will only increase in severity.
To pause briefly, let us return to the mental health of our potential clients. If they are not homeless already — during a pandemic no less — they are part of the precariat, a new class of individual that may aesthetically appear financially secure (iPhones, laptops, second-hand car) but are in a position where they could lose their homes if their landlords deem it necessary, even if that reason is the owning of a service animal. Combine that with a work force being exploited so that billionaires can go to the moon, further compounded by the government removing our rights to walk on the very land that we call our own — it is not surprising England ‘let off some steam’ after the football.
“A third of Britain is still owned by aristocracy. The 24 non-royal dukes own almost four million acres between them” Simon Basketter goes on to say in Trespass, Capitalism and Land[21]; as far back as The Enclosure Act and John Clare, the English people have rejected this notion that the very land can be owned by a select few individuals off the back of the slave trade. The new bill being passed will criminalise all forms of traveller, from Gypsy, Romani & Traveller communities, to the New Traveller movement.
“[Jess][24] says, “we will be the last generation. I will just keep moving … until they take my vehicle, I don’t have other options in my back pocket. I feel fucking petrified and also angry. People worry about Travellers turning up in their area, but where is the common land? You are taking away my animal freedom to be on this planet. It’s wiping out a culture.”
This lacking of common land — stemming from The Enclosure Acts since the 1600s onwards — perpetuates a lack of appropriate cultural support for GRT communities, and adjacent models of living. “You are criminalising a problem that has been created by the failings of a political will to deliver appropriate accommodation,” said Joseph P Jones from the Gypsy Council[25], a legal system resulting in what can now be described as making ethnic communities invisible at best[26], and ethnic cleansing at worst[27]. England has always had a problem with travelling communities[28]; if we are to displace an entire generation of people through landlordism, ethnically cleanse an entire culture of people reliant on nomadism, and offer no financial security in regards to homelessness, we will be left with a nation with no identity, no sense of home, and a declining mental health far beyond the capabilities of any therapeutic service.
We are unable to walk on our own country without becoming criminals. We are unable to remove ourselves from precarious formats of living. We are complicit in the ethnic cleansing of an entire people who do not prescribe to the common attribute of fixed abodes in the English psychoculture. In short both a very natural way of living (nomadism) and a natural response to homelessness (living off our own land) are both being criminalised with equal vigour by the government.
If counselling is not the answer to this gross misconduct by those in power, then what is? Options For Dealing With Squatting from Dog Section Press[29] indicates that most individuals in Britain are not opposed to squatting at all. “As the Metropolitan Police say, and this brilliant publication reveals, most buildings that squatters live in have been abandoned or are otherwise empty. When peoples’ only choice is criminalised, the legality of the law itself is discredited” says Danny Dorling of Oxford University. If Priti Patel is to continue criminalising trespass, then squatting may become a more common thread in the national tapestry.
Although the term itself is designed to illicit a response that such behaviour is improper, the act of squatting itself is completely legal. And in fact, squatters often help maintain the quality of a building. By keeping a building heated, it reduces mould damage. By keeping it electrified and used as a café, or artistic residence, or shelter, the building has to be kept to a proper standard of living, which arguably would be incredibly beneficial to absentee landlords. In Berlin[30], anarchist squats showed how uplifting and important squatting could be for a community; Anthony Bourdain, in his show Parts Unknown,[31] shows us how an anarchist commune such as Freetown Christiania can be so beneficial for people being able to feel comfortable in their own skin. It may seem hyper-radical for the counselling community to consider something like squatting as mentally beneficial, especially as squats are often associated with drug abuse and poor standards of living, but if the government are not going to allow us to live or walk on the very land we call our home, it may be the only option we have. And, I repeat, squatting is a completely legal enterprise when done correctly.
And finally, there just isn’t enough room…
All of this comes within a bubble of immigration fear, overpopulation conspiracy theories, and common-and-garden prejudice & oppression. I feel I have already opened the sluiceway when it comes to the ignoble philosophies that underpin homelessness, trespass, and how we treat our ethnic minorities, and will pause here rather than overwhelm further, bringing it back to what Ollamh Counselling is about: therapy.
To be reliant on individuals who preach community, but who do not present methods of living within one is, in and of itself, an anxious state of living bordering on an existential crisis. Before I even touch on the notions I have highlighted above — the threat of homelessness, the number of people living on the streets, the scapegoating of ethnic minorities, rampant landlordism, a vacuum of employment in the pandemic: the list goes on — the fact that many of the necessities of life are not available to everyone is troubling. The fact we have to pay for our homes. The fact we have to work long hours to offer our labour to an absent CEO parading in the sky. The fact the very soil, the muck, of our country is denied to us with trespassing laws and the improper policing of squatting — these are all factors that compound a growing anxiety that capitalism thrives on. Why would we hand over our labour, our work, to Branson in the sky, if there was no threat of eviction?
It seems apparent that no amount of therapeutic work will solve the existential threat of our generation. Abandonment, depression, anxiety, precarity — these are all factors that our teachings in counselling may be able to alleviate (I’ll even argue CBT-styled planning may help in the battle for accommodation) but the core struggles are far removed from the therapeutic profession at present. Counsellors & therapists rely heavily on models of mental health that do not change the systems around them; the intersectionality of LGBT+ prejudices, GRT prejudices[32], and homelessness indicates that we must look outside of Western Models of therapy to benefit our clients[33]. If we were doctors, we would not treat the fever, but the virus that causes it. And in this instance, it is the systemic abuse of the precariat — and the intersection of communities therein in need of support — that we must struggle with & against.
This seems to not have a simple answer, and yet Universal Basic Income[34] would solve a huge proportion of these issues. A flat rate that offers people the necessities of comfortable living immediately rectifies much of the existential dread that comes from landlordism and the criminalisation of trespass[35]. Our sense of national identity — although problematic for the anarchist — is currently manifesting as violent football hooliganism; a recreation of common land could offer an alternative method of people to connect with the literal land they call their own, rather than it all being held in Dukedoms. And a reformatting of squatting laws — perhaps renaming it to Community Led Redevelopment — so people can utilise their urban environments rather than leaving them to rot, could similarly alleviate some of that disconnect we possess with our own country. As much as I may be opposed to the notion of countries as an absurdist endeavour, I cannot help but wonder how much our collective mental health may benefit from being able to live & eat comfortably, reconnect with our land, and redevelop our communities without interference from a state apparatus that only wishes to imprison us.
With thanks to @periuspb and the radicals of twitter who helped research this article.
Update
Shelter sent me a great resource on mental health stats for the homeless. I’ve yet to go through it myself, but in future editions of my work I will be sure to include this information.
Nathan T. Dean is a writer, artist, trainee counsellor, practicing chaos witch, and founder of Ollamh Counselling.
All of these essays are part of an evolving documentation. Ideas the author may have now may shift in the future. This is the lot of the therapist, who must continuously explore their empathy in radical ways as the environment around them shifts. If you find anything in these documents you find offensive, please contact the author at ollamhcounselling@gmail.com. Without discussion, correction, and open discourse, we cannot benefit our clients as effectively as we might.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57790040
[2] https://www.executivetraveller.com/news/richard-branson-billion-dollar-virgin-bailout — specifically focus on the paragraph “As part of its immediate survival plan, airline will abandon London’s Gatwick Airport, close to the Virgin’s headquarters at Crawley, and shift all flights to London Heathrow, while also eliminating 3,150 jobs — about a third of the workforce — to ride out the coronavirus crisis.” 3,150 jobs so he can go to space practically on his own.
[3] https://www.epi.org/publication/two-billion-dollars-in-stolen-wages-were-recovered-for-workers-in-2015-and-2016-and-thats-just-a-drop-in-the-bucket/
[4] God may have a sense of humour, but even I think this one is pushing it a bit: the billionaires in space whilst we starve on Earth…
[5] https://twitter.com/haziethompson/status/1412948886604455937
[6] https://twitter.com/Vinncent/status/1414140281709121537
[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/11/science/cost-to-fly-virgin-galactic-space.html
[8] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0211/the-first-trillionaire.aspx
[9] https://twitter.com/Natt/status/1414299910485204994
[10] https://twitter.com/OllamhC/status/1414562793794191363
[11] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55631693
[12] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/979393/Statutory_homelessness_release_Oct-Dec_2020.pdf
[13] https://twitter.com/benphillips76/status/1411219201000415233
[14] Especially that specific brand of existential dread where we presume things can only get worse when things seem stable
[15] https://www.crisis.org.uk/media/20613/crisis_mental_health_service_evaluation_2013.pdf
[16] https://twitter.com/Lord_Sugar/status/1412100387264471043
[17] https://ollamhcounselling.medium.com/trigger-warnings-1-30b004cdb93
[18] We must remember that taxation is accumulative. Even if we taxed Jeff Bezos 100% of his profits, he would still receive more money each month than most people on the planet.
[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat
[20] https://www.boredpanda.com/landlord-secrets-tips-exposed/?utm_source=duckduckgo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=organic
[21] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thebuddhasaid/2020/09/the-unawakened-life-sucks/
[22] Also check out the Rat Park experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
[23] https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/50519/Trespass%2C+capitalism+and+land
[24] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/05/the-police-bill-is-wiping-out-a-culture-new-travellers-take-a-stand
[25] https://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/news/2021/03/new-anti-traveller-laws-set-criminalise-nomadic-way-life
[26] https://minorityrights.org/2021/04/15/policing-bill/
[27] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/12/persecuting-travelling-people “I’m not sure what the Tories want those of us who belong to GRT communities to do next. Sign on to the council housing register and wait 10 years while we freeze to death in a local bus shelter, instead of waiting a similar amount of time for a council-approved plot?”
[28] And I will admit, when I was younger, I also perpetuated racist attitudes to GRT communities, which I try and account for, and better myself from, every day.
[29] https://dogsection.org/press/options-dealing-squatting/
[30] http://www.slowtravelberlin.com/squats-neo-nazis-friedrichshain-in-the-90s/
[31] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3267020/
[32] https://twitter.com/MartinJDocherty/status/1412113348259454980
[33] I would be very intrigued to learn from GRT communities what they would regard as their models of therapeutic work.
[34] And for those who believe it economically unviable to introduce such a system, may I offer you this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvRueM6wBgoZUi-JrCCw5e1PGSSivxpfh
[35] https://theconversation.com/criminalising-trespass-will-hurt-travellers-most-but-government-proposals-fail-on-their-own-terms-153749