Comfort as violence
I live a comfortable and peaceful life…
I am a forty-something-year-old white woman from Southern Europe. That’s in the global north, and I live a comfortable and peaceful life. Of course, there are challenges, responsibilities, and preoccupations. As a woman, I must endure the engrained misogynist experience in social life. Being from Southern Europe, I also have to live with a cultural sense of inferiority from Northern Europe.
Nonetheless, I live a peaceful and comfortable life. My family and I have easy access to health care, food, all types of gadgets, and several information sources. We can walk the neighborhood fairly safely and go on vacations freely. Our homes are weatherproof, with easy access to electricity and all the amenities of the clean technological way of life.
There is one day when all turns. If not from a significant natural disaster, it happens once your mind, heart, and consciousness begin to be integrated and entangled with the world's consciousness. Seeing beyond your navel. You begin to sense, feeling deeply, that comfort equals violence. Your comfort, our comfort! I’ve taken years, a very long time, to be able to express this without being utterly shaken and crumbled inside, without shame or guilt. But responsibly and integrally.
Yes, because I do have a choice of not being broken from the world outside, of not having to survive in a place plundered with constant violence, war, hunger, or displacement. Of not having to sell my children or endure long work hours or slave labor. I can decide to retreat to the comfort of my own home and take my gaze away from this intrinsic and systemic violence. Since I am a native of this country, a white-skinned one, I do not suffer from racism, so I can decide not to think about it. I’m a cisgender woman with an able body, so I can choose to neglect all this. To shut my eyes, for I do not have to support it throughout my day or life.
So, I, and probably you too, have this comfortable and privileged option, which can be mistaken for an inherent birthright, the prospect of escaping to the comfort of a home. A walled structure that protects, keeping its dwellers safe from the harsh, violent world outside. Still, this same home that covers these same walls that keep us safe reverberates violence throughout because it’s about severance from nature, anxiety, insecurity, fear, and even genocide and ecocide.
Our homes are built on space conquered to the wilds, revolving deeply into the earth and probably killing the ecosystem, the animals, the waters, and everything in between. Our built structures domesticate us, separating us from nature, community, neighbors, or even family — the perks of an individual urban way of life.
In the technological post-industrial west, our comfortable homes are only achievable because of the earth’s continuous loot.
Our cheap way of life is really expensive; our peace and evening relaxation reflects waves of brutality and destruction.
The structure construction materials are relentlessly mined, leaving deep scars in the earth and communities of modern slaves. The metals and minerals took millions of years to be made and are now handled mindlessly. All the sand from the bottom of the rivers, lakes, or oceans has been stolen from the ecosystems where it belongs, where it is really needed. The timber used for construction or furniture is being cut, leaving animals with no home, and communities with no food, disrupting the complex water cycle and leaving barren lands. Even our trash is sent to these “far-away” places, usually in the global south.
Our comfortable way of life is poisoning the world and extracting the rest.
This is not a “right”; it is a privileged theft that we continuously allow and recreate.
Having a home is a multi-layered responsibility, not just a right. One layer is the accountability to use all these resources, natural and otherwise, humbly and wisely. Say no to consumerism in its myriad forms. Another layer is admitting this toxic way of life is perched on the edge of a cliff, in a very precarious equilibrium, for it is not sustainable in any way. Get out of the illusion. A third layer is integrating the deep caring for what surrounds us — just living a simpler life. And say thank you for all the sources, materials, and lives needed to build your home.
