But what’s rarely discussed is the state’s responsibility to care for the old and weak – and actually for all its citizens regardless of ability to contribute economically

But we all have to grow old some time. I’m in my late sixties and never bothered with a private pension, but have a small state pension. When I was young I never thought about this. How do we bring the need for care and pensions into the domain of the younger artist or activist?

Vienne Chan: To be honest, it’s only something I thought of recently while looking at financial markets and the massive influence pension funds have. Yet it doesn’t add up to what their mission is or should be. Their mission at a superficial level is to make enough money to provide for our wellbeing in old age, but the key part is wellbeing and the means they employ don’t add up to it. The pandemic helps to bring senior care and care (in general) into the light, especially in the beginning when there was a lot of talk about how old people can just die. The counter-response demonstrates that we do care. We also care about underpaid care workers. There are actually a lot of art projects about care now.

That’s not a bad thing, but more recently, there’s been more talk about self-care as a political act. Self-care should be more than just taking an evening off and drinking some tea, but also thinking about our own future. For example, in the case of the refugee crisis, a https://datingranking.net/de/biker-dating-sites/ lot of the right wing capitalised on the fear of lack of money for our own wellbeing so therefore “we can’t take in any more refugees”.