lambchops by Haj
The Capitalist Lie – Welcome to the Slaughterhouse
The Capitalist Lie, part one
This is part one of a six-part series first appearing in the Medium publication Coping with Capitalism April 15, 2024 in response to the lies propagandized by our capitalist society. Much gratitude to Shawn Roberts, Jr. publisher and editor for his vision and improvements on this series.
Every one of us should take this moment and reflect on where humanity finds itself.
We have ascended great heights. Indeed, our dreams draw us towards the heavens itself.
Yet, with all of our genius, we are now facing what has been called the Mass Extinction that could well mean the eradication of most, if not all, human life on Earth.
What have we done to bring this upon ourselves?
It seems that our potent intellect fails to insulate us from our own intractable folly.
By reaching such great heights, we are like Icarus as we float above the clouds for only a moment before we must fall to certain doom.
This situation must change. Our society, the world we have constructed, as we know it, must transform and transform dramatically.
What is it that has led us here? Only by recognizing this, can we hope to change our situation for the better. Those responsible will reveal themselves.
Certainly, we all share responsibility on a sublimely real level, but the society we have constructed is both competitive and skewed into an intensely distilled concentration of real power.
This power has in no way been democratically distributed. Today, we see the rise in fascism around the world meaning power will further consolidate. That is exactly the idea.
The distortions are so amplified that we are kept confused, spinning on our heels, and utterly distracted.
We must seek the truth without prejudice. If we have any prayer to alter this course of complete social and demographic collapse, we should all pay very close attention.
What should be glaringly apparent to many by now is that our global system of economics must be held to account.
Our economics has, in truth, been based on thousands of years of hierarchical power and wealth. Our institutions and systems support these hierarchies exactly as they were intended to do.
Certainly, in years past, some distribution of power was deemed a political necessity; yet our economics is supported by and supports a violent, white-supremacist patriarchy that has been in place since the foundations of the Western world.
We could call this the Great Exploitation – of our neighbor and the natural world that supports us all. This would have been the perfect moniker. Power wielding power.
Labeling this system a competitive economy propelled by the consumption of goods and services or even simply calling it a consumption-driven economy would have been a more informative compromise for a name.
What we actually call this, of course, is global capitalism.
If you want to do it one better and ramp up the distortions and lies, call it by its Newspeak name. Therein lies the real problem for a good number in Americans.
…Go figure…many, it seems, wish to affix the preponderance of blame elsewhere.
There really isn’t a rush from a media too steeped in the deception of the propaganda model to expose the truth. Politics have become national with the national media monopolized in the hands of a wealthy elite. So, the lies are simply being amplified or the truth is quietly swept under the rug.
Most often, we hear this notion that our planet can’t support a human population of 8 billion people, and this is the apparent cause of our current climate troubles.
In truth, this line of thinking is likely a gross distortion of the facts. The most glaring evidence of this is that the vast majority of negative climate activity is attributed to a much smaller percentage of the world’s population.
While 80% of the globe’s population accounts for 20% of the climate change activity, a meager 20% of the population accounts for a whopping 80% of the negative impacts on the climate.
What is this telling us?
First, and most apparently, it is telling us that demographics are not the entirety, if even a significant portion, of the problem here.
So, while one might blame population for our woes, one would be missing the most significant point presented by the data. Poor people are accounting for only a minimum of climate change activity. Wealthy nations are overwhelmingly the most responsible.
Wealthy nations have industrialized. This means: high amounts of carbon emissions from a panoply of waste their industry creates; modern transportation networks that are built around the individual and the automobile; a neurotic intensity for repetitious consumer activity to support a materialist lifestyle; and a profit obsessed and “factoried” agriculture that features the cruel exploitation of animals. All of this activity drives a seemingly insatiable thirst for more and more energy while generating volumes of harmful waste.
Poor nations remain far behind wealthy nations in building industrialized economies that generate this level of greenhouse gas. It’s really that simple, but we seem to turn away when we are faced with these facts.
The truth is, once we examine demographics, we realize that in wealthy nations, with relatively broad, affordable and convenient access to both education and health care, birth rates begin to decline. When poorer countries fail to deliver this level of affluence to their citizens, birth rates are consistently higher.
This data exposes the potential causes underlying our planet’s rapid population growth. It seems embedded within global economic disparities. When people are provided affordable and convenient access to health care and education, they moderate population growth to the point of negative growth.
The problem is that bringing this level of affluence to the rest of the world would simply exacerbate the crisis before us even as populations drop. It’s in the data.
Swimming in these seas, we are like an addict. We may well realize we have a problem, but we deny what is causing the problem. This metaphor is significant as we really are dealing with the same demons as the addict or the alcoholic.
This remains lost to us.
That’s not all. When we begin to dig into why there are things like addiction, alienation, suicide, and other self-destructive and violent behaviors that plague our society and why these things are on the rise, we might begin to see what is behind all of this. That is, if we could introduce a meaningful level of honest self-critique into our thinking.
When our world finds itself racing towards extinction and destruction, a number of critical questions must be asked.
First, we must question the leadership that has brought us to this point and seems to be propelling us towards certain doom. Everyone should be concerned simply because these are the same group of leaders who brought us here.
Everyone – not just the poor and the black and brown people – should be concerned. Listen closely. Talk of “thinning the herd” seems darkly akin to “the Final Solution” particularly with the entirety of the rhetoric of this caste. LGBTQ+, Jews, immigrants, or anyone else “othered” – should be worried. In truth, even the rich should jump ship.
As we question our leaders, we must also cast a critical eye on our venerated institutions.
These institutions include our precious global economic system which is indeed known as capitalism.
In Part Two: Shop ‘til you Drop – the Unsustainability of Capitalism we will deconstruct some of the faulty mechanisms of a consumption-based economy.