quarta-feira, 30 de novembro de 2022

Class consciousness is arguably the best immunization against most capitalist myths

Class consciousness is one of the most effective intellectual tools to dig thoroughly the many layers of deceptive manipulation that allow the capitalist class to keep us, the poor competing with each other for scraps.

The market economy is a paradise for creative entrepreneurs  and innovators willing to work hard transforming great ideas into amazing products, devices, gadgets and  services that makes us all happier in a ever more commodified world.

Question: is it sustainable, desirable or necessary? In my opinion, it is not. It is perfectly attainable to have fulfilled and meaningful lives with much less, life is not about owing more but about knowing deeper to a more comprehensive understanding of the world around us.

Most relationships are becoming increasingly commodified transforming us into uni-dimensional beings. We see everything through the profit lens, when we have nothing to gain we should look somewhere else. Profit driven social relations is the default mode expandable to all kinds of relationships (animals, plants, nature) everything must be regarded as an opportunity for investment and the financialization of nature (ecosystems services) is the last frontier to control not only nature but its biochemical processes.

The market economy which means the financialized economy is the way to go, all existential threats faced by humanity and the rest of the living community of Planet Earth can and should according to the people on the top of the social pyramid (the ones that control the world financial system and pull the political strings) can be solved by the free-market neoliberal capitalist rules (green capitalism).

They will tell us that now is different but I tell you that the basic premises are still the guiding lines, "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." - Albert Einstein, because they don’t want any systemic structural change that could undermine their interests.

The human imagination subjected to the market economy mentality, puts our creativity serving the commodification of everything. The market economy praises creativity but within the profit driven boundaries.

Natural resources are limited and most habitats and ecosystems when destroyed become a major factor to drive species extinct, does it matter? No! What we need is to green the economy and keep the current system in place and everything will be fine.

Where does the raw materials come from? The PR machine are in charge to sell the wider public the fictional reality of circular economy, energy transition, imagine a world powered by blue hydrogen, biomass power-plants, millions of windmills changing the mountain and coastal landscape forever, the capitalist techno-fix mentality prevails because the profit mode is the default mode and what we need is a deep change in mentality.

Could we ask for a seven generations assessment, would it be wise?, before we, as a society decide what´s best in the long run? The techno-fix mentality, Technoscientism is the religion that we should trust to provide solutions to the problems created by previous techno-scientific solutions in an ever growing spiral of complexity. That should be the definition of irrationality but instead is becoming a generalized blind faith in technoscientism.

Wouldn't it be better to draw some limits and try to live with less in a more egalitarian society? Can we live more, work less and truly enjoy meaningful lives?

Class consciousness is the antidote to most myths and pitfalls of the so-called free-market capitalist economy based on the accumulation of wealth, power and control on the top of the social pyramid which is neither good for people nor for the environment.  

High-tech innovation and computer sciences fast development applied to almost all areas of the economy is changing the way we live, work and interact socially. The fascination with information technologies is practically universal and transversal to most professional, academic, entertainment activities.

Should we slow the pace or is it asking too much! The prevalent mentality of unrestrained techno-scientific advances is widely accepted as a given, that must be not questioned, why should we slow the pace of techno-scientific development?  

Humanity is undergoing fast changing times. In the global north countries the working class living standards is steadily being eroded, somehow we are transitioning from a mass consumption society to the rise of the useless class, austerity policies in financialized economies generates poverty, social exclusion and a lot of unnecessary human suffering and misery.

Whenever a society has the material resources to satisfy the needs of its citizenry and deprive them of the means to live based on ideological prejudices and fake moral principles of meritocratic values, we need a strong sense class consciousness to debunk it and put human dignity as political priority.

Our minds run on a lot of BS ideological prejudices on what is the economy for and whom it should serve, I mean what is the real purpose of any economic activity? Most of us probably believe that the main purpose of an economy is to produce wealth, because we confuse wealth with tangible goods and services, but wealth is a useful fiction to manipulate useful idioms.  

Apparently most people keep believing in the myths of capitalism. Decades of anti-communist and anti-socialist propaganda transformed radically the cultural-ideological environment through class denialism.

In a leveled free-market open economy, the best ideas and the most persevering people have the best chances of being successful, the losers are the ones that are not able to make sacrifices and stay focused, therefore they can only blame themselves for their failures.

Under the capitalist rule, life is a game, only the few have the opportunity to become winners, and ruthless competition to defeat the adversary is the basic rule of the game, unless cartelization works better.  

While most of us compete for recognition and reward; simultaneously we are used as pawns, it doesn’t really matter which side of the barricade we find ourselves in, third parties are profiting from our labor and sacrifice.

We dedicate our lives to promote someone else agendas (which frequently are against our best class interests) that’s called exploitation.

We are free to choose whom or which organization, institution, corporation, etc, serve in order to make ends meet. Even the citizens with the highest level of education have to follow these rules, successful careers depend on the ability to pick the projects which are more likely to be funded, who funds the projects controls which ones are the good ones.

Either you serve powerful entrenched interests or you end up as a pariah. Academic freedom, free-speech, free-choice, social mobility cannot coexist with class domination. Denialism, cognitive dissonance, intellectual dishonesty, hypocrisy, arrogance can be summed up as voluntary servitude, at the highest levels servitude is rewarded with lots of privileges and entitlements but there is still servitude, in a trickle down servitude system.  

segunda-feira, 21 de novembro de 2022

The continuous struggle for survival limits the participation in society

We spend our lives listening to trusted "authorities" preaching the value of democracy and freedom, the role of freedom of the press and expression, but what they really teach us is to comply with the only form of freedom that really matters, the freedom to use money as a tool to limit the access to goods and services that should be in the public domain. Unrestricted private investment is the definition of freedom in the era of finance capitalism, democracy for the few who benefit from the privatization of what was once part of the commons.

The closer we get to the base of the social pyramid, the more our ability to influence structural changes in society diminishes.

Citizens at the base of the social pyramid have to organize themselves in groups, movements, parties, unions, etc., to regain bargaining power to demand effective changes. Individually, we have no political voice, class consciousness is the remedy against isolation and social atomization and the awakening to participatory politics for the collective struggle to consolidate our individual rights and freedoms.

Capitalist individualism denies basic rights and freedoms to the many while ensuring democracy for the few. Ecosocialism guarantees the rights and freedoms to people, but also to the rest of the living community while respecting the ecosystems and habitats of planet Earth, because it is not just about us, humanity. Who wants a planet where nothing remains but a dystopian transhumanist civilization?

“Liberals” like to sell the idea of ​​a society composed of free citizens who master their destiny, as if the economic-financial political system of a class society was organized to guarantee equal opportunities to all citizens.

It all boils down to individual choices, based on the idea that it is always possible to overcome social disadvantages with willpower.

The influence of family support is structural for the formation of the child's personality with adequate emotional support.

Parents must have the knowledge, availability and sensitivity to educate a child so that their potential can flourish. Only a functional family with financial means has real possibilities of opening horizons to the child at an early stage and I am not referring to overloading the child with extracurricular activities, that is manifestly stupid, I am referring to the sensitivity to assess the child's evolution in terms of tastes, tendencies, intellectual curiosity, artistic abilities and others, this is what is crucial for a harmonious development.

Most citizens reach adulthood without having the slightest idea of ​​the diversity of academic choices and career opportunities that exist due to the sociocultural limitations of the environment where they grew up and the people with whom they interacted and related.

Many young people and adults may know about the existence of “uncommon” professional options and careers, but for reasons of social status and various constraints they believe that they are beyond their reach, some will realize this later as they deepen their knowledge and understanding of what society really is, but for most of them there is already to much at stake for a drastic life change. Again, the exceptions confirm the rule.

In economically disadvantaged and culturally limited families, generally less attentive to the details of the needs of children and young people under their responsibility, they tend to prioritize academic and/or professional choices aimed to fit the job market.

Personal fulfillment is indelibly associated with economic achievements, the more steps one manages to climb on the social ladder, the more pride one feels because in the context of a commodified consumer society, everything boils down to the financial availability to acquire the goods and services that most citizens and families want enjoy.

The professional careers choices that provide social recognition and better economic and financial rewards is extremely reductive. From the academic programs conception to the professional careers choices, there is little more than a process of adaptation to the established structures which limit the development of a critical mass capable of mobilizing wills to enforce systemic changes so that human existence ceases to be a mere process of voluntary submission in exchange for the right to survival for the many even for the ones that don’t recognize it.

Most citizens at the bottom of the social pyramid adapt without resistance because they perceive society as an immutable reality, or extremely difficult to change, which ends up to have a similar result.

The truth is that we are conditioned from an early age to tune in to reality at specific cultural-ideological frequencies, although in the broader socio-cultural environment a multiplicity of cultural-ideological frequencies coexist, it is as if they don’t because due to different constraints we are unable to tune them.

A class society is characterized by offering opportunities to members of the privileged classes that are denied to members of the "inferior" classes. In practice, the difference in levels of self-confidence and self-esteem can be abysmal and obviously has a negative impact in terms of academic performance.

Children and especially teenagers from upper-class families are much more confident and secure than their lower-middle-class peers, the feeling of shame associated with material privations humiliates and frustrates, especially in adolescence. From a rational point of view, we should not feel ashamed of our social origins, but in a consumer society ruled by a capitalist system where we are defined by what we have, it is not easy to circumscribe feelings of inferiority.

The apologists for the established order argue that social success depends solely on individual will. The relevance of individual perseverance in pursuing a given goal is crucial for success, but true motivation comes from something more important, which is the fact that we truly believe we are doing what is right.

And despite all the inconveniences, there are still people that only function when they fully identify with the projects where they will have to invest their talents and time because the option for cognitive dissonance is not the way to preserve integrity, it is way to normalize the process of cognitive dissociation and blind conformity with situations that otherwise would make people rise up.

What is at stake is the attempt to camouflage the injustices and inequalities caused by a society structured in classes with the aim of diverting responsibility for failure onto citizens who are actually victims.

Pointing out character flaws, personality disorders and other problems that all of us human beings share as the main causes for individual failure, therefore we don’t need to question the established order.

Less contestation and more adaptation is the motto, to the point that it makes no sense to resist. Society as a whole is moving in that direction.

Another point on which it is necessary to reflect: the professional occupation must never be the solely form of social participation in societal affairs regardless of social status, every citizen should play different roles in society according to age group, life experience and other useful knowledge that they willingly want to share.

Many citizens spend their entire lives working in BS jobs as if they were condemned to perpetual monotony and imbecility while being to polluted environments, rotating and intermittent schedules, low wages, precariousness, a whole set of negative aspects associated with essential but undervalued professions and occupations.

Many citizens with higher education and intellectually stimulating professional careers argue that the retirement age should be raised so that those who wish to do so can extend their professional careers without losing benefits. Obviously, people don't lose validity just because they reach a certain age.

By the way, the “elderly” have a lot to share with the community, regardless of their life walkways and academic degree. They are repeatedly seen as a burden and treated as if they were imbeciles, a clear sign that we live in a sociopathic society and the lower we go on the social pyramid the less respect we show for the elderly. Poverty symbolizes failure in a society that praises fake wealth, frivolous behavior and superfluous consumption of luxury items as the beacon of freedom of choice and social success.

Returning to “active” life, a wide range of functions and professional occupations essential to the proper functioning of society are carried out by millions of citizens who submit themselves to painful and monotonous working conditions. Assembling lines, construction sites, mines, manufacturing facilities with high environmental pollution, where even the time spent in the bathroom is controlled, and I could go on...

This “category” “class” of citizens needs more free time to dedicate to activities that give them pleasure than to prolong the torture. It is true that many people tolerate (accommodate) the BS jobs (“Bullshit Jobs” by David Graeber https://davidgraeber.org/books/bullshit-jobs/) relatively well, because they believe that it is part of normality, that it cannot be changed, so it's best to move on.

This is true for a part of the population, but it is not true for the population as a whole, many citizens, for reasons of mere subsistence, accept jobs that cause them extreme psychological agony and often do not even have anyone to talk to without being advised to see the positives aspects that in many occasions are mere fiction and follow the principle: when you can't fight them, join them, give up, stop thinking for yourself and join the herd.

An extremely unequal system that sacrifices the lives of many citizens so that others can emphasize the importance of their professional, managerial, academic, etc. careers even when the value of their work is null and in some cases harmful to society, it is a sociopathic society governed by a psychopathic elite.

While citizens of the so-called "inferior" classes are looked at with disdain, as if the only "productive" form of social participation could be limited to “noble” functions and occupations, devaluation the so-called undifferentiated work only proves the iniquity of the class dictatorship that we are all supposed to worship.

The myth of social mobility needs to be debunked, most adult citizens with family responsibilities and bills to pay can do little to nothing than take the "opportunities" society has to offer, mostly the BS jobs.

For most it's basically about trying to survive and stretch the money until the end of the month, which in itself represents a tremendous challenge.

A radical change of one's life path is not impossible, but for citizens at the bottom of the social pyramid, the exception proves the rule, when it comes to climbing the social ladder. Accommodation is an important factor of social inertia, but even among those willing to make sacrifices, the success rate is low because the problem lies in the way society is structured, not in individual will.

At the individual level, opportunities are very limited for citizens with limited economic resources since the concern with basic sustenance is constant.

Socio-professional elitism attributes relevance to certain professions, occupations and roles to take all important decisions and disqualify the many as unfit to be involved in social and civic intervention, besides the right to vote, ordinary citizens are ruled out of any form of participatory politics with the purpose of laying the foundations for participatory economics for a more just and thriving society.

All citizens without exception have the right to play a role in society that goes far beyond the professional sphere, of course this does not interest the dominant socio-professional classes and elites.

True democracy will never please those who defend privileges and rights denied to most members of society. Inequality is the essence of any class society and meritocracy is nothing else but the justification to protect entrenched interests normalized over time and transformed into acquired rights favoring the rentier class.

Success stories of vertiginous social ascension are marginal even in societies where education is free, if we take into account that education is the great social equalizer.

Entrepreneurship has limits and many projects considered innovative are just empty promises and/or blatant frauds. The FIRE sector, the financial system and financial markets in all their forms, genres, products, tools, schemes and tricks "breed" most billionaires without producing anything tangible other than unnecessary human suffering and that’s what we are supposed to be the future for humanity with the financialization of ecosystems services.

The social roles should  be associated with every specific age group, it is unfair and punitive to link the social role to the professional path. The wisdom that comes with age has nothing to do with techno-scientific knowledge and high-tech skills.

Younger people are better equipped to adapt and function in a rapidly developing society, where change happens at a breakneck pace, this acceleration makes older citizens look inept, however, the problem is not in the people, it is in the paradigm of political economy "chosen" as the foundational rules to regulate the means of production and allocation of goods and services in society.

Excluding, ridiculing, demeaning, ostracizing and blaming people for not following the “evolution” of society, under the pretext that society does not advance due to technological illiteracy, as if this were the only credible parameter to assess the “utility” of human life. This mentality says more about the state of society than about the "uselessness" of older generations. A healthy society does not put the young in competition with the elderly, it accommodates people in different roles according to their age group.

Since humanity is humanity, societies respect the statute of age, in the era of transhumanist techno-scientism older generations represent a cost and are a nuisance, unless they have the financial resources to pay premium services, those who supposedly have always lived above their means, when in fact they were deprived of the means to live should be euthanized and reused as Soylent Green, to follow the principles of efficiency!

Reducing the social role of citizens to professional careerism only serves to marginalize the majority of citizens who will never have the opportunity to actively participate in shaping the Polis.

Reducing citizens to consumers, voters and compliant spectators is to make them irrelevant, representative democracy serves to maintain a clear division between those who dictate policies and those who suffer the consequences.

The basic principle of democracy is economic democracy, participatory economy and political agency to prevent the growth of social cancers. If society is not vigilant, over time, individuals with mutual interests will organize themselves to instrumentalize society's institutions and create a legal system that protects their interests and will design a moral-cultural code-system that affirms the nobility of their cause-ideology.

The masses end up being ruled by oligarchs and plutocrats, the rentier class part of the deep state. Society as a whole is enslaved using schemes and scams that reinforce power, centralize control and concentrate wealth in the hands of the few while diminishing the bargaining power of the lower-middle working class.

The precautionary principle is the most “economical” choice to avoid the fasciszation of society and the only way to enforce it is to hold citizens accountable with regular political agency and by assigning a role in society based on age group, no matter who you are or what you do for a living, we all have the duty and the right to participate and in many circumstances we are more trustworthy than personalities and institutions considered “authorities”.

The Ivy League type of institution and celebrity-influencer culture says a lot about the delusional state of modern societies, most of us admire, follow and worship people, brands, ideologies that transform popularity into legitimacy.

Populism in itself is neither good nor bad, both demagogues and respected orators use rhetoric as a means to manipulate perception and emotions, what really matters is the content, does it adhere to reality, or not?

It is important to learn how to identify patterns, a beautiful speech can be nothing more than an empty shell, Gandhi wrote the following quote: "An error does not become truth because of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because no one sees it".

Popularity says nothing about the reliability of the information conveyed, that “legitimacy” comes from the fact that followers believe in the sources without bothering to confirm them. Therefore, lies and misinformation are easily propagated as a means of protecting hidden agendas that serve vested interests.

Is there no alternative to the techno-fascist transhumanist proposals put forward by the WEF? The real objective of this group of "globalists" is to safeguard the interests of their class through the process of financialization of the ecosystem services presented as the solution to solve all environmental problems. These elites want to control nature excluding millions of people and quite possibly resorting to eugenics as a way to reduce population.

These crooks don't care about what we want for posterity, nothing matters but their agendas. We fell asleep and lost what little control we had and now we are at their mercy, instrumentalized as useful idiots for imperialist and cultural wokeism and gender wars as they advance their agendas that will enslave us to the point of no return.

A society that dignifies human beings and respects nature and life cannot be based on the relentless exploitation of everything that can be transformed into products and commodities.

This is the basic rule of democracy and freedom, the exploitation of man by man and consequently of all natural "resources" by mankind, with the aim of commodifying social relations and life itself is a perversion that, once instituted and normalized, becomes accepted as an immutable reality and we begin to swim in it like fish in water.

The precautionary principle is defined by valuing simplicity and reciprocity. A culture of sobriety and respect for natural limits has to be the norm. The exploitation of natural resources and the construction of infrastructures always entails the destruction of natural habitats and ecosystems therefore must be used with moderation which can never be achieved in a for profit capitalist society.

If we are driven by genuine environmental conscience, we, as a society have to restrain economic activities that can cause potential irreversible  environment changes because every species that becomes extinct due to habitat destruction is a crime against life.

Our delusional hubristic technocratic culture gives us the power to change the environment at such an accelerated pace that we cannot process it, but the future generations will have to bear the consequences, such a reckless culture should be questioned every second, more then urgent it is imperative to stop it, but instead we are totally hypnotized by it.

Representative democracy means delegating the control of most relevant institutions to third parties through a vote of confidence for a certain period of time. In most cases in do not even have the right to demand the fulfillment of the electoral political programs.

The political class is completely unimputable to the law of the land but accountable to the oligarch and plutocrat class. A society ruled by the rentier class following the parameters defined by the deep state governance is not a democracy is an oligarchy, the right to vote is a charade for compliance.

The dignity of life and the sobriety of the precautionary principle as a tool to avoid exaggeration should be at the base of all educational programs.

The dangers represented by the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a small elite are real, over time the concentration of wealth will become effective political influence, economic power and control of the structural institutions that should ensure the separation of powers.

The main institutions of society begin to serve the interests of the dominant class and society as a whole becomes hostage to the will of the powers that control society. In order to survive, ordinary citizens are obliged to accept voluntary servitude as a basic civic duty to put food on the table an guarantee  roof over the head.

Democracy becomes a vessel full of empty promises (slogans) and, over time, fails to fulfill the minimum objectives of the social contract, opening the doors to the return of fascist regimes that promise the "regeneration" of society.

The celebration of the Commons as an antidote against the commodification of human relations. Money (a virtual concept, a fictitious entity) currently works, practically on an exclusive basis, as the means of access to essential goods and services.

Money, no matter the format, we are on the verge of instituting and normalizing the use of CBDC's (Central Bank Digital Currencies) under the dominion of the capitalist system is a tool to negative discrimination because it serves to exclude the so-called "inferior" classes, the echelons at the bottom of the social pyramid.

The concept of social justice is replaced by the myth of meritocratic entrepreneurship and social interdependence is replaced by careerist entitlement, and as we approach the top of the social pyramid we enter in the realm of absolute unaccountability but somehow we are supposed to believe that all is done to enhance the so called western democratic values, one thing is true, only deeply delusional minds under the western propaganda hypnotic effects can truly believe it.