When productivity and efficiency factors are imposed as barometers to measure the success of economic activity, the commodification of social relations becomes an inevitability, animals are reduced to products and the exploitation of natural resources to feed a profit-oriented civilization. is accepted as a normal procedure
The productivist logic aims to increase profits by reducing costs, for many people this logic seems innocuous because it excludes the dehumanization and commodification of human relations.
The normalization of this logic makes acceptable to pay to enjoy the "services provided" by natural ecosystems, putting between us and a natural “resources” an entity/company to mediate and profit from this relationship.
Gradually the so-called "disadvantaged" citizens are excluded from accessing places considered natural heritage supposedly to avoid excessive human impact. Reducing human impact is crucial for the preservation of natural spaces, but what is at stake is limiting access based on financial capacity by making us paying for services based on the commodification of social relationships and nature.
Of course, we get used to everything, but that doesn't mean we're on the right path, let alone become better citizens. A culture in which empathy and compassion are excluded from everyday life ends up being ruled by petty, opportunistic and unscrupulous people who can promote themselves with very elaborate discourses on ethics and human rights, but when they reach the places of power they enact laws, rules and regulations that go in the opposite direction.
The community of living beings and the environment that sustains them are not resources available to economic activity. The destruction of habitats to build communication routes, airports, facilitate access to sites rich in minerals and other raw materials, or to install wind towers, or large parks of photovoltaic panels are not an example of efficiency and productivity, but an example permanent alteration of natural habitats with the green capitalism seal of approval.
The current paradigm of society is highly dysfunctional, the assumption that there are no limits to anything, that it is always possible to go further, own more and stimulate economic growth as the only way to create new jobs and reduce poverty.
First, social inequality and poverty will never be solved with economic growth per se, in the specific case of financialized economies, economic growth only serves to increase the concentration of wealth at the top of the social hierarchy, in the rentier class of plutocrats. and oligarchs. The US and the UK are paradigmatic examples of how the concentration of wealth in the FIRE sector is responsible for increasing inequality and poverty with the destruction of jobs in the real economy.
The so-called energy transition and the digital economy
are the new battlefront for the legitimation of the capitalist system in order to justify the exploitation, the looting of raw materials and mineral resources and to continue the destruction of ecosystems to build and install the infrastructures of the new technological era, the so-called fourth industrial revolution.
The maintenance of the status quo is more important than the preservation of ecosystems, the objective is not to solve the problem of social inequality or make society more sustainable, but rather to perpetuate the control of society in the hands of the same entities.
What is at stake is not quality of life, but unlimited consumption and enrichment based on merit as an indisputable measure to assess the quality of human activity in society.
Why do we continue to work 8 hours a day and where does the productivity gains coming from technological innovation go?
Economic growth is still a tool to lift people out of poverty, but that doesn't mean the paradigm should be perpetuated. I believe that most human beings do not advocate a planet where there are only human beings, but that will be the fate if the current model of society is perpetuated.
Mass extinction will accelerate and those who believe that green capitalism will solve environmental and economic problems do not realize that the future holds a world in which life as we know it may cease to exist.
A planet without animals in the wild, a planet where most life forms will be the product of bioengineering and the fusion of biology and technology, including the human species. Transhumanism will be promoted as the upgrade needed to protect the human species from extinction.
If you believe that this is the way, then just cross your arms and your dream will come true! It seems to me that there are still people who would like to live on a planet with the diversity of life forms in the wild that we should consider normal. I believe that many of these people would be willing to reduce consumption and live with more and better quality, with more time to give meaning and purpose to life without feeling any need to satisfy all the whims that cross our minds just because we have the means to produce goods. and superfluous products when in fact we need to work less in order to live more sustainably in a truly inclusive society.
No matter how many conscious choices the consumer makes, as a citizen he will continue to be marginalized. We cannot talk about democracy when only the homo economicus matters.
This is the reality that is imposed on us and to which we submit as if there were no alternative when it is precisely the fact of assuming this that gives it the quality of "immutability".
We are conditioned to perceive society in this way, the principle of least effort does the rest.
The effective change in the model of society requires full awareness of the consequences of the current commodification of human relations and the obstacles to be overcome to avoid the degradation of the quality of life of the working class and the environment before technofeudalism and transhumanism are imposed as the new societal paradigm.
A society where profit is placed above all other value becomes a dehumanized society that reduces all forms of life to commodities.
An endless war, in one hand, for the right to survival and on the other for the accumulation of wealth for what it represents in real and symbolic terms.
A system that pushes people into a vicious circle from which we rarely are able to escape out of necessity, interest and even addiction.
People who work in factories, on animal slaughter lines, on farms where they have to deal with animals, which are actually machines that produce milk, meat or both, people whose profession is to terraform forests for pasture, install intensive plantations , mining and oil and gas exploration, the people who work on the factory boats that literally destroy the ocean floor, the people who work in the aquaculture systems, etc...
In short, all people who live from activities with a destructive impact on the environment, do so for the simple reason that reduced to individuals without any political agency, they live trapped by the need to survive and as such have no other way but to submit.
Those of us working in the tertiary sector are equally complicit and can be more desensitized than primary sector (extracting natural resources and agriculture) and secondary sector (manufacturing, construction and processing) workers.
Most of us are just armchair activists. Confronting power is a dangerous activity, because when the powerful feel threatened, they resort to all available means to dissuade and repress any opposition that seeks to dismantle the established order.
That's why people prefer not to take risks when they fear everything will be a will-o'-the-wisp. When we have to put our bodies on the line, it should be for a worthwhile cause.
The current societal paradigm based on the mass production and consumption of superfluous goods and services is unsustainable and the reason why we have managed to shore up the collapse of the economic-financial system is because it is artificially maintained through scientific research and development applied to technological innovation each increasingly invasive and destructive, but touted as the remedy to solve environmental problems through the transition to the green economy and the digital revolution (the fourth industrial revolution).
These are not real changes but the continuation of the same scheme of power in a hierarchical society for one reason and one reason only: the wealthy elites will repudiated any change that might pose a threat to them, they want centralized control by any means and they intend to continue the process of concentration of wealth at the top of the social pyramid whatever the cost to the environment, humanity and even the very existence of life on planet earth.
At the very least, we should be skeptical of the solutions put forward by today's scientific, political and technocratic elites. It is not about defending climate denialism or any other form of ideological sectarianism, but about realizing that the current model of society does not serve the well-being of people or the environment, it simply defends the deepening of technological dependence through technocratization and the commodification of the relationship between human beings and nature.
Skepticism is a feature of scientific thinking, we should never accept any kind of dogma (immutable truth) as basic regulatory principle for intellectual analysis. Acquiring knowledge is a process, not the mere piling up of information and we have to take into account the existence of intentionally omitted or kept in secret agendas aimed at achieving concrete goals and outlining the direction in which society should be led.
A most comprehensive study of available information requires interest and dedication, not everybody has the idiosyncratic characteristics to feel intellectual curiosity in devoting time and attention to the broader study of subjects and issues essential to understanding the problems that affect our lives and shape how society should look in the future.
People who have enough power to legitimize a given societal paradigm are able to instill in the minds of the majority the “right” to fight hard for survival, relying on the implicit conformity that sociocultural engineering resorting to perception management techniques using the means of communication controlled by public and/or private entities and institutions to disseminate information using technological means and human resources with the ability to design perceptions (versions of reality) aimed at influencing and framing public opinion to manufacture consent according to the interests of powerful.
As long as the powerful manage to make the majority believe that society is nothing more than the cumulative result of economic activity and individual and business initiatives based on conscious choices and free decisions, the majority of citizens will not be able to organize any form of effective opposition.
We simply continue not to take seriously the heart of the problem that class society represents, a hierarchical scheme that gives rights of entitlement to some at the expense of others secured with the myth of meritocracy to justify it. We can and do know how to justify the unjustifiable, exploitation, enslavement, segregation, repression, genocide, plunder all the time under the banner of civilizing the savages and the infidels (as Godlike gardeners with license to transform the jungle into a civilized paradise). If we would care about freedom and the pursuit of balanced ways of living instead of this parasitic lifestyle where everything is commodified and most of us end up fighting over crumbs while watching the devastation of everything that should be precious, life in its diversity, a living planet and we don't need to become anarcho-primitivists to understand that the current societal paradigm will never be fair, equitable, respectful of life and all values that only exist on paper if they exist at all.
