Complex societies do not evolve or change based on ideas and projects due to their potential to make communities more sustainable, balanced, and fair but based on vested interests.
Individuals, families, groups, companies, organizations, institutions, governments, and supranational entities can and do influence public opinion to get support for implementing societal changes that often go against the best interests of the many.
It is logic and repetition, not reason nor veracity, behind the creation and spread of dominant subconscious narratives that determine how most of us perceive reality.
The dominant narratives do not have to be convergent; by omission or exaggeration, they seldom question the structural foundations that keep a dysfunctional system functioning. The dominant narratives are meant to divert, deceive, and divide.
The future society is being designed and shaped by people and institutions committed to perpetuating the present power structure.
Whenever radical demands threaten the wealth and power accumulated by national or transnational elites, such as demanding an equal distribution of wealth and power, the individuals, groups, organizations, and governments advocating for such outrageous demands are ridiculed, and their proposals are considered unrealistic.
Power and wealth go hand in hand in managing dominant cultural-ideological narratives to prevent ordinary citizens from feeling the need to understand reality through the lens of class dynamics.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass
Class consciousness is the indispensable cultural-ideological underpinning for a comprehensive understanding of how capitalist theology clouds reasoning and inhibits most people from feeling the need to seek the true causes of the structural problems facing humanity.
The sword of Damocles hangs over the survival of humanity.
If nothing is done to change the current political and economic paradigm, the rise of a dystopian, techno-fascist transhumanist society prescribed as salvation for humanity will be imposed in the face of widespread apathy.
Citizens deemed redundant and useless will ultimately fall victim to some form of adequately rationalized eugenics program. Reducing the ecological overshoot and mitigating the climate crisis will eventually be done using the principle of class meritocracy so that the upper dominant class can continue enjoying the privileges they feel entitled to while a substantial part of the lower dominated class must be eliminated.
Instead of debating a democratic solution for a more frugal, social, and ecological society based on an economy geared towards meeting essential needs and accessing universal public services, we are being deceived by far-right populist narratives targeting scapegoats to divert people from the systemic roots of the problems.
Plutoligarchs put the financial means at their disposal to control all areas of life in society.
Ideas, projects, initiatives, and programs that in any way challenge the power structure are discarded, slandered, and ignored. By dictating the dominant narratives, they can shape public perception to manufacture consent. The formation of mass movements based on class awareness is arguably the most feared nightmare capable of keeping elites awake at night.
The rentier elites, the plutocrats, the oligarchs, and the professional-managerial class resort to every possible strategy to prevent ordinary citizens, the working poor, and the lower middle class (a comprehensive group of people deprived of the means to have a dignified life) ) to be interested in the serious study of the inherent injustice of class-based societal systems and how the accumulation of capital requires territorial expansion (colonialism and imperialism), the subjugation of people (exploitation and slavery) and the predation of natural resources and raw materials (plunder and ecocide).
I highly recommend reading “Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and Capital Accumulation” by Jason W. Moore https://jasonwmoore.com/.
