You know, in a way, Iām not really surprised that capitalism has the fucking deathgrip on the collective brain of the west that it has. Itās built on the same foundational assumption that I think causes us a lot of unnecessary bullshit. The fact is that despite living in an incredibly impermanent universe that is constantly shifting, changing, twisting, unifying and coming apart, we desperately, desperatelyĀ want things to be forever and unchanging. Humans build and buy houses on cliff edges, and fault lines, and in regular flood zones, even when well aware of this being the case. Because, well, the cliff is there now, so presumably itāll always be there. There isnāt an earthquake happening this very second, so probably itāll never happen. And then we build our lives in it, spend our time in it, spend our money on it, wave off precautions we could take because eh, Iāll get around to that later, and then weāre completely shocked and devastated when the house crumbles into the sea. Or even when the cliff encroaches far enough that the house becomes uninsurable, and what the hell am I supposed to do with this place that I canāt sell and donāt want to live in, with its value plummeting?? The growth mindset of capitalism functions in the same way. You have a bucket of water, so you take out a cup and sell it to somebody. Then tomorrow you sell ten cups. Then a hundred the day after. Thatās the plan, and why not? Thereās water in the bucket nowĀ so obviously there always will be. Run out?? Donāt be ridiculous, the bucket canāt miraculously run out, look at all the water in it! Thereās oil underground now, the climate isnāt at risk now, there arenāt any trash islands in the Pacific Ocean now, so letās build our business model on the assumption that that will always. Capitalism does not, and cannot take into account that over time things change, because the end goal of everything developed under capitalism is always growth, and it encourages the part of our nature that also wants that to be true.Ā Things get even worse when it intersects with conservatism, which is the political attitude that change is bad and things totally can just stay the same forever, and that itās desirable for them to do so. Which is one of the reasons you start getting into real danger when supposedly left-wing parties start to see themselves as parties of the status quo. The safe bet, the steady hand, under whom nothing will change. We already have people who think nothing should change. Weāre well-fucking stocked with those people. We need somebody to be willing to operate on the assumption that the cliff edge might crumble, the climate might collapse, theĀ āharmless jokesā of today might actually just be mindless cruelty.
