You know, in a way, I’m not really surprised that capitalism has the fucking deathgrip on the collective brain of the west that it has. It’s 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, desperately 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 it’ll always be there. There isn’t an earthquake happening this very second, so probably it’ll 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, I’ll get around to that later, and then we’re 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 can’t sell and don’t 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. That’s the plan, and why not? There’s water in the bucket now so obviously there always will be. Run out?? Don’t be ridiculous, the bucket can’t miraculously run out, look at all the water in it! There’s oil underground now, the climate isn’t at risk now, there aren’t any trash islands in the Pacific Ocean now, so let’s 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. 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 it’s 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. We’re 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, the “harmless jokes” of today might actually just be mindless cruelty.
