The Promise of Illusion

 Most famously the Bible speaks of a time, a golden age, in which humans did not toil. They lived blissfully in the garden having no care in the world, nor fear. Likewise the ancient Egyptians speak of a time called Zep Tepi, and nearly all ancient cultures have tales of a time in which man lived blissfully without a care and nature provided all they needed. These stories, I believe, speak of an actual time, albeit allegorically, before humankind invented agriculture and civilization. One only need to look at tribal societies today to understand this fact spoken of above. Civilization promises us something we already once had, a golden age. One in which humans had no need of toil, but spent their days enjoying each other and foraging for what the Earth naturally gave them. Taking not more than they need and being satisfied with life and the world as it is.

This promise is and always was an illusion. Civilization will not bring about any golden age and the idea that capitalism tells us that we can live a wealthy life if we work hard enough is just as much of an illusion as what civilization tells us. Instead civilization has preceded to create a dystopian nightmare in which the Earth and all its inhabitants are ravaged for another illusion, profit. There is barely any place in which civilization has not completely ruined with the sole intent to create profit. Humans squander their lives toiling away to achieve a life that they will never gain. We labor our lives away in the hopes of reaching this illusion of a golden age. We are promised retirement in our old age, but at what cost? Labor has taken its toll by that point and we are essentially used up and unable to enjoy our lives as we are merely moments away from death. 

While our tribal brothers and sisters are living in their own golden age, one without toil or worry, we toil and worry to try and achieve ours that will never come. We are mere cogs in the machine of civilization which only releases us from its bonds when it decrees we are used up and no longer useful to the machine. It tells us that this is our “golden years” and to enjoy retirement. Enjoy what at 65+ when we have used up our youth toiling away for the techno-industrial system? By then our bodies are weary, bruised and beaten from a life of unrelenting toil, stress, and anxiety. 

The promise civilization has made has cost us our lives. It is an illusion no human can achieve.

Why For Proft Ruins Everything

 In a society that prioritizes profit over all things, how on earth can we know what reality actually is? We are in a gulf of never ending products, each trying its best to prove they care about us when in reality they only care about selling something to us. Something created at low cost and sold for well more than what it is actually worth. How can we know someone is being sincere when the motive is profit. Can we know that the person selling us a medicine is being sincere? No, they know we have a problem and created a solution to it in order to make a profit from us. For profit anything ruins everything. It devalues reality and life in general as it reduces everything to a transaction. Our life, in this system, is a series of transactions in which everyone, nearly everyone, is trying to extract some profit from us. The nature of this rubs off onto humans, who then view everything as transactional. So even our actions are calculated responses based on what a person or people can provide for us. Is it profitable for us to be around someone who is depressed? If we can gain anything from this then the answer is yes, if we cannot then we don’t. 

This is why a for profit system ruins everything. It teaches humans to look at everything in terms of how we can profit, reducing literally all interactions to transactions. Even when we date we are looking for something to gain from the interaction, making it a transaction. “If I buy her dinner and something nice, maybe she will fuck me.” Thereby dating becomes transactional. A person may think “Can this person provide a nice life for me? Are they financially stable enough to take care of me so I don’t have to work?” Thereby dating has become transactional, not interactional. This reduction is part of domestication of the human animal in which we have been reduced to living off the very system that is destroying all life on this planet. Without it we would be totally free, with it we are mere cogs in a death machine. However, we are domesticated and cannot live without it, its sort of a symbiotic relationship. We proved labor power, it provides us with the bare minimum, but strips from us our foundational human nature to live off of nature alone. 

Removing a for profit system would certainly be a step up in the human condition under capital, but it would not be a means to an end.

The Crises

 Humans will go to their extinction singing the praises of the very system that is killing them. Despite all the evidence for human caused climate change humans still seem content on living in their delusion that everything is alright. Humans are going about business as usual when in reality we are seeing the effects of climate change first hand and need to be acting to stave off any further damage. But alas, human concern themselves with trivial things and argue about inconsequential nonsense instead of acting. Civilization, namely capitalism, caused the crisis we are seeing today, its clear as day. Yet humans seem to think that civilization, again namely capitalism, is the greatest system ever invented. Its as if we are praising the noose we are about to be hung with. We are praising the gun we are pressing against our head ready to fire. It is sheer nonsense, the height of absurdity. A critique of capitalism here is not enough, as civilization gave rise to capitalism and therefore it is civilization that bears all the blame. 

In our 200,000 years of existence almost all of it was spent living in harmony with nature. We hardly left a mark on nature. and in the last 6,000 years or so we have damaged nature beyond repair and seem content on going to our graves continuing to do so. The handful of people responsible for the bulk of the damage have convinced us that it is we who are the problem and so we should recycle or drive electric cars. When in truth it is they who are the culprits. The masters of civilization are also the archetects of our demise. We need to face reality, accept the truth, and act expediently to stave off anymore damage. As a pessimist I don't see this happening, nothing short of a collapse.

Apocalypticism

 For over 2,000 years Christians have been saying, to some degree, that the end of the world is just around the corner. It seems to accelerate when global tensions arise, but never really subsides. I know in my experience many Christians welcome this, and there are some evangelicals working to bring about the end of the world. Scary enough some of these very people are in high levels of the government, actively working on bringing about the return of Christ and the end of the world. There is a Netflix special about a group called “The Family International” working in high government positions doing this very thing, the special I believe is called The Family and is worth watching.

My question is, why? Why are so many Christians hell bent on bringing about the end of the world? I think its simple. Subconsciously they know something is fundamentally wrong with the way things are, i.e. civilization, and are seeking an escape from it. Christianity offers this escape. The end comes and those chosen few get to spend eternity outside of this rotten civilization. That is my fundamental take on this issue. I think if Christians could be shown primitivism it would help quell these feelings a bit and maybe give them a more constructive outlook rather than such a destructive and self serving one. 

The Game

 Civilization is like a game you're forced to play at gunpoint. You cannot win and they gaslight you if you ask any questions. And they are constantly trying to convince you this is the greatest game ever. The sad fact is that most people do not realize that they are playing the game against their will. Since birth we are conditioned to the game and expected to play, in fact we are not given a choice to not play the game. We have no choice, but the illusion of choice is there. We are told that failure is not the design of the game but some fault of our own. When we see other people in dire circumstances it is immediately assumed it is because of their own poor decision making, not the system, that is the cause. Others will say it is the fault of capitalism, which is working as intended. That is partially correct as a critique of capitalism is good, but it is not enough. We must look at the civilization itself as opposed to whatever "ism" is running things. 

Monopoly, originally called the landlord game, was developed to show just how awful capitalism really is, and anyone who has played it can attest to the game being unfair, but rarely apply that to our own current condition. However we can opt out of monopoly or any other game, be it before the game starts or during the game at some point. But notice if you quit the game the other players get upset, maybe even taunt you to stay and play. So its sort of self regulating in that the other players keep other players playing, like in life other people keep others playing the game of civilization. If someone decides they don't want to play and go live wild and free, they are ridiculed, mocked, and looked down on in most instances. Much like "civilized" people look down upon so called primitive people. It is almost as if "civilized" people came upon wild people, realized they could not convince them that civilization was better and so forced them into the game or just killed them outright. 

This is the pathology of the disease we call civilization. Most of us are so domesticated that we cannot allow others to live free and wild. We find it odd or disgusting to think that someone would want to live in the wild apart from civilization. We glamorize the ecocidal nature of civilization, its penchant for killing those who cannot keep up or those who do not want to play the game but are stuck playing anyways. We glorify what humankind has accomplished without realizing that the march of progress is actually a march to our death. The great toll that the march of progress has done to the planet and all its inhabitants is something we conveniently ignore. Yet we keep patting ourselves on the back for all the supposed good we have done in the wake of our destruction.

On Delusion

 Prehistoric primitive humans likely had no need for delusion, they likely and almost undoubtedly just accepted the reality around them. That death is a natural part of life. They had no need of surplus and accepted what nature gave them as food, took nothing more and nothing less. This isnt to say they didnt have some worldview we might consider somewhat delusional, like animism. Its pretty much accepted that early primitive humans were animistic, the idea that all is imbued with spirit. This idea may seem absurd to us in the light of our current delusions and misinterpretation of reality, but is it that insane? Daoism and Zen Buddhism have these ideas, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. If you think about it, its quite logical compared to what many believe in today. But why are delusions rampant? Why is it that people do not seem to have a firm grasp of reality and in many cases knowingly reject reality for delusion?

I think civilization is so unnatural that humans seek out delusions in an attempt to explain their horrible reality created by civilization. That we are reduced to mere gears in a never ending and all consuming machine that labels itself "progress" and there seems to be no escape bears the question, why wouldnt humans create delusions to escape this newly created "civilized" reality? It seems human beings need delusion just to survive, just to avoid the sad reality that this forward progress is actually a progress towards species suicide, and potentially eco-suicide. 

There is comfort in delusion. There is comfort because it gives us something to look forward to outside of this death machine. There is comfort because some of these delusions attempt to explain this reality and how it is either our fault or someone elses fault we are not able to live some lavish life. There is comfort in the idea that there is some master plan and someone pulling the strings of this said plan. If someone is in control, then there is a meaning for this mindless march of alleged progress. That delusional meaning gives us the ability to carry on, slaving for this civilization that reduces all of us to domesticated animals on a miserable slaughterhouse farm. 

There is a need for many for these delusions, but for some we are beyond these delusions, we see them for what they are. We have no need of delusions and the dogmatism that accompanies them.

Hiatus

 I have been on hiatus for about 5 years or so. In that time I have learned and grown significantly. I have shed delusions and moved past dogmatic ideals and just, am. My blog will be reflecting this new self from this point forward.

The End of Man

 In Genesis we read how man came to know the truth, the knowledge of good and evil and was thus thrown from the garden or paradise to live a life of toil and hardship. I see this as an allegory for man discovering, whatever the reason, agriculture. Which inevitably led to civilization. Since then it has been a downward trajectory for human kind masked in the guise of "progress". Primitive hunter gatherers had a relatively easy and stress free life of relaxation and at times gathering, and rarely hunting to survive. While early agriculturalists led a life of hardship and toil, and were significantly less healthy than hunter gatherer counterparts. Agriculture led to civilization, which led to large scale conflict and this so called progress was only to further civilization itself. Math and geometry were developed as a means to build better agriculture. Military was developed to defend the surplus food and those that managed it. Growing technology is like slowly building your own prison in which you live and are now helpless to escape because you know no other way. This is domestication. Animals who are domesticated often have a much smaller brain than their wild counterparts, likewise modern human brains are 20% smaller than our ancestors from 20,000 years ago. Our dependence on technology is killing us, it is not making anything better. Look around, the rich are getting richer and the poor are growing poorer. The system isnt even bearable to live in. A small medical bill could bankrupt the average American. Just to get higher education one must drown themselves in debt from which they will never escape.

The end of man or humans themselves, to be more specific, is the modern techno-industrial system.