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.