The Daily: 15 October 2024

Have you ever wondered why the titans of capitalism have not gone after mainstream environmentalists? Capitalists show no restraint when it comes to violently shutting down things that bother them — from escaped slaves to the Chipko women to the Chiapas conflict to the Water Protectors. So why are so many in the “liberal” media and academia allowed to publish? Indeed, why are they paid handsomely for their milquetoast critiques of our system? Why does capitalism reward these ideas, these people?

No, it is not because of their body type, though that is a factor.

It is because the titans of industry don’t care what we say. They don’t care what we think. They don’t care about those with an enormous platform or loud voices. They don’t even care when we all get together and march through the streets. This is the fundamental flaw in protesting. Really, it’s the flaw in our whole representative political system. All politicking does no actual thing. Though it does keep us all busy, too busy to do actual things. Which is why it is encouraged by capitalists… But all talking, writing, even thinking about what we “should do” is worse than useless. It takes time and energy, and yes, thought, away from actually doing the work. We are lulled into a false sense of security. Well, we thought about it, came up with a plan, now we’re fine… when nothing has actually been done. And that too is just fine with capitalists…

They don’t care about our petty little lives and silly little ideas — they care about what we do. Particularly those things we do to negatively affect their wealth streams. And mainstream anything — be it environmentalism, social justice protestors, artists and novelists, even the oxymoronic travesty that is punk now — does not harm capitalism. To the contrary, the mainstream is mainstream because it is actively supporting those wealth streams, participating in them.

We are all still being good little consumers. One might even point out that many of the prominent Green-ish folks are advocating for more consuming, building back better, digging up more resources and churning them into wealth, using bodies and lands to make a brighter, less polluting future. (Where? And for whom…) They do not even hold back from considering such things as confining all humanity into urban wastelands and feeding us all energy intensive Soylent Green wannabe gloop or powering this brave new world with nuclear energy. (Why not go full Matrix while they’re at it…) Mainstreamers have bought into the buying your way into salvation fantasy, hook, line and sinker.

Of course, the capitalists are content. For them, the various green deals are merely different paths to increased wealth extraction. Yet it should be pointed out that none of these things is actually happening. There may be more solar panels in the world now, but we are more dependent than ever on fossil fuels. Veganism might be more popular than any previous food fad, but it is still dependent upon industrial agriculture and immense supply chains and inconceivable levels of degradation — merely replacing CAFOs with palm oil plantations or slash and burn livestock feed production with water-guzzling almond monocultures in the desert. And really, it’s not even replacing. It’s adding on to the original horrors. And nobody ever turns their attention to the fundamental problem behind all this waste — that we are pretending to be separable and separated in superior ways to our biophysical support systems. That we are poisoning the things we rely upon for our own existence, while we play our infantile status games. (I mean, it would be farcical if it weren’t so catastrophic…)

No… There is no brave new world on the horizon. Just more of the same until we choke on all this too much.

Which is precisely what things like Helene and Milton are… the planet choking.

But what happens when we do actual things to bring ourselves within planetary boundaries? Well, first of all, this is a much quieter project. It does not come with a bullhorn and a million followers on social media. It will not earn you wealth or prestige. You may feel like you are disappearing, which, in most ways, you are. When you turn away from rampant capitalism, perpetual growth, and relentless consumption, you are turning away from the means of promoting yourself, of remaining visible. You are becoming small, yes, human-scaled, but in the age of super-sized, this feels like an inconsequential life. It can feel hopeless when you look out from your little boundaries and see all the growing transgression in the world.

But what happens when we do things that start to affect that transgression, start to hem it in with planetary limits? What happens when our actions affect capitalism? Or even cross into a level of public awareness that our small actions merely have the potential to become an effective force? If mainstream greens were actually doing something, anything, to bring themselves or to advocate bringing the human project within biophysical limits, then they would be silenced. There would be no more publishing, no more income, no more interviews and public attention. And then the usual witch-hunts would run their course. There would be mocking, delegitimizing, derision. The subject would be beaten down to invisibility. And if scorn proves insufficient, or if the authorities are merely sufficiently annoyed, there follows imprisonment, expulsion, and bodily harm, often targeting loved ones, usually ending in an unmarked grave.

This is a common story. It is not, however, the story of most forms of protest in this system. How many people who write about what “should happen” in prominent media have been targeted? How many protesters, even those who have been arrested, have had their whole life turned into pain and then oblivion? How many just keep churning out books… The capitalists don’t care. They are not threatened. Writing matters not one whit…

As you can imagine this creates a certain level of conflict in my own life. I don’t believe in all this scribbling mainly because I am allowed to continue doing it. That is partly because of my privilege base, but it’s also because what I am saying doesn’t matter — even when what I am saying is describing what I and others are doing to escape this system. Even when my message is explicitly to stop buying shit, to drop out, to walk away. No, to run away, screaming… and don’t look back!

I’ve had people tell me I should publish my thoughts in a book or some more prominent media platform. Well… first, I don’t want to make people pay for my thoughts, which are probably no more valid or worthy than their own… Then, is there really any publisher who will support this message of mine? If it were less consequential, maybe. But if the ways of being that I follow were to become common, there would not be a publishing industry. Do you think they don’t know that?

But there is a less brave face to this as well. I don’t actually want to be a target. I don’t crave attention of any kind, but I really don’t want negative attention. Most of the people who defy this system with bodily acts are the same. They don’t want more pain. They are trying to escape pain. I don’t want to suffer for the cause. And I certainly don’t want my loved ones drawn into that quagmire. I simply want the whole need for a cause to go the fuck away.

But the strongest argument against finding a bigger soapbox is that bigger is the problem. Bigger and especially not doing bigger, just writing bigger. It does not matter what I write. What matters is what I do. And if I were to put more of my time and effort into this writing, then I would be doing less.

I struggle with this. Half of me wants to yell “Turn off the damn machines and go live a real life!” Because this is the only one I get. And a real life is not electronic. It is not symbolic or representative. It is messy and squishy biology. It is the hard facts of geology. It is the endless fascinating quest for energy, which in human bodies takes the form of producing delectable — that is, nutritious — food. It is reproducing and raising that next generation into viable beings. It is tending to a small corner of the world and leaving it in a better state than I found it. It does sometimes take the form of thinking, yes. I love beauty and comfort and all the bizarre little ways that this universe creates pleasure for its beings. I think about the meaning of that and all the myriad implications.

On the other hand, I love writing. I create stories. I turn this language on its head sometimes and force it to talk about the things it despises, like mortality and responsibility and real love and all the “shoulds” that flow from even five minutes observation of the actual world. But I love the process of manipulating these stupid symbols to create a message that may be understood by some other being. Maybe even a message that outlasts my words. I know it is unimportant relative to doing actual things, but I am good at this stupid human trick and that is a seductive drug.

So I have to remind myself regularly that the life I am living is not in these words. The meaning of that life is not to be found in a mind. It is found in a body. It is the body. It is the being and the doing and the practice of life. And very little of that practice can be found in human ideas, particularly those that are in print.

However, that practice, that praxis, is absolutely inimical to the project of this culture. If every body is living a real life for themselves, there is no profit for the elites. There is no work done for the elites either. In fact, there are no elites. Living a real life tends to reveal the lack of justification for hierarchy. The ideas of an elite thing crumble when every body is just a body with a life to live. Just… but how much is in that just! Capitalism can’t compete with real life. And so it must silence anyone who draws aside the veil and reveals the joy beyond its synthetic and sterile confines.

When people do that, when they do things to get away from this culture, to break their bonds to this culture, or even just show that there are good reasons to want to escape by embodying those reasons, capitalism is threatened. This is not merely philosophy. Capitalism is not merely philosophy either. It is an embodied way of being that takes material wealth and physical work from this planet to reward a very few people. Without those material inputs, there is no capital output. There is no reward. There is no wealth. There is no hierarchy. When people refuse capitalism, capitalism is physically harmed.

Think about that! And then pay attention to the people and the ways of being that provoke a response from capitalism. Because those people, those ways of being can bring down capitalism, can end this nightmare culture.

And then notice what capitalism allows, what it encourages and rewards… Notice who receives attention and who is visible. Notice what is actually being done in all their words.

The prominent paths are not the ways out.

The ways out are small and silent and obscure. And they do not come with publishing contracts… The ways out are doing the work and being an embodied life. The ways out do not need leaders or mass action or public law. They do not require expert opinion or explication. The ways out are just that… out. No more of this…

But there is such joy to be found out here! And that terrifies capitalists…

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©Elizabeth Anker 2024