Making Ends Meet

The Permanent Lie of Capitalism v. Socialism

THE EVILUTION WILL BE TELEVISED ©2019 and MEG VS SOCIALISM ©2020 by MR. FISH (Dwayne Booth)

Logically, Socialism v. Capitalism is a false dilemma. As cultural memes, they are diametrically opposed political paradigms at the polar extremes of a spectrum of governance and polity. Yet in reality beneath that social fabric and fabrication, each one rests upon a social contract (or lack thereof) and its ethical ground and moral foundation (or lack thereof). Despite all the noise and appearances to the contrary, political, cultural, economic, social, and other tensions, conflicts, strife, and enmity between capitalists and socialists in 21st century reality are rarely or never about ethical grounds and moral foundations.

The primary purpose of this bogus ideological Maginot Line is hidden, as it serves the political interests and aspirations of both sides equally well. Beneath the public bellicosity and pitched battles between them, each of them, throughout most of political history, has become a permanent lie concealing the underlying truth of totalitarian reality.

The Prince of Evil, the Ruler of this World, knows his reign is coming to an end. That is not a Christian-only statement. There is a ‘prince’ of evil who is ‘ruler’ of reality in our world and his ‘name’ is fascist capitalism. In its Christian sense, the opening sentence of this paragraph is clearly stated in Scripture. All theism aside, fascist capitalism is the reigning vicious cycle of wealth and power and the vile and evil maxim of “all for me none for you” in unrestrained rapacity on Earth today. The USAmerican reality v. myth dynamic is simply illustrated:

The Reality and Myth of USAmerican Fascist Capitalism

Hell hath no fury like Mother Nature scorned. Fascist Capitalism started ravaging her at least 200 years ago if not much further back into misnamed sentient and sapient human history. Throughout the 1900s, especially in post-WWII years, the brutal abuse expanded exponentially and intensified beyond tolerance, as nations queued up for their turns at her. Facing self-inflicted global suicide, the 0.00…1% cabal of philosophical zombies is now sleepwalking into catastrophe, while growing numbers of their like empty-minded automata awaken to Mother Nature’s reality. The ultra-elite fascist capitalist cabal dreams and wet dreams day and night, fueled by fatuous futility, oblivious to two increasingly self-evident truths: #1, the universe — where Mother Nature is the lawmaker — is and always has been totally aware and conscious of our being and presence; #2, she has a perfectly tuned moral compass and a flawlessly ethical bearing under those laws that human being and presence on Earth have violated with unfettered abandon and intentional malice for a very long time.(1)

USAmerican Fascist Capitalism isn’t the first fascism in human history. It just took USAmerican capitalism to be the first to secure global fascist reach and grasp, search and destroy, with overwhelming shock and awe. Evidence mounts by the hour that it will be the last ever, however. An ecocidal and genocidal force majeure unto itself, it's rabid insanity knows no bounds.

Socialism has its own equally blackened heart of fascism as a precursor to the USAmerican brand:

The Reality and Myth of Soviet Socialist Fascism

Nazi Fascism is another nefariously infamous example, which turns out, as a matter of historical fact, to have been covertly sown and reaped by capitalist cabals in all the nations involved in WWII:

The Reality and Myth of Third Reich Fascism

The most vitally important element of the three diagrams above is the small ‘S-curve’ in the middle of the two-headed arrow between Good and Evil. In that twist of the path between the opposites, human will and intention may go unethically and amorally awry into Evil or rationally and righteously for the Good. Bent on evil, the dark path is a slippery slope into the black-hole pit of an inverted bell (‘well’) curve. In the sort of extreme Fascist Capitalism suffusing 21st century reality on Earth today, the trail back to the S-curve is either lost or deliberately barricaded. The ideological seduction into Fascist Capitalism takes many forms, with such delusions as, ‘The lesser evil for the greater good,” which is pandemic in Western utilitarianism and pragmatism that pass for ethics and morality since Industrial Revolution began two centuries ago,(2)

‘Capitalism v. Socialism’ is semiotically engineered cognitive dissonance exploited by fascists to imprint reflexive mass behaviors and individual ideas and emotions purely for capital profit and gain. The intents, purposes, and ends thus served are the vile maxim and vicious cycle ensuring tyrannous concentration of power, wealth, rule, and control in the 0.00…1% oligarchic cabal of Evil kleptocrats ripping it from Nature, Earth, and everything they provided for the Good of humankind. The ethical ground and moral foundation is apolitical in that sense:

• Good is benevolent, philanthropic, altruistic, resonant, harmonious, relational, and communal.

• Evil is malevolent, misanthropic, rapacious, dissonant, discordant, divisive, and disintegrated.

Fascism is Evil. Fascist Capitalism and Fascist Socialism are Evil twins. Either or both could be (or truly, once could have been) Good. But humankind has already raped Mother Nature beyond any tipping point of no return or hope of redemption. Secular rapists of Nature or feral enemies of Christ, it’s all the same. Evil by any political name is a permanent lie we’d all rather believe than face 21st century truth and reality. The sixth mass — this time Anthropocene, i.e., human-caused — extinction already has us in its death grip and we literally have Hell to pay for our sins against Nature, ourselves, Christ, or all three.

P. S. An Extinction Rebellion podcast directly relevant to this posts’s topic.

Notes

(1) The laws of nature are universal empirical facts of reality and life. #1 and #2 are rapidly evolving scientific hypotheses, becoming increasingly desirable if not indispensable for rationally realistic cosmology. This post assumes both their scientific veracity.and their Christian reality.

(2) Every normal distribution bell curve and its abnormal inverted well curve consists of a pair of reverse-image S-curves. Left to right, a normal distribution bell curve shows rise and fall, which the change in the slopes of the curves clearly depict. An abnormal well curve distribution, by contrast, express a fall and rise from left to right. The Adizes Corporate Lifecycle is normal distribution bell-curve model of ‘Good’ growth and prosperity emerging, rising, peaking, falling, and declining into self-destruction. When the initial and precipitating conditions of that ‘Good’ growth are displaced or subverted by ‘Evil’ Fascist Capitalism, the entire curve is inverted in to the abnormal well-curve distribution. What had been growth and prosperity become concentration of wealth, power, rule, and control in the hands of the 0.00...1% few at the expense of the 99.99…% of Earth’s biomass and all non-living resources as well. The tyranny is absolute in the pit of that well, and climbing back up and out, desperate for a do-over is an apocalyptic death march. Humanity en masse embraces the ‘Good’ growth-and-prosperity permanent lie of Fascist capitalism. In truth and reality, the rape of Mother Nature the rapacious pillaging of her resources continues … a sleepwalk into catastrophe under a global suicide pact (World Economic Forum, i.e., WEF: Global Risk Report 2019, p. 15; UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, “Opening Remarks,” 2011).

Triadic Sortition?

Random Thoughts on a Viable XR Citizens’ Assembly

DOLLAR SIGN (c)2019 by MR. FISH

Random selection won't do, at lest not initially. In all honesty, through no real fault of their own, the citizenry at large is too ill-informed and contentious on the reality of the Anthropocene Extinction (AX) to deal with the Extinction Rebellion’s Citizen Assembly (XR-CA) roles and responsibilities rationally and univocally in confronting and engaging the oligarchy and corporatocracy of the fascist capitalism that must be overcome if humanity is to survive. Sad, but true. If we survive, those delusions and divisions may be overcome over time, but not in time to deal with the ongoing AX event.

As Roger Hallam suggests, however, some form of sortition is most promising. But the initial selections cannot be random. The scientific community within the XR, combined with prominent XR advocates and speakers like Hallam himself, ought to be the first 'pool' of Assembly candidates from which to draw the dozen members of the Assembly. But that alone won't do -- there must be some way to engage vox populi directly, in real-time, with a dozen drawn by lot from those key XR communities.(1)

Perhaps the best way to do this, while protecting the identities and privacy of individual citizens, is to set up a channel/group in the deep web, where those conditions are currently state-of-the-(clandestine)-art. The dark web may even be needed as well, if civil disobedience -- as deliberate breaking of the law -- is to be discussed, acted upon, and carried out. Nonviolent dissident action need not go above the deep web to the surface web or below to the dark web. The surface web should be almost entirely set aside for CA purposes. It's a global circus and carnival, teeming with noise lacking meaningful signal 99.99 ...% of the time. At most, a live-streamed channel of all gatherings and meetings of the Citizen's Assembly with the representatives of the actual members of the ultra-elite oligarchy should be broadcast on a surface web youtube or other free public channel (administered by deep and dark web XR staff).

As a 21st century XR coordinator and career technocrat, this strikes me as a plausible way to put up a Citizen's Assembly in three layers of communication that might actually work: from vox populi deep and dark through an assembly of a dozen XR spokespersons to the power and wealth regime who got us into this global suicide pact and have kept us sleepwalking into catastrophe for at least 30 years.

Local XR chapters could assist the citizenry in adapting to the deep and dark web apps in a TOR browser. This is about as close to live-streaming democracy as we may hope to get on current public tech. Two tactical issues: (1) who are the root and other system techs running the deep and dark internet of things for the citizenry? And, (2) how are fascist capitalists to be involved? For (2), each should have a voice boiling down to a vote just like very other citizen. But no more, no less. For (1), I confess I'm not sure how that could be secured from any and all human corruption and malware injections. My technosterone levels were never that high as a technocrat, and it has been draining away lately. but If there are any TOR and deep and dark web gurus in the XR community, I would look to them for guidance in implementing this three-layered sortition model sooner than later.(2)

In closing, finally, this must also be said. While presumably entirely fictitious, consider the sort of rebellion seen in such tech-fantasy as the Mr. Robot miniseries. The idea of having a black-ops elite cadre of super-hackers turning the world of fascist capitalism inside-out and upside-down is intriguing. Should events and actions of such kind be in the XR’s battle plan and technology arsenal? It goes beyond ‘mere’ civil disobedience, yes, and cases such as Julian Assange’s and Edward Snowden’s are public examples of deterrents, showing just how severe the consequences of such actions are.

What does ‘civil disobedience’ even mean, legally speaking (e.g., under the PATRIOT ACT), when laws are broken without compunction or consequence or they are simply superseded or suspended by fascist capitalist exigency? If dark web XR activism could nonviolently bring the World Bank, SWIFT, the IBS, the IMF, the Federal Reserve, etc. to their knees just one day a month for only a few seconds, the vile maxim and vicious cycle of power and wealth would be broken. It would be up to the Citizen’s Assembly to determine just how long and how severe those take-downs would need to be to seize full control of that power and wealth. Or until the instant extinction event of global WMD warfare is triggered to neutralize that power grab with extreme prejudice.

** CAVEAT: I'm brainstorming here. It's an out-of-the-box idea on how to envision Citizens' Assembly both operationally real and true to the XR declarations and demands at the same time, by leveraging resources that we have on hand already. I suspect the human problem is the more difficult ... my limited experience with the deep web, and I have none on the dark side (yet), seems to imply this may be a fairly straightforward model to implement on current tech. **

Notes

(1) A dozen is the right number. Like a jury, unanimity would be required. Like a hung jury, anything less than a unanimous verdict would rely on vox populi interaction to drive toward a unanimous verdict.

(2) Tactical question #(2) begs the question of what manner of containment should be imposed on the most egregious ecocidal capitalist and war criminals. I have some thoughts on this, but I would have to be talked down from my sadistic inclinations to share them. Despite being a Christian, mercy and grace for those vile sinners do not come easily to heart, soul, or mind for me. Dwayne Booth’s cartoon above, DOLLAR SIGN, seems to illustrate a fitting penance.

A Sorry Absurdity

The Inconvenience of Imminent Mass Extinction

THE NAKED TRUTH ©2019 by MR. FISH (Dwayne Booth)

Well-meaning and highly intelligent people decry the inconvenience to personal daily routines and to commerce, transport, and other business-as-usual in general caused by Extinction Rebellion (XR). They weigh inconvenience against XR’s peaceful action to expose and overcome the  root causes of onrushing Anthropocene Extinction (AX). This is the result, as if disruptive inconvenience were insufferable abuse and by far the weightier matter of the two:

The Sorry Absurdity

Such is the subliminal entrenchment of fascist capitalism in the buffered individual identities adrift in the immanent frame bubbles inflicted on the 99% as the insidious 1%’s permanent lie that is the social imaginary by which we live and die.(1)        

What the Extinction Rebellion presages and forestalls is global anarchy at war with an unbridled police state. Unless, of course, there is no imminent mass sixth Anthropocene Extinction (AX) at all and we’d all be doing just fine if XR would simply have their say and get out of the way. But the science is irrefutable: the Anthropocene sixth mass Extinction is already well under way and unfolding far more quickly than is openly admitted. How inconveniently disruptive will the global war be between nomadic terrorist anarchy and the barbaric brutality of an unfettered fascist police state? Will the distinction between enemy and victim have meaning at all?(2)

As the disruptive inconveniences of XR and other climate activism and civil disobedience intensify, perhaps discernment of the signs of the inevitable horrors of the decline and fall of human civilization in the wake of mass extinction will become widespread enough to make a difference that actually will make a difference in avoiding or at least mitigating those horrors.  

In a long condescending social media rant on this matter, a cherished friend, brilliant poet, and USAmerican expatriate in the UK, remarked:

The recent London marches have achieved little, really, and in fact have served to alienate the very people XR hoped to attract. To make a point about fossil fuels and cars, protesters effectively shut down central London, but then also blocked the local trains and tubes, which in themselves as mass transport should logically be seen as the sensible alternative to individual transport.

Another keen intellect and dear friend on the thread, also a USAmerican expatriate, to Canada, perhaps interjecting to referee or arbitrate, commented:  

… just reading that Parliament decreed a climate emergency today...however, it doesn’t set goals and is not legally binding. Have to admit that I never understood how super gluing oneself to a subway car or a govt building offers a solution to the issue. I do agree that disrupting public transportation can be counterproductive by causing major inconvenience to workers, citizens, patients, etc.    

Normally, even reflexively, I would have leapt into the fray and spewed out rant responses of my own – I’m far less aristocratic, sophisticated, and politically correct than my friends, apparently. But I decided instead to simply react with the familiar ‘sad’ emoji … (⌣́_⌣̀)

It was obvious my IQ wouldn’t matter. My EQ as conveyed in that trite emoji will most likely be misunderstood and irritating. But the truth is I am profoundly saddened at the futility of telling hard truths, however urgently terrible, to hardened heads and hearts, especially those of these dearest of friends. But more than that personal sorrow, I mourn for the horrific legacy for their children and grandchildren, and the absurdity of their willingness to foment and facilitate that horror upon them, because they wouldn’t be inconvenienced to prevent it.(3)

We rebels in the XR cause and movement must summon the will and courage to disengage the futility of rational argument and emotional appeal. Tragically, that leaves nothing but our story, our resolve, and simply showing up and standing firm against history’s tides to make the difference. We cannot allow the delusional shortsightedness of others to distract or deter us, or to impede our cause.  

Notes

(1) On buffered selves, immanent frames, and social imaginaries, see Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (2007); “Buffered and Porous Selves” (2008); and, Modern Social Imaginaries (2003). Generally, to correspond to individual identities as defined by the emotional and intellectual states of human being and presence, which are shaped by inter-relational sentient experience and ideological sapient connectedness. Put more simply but somewhat less profoundly, we are who we are (buffered selves) due to our thoughts and feelings (immanent frames) as determined by our experience and understanding of one another in the world of our society, culture, ethos, etc. (social imaginaries). Taylor’s concepts are invoked primarily to distinguish the thoroughly secular modern and contemporary identities, frames, and imaginaries in contrast to their precursors. Taylor generally sees Enlightenment modernity over the past four centuries as the momentum and inertia driving the changes.     

(2) Relevant sources are cited in these prior posts: “What Was Is No More: Rearview Signs of Bygone Extinction (draft in progress but published as-is);” “Anthropocene Extinction (AX)—The Grim Prognosis;”  “Carbonality: The Implosive Extinction of Humans as Carbon Cannibals;” ”XR: The One Event;” “Capitalist Fatuity: 21st Century Addiction to the Fix Being In;” “Where Have All the Humans Gone? Elitist Tyranny and the Mass Insanity of Modern Humanity.” New ones added here are, David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (Feb 2019); Jennifer Wider and Lucy Adams, Summary Of The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells: Life After Warming (Mar 2019); and, “’All this extreme weather pummeling the planet is our own doing’: Is climate change worse than we feared?” David Wallace-Wells interview by ITV News Science Editor Tom Clarke (19 Feb 2019), 23-minute video and brief synopsis.

(3) The social media post and thread have been deleted to conceal the identities of the two friends I’ve quoted here. They know who they are, as will some few who know the three of us. Should they choose to comment on this post or others on the blog, however, their anonymity won’t be further preserved on the blog.   

What Was Is No More

Rearview Signs of Bygone Extinction

The main story here is the elites have been robbing us for thirty years and now they’re going to kill us.

Roger Hallam, Extinction Rebellion (XR) Co-founder(1)

BLOODLINE ©2019 by MR. FISH (Dwayne Booth)

Climate once was a natural thing, but it is no more. Two centuries and four cycles of cannibal capitalism masquerading as progress in the name of industrial revolution ended that. The baseline of what once was natural has shifted so far from its true nature in causal reality that reality today is entirely unnatural, and lethally so. Humanity suffused itself in fascism by rapacious oligarchic capitalism, turning nature itself (on Earth at least) so upside-down and inside-out that already our grandchildren may be the last truly human being and presence anywhere. Nature? It’s a bygone myth beyond human ken, thanks to four centuries of Enlightenment modernity that peaked in the fascist capitalism of the 20th-21st century. What we wrongly call ‘climate’ is an unnatural, synthetic, after-image artifact mirage of what once was but is no more.(2)  

Rational civilization never really existed, though human history was stuffed and mounted in mythological effigies of delusion as if it actually had. They lined the hallowed halls and walls of every cathedral and citadel of fascist capitalism, forming scatter-plot imagery of ordered death and destruction with civilization always at ground zero, forever in the crosshairs of human hubris, vanity, and greed. We doubleplusgood duckspoke of such panacea promises as ‘geoengineering’ and ‘genetic engineering’ as if the ideas were ours or new. Our premeditated plunder and malicious exploitation of Earth’s ecosphere and biosphere already ‘engineered’ humanity across the event horizon of our own extinction for sheer profit, with ecocide and genocide as automated manufacture and business as usual. Perhaps we were philosophical zombies all along, with Newspeak our mother tongue since Babel. In dissipating silhouette, dissolving into rearview dissonance, self-inflicted extinction oozing from the inside-out through every pore, we were walking dead long before we killed ourselves.(3)

Never love—always War! Not peace—only Profit! No truth—permanent Lie!

Homo sentiens? Homo sapiens? If ever we once were, we certainly are no more. A living species on Earth? Once we were, but soon we no more will be. The macabre poetic causal justice of it all is that we reaped exactly what we sowed. We turned natural world and human nature into suicidal oxymorons: whatever once was natural to humanity is no more and whatever nature the world once had is dead and gone. We were the artifacts and architects of ecocide and genocide, so it is perfectly just that we should be ordered out of existence by the natural laws of causality, exiled by nature itself from any presence in causal reality forever, for being what was but chose to be no more and trying to take everything with us into the oblivion of our hubris and rapacity.    

Notes

(1) From “On Contact: Civil Disobedience to Stop Ecocide,” Chris Hedges interview with Roger Hallam (Part One), March 9, 2019, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=220tv9Jktmg. See also “On Contact: Extinction Rebellion,” Chris Hedges interview with Roger Hallam (Part Two), March 16, 2019, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfXqq888HPY.

(2) Stephen Pinker and Johan Norberg are silver-tongued promoters of the permanent lies of Enlightenment modernity and the scientismic pseudo-progress it spawned. Apologists for fascist capitalism, they and the like-minded others of blackened heart bask in aristocratic fantasy, denying the dying of the light that never was, fawning pawns of oligarch tyrants securely transcendent in sequestered star chambers of the corporatocracy they own and rule. George Orwell, C. S. Lewis, and most recently Sheldon Wolin, foresaw and foretold the death of semantics (in Orwell’s Newspeak), the fascist rise of scientismic capitalism (Lewis’ scientocracy), and the destruction of human dignity, liberty, and reason (Wolin’s inverted totalitarianism). See Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress; Norberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look forward to the Future; John G. West, The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society; Orwell, 1984; Wolin, Democracy Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.  

(3) The concept of “doubleplusgood duckspeaking” is from George Orwell’s Newspeak lexicon in his prescient novel, 1984. “The Principles of Newspeak” Appendix to the novel explains:

Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning “to quack like a duck.” Like various other words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a warm and valued compliment. (1984, p. 236)

he concept of a “philosophical (or ‘p-’) zombie’ is explained in Wikipedia contributors, "Philosophical zombie," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philosophical_zombie&oldid=895282030 (accessed May 3, 2019). See also Robert Kirk, “Zombies,” March 16, 2015, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies. Kirk describes p-zombies as follows:

Zombies in philosophy are imaginary creatures designed to illuminate problems about consciousness and its relation to the physical world. Unlike the ones in films or witchcraft, they are exactly like us in all physical respects but without conscious experiences: by definition there is ‘nothing it is like’ to be a zombie. Yet zombies behave just like us, and some even spend a lot of time discussing consciousness.

Anthropocene Extinction (AX)—The Grim Prognosis

Humanity’s Terminal Carbonality Cancer(1)

HE IS RISEN (THE SAD AND EVER-EXPANDING STORY OF DARK MAGIC IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA)
©2019 MR. FISH (Dwayne Booth), Cartooning from the Deep End

Five major extinctions and twenty lesser extinction level events (ELEs) have occurred during the Earth’s history. The five lesser ELEs leading into the sixth major mass extinction, the Holocene or Anthropocene Extinction (AX), are listed in this table:(2)

Extinction-Level-Events (ELEs) Since the Dinosaurs (3)

Prior to the Holocene/AX extinction’s beginning 12,000 years ago, humans had been on Earth for about 200,000 years, but their impact on the planet and its biosphere, ecosphere, and all its resources was negligible. That began to change in the later stages of the Quaternary period as our population began to grow. By 10,000 BCE, we were stomping the terra into surrender and submission. Our tyranny against the terroir of our own survival as a species is ongoing, and it has only accelerated since it began.(4)

Fascism is malignant capitalism. This is not political hyperbole—it is 21st century political and scientific fact, and it is the paradigmatic personal and ideological ethos of human being and presence in reality on Earth today. It isn’t about the bogey-beast of the capitalist vs. socialist cliché tragicomedy circus. Genuinely rational natural science explains how it causally infected its human host. We are now on the cusp between stages 4 and 5 metastasis, with brutal morbidity and extinction-level-event (ELE) mortality all but inevitable for humanity.

Fascist capitalism may be called neoliberal or neoconservative but those are just two of the many costumes it wears in the propaganda limelight. By any of the doubleplusgood signs and duckspeaking icons and symbols that infect us all, it is the same mortally pandemic and systemic cancer. Most of humankind is sleepwalking into that catastrophe, nevertheless, born into the nefariously conceived and rapaciously exploited sociopathic world order and global suicide pact we absurdly call ‘civilization.’ For this human privilege of persecution, we have the black-hearted black-hole core of cabalistic kleptocratic oligarchic tyranny to thank.(5)

When the cancer of fascist capitalism has run its course this time, the corpse of humanity as we know ourselves today will dissolve into the superacids of their victory as their history will record it; for all subsequent intents and purposes, never having been present in reality at all. When you can eliminate the 99.9999% enemy-Other and survive the transition, you are all that matters at all; the only difference that makes any difference whatsoever. This is the delusion that proves the rule of absolute power corrupting absolutely. It is the delusion that is running reality to ruin on Earth in our time and climate crisis is the noxious oven of genocide by ecocide. Unless, of course, a few buttons are pushed and a tsunami of WMDs rains down and rids the world of us the Other, no longer people bur raw animal resources to be exploited to death, in a flash. The odds swing wildly from one zeptojiffy to the next on which path we’re taking.(6)  

If human dissonance and insanity unleashed fascist capitalism, sealing our own doom in mass extinction, then only human wisdom and rationality can reverse the malignancy and heal the world and humanity of that cancer. Time is far too short for anything short of a mass human uprising and rebellion to offer any reasonable hope of human survival, rescue, and restoration. The good news is that it is happening with Extinction Rebellion (XR). The bad news is already seen in the rise of reactionary reflex of vehement enmity viewing XR as abject enemy-Other, exactly as the oligarch cabal of fascist capitalists has semiotically engineered them to do.(7)

Stand with XR to oppose and disempower the fascist capitalism that sows tyranny to reap power, wealth, control, and rule, which has created the manifest AX existential threat to humanity.(8)

Notes

(1) See previous posts, “Carbonality,” https://www.semiotic.com/posts/2019/4/23/carbonality; “XR: The One Event,” https://www.semiotic.com/posts/2019/4/19/xr-the-one-event; “Where Have All the Humans Gone?” https://www.semiotic.com/posts/2019/2/16/where-have-all-the-humans-gone.    

(2) See Wikipedia contributors, "Extinction event," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Extinction_event&oldid=892607493 (accessed April 26, 2019).

(3) The table shown here is from The Peak Oil article cited in the opening quote. The five ELEs in the table occurred by force majeure or natural causes following the fifth mass extinction 66 million years ago (66 Ma). It is, known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs in particular and 76% of Earth’s biomass at the time. Anthropocene extinction as the Peak Oil article describes is the sixth mass extinction, accelerating toward K-Pg magnitude or greater through the stages shown in Figure 1. Numbered notes in the “Possible Causes”  column originally explained the scientific terms they’re associated with, but they are not functional in this post. The crucial point is that 10,000 BCE was the tipping point that began the sixth AX event caused by humans. Also, the familiar ‘peak oil’ debate and dispute regarding whether or not fossil fuel supplies are depleting toward exhaustion is not relevant to the AX. Whether humans have a dearth or a glut of fossil fuel supply, the crux of the AX issue is not the supply side of the AX equation—rapacious demand and consumption are driving the AX event.   

(4) The sleepwalking metaphor is from the World Economic Forum’s January 2019 Global Risk Report, https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2019. The “global suicide pact” analogy is from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s warning in this video clip from his 2011 World Economic Forum speech, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Un1UibQnME.

(5) On fascism as malignant capitalism, see Chris Hedges’ Truthdig February 18, 2018 article, “How We Fight Fascism,” https://www.truthdig.com/articles/how-we-fight-fascism/, and previous post, “Capitalist Fatuity,” https://www.semiotic.com/posts/2019/4/3/capitalist-fatuity. The idea of “doubleplusgood duckspeaking” is Newspeak from George Orwell’s 1984. According to the book’s “Principles of Newspeak” Appendix:

Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning “to quack like a duck.” Like various other words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a warm and valued compliment. [1984, p. 236.]

(6) The 99.9999% figure is a stretch some would reject as paranoid. A slightly more forgiving and more layered distribution is provided from a conspiracy science perspective in my April 2019 DMin dissertation, “THE END SIGNS! ARE WE GETTING THE MESSAGE?” https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ceP4r7lFzT3K9-GebpRTuEDbOuOxE139.

(7) On “enemy-Other,” see Wikipedia contributors, "Abjection," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title= &oldid=891283587 
(accessed April 26, 2019). The seminal work is Julia Kristeva’s 1980 Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (https://smile.amazon.com/Powers-Horror-Abjection-European-Perspectives/dp/0231053479); cf. Jeffrey S. Murer, “Constructing the enemy-other: Anxiety, trauma and mourning in the narratives of political conflict” in Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2009) 14: 109. https://doi.org/10.1057/pcs.2008.33 and James Geary’s 2011 I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World (https://smile.amazon.com/Other-Secret-Metaphor-Shapes-World-ebook/dp/B004GUSHZ0).    

(8) See Only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse | George Monbiot | Opinion | The Guardian. To support and join XR Orlando FL, contact this blogger for details or simply fill out this form—https://actionnetwork.org/forms/xr-orlando-sign-up-form. Also, visit the XR Orlando Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pg/xrorlando/posts/) and the public group site (https://www.facebook.com/groups/XROrlando/). For general information about XR US and the rebellion in general, see https://extinctionrebellion.us/ and https://rebellion.earth/.

Carbonality

The Implosive Extinction of Humans as Carbon Cannibals

HAPPY EARTH DAY 2019 from MR. FISH (1)

The essential fact of human life for the 21st century is that we are carbon-based life forms. We did not have to turn that fact into the slippery slope of carbon profiteering, but here we are at the bottom of that slope. Continue on that course and we cross the event horizon of extinction far sooner than we dare realize, if we aren’t there already.(2)

The Anthropocene Age began at least three centuries ago, arguably much earlier. Since the onslaught of the industrial revolution juggernaut, however, now in its fourth cycle, our rapacious cannibalization of carbon and other resources on Earth has ignited a sixth mass extinction in world history. It is a quintessentially unique event—never has any species on Earth risen to the pinnacle of cognitive presence we humans possess, yet paradoxically, neither has any species on Earth so stupidly wrought its own self-destruction. Anthropocene extinction (AX) is the 21st century reality already and our carbon cannibalization continues to rise.(3)

Unlike any of its precursors (as far as we know), the AX is an implosion event. Prevailing science says the fifth extinction (the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago) occurred due to the confluence of widespread volcanic activity and an asteroid impact. The combined explosive effects wiped 76% of life on Earth out of existence. Similar acts of God or of the causal laws of the cosmos predating humankind likewise were explosive events. In the AX event, however, the human species created a faux ‘civilization’ that, at the end of the day, exploits Earth and all its resources, including humans, to death.(4) The curtain will fall on that tragically absurd charade as human systems fail in the AX unfolding around us. AX is best understood, therefore, as an implosion—the annihilation comes from within humanity ourselves, not from any beyond.

The Earth Day movement will reach its 50th anniversary in 2020. We “sleepwalk into catastrophe,” blindly bound by a nefarious oligarchic capitalist sociopathic contract enslaving us in a “global suicide pact.” It is a slavery we are born into, unless we happen to be in the ruling ultra-elite cabal of oligarchs. Extinction Rebellion (XR) and the Sunrise Movement are strident and rational voices aligned with Earth Day Network in common concern. One clarion voice above most, deservedly so, is that of 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. Pulitzer-winner Chris Hedges and XR co-founder Roger Hallam are truth-telling activists at the forefront.(5)

There are two sides to the AX conundrum: carbon consumption and carbon emission. Rather than use our genetically endowed and divinely bestowed gifts of sentience and sapience to optimize the harmonious resonance of the two processes, they’ve been turned upon each other for profit. We are apparently willing and ready to suffocate and die horrible deaths en masse rather than repent and survive in a rational world founded on that harmonious resonance despite all the differences. Worse yet, Greta is tragically right: “no one seems to be talking about it and nothing has changed.”

We are caught in our own Hobbesian trap. The tyrannous insanity of oligarchic capitalism deconstructed Hobbes’ dilemma between state of nature and social contract to perversely resolve it through human extinction by preemption. Rest assured the oligarchs have exit strategies and escape plans from the trap they’ve set for the other 99.9999% of us that is already being sprung upon us. Its slow motion shifting baseline will tip suddenly into living hell on earth, like a thief in the night. We will eat and burn bodies for food and fuel and furiously rage against the dying of the light, before we will choose life in love over death for profit.(6)

Notes

(1) Clowncrack political cartoon by Mr. Fish (Dwayne Booth).

(2) The UN General Assembly says irreversible climate damage will be reality in a decade (https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm). I think irreversible damage has already been done to the eco- and biosphere, actually, as thousands of species have already been extinguished by climate change.  The famous normal-distribution “bell curve” is a poor model from this perspective. It’s much better seen as an inverted normal distribution “well curve,” with parasites at both ends—cockroaches on one and kleptocrats on the other http://www.jimpinto.com/writings/wellcurve.html.

(3) A philosophical, theological, and scientific explication supporting these claims is in my dissertation, “The End Signs! Are We Getting the Message?” in the Digital Commons of George Fox University  (https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/dmin/), or https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ceP4r7lFzT3K9-GebpRTuEDbOuOxE139. On the fourth industrial revolution in the cycle, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Industrial_Revolution and the book by the World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman, Klaus Schwab, https://www.weforum.org/about/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-by-klaus-schwab.

(4) On the five prior extinction events identified by contemporary science, see “The big five mass extinctions” at COSMOS online, https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinctions. On ‘civilization,’ see Endgame, Volume 1: The Myth of Civilization (https://smile.amazon.com/Endgame-Problem-Civilization-Derrick-Jensen-ebook/dp/B00541YWHM/). For a different perspective with tighter temporal focus on more recent extinction events, see this fascinating Peak Oil article, which supports the thought I expressed in note (2) about already being deep into the AX event, https://peakoil.com/enviroment/the-anthropocene-extinction. The Peak Oil News & Message Boards, at least in this article, is a refreshingly candid and factually clear perspective.

(5) Links to related content: “sleepwalking into catastrophe,” World Economic Forum, 2019 (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-forecast-world-is-sleepwalking-into-catastrophe/); “global suicide pact,” World Economic Forum, 2011 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Un1UibQnME ):Earth Day 2020 (https://www.earthday.org/earthchallenge2020getinvolvedii/); Extinction Rebellion US (https://extinctionrebellion.us/); Sunrise Movement (https://www.sunrisemovement.org/); Greta Thunberg (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48017083 and https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/2419507664746516/UzpfSTExMzE3NDU0NjU6MTAyMTc0NDIwNzg1MDA1MTI/?notif_id=1556052537464173&notif_t=story_reshare); Chris Hedges and Roger Hallam (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=220tv9Jktmg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfXqq888HPY).

(6) Oligarchic capitalism deconstructs Hobbes’ Choice to replace mutual distrust with global elitist conspiracy enslaving humanity and ravaging the planet for profit. What Len Sweet calls “GRAIN” in his forthcoming book, Rings of Fire (https://smile.amazon.com/Rings-Fire-Walking-through-Volcanic-ebook/dp/B07PJMP4T6/), refers to the advances in Genetics, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (and information technology), and Nanotechnology the oligarchs will implement to secure their reign and control or dispose of remnant humanity beyond themselves, if any. See “Hobbesian Trap” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbesian_trap), not to be confused with “Hobson’s Choice” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice).

XR: The One Event

ILLEGAL EAGLE ©Mr Fish (used by permission) — honoring Julian Assange

In the image, let Assange represent all humankind, and the eagle pandemic global tyranny, specifically as spread in the form of unfettered USAmerican capitalism. Let the Wikileaks logo represent all truth and reality as we ought to know it but really don’t.

Humanity is inextricably integrated into a single event: the sixth mass extinction in world history. Humans are the apex predators (as the dinosaurs were before us) and the root cause of the event. This time, it is the Anthropocene extinction (AX) – we are murdering ourselves by our own being and presence on Earth.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) is also an event of human oneness, but it is disparaged, discounted, and eschewed by the vast majority of humans despite evidence beyond scientific dispute. So the strength of its unity is culturally marginal and socially suspect at least, and reasonably debatable in the best cases. In the worse and worst tragic cases, the XR One Event is under elitist oligarchic corporatocracy suppression and tyranny – everyone is, but few know it as well or see it as clearly as XR humans. Truth be told, we know the AX reality we’re in from marrow to mind, but the dissonance of the police state engineering of our cognitive senses of our own being and presence destroys the bridge across that gap. XR humans are the spark of absolute truth in the black hole 21st human reality. Today, cognitive propaganda intercedes between our actual presence in reality from one zeptojiffy to the next, on one hand,  physically beneath any fully cognitive awareness of that presence. At the same time, on the other hand, the neural networks of our mental being in that presence are preconfigured to present a bespoke custom-engineered comprehension of (what we take to be absolute truth and genuine reality).

We no longer think before we experience, believe, know, and understand. As long as the brain states and mind maps match, with the predetermined ideological context as the paradigm, the controlling paradigm is modified to reject conflicting perception, correct mental sense and reason, and download the changes. This all occurs in an indiscernible corpus callosal sequence of zeptojiffies between causal reality utterly regardless of our presence and being and what we are neurally programmed and semiotically engineered to believe as truth and accept as reality.

We are to be and to do as we’re told, while being deluded into believing we are freely choosing to be and do as we are. We are not. Who we are and what we do are propaganda-defined  from one breath to the next and the very last thing we are engineered to consider – much less accept -- is causal truth and reality. Causal reality is little, however, concerned with that human disposition to think for and of oneself and others. Under ordinary circumstances it set us free to exercise that free will without restraint – at least within the universal and probabilistic constraints of the causal laws themselves, of course.

And there’s the catch. Our own being and presence on Earth through four cycles of industrial revolution and oligarchic corporate rule have abused the efficacy of causal reality. What, do we suppose they don’t apply? What, me worry? News flash: humanity is not the apex predator on Earth or in the cosmos. Causal reality is. We stand no chance whatsoever of survival as a species on Earth to precisely the extent that we’re willing to defy, misapply, and ignore those laws and their ruthless efficacy. Here we stand, globally enthralled into an en masses suicide pact, as we sleepwalk into catastrophe we’ve inflicted upon ourselves.

There we will fall and die defeated and destroyed by truth and reality we continue to disavow or ignore. The is only one chance remaining. Ultimately there is only One XR Event, not many. its core, it is an unstoppable and unstopping rise of truth and reality as one human outcry. If human history doesn’t record the XR One Event becoming the XR Won Event -- much sooner than later! -- we are damned and doomed.

And we will have fucking well deserved and earned it. The guillotine AX is already falling and our species as one being and presence are in the block. Anyone who thinks we’re not guilty or undeserving beyond reasonable doubt will see their children or grandchildren dying faster than the bodies can be burned and buried.

So it will be for all of us. As the One that was but will be no more.