Evading the State is Good For You: Upland Natives, Valley Civilizations, Mitochondria, and Carbon Dioxide

What they found was that the mice with very specific defects of mitochondrial energy production experienced profound deleterious effects from the level of the cell all the way through to the entire organism. Their organs, their axes, and the entire mouse failed to adapt to the insult of restraint stress if the right defect in energy production was introduced. Some were more deleterious than others, but the overall point stands: if you can’t produce energy under stress, whether it’s psychological or physical materialist in its nature, you fail to adapt down to the level of your lived biology.

In my speculations, though this hasn’t been shown to be the case in humans yet, there is no reason to suspect that our own responses to psychological stress aren’t mitigated in the same or similar ways, and modern life in bureaucratic, systematic civilizations is one long constant stressor of domination that strips people of their autonomy. I think on a near societal scale we are experiencing learned helplessness from chronic psychological stress, and the people who have successfully evaded state control to self-determine their circumstances not only have a desire to do so, they also have real, material, physiological advantages, if the story I’ve woven together makes sense.

via Center for a Stateless Society » Evading the State is Good For You: Upland Natives, Valley Civilizations, Mitochondria, and Carbon Dioxide

THE MYTH OF THE ABSENCE OF MYTH

An immense fraud has been perpetuated in contemporary thought, founded on the persuasion that modern life is a malaise – a decadence – produced by an “absence of myth.” It has dwelt in modernity’s shadow from the outset, the most fervent purveyor of its decadence, like a jealous doppelgänger. Yet, far from abolishing myth, modernity is in fact constituted by the greatest myth of all: the myth of perpetual progress; of the extraction & consumption of natural resources without end & the magical transformation of human waste back into nature. This is what the blood-&-soil of the Corporate-State amounts to: the belief that – in greater abundance than the old gods, at the service of individual gratification & without cost to the collective conscience – Capitalism will provide. This mystification of industry (of technology in general), fed by a complete disregard for ecological consequences, has led – with all the negative pathos of a child’s fairytale – straight down the path of catastrophe. Catastrophe on a truly mythic scale. For it is this – & not its absence – that will define every possible human future to come.

via DEATH BY RESURRECTION – ALIENIST MANIFESTO

Climate and Collapse: Only through the insurrection of civil societies will we avoid the worst

A disastrous scenario could be that of an unrecognisable Earth, less habitable overall, with hundreds of millions of refugees ruined and forced to leave their homes, whole sub-continents left to the chaos of civil wars and the extraction of resources, and ultra-militarised world powers. These authoritarian regimes would fight each other for the control of Earth’s resources, and would internally reign a dictatorship in the name of the ecological emergency and the exclusion of destitute foreigners hurrying to their doors.

In the name of climate emergency and in the face of a rapid degradation of Earth’s habitability, these regimes will abolish the moral and social boundaries: we will be offered servitude and submission in exchange for survival. The control of our personal data will guide our behaviours. This totalitarian order will present itself as an ecologist and will ration the use of resources, but will maintain enormous inequalities between a general population with diminished life and an elite that will continue to over-consume.

This is the scenario of a capitalism partially de-globalised, and re-structured in dictatorial blocks, in which the militarised state and the economic power would become one. Fully privatised ecological service markets, climate geoengineering, military and extractivist space conquest or trans-humanism would be the “solutions” proposed by these regimes to the problems of the planet. This scenario sends chills up the spine. Yet we are already experiencing these premises, in China, the United States, Russia, Europe or Brazil.

Only a massive mobilisation of civil societies and victims of climate change already facing the damage of existing “globalisation”, only an ethical and political insurrection against all attacks against the living and human dignity itself, only an archipelago of revolutionary changes towards well-being and self-reliant societies can thwart this scenario of ecofascist capitalism.

via Climate and Collapse: Only through the insurrection of civil societies will we avoid the worst

USES FOR A DEAD POLITICS

ALIENIST MANIFESTO

Alienist Broadsheet #9 (February 2019) download PDF

THE ANTHROPOCENE IS CAPITALISM’S “HUMAN HYPOTHESIS”

Between the Anthropocene & the approaching Technological Singularity a stark predicament comes into view: that those cultural formations so far modelled on “Western democracy” are unable on their own to produce the social, political & economic transformations necessary to survive the conditions likely to prevail in the coming century.

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Only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse

via Only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse | George Monbiot | Opinion | The Guardian

‘The Selfish Ape: Human Nature and Our Path to Extinction’

Weaving together stories of science and sociology, The Selfish Ape offers a refreshing response to common fantasies about the ascent of humanity. Rather than imagining modern humans as a species with godlike powers, or Homo deus, Nicholas P. Money recasts us as Homo narcissus–paragons of self-absorption. This exhilarating story offers an immense sweep of modern biology, leading readers from earth’s unexceptional location in the cosmos to the story of our microbial origins and the innerworkings of the human body. It explores human genetics, reproduction, brain function, and ageing, creating an enlightened view of man as a brilliantly inventive, yet self-destructive animal.The Selfish Ape is a book about human biology, the intertwined characteristics of our greatness and failure, and the way that we have plundered the biosphere. Written in a highly accessible style, it is a perfect read for those interested in science, human history, sociology, and the environment.

via ‘The Selfish Ape: Human Nature and Our Path to Extinction’ : collapse

Funnel Vision: The Black Hole of Insight

Negative Geography

I’m going to tell you a story. That doesn’t mean I’m being dishonest. I’m being as honest as I can, but the first honest thing I’m going to tell you is that the Truth is beyond my grasp.

Well, it’s not so much a story as a description of a place I visited: Picture a funnel, like the inside of a tornado. We’re looking down into the center of the funnel. In the very center is an empty place. I’ve colored it white for contrast, but it’s more like a black hole. Or call it the still point in the turning world.

The sides of the funnel are thoughts, feelings, interpretations, stories. The whole of consciousness, what I’ve been calling positively oriented perception, spinning in a vicious circle. Human consciousness only? I don’t know. Perhaps the section of the funnel we can see is human consciousness, but that may change…

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Nefarious Agents: Elliot Abrams

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This is the first in a series intended to peel back the glossy facade of ideology and intellectual fancy to show the very real, all-to-human faces of agents of power. It’s true that the processes and practices now ravaging the planet dare riven by the extinction circuits stacked within technocapitalist production, yet at every juncture these wayward war-machines remain dependent upon deliberations and decisions made by elite managers, bureaucrats, and high level influences whose private interests become instantiated as organization imperatives within major institutions. Here we will name these agents and give space to the forgotten truth of personalized power. [*submissions welcome]

Elliot Abrams once more makes an appearance on the world stage as the Trump administration’s special envoy to Venezuela. Mike Pompeo’s latest statement “Watch the noose tighten around Maduro’s neck” is a restatement of one of Abrams threats. The Trump administration has become emboldened by the emergence once again on…

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The Upside of Accepting Collapse?

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The Benefits of Accepting the Possibility of Environmental Collapse and Human Extinction

By John Bell

British Professor of Sustainability Leadership, Jem Bendell, has recently published a thoughtful review of the scientific studies on climate change, called “Deep Adaptation”. He concludes that social collapse is inevitable, environmental catastrophe is probable, and human extinction possible. He says, dramatically enough to get our attention,

The evidence before us suggests that we are set for disruptive and uncontrollable levels of climate change, bringing starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war

But when I say starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war, I mean in your own life. With the power down, soon you wouldn’t have water coming out of your tap. You will depend on your neighbours for food and some warmth. You will become malnourished. You won’t know whether to stay or go. You will fear being violently killed before starving to…

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Fourteen Recommendations on Living Beyond Collapse-Denial

Professor Jem Bendell

Photo by Samuel Silitonga on Pexels.com

We are all troubled by difficult emotions as we consider our environmental predicament. Some of us may seek to escape those difficult emotions by getting busy with activism or perhaps by complaining about others who don’t share our views.

Some recent negativity towards my work reminded me of how despair is something we can learn from – but that it takes time. Including time away from the public sphere and the rush of our daily lives.

Last January 2018 I shared some recommendations for people experiencing difficult emotions. based on my looking back over the 4 years since I had begun to accept that near term societal collapse would be likely, or even inevitable. This was in my long essay called “After Climate Despair”. It was before my work on this topic had become well known and it feels appropriate to re-post it…

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