[P2P-F] Fwd: The Three Extinctions

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kanth, Rajani <rkanth at fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Tue, May 24, 2016 at 6:37 AM
Subject: The Three Extinctions
To: "michelsub2004 at gmail.com" <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>




                               Human Survival: and The Three Extinctions

Given the  deep obfuscations of Modernist ideology, which overwhelmingly
dominate  both its ‘left’ and ‘right’ variants, globally, we oft elide
many fundamentals that should , rightly, concern us: and  just one of them
is  the fragile nature of our precarious  State of Being in these perilous
times.

Let me , therefore, point to Three  imminent/immanent Threats humankind
faces today: I treat them all , seriously,  as entirely possible
‘extinctions’.

They need to be viewed as such, and prepared for , with countervailing
planning, rather than the slew of  sub-issues that  tend to detain public
opinion/discourse within the carefully controlled  mass-media.

The 3 (uniquely Modernist) Extinctions are:

Firstly, a Nuclear  debacle: be it  by intent,  or by accident.

IF  we somehow get past that,  then Second:  surviving the extant  rush to
morph us all , perforce,  into a Trans-Humankind, via what I term
‘robotisation’ and ‘synthesisation’.

We are well  en route  to such a dystopia, originally  commenced, a century
ago, with the wholesale ‘mechanization/robotisation’  of
production/management  processes of production and delivery, of
consumer/producer goods/services, across all sectors. Now, with the advent
of  bio-genetics , bio-electronics is  intruding menacingly  into bodily
structures and  functions, via  advancing nanotechnologies.

This is paralleled by the grim determination of Corporates to find
profitable, synthetic substitutes for all organic, natural,  products and
processes – let’s  simply call this ominous  trend  the galloping
‘synthesisation’ of life.

If we , somehow, manage to avoid Strikes One and Two – fortuitously - there
is yet the  Third hazard , no less calamitous than the previous two :
Cultural Survival.

The Late Modernist ‘ Neo-Vandalist’ Agenda involves the utter, ruthless,
deracination of  all non-Modernist, autonomous,  cultures and
civilizations, globally.
This has, to some degree, already been achieved.
A standardized, homogenized, and ‘flat’, cultural (and eco-political)
landscape makes marketing, control  and domination,  so much easier.

The Modernist, ‘culture-free’,   wasteland is steadily expanding by the
day, engulfing more and more of physical, social , and cultural space.

Notice the nature of the above 3 Threats: they  each spell  near-extinction
of the anthropic  species  - physically, biologically, and morally,
respectively.

Notice, also, I have not mentioned the more usual, endemic  genre of
oppressions that engage   public attentions,  in more ‘normal’ times,
i.e.,  racism, sexism, jingoism, and  empire :- all  pushed into the
periphery, now - much like chronic, systemic disorders , at another remove,
of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, ecocide, etc, that occupy the
airwaves ( indeed, where/when in Modernist history have such issues not
existed?: there is NO Modernist ‘golden-age’, contrary to the  lapidary
delusions of the varied apologists and shills).

Notice, finally, that I do not include climate change in the list of
possible ‘extinctions’: because we can and will cope with it, with the
usual lags – even more so because many mega Corps now clearly smell  vast
potential for profits in it.

Besides, anthropic extinction is not an imminent climate change
consequence, implying  at present, merely even more straitened living
conditions.

Thus do catastrophic evils trump merely calamitous ones.

Unsure of the difference between calamity and catastrophe?
Let me explain, by modifying an old witticism.
It were a calamity, I would admit,  if a luxury-liner carrying the entire
set of  the nouvelle billionaire rulers of the globe were to capsize,
mid-voyage, mid-ocean.
But It were a  real catastrophe, perhaps,   if someone were to fish them
out.
The humor is harsh, I know (for they be all honorable men…) : but the
extinctions I speak of - the gratuitous gifts of this same genre of gentry
– are no less benumbing.

By informal reckoning, I surmise that no more than  about a 1000
individuals, mostly of European origin, now hold the keys to the destiny of
7.5 billion of us (indeed, how did we let us ourselves get to such a
pass?).In the last analysis, we are oppressed by  this genre of real,
live,  rulers of the realm,  not simply by the sway  of abstract
‘paradigms’.
And that’s every bit as scary as the extinctions themselves.

And the probability of our surviving these 3 extinctions?
The First (nuclear) threat is the most critical,  since we cannot rule
out/control  accidental discharge(s) of weaponry: and nuclear waste is
already, for some time,  seeping , like some gothic horror,  into land and
sea.
We need a CERN-scale project to attend to this: but with a view to
terminating nuclear processes - not extending/refining them.
You can bet your local reactor that when billions are spent on a  science
project it is NOT to advance human welfare, in the first instance.
Yes, our scientific elites are all, save the usual honorable exceptions, a
co-opted, bought-out, and loyalist cadre.

The Second, and Third threats, are, leastways  in principle, highly
avoidable, since public policy can, in theory, be brought to bear on
stemming it.
But our record of preventing disaster(s) is anything but reassuring, as we
look back at the last few centuries of outright  genocide, mass-murder,
war,  and exterminism.
This is even more true in these last decades of what I term  “Late
Modernism’.

They that ‘permit’ us  their version of ‘democracy’ weren’t  exactly
planning on committing suicide in so doing: ‘we, the people’ were never
part of that game, save as gulls.
There is not one ‘right’ we possess in modern times that may not be wholly
retracted, as it suits the Masters of the Universe, the shrill  propaganda
of the system notwithstanding.
Think I exaggerate? Have a look at the newly arrogated prerogatives of
governments (read Corporations) in any ‘advanced’ Modernist formation

The Third extinction is fatal to the species in its most poignant sense:
there is an operative  Gresham’s Law of Cultures - base cultures drive high
cultures clear  out of circulation.
Competition and ‘devil-take-the hindmost’ ideas of  abject self-advancement
dull the edge of  antic anthropic cultures, which are universally, in the
‘infancy of humankind’ ,  affective, convivial , and familial, in essence:
co-operative norms enhance it.
It takes millennia to build the latter, yet  it  can all  be erased in but
two, or less, generations.
Which is what happened to the colonized peoples by dint of the  impact of
our ‘civilisation mongers’.
And who can, after the fact,  scale that loss?

Certainly not the tribe of  materialists who constituted Modernism to begin
with: a mere mess of pottage suffices for this lot.
Cram their itching palms with lucre, and they’re  in veritable seventh
heaven: after all, they who first ordained ‘per capita income’ as  a vital
metric for ‘progress’ ,‘development’, and what have you.
Culture? Civilisation?
No more than will-o'-the-wisp,  ignis fatuus, parlor room twaddle:  save
all that for a rainy day.

Used to be the case , in classic Colonialism of  yore, of a stance of
‘give us your resources, keep your culture”: now it’s more  a call for
 ‘surrender your resources,  abort your culture, and sacrifice sovereignty’.
Such the criteria,  to be a true vassal of the global empire - in these
times.

As I have remarked before, Europe and  its offshoots – whose elites govern
the world today - bear the lion’s share of responsibility for the  current
state of affairs.
They dragged us to this climacteric, willy-nilly: but we may all have to
co-operate, now,  deploying all means at our disposal - to get us out of it.
Yes, our ragged-trousered philanthropy is to be the salve:  fitting, is it
not?

And if/when we do, let us hope we will   all be possessed of the essential
wisdom to  jettison forever the  modernist chimera of ‘progress’  - which
has  enslaved us  all in technological, militaristic,  and financial chains
more asphyxiating and inescapable than the ones that bound us in the
pre-modern era.

We need to find our way back to  a historically  extant Eden (no, not
Utopia, by any stretch;  but  far more modest microcosmic , anthropic,
communities within which co-respecting  accountability , and conviviality,
are more possible and  likely) via  the anthropic societal model of  a
‘moral economy of affections’,  bypassing the modernist, contractual,
‘material economy of interests’ which is the ontic/epistemic quagmire we
are sinking in today, to an immiserating,  inexorable, and  irredeemable,
doom.
                                                   R E F E R E N C E S
Kanth, R. The Post-Human Society, Munich: De Gruyter, 2015
_______   Farewell to Modernism: On Human Devolution in the 21st Century,
forthcoming, NY: Peter Lang, 2016/7.
 [© R. Kanth 2016]




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