Ideology of “Growth” (IOG)
– assumption of no limits: metastatis, envelopment rather than development
– only thing that increases over time is the PAST
– Past is intangible, inexhaustible, infinitely malleable (unlike real matter)
– IOG keeps focus on FUTURE – distract attention from what is happening in the present —> rapidly converted into more past
– consumer economy obliterates attention – should be numbered among:
EXTERNALIZED COSTS
– everything of actual (subsistence) value
– e.g. clean water, clean air, healthy soil, entire web of life
– also family/community values, public space
– some of these may soon only exist in the past
WHO IS THE CONSUMER?
– fiction of marketing
– spectator (rather than participant)
– temporary container of waste products
– permanent loser/debtor, b/c of externalized costs —> sucker
– transient human resource —> statistic
– target of crime, terrorism —> “body count”
BUT we are not consumers!!! To realize this is to bring about:
UN-TELEVISED REVOLUTION
– impossible
– essential
– any attempt to fill void w/out challenging void-creating machinery (i.e. “wants”) is FUTILE
– Love, God, Family, Community, Wilderness, etc. all equally susceptible to commodification, i.e. conversion into vacuums
– televised revolutionaries —> “Everything sucks” simply feeds the IOG
NEEDED: ANTIBODIES
– immune system works by beating invaders at own game
– examples: questions vs. answers, free love vs. lust/greed, public libraries vs. bookstores, wild places vs. zoos, playing games vs. watching sports, DIY networks vs. commerce
– laughter most effective weapon against void (IOG can’t be conquered through argumentation)
– spontaneous healing: logic of participation (“magic”) as full partner to discriminatory logic
– autopoiesis
HOW TO GET THERE
– build respect for authentic past (unknowable) & nature —> cultivate awe
– apophatic method: negative growth
– slow food, slow lane, living deliberately (not just “doing without”)
– more pleasure, not less —> more things give pleasure, giving itself is source of pleasure
– more “goods”, not fewer —> many small things/beings in place of one or two big abstractions
– plenty of energy