Sunday, December 5, 2021
Planetary Death Drive
Much commentary has been devoted to the comparison of the global vaccine roll-out and COP 26 process. It is certainly true that in both cases the wealthy North/West/Developed "Center" is taking care of its own and letting the "Periphery" suffer. Nothing new there. But I think another interesting comparison is the way citizen/workers in both spheres continue to both refuse to wear masks and refuse to take global heating seriously. This is the same disavowal wearing two different masks.
In both cases the humans are so wedded to capitalist ideology that both of these threats, the pandemic and climate change, are seen as secondary to maintaining economic growth. This not just eletes protecting wealth,power and status by "manufacturing consent". The masses also prefer getting sick and roasting the planet to disrupting their "way of life" (not just comfort but the whole project of Modernity, to the degree they understand it as the forward march of progress). Of course this "preference", this misrecognition, is taking place at the level of action. It can be expressed in all sorts of superficial irrational "rationalizations" such as government conspiricy, love of liberty, cabal of evil scientists, etc..Anything but acknowleding capitalist democracy doesn't actually work and History doesn't necessarily progress.
At the level of unconscious knowledge, they know perfectly well the virus and global warming are real and that their actions will lead to destruction. That knowledge has to be repressed because shattering the ideological structure would be too painful to bear, the guilt and shame and reality just too terrible. Better to disavow, to enjoy the fantasy.
Part of that fantasy is The End Times as Punishment. Here, humans are fallen from grace in the gaze of the big Other and deserve annihilation. This form of justice would prove that life has some meaning, some teleological Reason. Most people will tell you humans are bad, greedy and selfish, that is their "Nature". And that outer Nature is mean and brutish. Therefor whether it is a pandemic or climate, it is just wiping the slate clean. This is the nightmare and we need only awaken to the dream. But we can only awaken through death.
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