“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche)
We live in such a civilization, which has developed throughout millennia, where we can safely share this conclusion: the world is ending, at least for humans. Organized religions, government institutions, schools, hospitals, social norms, and traditional cultures play a critical role in imprinting capitalism as a way of life (beyond an economic system). We are unable to imagine any solution exclusive of capitalist involvement.
Championed solutions to existential problems present through capitalist process. Elon Musk is the gateway to existential solutions. Tesla is a widely accepted solution to the oil problem. We champion this design. We buy the car. We feel empowered. We feel activated. We are the protesters. We have committed to this highly overpriced purchase that speaks volumes to our connectedness to global issues. We put our money where our mouths are (just don’t look in the trunk filled with that day’s designer shopping, meats, plastics, and chemical pharmaceuticals). It is the emotion we buy. It is the religion we abide by in daily life. A voice comes along to say, “I see through the Tesla hypocrisy.” But a negation follows: “Tesla is better than the V8 ICE Diesel I was driving; Tesla showcases me as avant-garde and futurist!”
We never really think to hear sounds beyond capitalism. Even in the pre-industrial and pre-Adam Smith capitalism eras, we were capitalists — opportunists. We enslaved each other for queen, king, and empire. Before that we capitalized by religion. As such, when we see people dance to tunes outside of sound waves made possible by the instruments of capitalism, we cannot process the sound; the melody falls on our socio-surgically deafened ears. We watch those few who still possess natural hearing dance to the music we will never know. By the strength of the ego, we identify them as crazy. We dismiss them. By spiritual appeal, we wish we could dance with those free from capitalist greed, corruption, and coercion.
Any solution that, in and by its socio-spiritual endeavor, embraces and supports the foundations of capitalist structure becomes complicit to the unsustainable future. We must respond with a revolution, a radicalization, an invited discomfort, an acceptable suffering to shock our current trajectory into the abyss, to press on the brakes and bring us to a deadbolt stop. Only with a human collective repurposed to global social harmony—equitably to all life instead of capitalizing on life—can we find the equilibrium of maximized compassion and minimized suffering; magic through love, the same love and compassion that remains unaltered in Platonic perfect form — Pure Love, God, Nature.
Jesus famously revealed this force of love. The momentum was gradually hijacked and renamed as an institutional enslaver. Globally, we participate in the enormous annual event called Christmas, a mass celebration of overconsumption and merriment in memory of the birth of the person we care not to remember for the love he inspired but for the brutality of the punishment he endured for thinking outside nurtured capitalism.
Today, the Roman Catholic Church represents Jesus in the most powerful authority. We honor the sexist papal leadership and bow to false piety and righteousness. This untouchable city-state in the middle of Rome is testament to the glory of the capitalist religion. Jesus promoted an equitable society based on harmony, an ideology of compassion and love, which was repurposed in sale to the same commons. Then came crimes of capitalism throughout the Church’s history including, but certainly not limited to, murdering children from Canada to Australia, raping children globally, and terrorizing opposition to maximize and maintain profit. Thus, and as capitalist cycles in industries repeat such ugliness and inhumanity through greed and criminality, our institutions become capitalist to the core.
Can we truly establish the necessary global changes to reach a sustainable harmony? It will certainly not manifest through hypocrisy. Swapping investment portfolios to environmentally friendly options is presented as a solution to sustainability concerns! But are we not using the same instruments? We boast of New York Stock Exchange bell-ringing when we present unverified solutions to existential problems. Are we not using the same office towers of lawyers to file papers on pages that come from the same destroyed forests? Are we not supporting the NASDAQ that also powers the funds we just asked investors to swap out of? Sounds very much like the oblivious vegan protesting meat consumption by walking to the counter at a restaurant that sells both vegan and meat burgers to order a plant-based meal! Where do we really think the money we just handed over is going? Or do we gullibly assume to have been the impactful difference?
Our consumer choices and actions require meditative and ruminative pauses. Does the action call of our stock options not travel through the same fiber-optic wires others use? We are, unfortunately, and mainly unknowingly, sharing infrastructure on multiple tiers with the opposition. We are more in bed with them than we can ever hope to be apart.
Perhaps there is value in hypocrisy to advance capitalism to its most extreme stage: delusion. “A wolf seeing some shepherds in a shelter eating a sheep, came near to them and said, ‘What an uproar you would make if I were doing that!'” (“The Banquet of the Seven Sages,” Plutarch, 13-156a, Aesop) We must first relieve ourselves from the capitalism that has become mentally impregnated in us. We must unveil hypocrisy in fearless protest and face the consequences of crucifixion. We are guaranteed death by any chosen life path; we have the power to choose a meaningful life. It is only delusional capitalists who label those who dance to nature’s music insane: Nietzsche, Wollstonecraft, Spinoza, Parks, Jesus, and others you would know to add here…
