Embrace the paradox, humans are arguably the greatest rights violators in all forms of violence, but they are also the only beings capable of granting rights through moral agency. The paradox is also true of anthropocentric climate change, it’s creator, but also it’s only possible resolver. The environment only has instrumental value to conscious beings so it would miss the mark to assume the absence of humans is in anyone’s (including animals) best interest.
Guess we should just try to get through each others thick skulls instead of being edgy :/
What causes, and conducts capitalism if not humans?
Capitalism is a system of class oppression where one class of humans that produces nothing exploits the other who produces everything. This also occurred under feudalism, which utilized religion to mediate all social relations and maintain social order, the subject of religion being God. The subject of capitalism is profit.
The struggle between classes will remain after the defeat of capitalism, but we must make sure to develop a society in which the many continue to struggle for the benefit of all over the domination of the few who struggle only for their own benefit. The rule of the few dehumanizes the many to varying degrees to justify their own dominance, and through that dominance influences the many to accept the imposed condition of their own diminished humanity. Through the dehumanization of others however, the ruling class makes its self less human.
So even though it is humans carrying out this oppression, it is necessary to diminish the humanity of others in order to rule, and their rule sets the standard for what is and is not human.
When we fail to see nature as a unity of opposing forces, then we fail to recognize that every object is defined not in itself but by the things that relate to it, and we can’t understand some vital truths. Namely, that every social thing is defined not just by it’s own existence but also by the existence of its opposite.
Which is to say, that while it appears that humanity is the problem, this belief is a condition of our own oppression. Humanity of the many is not the “virus,” it is on fact the cure for the virus of class oppression and dehumanization. But to accomplish this, the masses must reassert our own humanity, unflinchingly in the face of violence that seeks to make us low and break our spirit.
As Paolo Friere said, “it is the historic mission of the oppressed to restore the humanity of the oppressor.”
All capitalists are humans but not all humans are capitalists so it’s a bit of an overgeneralisation.
Humans invented and seem to naturally gravitate to capitalism, it’s not some cosmic evil imposed on them. They’re still a virus.
It would be nice if communism was an emergent behavior of humanity. It’s got to be forced from the top down with a vanguard.
Well, the largest expeditor of the problem, but still done by and for an infection.
We still made huge impact to the ecosystems in the past too, it’s just that we now no longer destroy only local ecosystems.
Without capitalism, would we still be an infection?
Yeah probably if we took the immediate means of production and just tried to socialise them. Idk if doing what Lenin did back in the day would work now (just copying capitalist production and socialising it.)
