Nature vs. Nurture
Our feelings about animals and industry are not solely about the animals. No, the rising distaste surrounding our treatment of animals in the meat industry reflects our own experiences within a world of concrete and steel. Humans are shuttled to and fro within a mechanized world that extracts their life essence to unknown ends, in ways not unlike the life of the industrial cow or chicken. This is another example of the growing tension between the divinity of nature and natural systems and the hardness and efficiency of the machine. Many think that the Machine War exists in some science fiction future, but I have said this before, the Machine War is happening right now. Arguments can be made, and sometimes are made, to support the machine, as either opposed to nature, or a new form of it. And it is important to have explicit conversations about this binary reality, for there are some compromises that might have to be accepted. However, the rampant unconsciousness with which people resign themselves to penned-in machine lives, is evidence of the Machine exercising in ways that are not honorable, in the old sense of that word. The chicken I eat may be free range, but am I free range? That is the question.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 at 9:03 pm. It is filed under 2012, anxiety, concepts, Conspiracy Theory, Environment, Futurism, Globalization, Philosophy, Science, Singularity, Slavery, Survival, TheMachine, Transhumanism.
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Machinery=Domination over nature. This kind of domination can be used for good or bad. Unfortunately in capitalism the only major machinery that can be made and funded is the kind that dominates in the bad way, and acts as another gear for capitalism as a whole. I can’t help but see all of this machinery as weaponry in some way or another. I just don’t see how we can make good on this while capitalism still rules. :/
i agree Natasha,
but i continue to draw a distinction between capitalism as an abstract means of interpreting ‘the system’ and the capitalist mindset, and it is this capitalism, the mental modality where human individuals turn every moment of their lives into a capital entity, a monetary exchange, that makes the world less humane…
so, i don’t think we can destroy capitalism by tearing down institutions, because the mindset will simply rebuild them, like the borg…
somehow we must create a culture that is so seductive and awakening that people naturally migrate toward it, and away from capital as a means of declaring their value.
Great post. Thanks for aiding and abetting the escape from mega culture.