The end of Capitalism is harder to envision than the end of the world
Another BEST OF docu-mental podcast
MORE FROM OUR BEST OF SERIES
Greetings,
I’m still taking a break from posting new material, but this morning I recorded an exciting interview with debut author Alice Sparkly Kat, aka “Ace”, whose book Post-Colonial Astrology: Reading the Planets through Capital, Power, and Labor is the catalyst for a rich discussion about how centuries of hierarchical thinking and delusions of race have held us back as a species and accelerated the destruction of our world.
Even so, despite the evidence all around us, we remarked upon how for so many, it’s hard it is to imagine a post-Capitalism world.
But, some people like Ace are actually doing that, and so are living rich, meaningful lives, often oblivious to the dramas the rest of us stay caught up in as we hang on every word of the digitized and industrialized corporate attention aggregators who distract us and then capture, package, and sell our minds so that we never fully use them.
And yet, it’s our minds that when we are in full possession of them, open us to the world of truth, the place where we might have time and inspiration to envision that post-Capitalistic world where we are free, not monetized and manipulated.
A mind free of entanglements is a mind free to imagine. Imagination is the only renewable resource on this earth, and its why the profiteers wants access to yours by way of capturing your mind.
We are so conditioned to outsource our one single renewable resource, we hardly even stop to consider we are both the market and the product. As Ace points out in her book, and as we have explored here before, Capitalism must cannibalize everything if it is to survive.
In my conversation with Ace, which I will air later this month, we discuss the difficulty of imagining a post-Capitalism world, and consider how it is currently possible for us to all be captives, living in a lie — the one that purports race and hierarchy are irrefutable and organic to humanity — but not be liars ourselves.
Such a notion is not a “get out of jail free” card, so much as it is a compassionate perspective that goes beyond “wokeness”, just another word turned into a weapon, and creates a space where we can begin to heal ourselves and each other without feeling defensive or ferocious when discussing the pain of perpetuating the lie.
Most of all, we discuss how the archetypes that exist beyond us, the ones that we draw from by way of our imagination, are common to us all, even those of us who don’t care about learning the language of astrology.
Whether we as humans engage with archetypal power for good or ill depends on how we are oriented to that power by way of the languages we speak and the intentions behind them.
The way to re-orient language not away from power, but to a new form and function of that power, is to first understand that the old paradigm still captivates our minds, because we still give it our attention.
Re-interpreting the symbols by at least being willing to say that it’s possible to see something else beyond the current orientation to hierarchy is itself a powerful act, one that can lead us each to a place where lies new myths and meanings, possibly even sustainable ones.
In the meantime…
This redux interview with London economist and contributor to New Statesman, Grace Blakeley, author of STOLEN! How to Save the World From Financialization, will get your minds in shape for the conversation with Ace.
Speaking of the heavens above, including the Moon and all its metaphorical potentials, here’s a recent short video from Blakeley about Jeff Bezos, the man who is actively engaged in colonizing the moon.
What gives him the right? You do, I do, we all do, because our current orientation is towards a rich man having the power to subjugate whatever he can get his money around. You give him your power and money with every amazon purchase you make. Are you okay with that being a heavenly body?
As Blakeley, makes plain, Bezos’ language is that of hierarchy on earth. Should he have the final say? Will he? For now at least, we are allowing Bezos to be the lead author on the future story of the Moon.
Happy weekend.
Peace,
Whitney