I catch glimpses of regular people starting to wake up from the narcoleptic dreamworld that capitalism has put them in. I work in a very working class environment, and it's now very easy to get people to talk about the big structural issues driving our civilization to ecocide, in a way that it wasn't just a couple years ago. People truly want to live in a better world, they're mostly just exhausted and dispirited by the vampiric powers they live under. Until just a few years ago, a huge majority of people labored under the delusion that if they just hustled as hard as they could, they might be able to "make it" in this economy. Now the great majority are waking up to the fact that not only can they not make it, if they stay on this hamster wheel, they will die. This is a great big pill to swallow. Not everyone will take it well. But it's part of the conditions of history that must work itself out in the human psyche before we can ever hope to come together around an agenda of survival and caring for our biosphere. There's a whole process of grieving, bargaining, anger, all that shit, before most people will truly understand what their situation is. For those of us who have seen it for some time now, it's incredibly dispiriting and irritating to have to wait and watch as people figure this shit out.
The question is, as always, how bad will the damage be before we wake up from the dark dream that Capital has lulled us into. Possibly the damage will be terminal- a slow motion extinction that we all must live through until we perish from whatever local disaster takes us: starvation, violence, wildfire, drought, what have you. But also possibly, as more and more people fall into poverty and desperation, the power valences and socio-economic incentives will flip. People will be forced by their shit circumstances to look out for each other. The ego-driven, money-driven, success-driven societal structures will simply cease to interest people and they will find that they get more acclaim, more respect, more power over their own lives by helping their communities than by exploiting them for their own benefit.
One thing that has helped me calm down a little about this has been listening to this EXTREMELY long and detailed podcast about the French Revolution. The people who underwent this massive series of crises/changes had no idea how it would end up, where it all was heading. Each stage of it was run by groups of people trying to get their own agenda through. It was, if you include the Napoleonic Wars, a nearly 30 year period of disruption, war, and chaos. But it birthed a new societal order. The Ancien Régime was never again able to be reestablished, a Republic is what France became. But to the people taken up by these changes, that was not clearly going to be the outcome. Even the beginning stages of the Revolution weren't planned as revolution or recognized as such. They just had to undergo every horrible step of that process until it was over. (Interestingly, there was a climate change element to the whole thing: the genocide of native people in the Americas resulted in wild overgrowth of their carefully constructed agricultural system, which sucked a bunch of carbon out of the air, cooling the planet for a while and resulting in poor harvests and food shortages in France. This was one of the things that drove the old regime to dysfunction and collapse.)
Techno-capitalism seems unbeatable, but we're just ants on the ground, observing what we can. We don't have the perspective to see this huge crisis objectively, therefore we shouldn't assume that the depressing parts of it are unchangeable. The Ancien Regime seemed inevitable until it just wasn't anymore.
On the other hand, maybe we really are all fucked. <Hollow laughter of the damned>
daniel if you have not already, go to la zebra (one of the colibri group’s hotels) and pop into Mulberry Project PopUp bar. it is one of my son jasper’s world wide popUps - after rio, cartagena, iceland, zanzibar & kenya. it’s his 6 year in tulum for the season. ask for him although is not there often as he consults for all 5 hotels on their f&b ... he’s fun and also has a flat in new york. - janine milne
Here's a source. Zizek has been talking about this for decades but it's helpful to remember he's also a materialist and self-identified Marxist, so "Religion is the opium of the people" and all that:
Always big expectIons and opinions written by privileged people on Tulum .
People who come from advantaged backgrounds and different cultures Seeking the same or similar lives in a small pueblo which has its own deep routed culture , people who come expecting so much and wanting things to be the same or similar as it used to be or is back home .
Like in life in general when their needs are not met they blame and rant with big opinions and judgments .
But do they put their elegantly written words into action ?
Do these people go to mayan communities to help the people who are being abused by coca cola or help to sew the seeds in their fields , and educate the children of this new and fast growing way of life, which for them is changing very fast , with the quick rush of tourists coming with large amounts of money building overpriced restaurants and hotels and exploiting their lands .while they are left wondering who they are in all this .
Tourists , home owners , business people ,
Cartels move in and demand a piece of the prosperity , but pay nothing back to the sacred land or locals they have used to create their dream .
No one ever writes about the amazing people who do wonderful things in Tulum : like share knowledge and seeds for locals to grow in new ways . communities who buy land just to keep it sacred from large developers.
Women who create safe places for vulnerable women and children to live .
There are also incredibly amazing people in Tulum doing beautiful positive things which pays back to all that has been ripped apart.
Be a positive influence whilst in Tulum .
Support and act in helping rather than being the cause .
The earth is a reflection of how we treat life on earth. The create balance we must live in balance. Our place is as vegetarians. To create peace, we must act in peace. The key to peace is a vegetarian diet. KingTreeBear.com
Well said. Evolution is a long, very slow process. I expect that humans will have to evolve quite a bit before we can live in harmony with the planet, with major "speed bumps" along the way. That was not a critical issue in the (commonly known) past. In any case, it won't be possible with billions of humans, no matter what technology we develop. Our problems are not resolvable at that level; they are rooted in our psychology, our DNA. Understanding our true nature as consciousness, and acting from that level, is probably a better cure.
My first visit to Tulum was in '79. It was a virgin beach with free camping. There was no town, hotels or restaurants.
Like every other spoiled place on earth, it was ruined by the wealthy developers. Trust-fund-burners notwithstanding, the wealthy are the cause of all the world's environmental problems. I'm not surprised to see that the wealthy are now blaming "humanity" for all the ills while pushing for a great reset that will enrich and benefit them while punishing and restricting the people.
I catch glimpses of regular people starting to wake up from the narcoleptic dreamworld that capitalism has put them in. I work in a very working class environment, and it's now very easy to get people to talk about the big structural issues driving our civilization to ecocide, in a way that it wasn't just a couple years ago. People truly want to live in a better world, they're mostly just exhausted and dispirited by the vampiric powers they live under. Until just a few years ago, a huge majority of people labored under the delusion that if they just hustled as hard as they could, they might be able to "make it" in this economy. Now the great majority are waking up to the fact that not only can they not make it, if they stay on this hamster wheel, they will die. This is a great big pill to swallow. Not everyone will take it well. But it's part of the conditions of history that must work itself out in the human psyche before we can ever hope to come together around an agenda of survival and caring for our biosphere. There's a whole process of grieving, bargaining, anger, all that shit, before most people will truly understand what their situation is. For those of us who have seen it for some time now, it's incredibly dispiriting and irritating to have to wait and watch as people figure this shit out.
The question is, as always, how bad will the damage be before we wake up from the dark dream that Capital has lulled us into. Possibly the damage will be terminal- a slow motion extinction that we all must live through until we perish from whatever local disaster takes us: starvation, violence, wildfire, drought, what have you. But also possibly, as more and more people fall into poverty and desperation, the power valences and socio-economic incentives will flip. People will be forced by their shit circumstances to look out for each other. The ego-driven, money-driven, success-driven societal structures will simply cease to interest people and they will find that they get more acclaim, more respect, more power over their own lives by helping their communities than by exploiting them for their own benefit.
One thing that has helped me calm down a little about this has been listening to this EXTREMELY long and detailed podcast about the French Revolution. The people who underwent this massive series of crises/changes had no idea how it would end up, where it all was heading. Each stage of it was run by groups of people trying to get their own agenda through. It was, if you include the Napoleonic Wars, a nearly 30 year period of disruption, war, and chaos. But it birthed a new societal order. The Ancien Régime was never again able to be reestablished, a Republic is what France became. But to the people taken up by these changes, that was not clearly going to be the outcome. Even the beginning stages of the Revolution weren't planned as revolution or recognized as such. They just had to undergo every horrible step of that process until it was over. (Interestingly, there was a climate change element to the whole thing: the genocide of native people in the Americas resulted in wild overgrowth of their carefully constructed agricultural system, which sucked a bunch of carbon out of the air, cooling the planet for a while and resulting in poor harvests and food shortages in France. This was one of the things that drove the old regime to dysfunction and collapse.)
Techno-capitalism seems unbeatable, but we're just ants on the ground, observing what we can. We don't have the perspective to see this huge crisis objectively, therefore we shouldn't assume that the depressing parts of it are unchangeable. The Ancien Regime seemed inevitable until it just wasn't anymore.
On the other hand, maybe we really are all fucked. <Hollow laughter of the damned>
daniel if you have not already, go to la zebra (one of the colibri group’s hotels) and pop into Mulberry Project PopUp bar. it is one of my son jasper’s world wide popUps - after rio, cartagena, iceland, zanzibar & kenya. it’s his 6 year in tulum for the season. ask for him although is not there often as he consults for all 5 hotels on their f&b ... he’s fun and also has a flat in new york. - janine milne
Thanks Daniel. Can I ask in which of Zizek's works he critiques neo-Shamanism / Eastern Mysticism / New Age?
you can ask but I don't remember!
Darn. Alrighty! I'll continue my hunt. Hope you're doing well!Super cool you have a substack and looking forward to reading more!
Let me know if you find out. I haven't come across anything from him on those topics.
That's funny, I was going to ask the same question!!
Here's a source. Zizek has been talking about this for decades but it's helpful to remember he's also a materialist and self-identified Marxist, so "Religion is the opium of the people" and all that:
https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/2/zizek.php
Cool. I just found that like 5 minutes ago, and I was suspecting this was what Daniel was referring to. Glad we're on the same page.
Always big expectIons and opinions written by privileged people on Tulum .
People who come from advantaged backgrounds and different cultures Seeking the same or similar lives in a small pueblo which has its own deep routed culture , people who come expecting so much and wanting things to be the same or similar as it used to be or is back home .
Like in life in general when their needs are not met they blame and rant with big opinions and judgments .
But do they put their elegantly written words into action ?
Do these people go to mayan communities to help the people who are being abused by coca cola or help to sew the seeds in their fields , and educate the children of this new and fast growing way of life, which for them is changing very fast , with the quick rush of tourists coming with large amounts of money building overpriced restaurants and hotels and exploiting their lands .while they are left wondering who they are in all this .
Tourists , home owners , business people ,
Cartels move in and demand a piece of the prosperity , but pay nothing back to the sacred land or locals they have used to create their dream .
No one ever writes about the amazing people who do wonderful things in Tulum : like share knowledge and seeds for locals to grow in new ways . communities who buy land just to keep it sacred from large developers.
Women who create safe places for vulnerable women and children to live .
There are also incredibly amazing people in Tulum doing beautiful positive things which pays back to all that has been ripped apart.
Be a positive influence whilst in Tulum .
Support and act in helping rather than being the cause .
The earth is a reflection of how we treat life on earth. The create balance we must live in balance. Our place is as vegetarians. To create peace, we must act in peace. The key to peace is a vegetarian diet. KingTreeBear.com
Well said. Evolution is a long, very slow process. I expect that humans will have to evolve quite a bit before we can live in harmony with the planet, with major "speed bumps" along the way. That was not a critical issue in the (commonly known) past. In any case, it won't be possible with billions of humans, no matter what technology we develop. Our problems are not resolvable at that level; they are rooted in our psychology, our DNA. Understanding our true nature as consciousness, and acting from that level, is probably a better cure.
My first visit to Tulum was in '79. It was a virgin beach with free camping. There was no town, hotels or restaurants.
Like every other spoiled place on earth, it was ruined by the wealthy developers. Trust-fund-burners notwithstanding, the wealthy are the cause of all the world's environmental problems. I'm not surprised to see that the wealthy are now blaming "humanity" for all the ills while pushing for a great reset that will enrich and benefit them while punishing and restricting the people.