Everything is changing and I don't know why…

looking at the world like a mirror!

As globalized citizens, we are reactionary beings exposed to global and local “events” and upheavals that are currently taking place around the world. The current genocide in Gaza, the possibility of civil war in the first world, assassinations, geopolitical ruptures, mass displacement of the working class, extreme climate events, imprisonment of the undocumented, violence against women, children and minorities, the list is perhaps endless. The complexity, urgency and chaos has reached a point in history, that we cannot make sense of many things including our own objectivity, our kin, community and corresponding society. The world as we knew it and took for granted, is falling apart bit by bit.

“You're aching, you're breaking
And I can see the pain in your eyes…
Says, everybody's changing and I don't know why…” (Keane, Irish band).

But this “changing” is inevitable and I want to “know why”. By what means and what “specificity of forces” have captured (and converted) our planet into a prison system? What global structures of domination, are destroying human and non-human existence, at such a rapid rate? A “metaphysics of everything” that regenerates and lives is intertwined, and what more can be expected from human beings as new “becoming”?

The story here, is based on three principle characters. One being “Necrocapitalism”. Two, the advent of 21st century “techno-molecular colonialism” . Three, the dialectic which appears as a consequence of the above two. Of separation and or exclusion, of people from their native lands, practices, identity, modes of production and viz-a-viz modes of survival. As an entanglement and a set of contradictions that inevitably points to collapse of the current “world order”. And consequently what possibility of “new becoming” as evolutionary steps.

1️⃣ Necrocapitalism — The underpinning role of extreme violence in the functioning of larger biopolitical orders makes for the global prevalence of “necropolitics”. These terms, coined by critical theorist Achille Mbembe (Cameroon) structurally explain a state’s “right” to kill and to organize people, even to be killed (as opposed to live). One can see that across continents as well as a historic process. From the holocaust and ecocide in the “New World” (1492-1850), right down to the genocides and mass extermination projects of the 20th and 21st century. In Europe, in Japan, Algeria, Chile, Argentina, Vietnam, Cambodia, Tibet, Bosnia, Serbia, Sudan, India, Guatemala, El Salvador, Rwanda, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine and currently in Gaza / occupied Palestine.

From a global context, the state’s will and the intentions of the ruling class, together can expose the weakest sections of society to extreme violence and death, or reduce entire segments of populations to the barest and most precarious existence. Done so, in order to “preserve the established economic and political hierarchies of the capitalist system.” (Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics). He identifies “racism as a prime driver of necropolitics” stating that racialized people's lives are systemically cheapened and habituated to loss. This verdict is confirmed by a range of scholars, situated in the West, such as Nancy Fraser, John Bellamy Foster, Silvia Federici, David Harvey, Jason Moore, Raj Patel, and earlier by Mike Davis, Franco Bifo Berardi and James C Scott, to name a few. And when those very “radicalized” people rise up, organize and rebel, the global systems that maintain the necessary “biopower” (Michael Foucault) including the institutions of justice and human rights, tend to destroy their resistance or worse outright eliminate them. “The disposable, or the surplus of the population within many nations, is framed by the state, similar to the organization and treatment of natural resources, cattle, farm lands etc.” (James C Scott, Seeing Like A State).

For the ruling class and its corresponding state, all types of mass resistance, be it anti-war activism or protection of the undocumented or coalitions of women’s reproductive rights — such “people based movements” have to be destroyed, defamed or diluted by any means possible. Is why there are active “concentration camps” in China, just like those in the United States, El Salvador, Fiji (for Australia), India, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia and Croatia. As a historic process, we see the foundations of such a “mass prison systems” as a continuation of European colonialism, Vichy France, Fascist Spain, Monarchy Of Sweden, and later as the WW2 Nazi concentration camps followed by the “Gulag Archipelago” of the erstwhile Soviet Union.

Economic sanctions, arms embargo, blockade, corporate land-grab, mass urbanization, rentier finance, eviction of rural populations, enclosure of the remaining indigenous, contamination and poisoning of Nature, racial segregation, appearance of new pathogens and virus — might seem different facets of our current zeitgeist, yet they all tie into the power and prospects of “Necrocapitalism” actuating at a global level. Or check out the “humiliation” that goes on between many borders and corridors of human traffic.

When thousands of cattle perish, crops fail and people develop extreme skin diseases next to a Coca-Cola plant in India. When a huge oil-spill in the Gulf Of Mexico decimates marine and bird life for generations. When hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs are “arbitrarily detained” within internment camps in China. When ICE agents arrest over 50,000 migrants with no crime records in just one year. How millions add up, when we count those who have abandoned Venezuela, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Iraq, Sahel and Syria over the last 25 years. When “Human trafficking and exploitation of women”​​ shows that 91% of trafficking victims for sexual exploitation are females (U.N. Women). Such catastrophes and more, cannot be made sense of as just geopolitical ruptures or ecological disasters. According to Achille Mbembe, “Biopower and necropolitics cannot exist without each other”. Is important to understand the “specific imbalance” between the two, that depends on the features of racial capitalism and ethno-nationalism in each country. Hence, there is no particular “sovereign difference” between a China, Russia, Canada, America, Venezuela, Argentina, India, Israel and many other nations, when it comes to the presence of either racial capitalism or police power or ethno-nationalism — and all the corresponding systems of propaganda, violence, exploitation and involved dehumanization.

The pending resolution upon the United Nations, is also connected to Necrocapitalism. It can be simply understood by the fact, that it took the institution more than 700 days to “officially accept the truth” (Electronic Intifada) — all the evidence and verdicts that “Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza since Oct 2023”. Yet the ordinary world and people did not wait for such hollow declarations, because we know well that the United Nations serves the American empire above all else. The entire facade of humanitarian aid, human rights and international justice falls apart when the matter is orchestrated by various forces of Necrocapitalism.

2️⃣ Techno-Molecular Colonialism — As the air we breathe gets laden with more and more dust, toxic gases, strange substances, burned waste, new pathogens, forever particles and granulations, it also absorbs trillions of electronic frequencies and transmissions every day — that take place within the virtual reality of a “seemingly infinite cyberspace” (Franco Bifo Berardi). So is the human body, much like the air we breathe, thanks to immersive visualization technologies, transmission speed, data transfer, of videos, images, sounds, flashing symbols, etc, all pointed at our mind and organs, then also exposed to asphyxiation and suffocation. Of information and a lot more at a sub-conscious level.

Nothing translates this excess better, than the techno-digital universe that has “become the double of our world”. And there is no unbecoming this duality as of now. Artificial Intelligence and the age of “dream machines” is here. No one can really define what the internet is about, yet whatever the splendor and infinite discovery, above all it enables new forms — of presence, persona and circulation, fame, incarnation, reincarnation, and even ridiculous resurrection. “Not only has modern technology become theology, it has also become eschatology.” (Achille Mbembe).

So, navigating or traversing screens, has become the primary activity of contemporary humanity. A bizarre duality, regardless of our so called race, identity or real needs. As “beings” transported to the other side of the screen — as a practice, we believe that “humanity can be present to itself” while keeping a distance from itself. Why this is a great entanglement between the “techno” and the “bio” — to a point where the flow of energy, matter and information, has coalesced into one. A hyper-complexity of a world that is visible to you and to me, all the time. Free or paid. Where we can watch “a live streamed genocide” (Al Jazeera, Amnesty International) or prefer the live streaming of music, movies, gaming, fiction series, sports, pornography, virtual reality, meta-space, etc etc. What reads like an utter disaster in the making, better explained by e-flux magazine as “…a matter of time now, technologically capturing the energy of the living and downloading it into the human, in a process that calls to mind the first creation.” Techno-Molecular Colonialism appears more and more like a tentacular form of acquisition, yet very akin to medieval religions, whereby entire populations are organized and “kept busy” but as serfs tied to vast cybernetic systems.

Millions of teenagers scrolling endlessly on Tik Tok or Instagram or any such social media platform, are in fact the perfect “serfs” of Techno-Molecular Colonialism. Thoughts can now be replaced by “codified norms, actions and behavior”. The generation to follow are the children and even toddlers — assimilating and integrating into a world of “continuous virtual action” (Franco Bifo Berardi). One must reckon with millions of middle-age and retired folks, also hooked-up to virtual feeds, instead of reading books, newspapers, magazines or even hanging out with community — regular activities, of their lives earlier. What a great new universal “purpose” after all?

It hardly matters if its IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Apple, Xaomi, Alibaba, Amazon, Facebook, Tesla, Palantir or Samsung — are absolutely devoted to various schemas of de-corporation, re-corporation, and trans-corporation of our minds and bodies — in favor of Techno-Molecular Colonialism, as the cornerstone of the “new technological religions” (e-flux, Meditations On The Second Creation). Worse, when modern technology now brings about fiction, incarnation, transfiguration, even resurrection, the worst ideas and even the virtual “Eucharist” (this is my body, Love, Death and Robots).

The above narrative is an attempt to debunk a popular consensus, which points to neoliberalism and America as the “heart of the global crisis”. Indeed, left-intelligentsia, think-tanks, NYT or The Guardian or Haaretz, or even David Harvey, David Graeber, Noam Chomsky or Naomi Klein, or myriad progressive international NGOs – all have put the blame on neoliberalism, hoping that “corona-virus spells the end of the neoliberal order” (Achille Mbembe). These gurus and leading figures, that shape global opinions have claimed again and again that “uniquely American virus, that is neoliberalism”. We must remember whatever their predicaments and warnings and how-many-ever evils of neoliberalism and of the American empire, all these figures and institutions are still hogtied to hierarchy, wealth, exuberance and the “corresponding knowledge economy”. An opinion that is most entirely shaped in the West, that accounts for less an 5% of total human population, and then reinterpreted by the “Rest”. This very order, made of thousands of specialized roles and expertise, exist inside every nation, omits the presence of modern technology and its endless innovation (power) is one that is also tacitly devoted to capitalism or what zany folks like Yanis Varoufakis like to label as “Techno-Fuedalism”.

As of now, there seems to be very little critical analysis about continuously “airing our grievances” (Millennials Are Killing Capitalism). Filling the same air with more CO2 as is. Beings as subjects or brands, news or entertainment, knowledge or conspiracy, doomer or boomer, albeit situated within the overall impositions of “Techno-Feudalism” of the internet. People numbering hundreds of millions are broadcasting themselves online, putting themselves out there, for the world to see and hear, fighting whatever cause, serving whatever propaganda or performing spectacles for all we care. For how long can this “self-incarnation” and “online transfiguration” go on? No one knows, and worse not many wish to think what lays beyond.

3️⃣ The Contradiction — A negation of the present world-system, which can be understood as “Necrocapitalism” or more hardcore in the words of Nancy Fraser as “Cannibal Capitalism” is a matter of privilege eventually. If one has enough food, a safe shelter, economic stability, cheap energy and some money in the bank, we tend not to bother so deeply about what is it, that has destroyed our planet. As a contradiction, we prefer to think about a better future where all current disasters and catastrophes have been magically fixed. Or the current system would collapse like some Hollywood disaster-fiction movie. Alas violent, racialised and necropolitical dynamics (and horrors) continue 24/7 at various peripheries of every empire, in every continent, within vast economies of extraction, production and profit.

Best encapsulated by American sociologist Charles Tilly — “war-making and state-making become simultaneously the highest form of organized crime and the purest form of governance”. All the existing democracy aside for the moment. Modern states and governing structures have from the start shared the same “DNA” as large-scale criminal enterprises or big “rackets” – power that comes from extorting money, resources, labor and loyalty from communities in return for “protection from internal and external threats”. Even the so called “war on terror”, directly appeals to racially, ethnically, culturally and religiously “pure” identities in so many countries across the world. The war we wage upon each other as a species — in the name of race or economics or ideology or resources, cannot be de-linked from the war being waged on Nature, nor can it discount the “interconnectivity of everything”.

The urge to understand this “interconnectivity and the governing structures”, has been felt by feminist scholars like Silvia Federici and Nancy Fraser. The two scholars, expand on the history of destruction, of care giving and women’s reproductive rights over time. The rupture goes two ways — one caused by the mass privatization and drug induced “slow death” of the “care giving industry” in the West, versus the wars waged upon girls and mothers at a global level. Both underpin types of violence, against their reproductive rights and their children. One cannot summarize but cry about this “civilizational tragedy” (Federici) when we see Palestinians mourn the murder of their children and infants everyday. Wither international justice and humanitarian limits for Franz Fanon’s “Wretched Of The Earth” then and now.

Neither body nor life can exist without air, without water, and without a common ground. It can never thrive without real community, real needs and relationships. As an example, in tribal African thought, for instance, life and body, of not just humans but also every living organism is “open” to almost everything. To air, to water, to fire, to dust and wind, to trees, vegetation, to other animals, and even extending to the invisible and the nocturnal world. “Everything was alive, at the intersection of languages”. (Achille Mbembe).

What humans become in the future will remain open to speculation, if not further evolution. Like there is nothing called “absolute impossibility” as much as the “probable” or “likely”. Yet more prescient and conscious, for us who are living inside the current world-order, that nothing is passive and everything cannot go on like a repetitive cycle forever, alienated from Nature and each other. The current world-system which many people believe to be forever, actually needs to go. Taken in isolation, no entity or person has “full control over their destiny and freedom”. Nor does a nation or a type of economy or ideology work for everyone. Never can the technologically superior and loyal, decide things for us all. “Real Nature” does not stay fixed like a postcard. As for evolution or change, we can literally become a mirror of the planet….

👶🏽🌏🧑🏻👧🏽⚠️🍄🧟‍♀️🦍🌐🧒🏾🌀

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