Quit dreaming. Quit imagining. Quit creating. Quit reflexive thinking.
Quit dreaming that the west can do better than dominating the world.
Quit dreaming that Europe means peace.
Quit dreaming that Europe could show the way to collective intelligence.
Quit dreaming that man can live without destroying nature.
Quit dreaming that man can learn from nature.
Quit dreaming that man should adore nature to live.
Quit dreaming that dreaming is the human aspiration to perfection.
Quit dreaming that more justice is possible.
Quit dreaming that life is about love.
Quit dreaming that money is only there to test our wisdom.
Quit dreaming that equality means shared dignity.
Quit dreaming that fraternity is blood to humanity.
Quit dreaming that life is freedom.
Quit dreaming that words can have a meaning.
Quit dreaming that thinking is allowed.
Quit dreaming that everything is possible.
Quit dreaming that making arms is not what we are here for.

Quit dreaming that enlightenment is our purpose.

Instead.

Make money.
Be scared.
Run like miserable bastards.

These concepts are too expensive for you.

YOU MUST BE FUCKING JOKING !!

Ode to Joy. Rev 2009.

How did we fall into the habit of needing a cart, powered by 50 horses, to go and buy a bottle of milk ? Who needs to light the equivalent of 15 radiators, or 50 hair dryers, or 300 light bulbs, or 30 microwaves to collect children from school in 2000 kg steel tanks ? Let’s not forget that the best half of the human body is made up of legs… Not simply meant to fold under steering wheels and screens. Laziness, is this what we call progress ?

Are we aware that the energy contained in 1liter of petrol (36MJ)  is approximately equivalent to the energy spent at climbing Mont Everest (10 MJ)  four times -A level physics-, or 120 kg of straw ? 100 kilometers by car, equivalent to at least climbing Mont Everest 20 times ? Or, 4 kilometers by -sober with no traffic- car equivalent to climbing Mont Everest once ? Cars are simply unfordable from an energy point of view. We cannot organize our societies with such energy intensive tools as top priority, such inefficient and resource intensive burden. We cannot afford 6 billions of engines burning the oil left in traffic jams, while congesting our cities and suffocating the population. The car model is an old fossil in our brains. An absurdity in an era of energy scarcity, a crime in an era of climate change, an unfordable non sense in a sustainable future .

Let’s face it, unless we burn the furnitures left, there is no sustainable energy available for cars. Unless there is plenty of extra arable land on Jupiter, cars are far too energy intensive to be generalized and mass produced. Whatever progress we make with their exhaust pipes, the earth cannot produce sustainable energy for 6 billions of cars. Cars will only deteriorate the situation faster by accelerating energy scarcity. Their noisy engines will not improve the situation of one single inch. Only dig a deeper out of control labyrinth. Urban sprawling is the straight result of 50 years of pro cars round the world blindness and innocence. It is now a immense mental and energetic trap we must extract ourselves from.

Shall we believe in old fashion politics investing in motorways, steel tanks, traffic jams, passive outgrowth and out of control urban sprawling, while ignoring e-working, pedestrians, cycle lanes ? How can we spend so much of our resources in dead locks ? How can we find colossal sums of money and top political support to build ever more motorways, to sacrifice limitless agricultural land to parking space, but not a penny and no political will to maintain pavements, to replace parking space by children playgrounds ? How can we give top priority to energy non sense ? How can we abandon the future of our children to an exhausted XIXth century model defended by arriere-garde lobbyists ? Why should our children waste their youth in solitude videogames instead of playing in our streets ? How can we prioritize cars over our own children ? How can parking space be a priority to children well being, and overall conviviality ? How can we ignore endemic asthma of the young generation ? Shall we tackle western systemic obesity through 30 min daily walking or more artificial molecules and hours wasted in a car at developing ulcers ? How much space do we plan to abandon to steel tanks with our elderlies not able to find a single bench to seat under a tree ? How foolish is this ? Cars are literally killing our cities and replace their potential vitality by non sense, harming-everyone-traffic-jams. Cars are far too aggressive for life. They come at too expensive societal price. They are too dangerous for anyone that cannot sprint on zebras. Millions of us run for their life to go and buy bread. Our elderlies, our children must spend their life inside. To them, it is a matter of life or death. Do we care ?

Each and every neighborhood that got released from car oppression suddenly boils of vitality and humanity. What are we waiting for ? Higher energy prices ? Irreversible climate change ? Bigger trucks to invade streets up to the windows ? How much longer are we planning to deny the obvious ? Passive urban sprawling is energy absurd. A natural resource black hole. And, structurally, cars are distorting our cities into hostile, inhuman suburbs.

The presence of cars in our cities is an historical bug,  a huge mistake that we inheritate from the previous two generations, obsessed by productivism to the point of denying space to human beings in cities. Cars in our cities are the sad result of taylorist thinking, obsessed with mass production of anything. And never consider consequences, never acknowledge the outgrowth of growth, or the waste of this stupid taylorist algorithm: produce and sell limitless number of cars for ever, whatever the consequences, including hostility and aridity of cities. Not mentioning wars of the future. Cars are the worse source of waste, lazyness, conflict, agressivity and debts we have ever invented. We are sabotating our cities in their name. Instead of finding inspiration in our pedestrian medieval cities we are massacring them with our steel tanks.  We became so blindly dependent and fetichist that we would rather sacrifice the next generations but not walk a mile. How smart a progress is this ? How smart is it to elect politicians supporting such absurdity because they don’t know any better ?

Are we going to find the strength to correct this stupid -cannot learn from mistakes- consumerist programming ?

If we want to preserve the most incredibly beautiful jewel of the universe, our planet, hosting the most incredible form of life, us, we may have to go back to walking for a while.

Adoring cars while despising the planet ?? There must be a bug somewhere. A taylorist implant blocking our brains somewhere.

Technology and politics can be slow mid term solutions. We also need to buy time by changing behavior.

Dividing the number of cars rather than multiplying them is the only obvious gain of comparable scale to our central energy addiction problem. The productivists among us will complain. But we know by now the heavy price of their obstinate mistaking.

If productivism was to be the ultimate sophistication of the universe, maybe we would have been given a infinite, flat, shopping mole as an ecosystem. Ours is circular, interrelated and finite. There must be reason, in’it ?

Why wasting so much time to adapt our concepts to this given topology ?

In the oven…

Individualism, can be development of originality, independence and self-reliance, autonomy of reason, autonomy of thinking vis a vis external moral standards, exercise of one’s goal and desires without infringing others’, freedom of thinking and expression. Individualism is not contradictory to collaboration with the rest of society, to mutualisation of efforts. Collaboration is not sacrifice of self interest. Collective intelligence is our way to survive as a species, therefore as individuals. Collaboration is complementary to individualism. Individualism and collaboration do not have to be antagonist. Collaboration is the ultimate goal of individualism. Mutualisation is the recompense of individualism. We like to share what we like most. No other pleasure fulfills the individual more than sharing. Fulfillment is somewhere beyond voluntary transcendence of individualism, and active mutualisation.

Unfortunately, we seem to have lost track of mutualisation as an end to individualism. Individualism has shrunk to a minimal envelop, to an alienating and sad algorithm: amass property to increase one’s happiness. We lost track of the intense individual pleasures of collaboration for higher social causes such as best education possible of the next generation, or imagining sustainable cities of the future. The mass consumerist culture has over cooked individualism and baked cupidity. More precisely, individualism has shrunk to a flat two sided envelop, with cupidity on one side and narcissism on the other, closing the mind to anything else.

Inflation of obscenity sells, but at the expense of dignity

Individualism is about cultivation of secret gardens, to be shared or not. It is certainly not about exhibition. It is not about obscenity to attract attention. It is not about inflation of indecency to sell magazines, it is not about generalized promiscuity on TV talk-shows to boost an audience. Individualism is about privacy, and the protection of the private sphere. Decency and dignity are key to the development of the individual. They are major achievements, not old fashioned victorian corsets.

Paradoxically, we are encouraged to streap always more -literally or metaphorically- to feed the spiral of obscenity. Streaping to attract attention and increase sells is well accepted practice. For example, the video clips of the top 10 are little more than a series of soft streapteases. Teenagers, the most vulnerable fraction of our society, before they had the chance to conceptualize dignity, are exposed to indecency on most radio programs. They are targeted by pornography before they had the chance to think of eroticism. Our mass consumerist culture has no deontology and uses obscenity almost as a primary source of energy. More and more naked flesh. More and more verbal obscenity. More and more confession. More and more intimacy to sustain an audience, to sustain a market. How far more do we want to streap for the sake of the GDP ? How can we applaud to the inflation of obscenity ? Inflation of obscenity certainly increases sells, and is GDP friendly, it certainly boosts libidos secretly, but it is pure barbary, eroding the pillar of civilization, human dignity. Obscenity is an easy entertainment, but a very sad joy. It is decadence of the individual.

How do we stop obscenity to run our society and fuel our economy ?

Our singularity cannot be mass produced

Individualism tends to singularity, our intrinsic right to be unique and strange. Our right to be ourself more than to be the others. Our right to be different. But a difference that cannot be mass produced. A difference that fashion cannot mass produce for us, by definition. Our difference ought to be unique and strange. It cannot be mass produced or recuperated by any fashion industries.

Our singularity, our difference, is, by definition, inaccessible to mass production. Mass production is normative by essence. It is based on molds, standards and patterns. None of our accessories, gadgets, have been produced for individuals. But for masses.

The main job of marketing though is to make us believe the exact opposite, to make us forget the existence of industrial molds and all the conditions of manufacturing. Fashion is precisely about this trick consisting in selling mass produced industrial goods, as if they were individual, personal outfits. It is about pretending to fulfill our individualism, to emancipate our self “Discover Me. Myself”, while only selling industrial goods. It is about convincing us that mass consumerism is made for us only “celebrate originality”. Fashion slogans are about making mass consumerism bearable to individuals. “When conforming is a no go, you know brand X has your back” . Marketing is about conceptualizing the modern fable of singularity, “Just for you we’re shouting out three new arrivals you need in your life”, about creating the ambiguity of mass-produced-individual goods “And until now they’ve been rarer than the first mixtape you ever made. But we’ve pinned down 61 pairs of them for your style needs.”, about manipulating our individualism in order to harvest it.

Harvesting individualism

Harvesting individualism yes, but supporting true emancipation of the individual: no.

Marketing is about exploiting the ambiguity though. This conceptual smoke screen necessary to sell mass produced gadgets to independent individuals. Without any scruples, marketing conditions our response and manipulates our right to singularity, our individualism. Marketing over activates our individualism in order to harvest it. It destabilizes all our self, in order to sell a pair of shoes. It electrifies our egos in order to sell socks. It stimulates and excites our individualism in oder to sell tooth brushes. Does marketing care of electrified egos walking out of shops ? It would be very surprising if marketing accepted any responsibility for glorifying individualism to such a scale and intensity. It would be very surprising if marketing did not deny again any side effects of mass consumerism. Marketing is all about mass producing saturday afternoon shopping hamsters craving for adrenaline shots but never admit it. Never acknowledging side effects of large scale harvesting of individualism and attempts to remote control brains and hormones without our consent.

Mass consumerism is not benign. It is not politically neutral. It is very political, in the sense that it deeply penetrates the self to condition responses, mess around our brains, experiments with our hormones without our consent, biases our relationship with the world, for the benefit of supermarkets, but never ours.

Keeping the brain artificially on a must buy mode is good for cash flow, but sad and dangerous.

Consumerism functions like pornography and like pornography it turns men into brutes. Exploiting people’s solitude, harvesting their solitude, and throwing them back to their solitude once they have payed their dividends and felt the shot of adrenaline. Consolidating solitude, fading social links, depreciating mutualisation as an alternative, leading to political disengagement, but also to maximum compulsive consumerism. What a virtual circle for cynics.

But, what is left of the individual once harvested by mass consumerism ?

The aridity of egocentrism. The unsustainable brutality and violence of cupidity.

A desert of the self.

Domestic consumption remains the current graal of panicking economists overruling the west. The only solution to every problem. Harvesting individualism is too central to western economy to envisage change. Questioning the dogma of growth is the worse of all taboos sanctioned by mental internalized inquisition. But does someone remember that behind the credit card, stand human beings ?

Or, unless it is, that man has become an external cost to the financial model ?

And that hormones controlled pavlovian hamsters can do just as well.

End of Part III

Pollution of the self, egos at threat, engineering consent

The predominant consumerist culture exacerbates individualism and the cult of the self. Pride, jealousy, narcissism, are being encouraged and amplified, egos are made to feel at threat artificially. In order to make us run faster, raise less questions and buy more. Marketing is about creating new profitable needs, not fulfilling us, nor imagining our future.

The same way, the volume of music has become intolerably high in most shops, in order to sell more, our egos are constantly polluted by artificial threats or conditioning. This big car will protect our family, this smart phone will make us more competitive, while this jacket will attract more partners. Without them we are just losers and do not stand a chance in western society. Our egos are constantly destabilized by targeted strategic advertising, for us to feel exactly as planned and reach the feverish must-buy state. In the space of 10 minutes of TV adverts, we are made to feel too fat, too big, too bold, too small, too old, too stupid, too poor, compared to the unarguable model. Our self is under constant assaults of consumerist insults. We are targeted 24/7, whatever the medium. Our brains have to handle this background pollution on the bus, at work, at home, when listening to the radio, watching TV, reading the papers. There is hardly any public or private space left without consumerist line commands, or pornographic incentive implants incarnated by the latest top models. We must remain on the vulnerable reptilian mode as long as possible, on the verge of the must-buy fever and ready for rewarding adrenaline shots.

Mass customized bodies

We are even losing ownership of our bodies and of its shape, now under the scrutiny and control of the consumerist culture and its “experts”. We became literally body builders, under the direction of architects who know better than us the way our bodies should look like and dictate the adoption of new prostheses. Our bodies became the favorite prey of marketing vultures, turning us into body obsessed imbeciles. Our mass customized bodies and anti-ageing illusions have become the new coal mine of the century and the cult of the body the necessary condition for the exploitation of that new mine. Our egos are so conditioned that we can hardly own freely our bodies any more. Our breasts or biceps have no choice but grow, absorb silicone and creatine and pay their dividends to the grand GDP. Since the customization of our bodies generate economic growth, why complaint ? We must reject and fight ageing with the most expensive and inefficient creams. We must look younger whatever the price. The cult of the body has become so central and such an evidence in our consumerist culture, that injection of poison in our bodies is becoming a benign consumerist practice. It is all about freedom of expression, state our cosmetics gurus and GDP soldiers. Under the threat of being marginalized, we must buy all these aesthetics or power and virility prostheses. We consent to do so under the massive psychological pressures exercised on us. Is this consent ? Is this engineered consent ? Is this consent under psychological yet torture ?

Have we heard of another culture that went so far deep in the flesh and mind, for the sake of piling gold? In the west the conditioning of the mind is so intense, that it lost control of the body and delegates the task to consumerist gurus. Ego and body prostheses have become the fuel of western economies. So far, we agreed with this disrespectful and irresponsible destabilization of our selves in the name of the overarching dogma of growth at any cost -if it generates GDP, it can’t be wrong.

The carrot of luxury is another obvious conditioning, an old, insidious yet powerful drive to accept anything in return. We must envy luxury and luxury is made to be enviable. In the west, luxury equals happiness and perfection, without question. The sign equal is even the trade mark of our western culture. This is how far we went.

In the west, the self, the ego, is being forced out of balance, by market forces and the ego’s Trojan horse called marketing. The induced imbalance of the self results in compulsive consumerism, fashion bulimia, cult of the body, and political disengagement. None of the latest are fatality falling from the sky.

The obvious risks of turning us into body obsessed maniacs, of intensifying narcissism, of deepening individualism, of demultiplying solitudes, of developing compulsive aggressivity, of fading social links, of altering eroticism, do not seem to be a problem at all for mass consumerism preachers, as long as cash is flowing and society remains politically dead cristal.

Marketing does not care about collateral damages and deny them all.

Responsibility, consent

Individual responsibility remains, but the consumerist whip is constantly looking at ways to interfere. Individual responsibility remains but under massive pressure by the dominant ideology -sell more whatever the price. Of course, consumerism has a massive responsibility for the mess we are in, including for the rise of the new religion: in debt, we trust. Consciously forcing an impossible sell, such as an expensive house, this is deliberate fraud. Our decision making process, our consent is engineered by an army of professionals. Who is responsible for a silly enforced decision ? Who is responsible for the credit crunch ? Which side of the debt contraction ? Can a debt contractor sell us an impossible credit on purpose, without taking any responsibility ? Mass consumerism is about overruling our decision making process, be it for buying a house, or a lipstick. That is fucking political. Shaking our egos all over, up until we sign the cheque.

Is this, consent, or engineered consent ?

The pollution of the self, the torture of the ego, by mass consumerism has been totally ignored, the same way climate change and pollution of ecosystems were ignored. Our own mental ecosystem called the brain, is infiltrated by consumerism, 24/7/365, including on Christmas day. Christmas, the day dedicated to spirituality and human bonds in western tradition, has lost any other meaning than piling colorful presents. And guessing their monetary values while stuffing as much expensive food as possible.

Are we not living times of merchants in the temple ?

Surely, the only concept left to qualify intrusion, to such a scale and depth, is : pollution.

Pollution of the self by mass consumerism.

Some people do not seem to care. And their only recipe to any crisis, debt and consumerism crisis, energy crisis, environmental crisis, population crisis, will always be: more consumption. Without scruples, they seem to be able to delink fast-bad-food and obesity. Without scruples, they deny the link between generalized aggressive cupidity and reptilian capitalism. While aggressive cupidity is the condition we must endorse for reptilian capitalism to function. Our selves are given no option. They must obey the conditioning.

Who cares if Christmas has turned into a consumerist circus ?

Who cares if every human bond implodes under the pressure of such conditioning, as long as we reach the 3% annual growth target.

How fucking expensive a target for mankind though.

Fragilizing our egos in order to sell us limitless number of prostheses. This is mass consumerism. Alienation sold as emancipation.

This cannot be “development”.

Glissement conceptuel du “Cogito Ergo Sum” de Descartes, illustrant le vide, de et par, la pensée consumériste.

Another factor that could explain our automatic if not paralyzed thinking, is consumerism.

Mind you, consumerism is not falling from the sky. It has an history and a purpose.

Controlling the masses, crowd psychology

Consumerism was born in the 50s, and was conceived as a system by theoreticians, such as Edward Bernays. Edward Bernays was the nephew of Freud. He was a very influential advisor in the US and the father of public relations, an euphemism for crowd psychology. One may wonder if he applied his knowledge of psychoanalysis for the good of mankind. To make it short, as the result of second world war, Bernays thought the masses were irrational, dangerous and irresponsible. He felt the manipulation of public opinion was necessary. Politics was too sophisticated to be truly accessed by the masses and rather dealt with, by an elite. Instead of participating to their own destiny, the people now considered as masses, would be provided instead with a simpler goal in life, easier to control and achieve: material happiness. This system is based on the hypothesis that most human beings cannot truly participate to democracy -too thick to think- and be given an artificial drive, as a derivative, a diversion, that would benefit the oligarchy. While muting society into politically crystal dead shopping malls.

All it needed was to associate happiness to material belonging. Advertising was born.

Creating needs, soon fulfilled at the shopping malls: Freedom of choice and Happy America were born. Anything else was treason in the times of McCarthy.

Disqualifying citizens

From its origins, consumerism is a doctrine, turning people into masses, individuals into happiness machines, democracy into mass democracy. It deliberately and arbitrarily disqualifies citizens to be active democrats, and transforms them into politically passive consumers. It manipulates the drive for happiness and replaces it by an artificial drive, while pretending to emancipate individuals. Also, in effects, the elite further isolates itself into the role of a manipulative oligarchy engineering consent of the crowd, when the elite should always try the exact opposite: integrate people. Like any deliberate manipulation of public opinion, consumerism reinforces the sedimentation of classes, which is politically unstable.

In short, consumerism is about depoliticizing the masses, while keeping them busy. Depoliticizing society -in its widest sense- and give it a one way choice: consumerism.

At its conception, the consumerist doctrine is pure cynicism.

Mental rape, short-cutting the neocortex

Maybe, not everyone knows that the primitive areas of our brains, the reptilian brain, is responsible for arousal, sex, and basic life functions. The old-mammal brain, which learns, recalls and emotes surrounds it. The neocortex that thinks and rationalizes, sits on top.

The primitive amygdala, can react in less than 100 milliseconds, while it takes 600 milliseconds for our higher brain to process information. Sometimes seconds or more for decisions to be taken. Our primitive circuits react and decide first, then we become aware and possibly rationalize our judgments. Or think we do. As the lower brain has already taken the casting vote. Advertisers know that. Very well.

Mass consumerism over stimulates the reptilian brain on purpose -bombarding us with any form of pornography for instance. It short-cuts the neocortex on purpose and talk to our primitive instincts first while deconnecting the neocortex as long as possible. Mass consumerism’s brain implants -advertising- keep our cerebral window to the world wide opened and vulnerable to any consumerist command, and impulse. Mass consumerism is about this rape of our mental space without our consent, or us knowing.

Switching off the neocortex alarm with mental screws, such as pornographic images, or pornographic implants. In order to use and manipulate the only reptilian functions left on purpose. Like a theft.

It is more or less mental rape under hypnosis, more precisely, activating unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain.

Stimulating our reptilian brains in order to turn us into impulsive, compulsive buyers.

That is the dirty mechanics of consumerism.

Why else do you think selling yogurts or pizzas would require some much naked flesh ?

Manipulating the intrinsic right to singularity: pretending to emancipate the self, while in fact flattening desire into simple fashion artefacts.

Consumerism and its ego’s Trojan Horse, advertising, does manipulate the intrinsic right of the individual to singularity. In other words, it reads in the title, “We can all be different”, but “as long as we are consumers”, state the small prints.

Also, fashion recuperates any attempt of differentiation and flattens its political content to politically insignificant aesthetics. While producing a new wave of gadgets.

Fashion, and its artificial rhythm, optimizes consumerism.

But more importantly, fashion does not support singularity but recuperates to deny it, it digests subversion and vomit colorful stupidity instead. (Think of the myth of the Harley Davidson).

Fashion establishes commodity fetishism, and turns mass consumerism into acceptable spectacle. It hides the domination of mass consumerism, presents it in the best possible light and indisputable horizon. It turns the nightmare of alienating productivism into colorful dreams. Opium. How else could we waste our lifes in sustaining ugly supermarkets ?

Structuralist Roland Barthes had already decrypted fashion in 1957. (Mythologies)

So, there is no need to do it again here.

End of part I.

Work more, to earn more, to waste more, to borrow more, to work more. Until death happens.

In short, that’s how the dogma of growth translates, for most of us.

What has growth ever meant to us ?

More cement. More towers. More motorways. More cars.

More gadgets. More loans. More screens. More bureaucracy.

‘More’ being intrinsically enough to justify the outgrowths of growth.

The human waste of growth, the natural waste of growth are pure insignificances when compared to the GDP.

Secondary effects of little importance to the dogma.

This is how a dogma differs from a theory.

It does not take secondary effects seriously. They are relegated to the bin of thinking.

Dogmas do not accept feed-back, even from reality.

Also, the dogma of growth is narrowing our thinking to children’s arithmetics. Reducing complex societies to simplistic numbers. How can it be, that scientists would never dare reducing the well-being of one individual to a number, but that reducing the interaction of billions of individuals to a single productivity indicator is well accepted practice ? Associating the destiny of diverse societies to a number, hasn’t this become a western, non rigorous, normative obsession ? Non rigorous and obsessive, is this fanaticism ?

The fanaticism of growth is such that it is impossible to listen to a radio or a TV without the dogma being mentioned, the latest news of the GDP being religiously broadcasted.

It has replaced everything else, and is the thermometer of life itself -except it does not locate anywhere special. Almost updated on the hour. And immediately released to the dead impatient public.

How was the GDP today ? How does the grand priest of GDP sees the future ?

Shall we sacrifice further flesh for the grand GDP ?

Shall we restructure for growth ?

What did the grand priest of the GDP in Asia said about our GDP yesterday ?

What does the grand priest of the GDP in America plan for our GDP tomorrow ?

What if our GDP is not bigger than theirs ?

What if our GDP deflates ?

This is how seriously and deeply we mainly debate the future of our society.

Leaving it to the growth-clowns to entertain us.

Have we learned by now what happens when 6 billion brains are simultaneously taken over by the fever ? Have we learned by now that global fanaticism of growth is lethal ? Have we learned that the dogma of growth implicitly activates cupidity from Sydney to Montreal ? Dangerously destabilizing societies. Turning individuals into enemies.

Taylorism is the western equivalent of stakhanovist productivism. And where most of us would inevitably pick the excess of stakanovism, taylorism remains essentially unchallenged.

Historically, fordism was amongst the first large scale application of this so called “scientific management”. Since it has penetrated most sphere of productions. It has been the arrow of progress and it is not politically correct to question progress nor its vector, in western society. It is the worse of all taboos. By definition, the west is technologically superior and the rest is under development. Following our guidelines to become westernized. Anything else is obscurantism.

By definition, taylorism, or its derivatives, is the indisputable productivist algorithm. By definition, this unquestionably smart mind creation materialized into unquestionably harmonious factories, producing unquestionably beautiful cars, unquestionably useful micro-wave to heat unquestionably delicious fast-food, or unquestionably clever nuclear submarines to tour and crash in our oceans. No questioning allowed.

Some humanists pointed to the suffering, the de-skilling, the de-humanising, to the alienation of the population. But then, the group benefiting from it, the emerging oligarchy found it perfectly acceptable.

Surely, such successful and emancipating approach to work could not just remain under the hands of a lucky few in car chains, or steel factories. From manufacturing, taylorism was transposed to any form of management. Physical taylorist conditioning muted to intellectual conditioning, through some sort of taylorist mental implants. The problem is that we are totally unaware of the depth of penetration of these intellectual viruses, these mental screws . They belong to our mental landscape, like wallpaper. They have penetrated our reasoning and condition our reasoning. The algorithm of taylorism is programing our thinking unconsciously, invisibly. We do not take decisions anymore. The algorithm does and is overruling us. But, we don’t like the idea of the west being conditioned. We would like it to be ideal and superior.

For example, most corporate bullshit bingo these days is nothing but approximate taylorism. Companies logos, slogans, internal communication, are nothing but taylorist mental implants to be accepted by the brain. “Just do it” kind of slogans, progressively robotizing the employees thinking. The mind of an employee has to bend to the ideology of the company the same way the workforce of a car manufacturer has to bend to screw. An employee has to believe lies if requested. Swallowing company’s slogans is what people dislike most at work these days. But silence is the price of a salary.

Which corner of an office is not under the scrutiny of a debilitating taylorist algorithm or its derivatives these days ? What is stress if not the visible part of the iceberg of western self-inflicting taylorist conditioning ?

Totally unscientific, absurd, counter-productive, costing more than the cost it scrutinizes, freezing creativity, stopping intelligence, sabotaging decisions, it does not really matter, as long as it looks like efficiency driven, and is coming out of suit-tie robots showing upside down excel graphs while mumbling sounds like management keywords. The smell of taylorism is enough in our days of naivety. Ask the banks. Ask the credit victims. Ask Madof.

Re-structuring -an classic euphemism for sacking- whatever the context, is sometimes the only room for immediate efficiency gain. It does not matter if the company will not survive in the mid term, as long as it looks efficient today. This is how far taylorist thinking has penetrated society. Self destruction. Sawing its own branch as long as it sounds productive.

Brussels and its eurocracy is not a place where emancipation of mankind is at stake anymore. Brussels is becoming progressively the center of a taylorist only driven Europe. Thinking under the auto-pilot of growth for growth. Where are the initial concepts gone ? Most official speeches these days are about increasing productivity. No more than a crude productivist conditioning. How fascinating. How emancipating. How enlightening.

“Work more, to earn more”. Is this rat-race-slogan the european intellectual horizon of the XXIst century ? Is this rat-race-slogan, the conceptual enlightenment for the XXIst century ? Voltaires, Rousseau would be just fucking ashamed of us. How much does this stupid productivist slogan weight compared to the smart conjunction and subtle equilibrium of concepts such as “Liberté-Egalité-Fraternité” ?

In a word, taylorism -or its ersatz- has become totalitarian. It is everywhere and is unquestionable. Like the dogma of growth: work more, to earn more, to waste more, to borrow more, to work more… Until death happens.

How far are we willing to go with such debilitating societal programming? How could we accept to go that far in the fragmentation of tasks and of thinking ? How did we accept taylorist conditioning taking decisions for us ? What is this absurd race for the illusion of total efficiency all about?

How can we worship such fanatic algorithm ?

How did we not reject this absurd totalitarian productivism ? How did we let it become such a lethal mental deadlock ? How did we accept as a result to be pushed that far into materialism ? How did we not realize this developing western mental illness called materialism ?

Some humanists point to the suffering of the population now being reduced to a workforce, to the millions of victims queuing at the doll. But then, the oligarchy found it perfectly acceptable.

This is even how it self-defines.

In the times of Adam Smith, ‘liberal’ meant favorable to exchange. In its widest sense.

It never meant freedom of over-exploitation of the human race and of natural resources.

Never.

It never meant that brutal competition would blindly overrule democracy.

Never.

‘Neoliberal’, is a neologism that does not mean ‘liberal’. It is a neologism that filters some of its sense and extracts the dimensions of interest to the group using it. Where ‘liberal’ is bijective -a common reciprocal interest is at stake- neo-liberal is not. In fact, neo-liberal is only a rhetorical exercise masking another less easy to communicate concept: greed or cupidity. Greed is not bijective and is self-centered. It is not politically correct. Neo-liberal is.

Capitalism as a system needs greed as its traction. Generalized cupidity is the blind condition for capitalism to function. Even children know that by now.

The fusion of cupidity and capitalism, i call cupitalism. It has been the indisputable ideology of our times up until the wake up call of autumn 2008.

‘Neo-liberal’, does not mean ‘liberal’. It means cupitalism.

If ideologues were so proud of their invention -generalized cupidity-, why were they constantly hiding their noble findings behind a misleading terminology of ‘neo-liberal’ ? Why not calling ‘cupidity’, ‘cupidity’ ? If capitalism needs cupidity as its fuel, why not stating it ? If generalized cupidity is so clever and brilliant a finding, why never mention it ? Why being so shy and discrete about cupidity being the central concept of capitalism ? WHY ? If capitalism is the optimum model of mankind, why hiding half of its mechanics under the carpet ? WHY ?

‘Liberal’ and ‘cupidity’ have very little in common. Nevertheless, the neologism ‘neo-liberal’ is confusing us: it labels ‘cupidity’ under the appearance of a ‘liberal’ terminology. It activates cupidity while talking about ‘liberal’. Hiding a concept with another, reminds us the prestidigitation of the red scarf at a corrida. Intentional false labeling is nothing but ideological manipulation.

Will our respectable leaders wake up to this fact ?

In 1860, a century and an half ago, the human population was about a billion. The individual energy consumption was approximately 250 Watts (metabolism and physical work). The source of energy was then entirely renewable (the sun and its indirect by-product such as wood, wind, hydro, animal power). Anthropogenic irreversible pollution, entropy, the kind the ecosystem cannot handle, or not fast enough, was next to zero. The concentration of CO2 were about 280 ppm, CH4 (900 ppb), tropospheric ozone (10 ppb), N2O (265 ppb). At the beginning of the 21st century, the human population is above 6 billions. The global average individual energy consumption is 2500 Watts (IEA, 2007). Each human being is now consuming 10 times more. And we are 6 times more. Collectively, we require over 60 times more energy from the exact same planet. Or if we like, the same planet has to provide the equivalent energy for 60 billions of our grand-grand-parents. Individually, this is the equivalent of having 10 “energetic slave” working for us constantly. Or 3 horses. Day and night, 24/7/365. In Europe, we need over double the average, 6000 Watts (approx 25 “energetic slave”), in the US, four times the average, 12000 Watts (approx 50 “energetic slave”).

The source of energy is 85 % fossils fuels (coal 24%, gaz 21%, oil 37%), 8 % (hydro + renewable 1%), 7% nuclear (another type of fossil). The concentration of CO2 is about 387 ppm, (+ 40% since 1860, actual rate + 2.14% / year), the concentration of CH4 is about 1750 ppm. The concentration of tropospheric ozone is above 55 ppb, (+ 400 % since 1860, 2.4% /year), N2O (310 ppb).

Anthropogenic irreversible pollution, is everywhere in the ecosystem, and accumulates like a poison. There is heavy metal deposition in the arctic, lead in the blood of polar bears, mercury in the oceans and in wild salmons, PCB in our flesh. Bees are threatened. We over fish. Species are disappearing at an unprecedented pace. Irrelevant externalities from an Adam Smith point of view. The energetic intensity of our activities, the comfortable energetic armchair we are floating in with ease, are over-stretching the ecosystem. And yet, energy has become invisible. It has almost become an abstraction. We don’t see, we don’t feel this addiction. At all. We are totally unaware of these 25 energetic slaves working for us 24/7. Or are we simply uncomfortable with this truth ?We simply deny the irreversible accumulation of wastes that comes with energy, and keep hiding them under the carpet, be it nuclear waste, CO2, plastic bags. For our children to find them ? This is irresponsible. Our energy addiction -call it comfort- comes at a massive price: eroding the future of our own children.

How did we fall into the habit of needing a cart, powered by 50 horses, to go and buy a bottle of milk ? Let’s not forget that the best half of the human body is made up of legs… Not simply meant to fold under steering wheels and screens. Laziness, is this what we call progress ?

Whatever the chemical reaction, that includes any kind of combustions, the second principle of thermodynamics states that alongside this reaction, the entropy of the universe always increases. Which in our context, unless nature cleans it for us, waste accumulates. The contemporary dogma of “ever growth on cheap energy” does not fit the second principle of thermodynamics. And the law of physics are difficult to contradict very long. We cannot negotiate new ones.

Fast and Furious

Not only are we consuming more energy, but our consumption is growing faster and faster. We used as much energy between the years 1900-1950, than we used between the years 2000-05.

Then…More

By 2050, the human population is estimated to be about 9 billions (factor 1.5). According to nowadays strategies, based on an 18th century model, human activity, the economy, must grow at an annual 3% rate. In 2050, globally, this would translate into an equivalent 4 times more activity (reference year 2000). On average, if the worldwide energy intensity remains the same (optimistic scenario), still we would require between 2 and 6 times more energy globally.

This is going to be difficult to explain to our grand-children.

It is going to be difficult to explain why we have chosen to stick to an 18th century Adam Smith model, invented when pollution was neglectable and therefore relegated to an externality, by default. Adam Smith could not integrate irreversible dispersion of heavy metals in his model, because he never observed the phenomena. This understandable mistake in the 18th century, is turning into the intellectual flaw of the 21st century. Our grand children will have to correct it. They will have to refresh this old fashioned model which does not take into account accumulation of poison. As well as handle simultaneously the collapse of the ecosystem, climate change and fossil peaks.

James Watt died in 1819. Energy, thermodynamics were not even understood before the 19th century. Adam Smith died in 1790, when energy consumption was marginal. Energy not even yet a unified concept. How could he forecast the 21st century ? Schönbein discovered ozone in the 1850′s. In the times of Adam Smith, CO2 was described as “wild spirit”. CO2, ozone, methane, energy, entropy, pollution were not discovered. They were “spiritus sylvestre”, “vis viva”. If anything, their were ghosts-like diffuse concepts. At the time of Adam Smith, regarding the ecosystem as an externality was not an ideological choice. It was just a methodological error due to limited knowledge of the times. Adam Smith could not integrate concepts that were to be invented a century later. We only started studying pollution 30 years ago.

We are counting the world with the wrong units (GDP, % of growth). Observing it with an 1750′s telescope. No wonder we keep accelerating in a U-turn, with such anachronism in mind. Where is the room for growth on this planet ? WHERE ? Which ecosystem can absorb our mistakes any longer ? Drilling for oil under the feet of the last polar bear, is this the best we can come up with ? We ought to change the unadapted striped 78 rpm disc of “perpetual growth on ever abundant cheap energy” or “growth at any cost” for a new conjunction of concepts such as stabilization, collective intelligence, survival of the next generations. In a word, sustainable development MUST become the overarching conceptual framework. NOW.

The law of economics have to obey the law of physics. There is a time when the ever growth scenario hits the curve of remaining available energy, and another one when its hits the curve of accumulated waste, when the ecosystem will stop sponging our mistakes and bounce them back. We must refrain our veneration of money and consider these big bangs ahead of us instead.

We must fit nature, not nature fits us.

Anything else is counterproductive, irresponsible short-termism.