Reformation of Value
I'm using my feet for my human machine
You won't find me living for the screen
Are you lonely, all needs catered?
You got your brains dehydrated
LaTimes has a piece on our throw-away consumption society, which is even more horrendously sinful around Christmas, a celebration of the Christ born in a manger or something. Ok, it's something; the profuse value of industrial society producing ever more stuff as a measure of vigor. For many reasons I don't much use the word capitalism, socialism for that matter too, at this point both are far too nebulous terms. Nonetheless, demand for ever greater throw-away consumption is without a doubt a fundamental capitalist value.
This need for infinite throw-away consumption is the greatest cause of environmental degradation. Nature knows nothing of waste, everything eventually becomes something else. Capitalism values waste, discarding, as progress, the more the better. I’ve long thought a great change from this valuing was not simply possible but necessary, using information to focus on using less resources and less energy. Unfortunately to this point, ever greater amounts of information have simply supercharged throw-away consumption:
“And then there is the cardboard — or what Johnson refers to as “the Amazon effect.”
“Mountains of the material are constantly moving through the facility, where it gets sorted and packed into massive bales weighing about 1,400 pounds. Johnson pointed to Amazon Prime logos peppered throughout one of the bales. “It’s everywhere,” he said.”
Speaking of Amazon and another example of those in power saying whatever stupid fucking thing they want as some sort of whacko beatitudes from the technological mount, Jeff Bezos envisions a trillion people populating the solar system. Lord, what can you say to that? It is completely logical for someone who came to his position by simply hawking more and more stuff. It's a completely depressing fact such thinking is ubiquitous at the technological top, more than a few claiming present human population growth is not sufficient, despite 8 billion people on the planet and 350 million Americans using 21% of the planet’s resources to partake in the advocated throw-away lifestyle. There's a fundamental problem.
Problem, the problem is you
What you gonna do?
I'll leave it to you
—J. Rotten