Despite promises of colonizing Mars, ushering in paradise through VR, and piloting "Wellness" programs, the wealthy aren't ACTUALLY interested in dealing with humanity's problems.
They're focused on getting *beyond* humanity to increase profits.
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jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/no-cruelty-t…
To really understand our bizarre moment and crisis, we have to take a look at both the history of capitalism and the current cults of personality that have developed around disgustingly wealthy men like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who have become savior-like to their followers.
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The worship of men like Musk and Bezos is centered around a loss of faith in our political and societal structures and a need to find messiahs who might act singularly, outside those systems, to create a solution to problems like climate catastrophe and political schisms.
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We are so desperate to believe in some future beyond our current crisis that we're accepting these adolescent fantasies that these men of power and wealth will simply craft us a future...if we just allow them to consolidate more and more wealth and power.
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The idea of living in a Mars colony is attractive to those who see no possible way of remedying the climate crisis.
It's literally a promise of a Heaven beyond life, a religious faith that something, somehow, will save us without requiring any action beyond purchasing.
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Meanwhile, these ideas that we'll just "escape to virtual reality" is a surrendering of shared society, an admission that our political and social polarization is not only untenable but unfixable.
It's a surrendering of life and reality to the wealthy and powerful.
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But the purpose of these pursuits, both interstellar colonization and digital religions, is to hide the very real and inhuman means these people are using to acquire wealth and power and to obscure the awful history of this process that has revolved around cruelty.
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To believe we're going to escape to Mars or VR, that men like Bezos or Musk will save us, is to go ahead and accept that the dehumanization of their businesses is totally fine, that their destruction of the environment is a means to an end.
It makes people feel better.
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It's necessary to talk about the rise of capitalism and how these religious ideas made white supremacy and colonization possible.
The destruction of cultures, genocide, and slavery were laundered through religious faith that the cruelty would lead to future utopias.
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It's no coincidence that exploitation of cultures and the stealing of their resources by the point of the sword and barrel of the gun were always accompanied with missionaries preaching of a religious purpose.
The violence is always hidden by the faith.
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White supremacy, enabled and destined to move resources to the hands of a white and wealthy few, was propped up by religion and religious faith.
After all, the accumulation of resources and exploitation of people had to be for a *purpose*, or a future utopia.
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Slavery was whitewashed with the same idea, given "legitimacy" through religious stories of ancient curses and God shining grace on the white race.
Again, slavery was a necessary evil that would, over time, lead to a utopia. The promise was the cause.
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The truth is, the wealthy aren't going to save us from climate change.
They caused it.
They have no answer for it except for to promise us future utopias FREE FROM IT. And those utopias depend on more production and more destruction of the environment.
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The wealthy promising they'll get us off Earth before it's destroyed by climate change is telling us to have FAITH that further destruction of the environment is necessary.
It's the same utopic promising that legitimized genocide, slavery, and exploitation.
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The wealthy will not help us. They've already shown this. As automation and declining economies persist, they'll leave us to food lines, to suffer on our own.
The utopic promise will continue, but it will only be a front for the continued exploitation and profiting.
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And as the wealthy consolidate political control, our polarization and violence will only get worse.
The government will continue to be coopted and pushed in the direction of their choosing, resulting in worsening material conditions and spurring more disorder.
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The truth is that these promise of a future utopia, whether on Mars or in the digital space, are hollow, requests for religious faith where it isn't deserved.
The wealthy see US as the problem.
They see US as something to move beyond.
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jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-…
If we're going to solve the climate crisis, if we're going to fix our politics, we have to do it ourselves, and it will involve massive changes and a lot of work.
We can't buy our way out of this and we can't depend on the techno-messiah false prophets who got us here.
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