We are being consumed by the machine that taught us to consume
Neoliberalism’s greatest trick is to convince you you are the problem. You are the reason you cannot pay your bills. You are the failure.
It is rarely you, or me. It is the system and structure doing exactly what it is designed to do.
For many years I thought I was the problem. It took going deep down the rabbit hole of neoliberal economics to discover that I was a pawn in a game of win for the very few and lose for everyone else.
The magicians hands want us to focus on the pain, scarcity, fear and inadequacy, while the heist goes on right under our noses.
Same with climate change. Let’s shift the burden of guilt to the individual while the energy costs to run the financial market – the one where money makes money from money contributing exactly zero value to society – uses so much energy every day. Or AI, owned by the few, about to become the most energy consuming machine ever created.
And the cry that AI will serve humanity. We might read Cory Doctorow and his very creative term, enshitification to know the path AI is on, especially when the government of the USA is about to remove all levels of regulation around big tech.
Think of AI as Applied Statistics. Not intelligence. And think of this tool as a giant machine. Just as Social Media has become.
We are being eaten by the machine and while it is consuming us, the consumer – taught to consume by the very same machine, we are made to feel guilty, a failure.
Yes, exactly as designed.
Time for us to see and know the game being played.
*PS. That is not to say that our acts of conscious consumption, recycling and energy reduction do not matter. Every bit counts. Yet never forget that until those who are the most egregious change their ways, which they have no intention of doing, our efforts are minuscule and will not tip the scales.
Photo Taken March 10th 2024, Article written November 21st 2024
