The Anthropocene or Living in Times of Pluri-Disasters
If the main starting point of this book is the severe environmental crisis we are facing and the natural planet-wide collapse toward which we are heading, todayâs ecological reality is powerfully connected to other issues such as growing socioeconomic inequalities, the erosion of democratic institutions, the organized apathy of citizens, the loss of power of nation-states in favor of corporations, the progressive disappearance of the notion of common good , and the economic colonization of the social, cultural, and political life by economic objectives. The global ecological crisis reveals these interlinked disasters caused by the core components of capitalism that include: an excessive exploitation of nature, the rise of industrialism, the self-destructive over-confidence in human-technical power, the arrogant anthropocentric mind-set, and denial of ecological limits , as well as the narrow rationalism and materialism that develop within a reductionist predominant form of science.
Neoliberalism as a âglobal systemâ threatens societies as a whole and more especially the core values of social communities and democracy , such as justice , âcommon decency,â civic virtue , or citizenship . In neoliberal patterns, economic efficiency, market values, employability, consumer freedom , and instrumental rationality are favored over democratic participation, civic values, personal autonomy , active citizenship , intellectual development (âenlightenmentâ 1 ), and moral rationality (reasonability 2 ). Institutions dedicated to the common good are systematically turned into competitive structures to satisfy the interests of markets and greedy elites . Pluralism is disappearing under the assault of a one-dimensional consumer pattern which treats humans and non-humans as commodities under the hegemony of private interests. Civil society , an essential element of the agonistic and critical democracy defended in this book, is losing out to âspectator democracy .â Indeed, citizens are more and more passive and self-centered in part because existing political and democratic structures leave them with few opportunities to participate and make collective decisions. As a consequence, the link between democratic politics and citizens is being critically weakened. Neoliberal individuals end up being overtaken by lassitude and resignation, indifference, and loss of interest for the shared common world. What defines neoliberal society is, indeed, a widespread disaffection for democracy and social bonds entailed by the loss of political agency and self-determination. In such a system, propaganda is necessary to manufacture consent 3 and to shape the fundamental values to ensure that individuals see themselves as consumers, workers, or owners of capital , rather than citizens, spiritual or relational individuals, friends, or members of social and ecological communities. In order to be fully operational, such a system must also rely on high doses of cynicism and the value of relativism cultivated by deconstructive postmodern views .
Neoliberal competitive market-state systems have colonized all aspects of life, but mainly, they have subjugated nature and used it as an âunlimitedâ spring of profit and resources intended to feed the logic of growth. The globalized neoliberal framework behaves as if nature were only a neutral background for profit-seeking and economic development. In order to push back the ecological limits that are more and more visible, neoliberals argue that those limits can be transcended through decoupling and technological innovations (Chapter 5). Indeed, constructivist neoliberal governments act as if the biosphere were a mere component of the socioeconomic sphere. As an anti-ecological ideology, neoliberalism denies the existence of natural limits and promotes unlimited material wants vs. limited resources, a cult of endless consumption (consumerism), and techno-fixes (techno-optimism ) as the solution to social and ecological problems. The appropriation and commodification of nature undertaken by this form of economic ideology and the freedom it enshrinesâunderstood mainly as the legitimate exercise of extractive powerâentail that the environment is viewed only as an instrumental source of raw material and sinks of fossil fuels rather than as an ethically valuable physical, biological, and chemical context of life. Inevitably, this type of economy has supported an insatiable extraction that is today overwhelming ecosystemic capacities. Neoclassical economics is certainly the instrumental form of rationality âthat most actively opposes the ethical valuation of the environmentâ (Smith , 2001: 26).
The neoliberal capitalist agenda, associated with an arrogant anthropocentrism and the technological optimism of many political leaders, experts, techno-scientists, academics, and citizens, has transformed nature and people into raw materials (ânaturalâ and âhuman resourcesâ). It has replaced democratic and republican institutionsâdefined by their concern for the common good âby structures aiming at facilitating the activities and profits of corporations and markets. It has deprived Western political structures of substantial democratic energy by turning citizens of wealthy liberal nations into demoralized and nihilist homo oeconomicus (âneoliberal citizensâ), that is, passive consumers as opposed to active citizens. More than that, neoliberalism , through mass media, entertainment, information, and educational systems, has incrementally converted all the spheres, activities, and dimensions of life into economic ones (âeconomizationâ or âmarketizationâ of life). Private and public institutions are used as ways to transmit the values of capitalism . 4 As an unethical and unsustainable model of commercialization, ultraliberal capitalism supports crass commodification , intensifies inequalities and transforms everything in its wayâfrom non-human nature to human beingsâinto replaceable, dispensable and disposable products. As a global threat, neoliberalism leads to âenvironmental stresses (water shortages, deforestation, soil erosion or climate change), food and energy insecurity, peak oil, rising poverty and inequalities within and between societies, increasing passivity of citizens within democracies and the inexorable rise of corporate power within and over the democratic state â (Barry , 2008: 3).
The price we, humans, are socially, politically and ecologically paying and will continue to pay in the future for the triumph of the neoliberal ideology is disproportionate with anything humankind has experienced so far (see Fig. 1.2). However, human relatively recent history already shows that the popular passivity and political apathy (mentioned above) fostered by cynical and disempowering systems of ideas have the potential to favour the rise of dictatorial regimes in which a father figure or âstrong manâ could take upon the conduct of public affairs. At a time when chauvinistic, racist, anti-elitist, and macho-ist p...