Capitalist Dominionism, the Temper Tantrum of Thanatos

By Vi Ransel

7/9/09

The anthropocentric Judeo-Christian ideology of Western Civilization causes its adherents to lash out like spoiled babies when thinking people challenge ANY of the sacred privileges they believe that they are entitled to by the virtue of their being them. That is, as the designated-hitters – and I mean that literally – the self-chosen people of the god they themselves created, spun out of pure hubris and an obsession with dominion and the subsequent need to rationalize it, not only have these “people” set themselves apart from, and above, all of the natural world of which they are an intrinsic part, groups of them have declared that some of them are even more entitled to use and/or possess all of the stuff in existence than other groups of them. And to cloak this pig in a semblance of respectability, they have smeared it with the lipstick of religion in an attempt to legitimize it. Religion fosters fear, obedience, ignorance and dependence.

Thus the various and sundry groups of “chosen” people have been able to convince other, more benevolent/gullible/innocent/ignorant/human groups, to tolerate their intolerance, cowed by fear of deviant-divine wrath if they don’t bow down and worship those who are colonizing and/or exploiting them, who claim to be their superiors in every way.

Not only do these arrogant self-choosers claim the divine right to exploit, brand, neuter, turn out, “shoot, trap, slash, cage, enslave, cut, gut, slit, slaughter, butcher, burn, shock, inject, beat, stomp, rape, wear, eat,” brutally torture and murder any and all sentient beings they designate sub-human, they designate most of the rest of human beings as sub-human through the self-revealed doctrine of White Supremacy. And in a further winnowing out of those unworthy of sharing in Earth’s freely given bounty, they designate those of their own hue, whom they’ve intentionally deprived of a share in the plunder as garbage, AKA poor white trash.

And this branding as beneath contempt is moving, increasingly rapidly, UP the pyramid of privilege as world economies and the ecology of the entire planet, off which the self-chosen are living, goes increasingly DOWN the toilet they’ve made of it.

The inhuman humans at the top of the pyramid of privilege have moved completely off it, with the advent of global capitalism, on to a Hindenburg-like blimp that floats over not only those designated inferior from time immemorial, as far as Western Civilization is concerned, but those useful idiots in the “Middle” Class who were created as a buffer between the blimp and the unwashed masses to allow the self-chosen to do exactly that – rise even further above the rest of us slugs without effective opposition.

In much the same way, the aftermath of Bacon’s Rebellion, comprised of slaves and indentured “servants”, created the white “race” in America. Until that point, more or less, “inferiors” were “inferiors” no matter what their color. After Bacon’s Rebellion, WHITE “inferiors” were given a smidgen of privilege and deemed to have a common interest with the Masters by virtue of their same skin color.

FLASH FORWARD.

In the United States, especially, not only the “Middle” Class was recruited to support their own oppression/exploitation, but the masses of the “Lower,” or Working Class, who do the, like, actual work that makes the system, like, work, were enlisted, via the New Deal, to partake in a tacky imitation of the excess of their “betters” via consumerism. The access to some shoddy, shiny objects, with built-in obsolescence of course, to make the cycle of The Consumption of Production endless at an ever more increasing rate (capitalism in a nutshell), and the assurance that the possession of the Chosen Skin Color made them chosen, too, conflated their interests with that of their Masters. And that was all it took to get the Middle and Working Classes to endorse their own exploitation. That and the hope that they, too, might one day leave the ranks of the exploited to become exploiters themselves.

How long will we continue to deny that the conveyor belt which passes before our very own eyes on a daily basis, carrying our pitiful portion of the planet’s gifts to us straight up to that blimp hovering over the pyramid of privilege, exists?!!

It seems that HUMAN beings, as opposed to beings (See how this works?) are “just intelligent enough that we’ve developed a devastatingly (self) destructive superiority complex, believing that our capacity to engage in complex forms of thought and communication endows us with the right to serially abuse the planet and other sentient beings, create artificial barriers to alienate us from the rest of nature, and to litter and contaminate the land-base and waterways with all manner of toxic, putrid, noxious, infectious, and disgusting liquids and solids, many with half-lives that exceed 10,000 years that the disease we call civilization has existed. Homo sapiens, the “superior species,” has taken “stewardship” of the planet and is careening toward self-destruction and mass extinction of other species own. How intelligent is that?”

But those who believe they are not only the masters of the system, but the masters of existence are in the process of “patenting life” via the genetic modification of all sources of food, and storing the uncontaminated (by genetic engineering) seeds in an explosion proof vault two miles beneath the ice under Svalbard, Norway. They naively think that they will escape and start over again after the holocaust they’ve initiated. Or do they? As Earth’s climate changes at an ever-accelerating rate, acceleration being a hallmark of capitalist production, “human” beings, along with all other sentient beings, are losing their habitat, the climate that makes their life on Earth possible.

The flow and feedback of one ecosystem into another – air, rain, oceans, rivers, deltas, marshes, glaciers, aquifers, the tropics, polar regions, temperate zones, the changing seasons, etc. – the climate we call weather, are intrinsic parts of the infrastructure that not only sustains life on the planet, but created it.

Now back to “Or do they?” Do the cavalier dominionists floating up there off the pyramid in the blimp of their bloated self-importance actually realize that nature is their benefactor? And do they intend to murder her for their “inheritance?” Like ungrateful children too impatient to wait ’til a parent dies to collect his or her wealth, will they kill the planet in order to possess it? Alternately, are they so pissed off at being dependent on the planet, so angry that it is actually not THEY who are in charge of life, but her, that they plan “to take their ball back” in a giant hissy fit and just kill us all, including themselves, because they can’t have their own way?

All quotes from Jason Miller’s “To dam the torrential rivers of blood and to silence the cacophony of their agonized cries…”

Vi Ransel, TPC’s senior editor of anti-capitalism, is a researcher and poet of exceptional caliber. Very little is known about her.

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