The Palisades Fire, Los Angeles, California, on January 7, 2025 Ringo Chiu/Reuters
Certes, le goût de la vérité n’empêche pas la prise de parti./Of course, a taste for the truth does not preclude taking sides.
Albert Camus, “Actuelles I, Le journalisme critique”, Combat, 8 septembre 1944
Octavio Alberola is an anarchist militant, strongly committed at the time to the anti-Franco libertarian struggle, who remains active in the struggle for a better world, keeping anarchist reflection alive.
The images that the national and international media transmit to us almost daily, of happy crowds strolling through festivals and fairs or filling concert halls, theatres, cinemas, stadiums and beaches on all five continents, encourage us to believe that humanity is living in times of great prosperity and peace. Yet never has its survival been as threatened as it is today. Not only because of the madness of war which, in addition to continuing to sow death and desolation, may end up causing a nuclear apocalypse, but also because of increasingly deadly viral pandemics and climate change which may make the Earth an uninhabitable planet.
Indeed, the images and news that these same national and international media transmit to us (also almost daily), about the horrors caused by wars and the calamities produced by the irresponsible management of viral pandemics and the climate crisis, prove that at no other time in history have the prospects for the future of humanity been so bleak and the lack of will and the impotence of our contemporaries to prevent them so abysmal.
Faced with such a disastrous and hopeless situation, how can we not feel responsible for having made it possible? For, more than the difficulties in confronting dystopian, viral and climatic threats, it is the evident lack of will to confront them that makes us powerless to avoid them and to build a more hopeful future.
It is a lack of will and impotence that should make us ashamed of ourselves, not only for being the result of our resignation or absurd obstinacy in maintaining the capitalist model of civilisation that has led us to such a calamitous and dangerous situation, but also for this latter being a model of production and consumption based on the passion of “always more”, on competition and the devastation of nature, which induces dissatisfaction, confrontation and destruction.
Since this model is the main threat to the survival of humanity, it would be logical to feel shame and concern for the terrifying and hopeless future that we are forging as contemporaries. And also, because the survival instinct is so important for survival, we would like to replace it with another instinct that is less dangerous for our survival and that of all living things. But, paradoxically, because our contemporaries’ addiction to consumerism and technological gadgets is so passionate and irrational, nothing is further from their concerns and desires than wanting to change this model for another. And this despite the fact that there is an almost daily stream of events that warn them of what is at stake.
An absurd and irresponsible way of behaving which, in addition to blocking the long lasting dialogue between people, opposes them and leads to their self-destruction; a self-destructive behaviour which, in short, has undermined “confidence in man and in his possibility of obtaining human reactions from other men by speaking to them in the language of humanity”, as Albert Camus noted in his day.
How, then, can we not consider this irresponsible and unworthy behaviour a humiliating and unbearable degradation of human intelligence and not say, with Fernando Pessoa, that “the consciousness of the unconsciousness of life is the greatest martyrdom imposed on intelligence”?
Indeed, how could this conscious unconsciousness not be “the greatest martyrdom imposed on intelligence”, since it is this that strangely prevents it, despite the fact that the instinct of survival is so fundamental for human beings and that humanity’s survival is so threatened today, from being its main concern? And given that it would be logical, in a context so dangerous for their survival that it should be.
In any case, given that the prospects for the future of mankind are so worrying, what is surprising is not only that survival is not its main concern, but that the vast majority of our contemporaries indulge in their unconscious passivity and resignation, almost never raising the question. As if this were an impossible reality to think about and the step, from observation to mobilisation, could only lead to impotence.
Hence the relevance of asking why they do not react or, if they do, why, despite the obvious responsibility of this lack of awareness for the current threats to our survival, their reaction is so passive in the face of announced catastrophes; whether these are the result of the warlike madness of those who exercise domination or of the criminal irresponsibility of the promoters and executors of capitalist development that is turning the Earth into an uninhabitable planet.
A disturbing passivity, since it is not the expression of serenity, but a testimony of resignation, and, in the end, of adaptation to the Darwinist and neoliberal world order of the climate-sceptics; of that order in which the “natural” thing to do is to force societies and individuals to “adapt” to a changing and competitive environment which, despite selecting the most “well adapted” and eliminating the “non-adapted”, continues to threaten the survival of all living things; an order that, in addition to being ecocidal, makes us accomplices – more or less willingly – to an end as absurd as ecocide will be if we do not prevent it.
Nothing, then, could be more natural than to worry about the dire consequences of such a surprising and distressing paradox, which prompts us to question what the state of the human condition is today. As well as, there could be nothing more logical than to try to understand why humanity persists in maintaining such contradictory, absurd and ultimately self-destructive behaviour.
Of course, because progress in the thought and practice of freedom has occurred through constant self-corrections of concepts and practices in socio-historical contexts over the centuries, it might be relatively logical not to fret too much and expect new self-corrections to occur again. And this could also hold for the progress inherent in the development of the desire for emancipation, which is the cause and the condition for achieving full dignity as a person; since this has already happened in France with the unexpected and surprising student protest movement of May 1968. Why worry and despair about what the thought and praxis of freedom are today and not have good reasons to hope that new corrections will take place that will make them progress again, together with the emancipatory aspiration that is inherent in them?
Well, indeed, if such corrections have taken place, there is no reason why they should not take place again.
Moreover, since humanity finds itself at a moment in history in which it is absolutely necessary to confront the ecological problem effectively in order not to disappear as a living species; it should be obvious for our contemporaries to wish to emancipate themselves from the tutelage of those responsible for making this problem what it is today. And it should also be obvious to know that the course of history, imposed by the exploiters and dominators, can only be changed by acting consequently to emancipate ourselves from them.
But, since what should be is not always what reality finally is, it should not be surprising that the evolutionary process of exploitation and domination does not necessarily lead to liberation. Moreover, since history shows us that the human being is always at the crossroads of certainties, probabilities and eventualities, we must constantly fear the interruption of the great chain of the deepening of human knowledge and the production of involutions.
Hence, there is the need to remain ever vigilant and to strive to find new ways of thinking about our relationship with the world. Vigilance and effort are even more necessary today because of the hopelessness of the future. But also to encourage us, in these times of post-truth and ideological and political regression, of serious pandemic, dystopian and ecological dangers, and of the absence of political projects that promote justice and equality, to reflect on the past and present of emancipatory struggles. And this not only to understand why humanity today is threatened by so many dangers – for our health, our freedoms and our lives – but also to know the reason for its worrying resignation in the face of the inequalities – present and future – that are already being announced.
And this is a necessary reflection, moreover, because of the extreme complexity of interactions, interrelationships and political, economic and human feedbacks that have brought humanity to where it is today, and because this complexity is a serious obstacle to becoming aware of the seriousness of the situation and the urgency of reacting against these deadly dangers that threaten our lives and the future of our species, as well as that of other species.
Especially now, when we know that the alienation of the “always more” of the capitalist system of domination and exploitation is what causes them; a civilizational paradigm that has led and continues to lead – more than ever – humanity to exhaust planet Earth, our home and source of life.
Replacing this paradigm with another that prioritizes what is essential for the life of all human beings and species on a habitable and sustainable planet is therefore a necessity and an imperious existential urgency. And this is even more so after noting the cost in human suffering and lives of the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world. An irrational and in some cases even criminal management, since once again prioritizing economic activity over people’s lives consciously exposes us to being victims of new pandemics, equal to or even more deadly than the one caused by the corona virus.
Changing the civilizational paradigm currently dominant throughout the planet is not only a necessity and an imperative urgency because capitalist competition is the generator of confrontation and wars, but also because capitalist consumerist habits have such a decisive influence on climate change. But it is obvious that, in order to give a consistent response to this need and urgency, it is necessary and urgent that we today become aware of it and act consequently in the face of the dangers that threaten humanity.
There is then the need and urgency to become aware of these dangers and to revive the desire for emancipation from any form of domination and exploitation of human beings over their fellow human beings, not only because this awareness and this desire are the true antidotes to the voluntary servitude prevalent in our societies today, but also to the individualistic illusion of believing that one can get ahead on one’s own in a world where the law of the strongest and the logic of every man for himself prevails. Furthermore, this awareness is necessary in the face of viral and climatic unconsciousness to contribute to the respect of the rights of nature.
It is therefore the conviction – although relativised by scientific doubt – with regard to the effectiveness of the “pedagogy of catastrophes”, as a trigger of awareness and changes of vision to organise the relationship with our fellow human beings and our metabolism with nature, which has prompted me to write this article. Not only because this awareness is so necessary and urgent to avoid new catastrophes, but also to be able to revive today the emancipatory aspiration. For it is obvious that, without this aspiration for a world of equality, where each human being sees the other as his equal and is responsible and supportive, neither the survival of living things nor the maintenance of practices of mutual aid and direct democracy seem possible to me.
There is thus the need and importance of reflecting on the role of consciousness in the evolution of Homo sapiens and on what the emancipatory struggles of the past really were, beginning with the revolutions that have taken place throughout history up to the present day, in order to evaluate their transformative potential and to see what traces they have left in history. Its role in the workers’ movement, which arose from the First Workers’ International in reaction to the disastrous effects of the Industrial Revolution in the world of work, is also fundamental, because it is through its historical development and its ideological evolution, until reaching the consumer society and digital information, that we can follow the process of the decline of the emancipatory ideal that animated it at the beginning; a decline that has led it to become a cog – more or less docile – of the dominant economic and political system, and an unwitting accomplice of the social and environmental disasters caused by this system.
This decline confirmed by the events of the 1980s and 1990s, so crucial for the workers’ movement in validating and spreading the idea of the end of ideological struggles and the definitive triumph of the market and liberal democracy, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc. The triumph that marked the “end of history”, according to the thesis developed by the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama – in his book The End of History and the Last Man – when he was an advisor to the Department of Defense in Washington.
Hence, as this thesis has strongly conditioned the collective imaginary and the functioning of consumer society and digital information, it is also important to reflect on what this society has been and still is. Not only because consumerism has not stopped expanding and technological development has accelerated since the emergence of the Internet and the web, but also because they have been determining factors for capitalism to be the hegemonic system in the world, while the workers’ movement is resigned to fight only to make exploitation less unbearable, the very same resignation that has made it an accomplice of capitalism, despite the obvious responsibility of this system in the emergence and development of viral, climatic and dystopian threats. This responsibility is accompanied by the sorcerer’s apprentice recklessness of this system, a system incapable of facing the catastrophes it provokes. The combination of irresponsibility and ineptitude should serve to warn us of what can happen if we do not react, if we continue to allow the promoters and defenders of this system to continue their work.
Capitalism is a system, which besides being predatory and irresponsible, shows little disposition to put an end to inequalities and stop its destructive action on the natural environment, not only because it is a hyper energy insatiable model, but also because, its objective being the accumulation of capital, it is impossible for it to reach – without abandoning its mechanisms and values – a minimum degree of containment in order to avoid the disasters that its functioning provokes.
Reflection is also necessary at a time of great deterioration of the public debate and of questionable ideological connections accelerated by the political management of the pandemic and the climate crisis. But, above all, it is necessary because these connections occur in a media saturated and confused context, where the political field and public spaces are leaning towards the extreme right, favouring the spread of reactionary conspiracy theories, carriers of serious negationist and fascist dangers, dangers concealed by a politics of confusion elaborated with theoretical elements and facts, speeches and references that evoke tragic events already lived. We must at all costs prevent the world from reliving such events.
These are, then, the reasons that compel us to consider it so important and urgent to make ourselves and our contemporaries aware of dystopian threats as well as of viral and climatic threats, because ethics and politics are decisive for the constitution and integral existence of persons and being a person is what gives meaning and value to our lives. It is therefore obvious to consider that physical survival is inseparable from ethical and political survival, at least for those who, for the love of freedom and the right to criticize, prefer to die on their feet, as persons, than to live on their knees, as individuals.
It is for this reason that it is so important and urgent to raise awareness of the dystopian threat; for, in addition to threatening our ethical and political existence, it is largely responsible for institutional inaction in the fight against climate disruption by both conveying negationist theses and for advocating capitalist developmentalism in a world that has already “exterminated the essential of insects, wild animals and trees”. We are witness to a biological extermination that makes “us, contemporary Westerners, the most murderous civilization of all time from the point of view of the biosphere. And the worst thing is that, in addition to being irrational, it reveals an ethical bankruptcy”, as the French astrophysicist Aurélien Barrot reminds us.
Faced with such a disastrous civilizational balance sheet, how can we not consider – with Barrot – that “the urgency consists in thinking” why such a disaster is possible and in asking ourselves “this essential question: what do we really want?” For, if the contemporaries of the beginning of capitalist civilization could not be aware of the environmental disasters that the development of their way of life was to produce, today’s contemporaries cannot ignore it, even if a vast majority of them are in a conscious unconsciousness that pushes them to an irresponsible and dangerous laissez-faire; a cognitive inertia that gives them a reassuring sense of security and prevents them from worrying about the disastrous consequences of letting those who decide for us do so.
This is why the existential urgency of today is to make ourselves and our contemporaries aware of the consequences of this consciously unconscious cognitive inertia; for, as Camus said in times as dark as today, besides the fact that the taste for truth should not prevent us from taking sides, as long as truth is accepted for what it is – even if only in a spirit – and such as it is, hope will not be in vain. True despair does not arise from being confronted with an increasingly obstinate adversity, nor from the exhaustion of a struggle that is too unequal; it comes from the fact that we no longer know what our reasons are for fighting and whether we should fight at all. For, now, in addition to the fact that the taste for truth should not prevent us from taking sides and even if the struggle is difficult, the reasons to fight are, despite the current confusion, very clear.
Octavio Alberola: The existential urgency of our times
Certes, le goût de la vérité n’empêche pas la prise de parti./Of course, a taste for the truth does not preclude taking sides.
Albert Camus, “Actuelles I, Le journalisme critique”, Combat, 8 septembre 1944
Octavio Alberola is an anarchist militant, strongly committed at the time to the anti-Franco libertarian struggle, who remains active in the struggle for a better world, keeping anarchist reflection alive.
The images that the national and international media transmit to us almost daily, of happy crowds strolling through festivals and fairs or filling concert halls, theatres, cinemas, stadiums and beaches on all five continents, encourage us to believe that humanity is living in times of great prosperity and peace. Yet never has its survival been as threatened as it is today. Not only because of the madness of war which, in addition to continuing to sow death and desolation, may end up causing a nuclear apocalypse, but also because of increasingly deadly viral pandemics and climate change which may make the Earth an uninhabitable planet.
Indeed, the images and news that these same national and international media transmit to us (also almost daily), about the horrors caused by wars and the calamities produced by the irresponsible management of viral pandemics and the climate crisis, prove that at no other time in history have the prospects for the future of humanity been so bleak and the lack of will and the impotence of our contemporaries to prevent them so abysmal.
Faced with such a disastrous and hopeless situation, how can we not feel responsible for having made it possible? For, more than the difficulties in confronting dystopian, viral and climatic threats, it is the evident lack of will to confront them that makes us powerless to avoid them and to build a more hopeful future.
It is a lack of will and impotence that should make us ashamed of ourselves, not only for being the result of our resignation or absurd obstinacy in maintaining the capitalist model of civilisation that has led us to such a calamitous and dangerous situation, but also for this latter being a model of production and consumption based on the passion of “always more”, on competition and the devastation of nature, which induces dissatisfaction, confrontation and destruction.
Since this model is the main threat to the survival of humanity, it would be logical to feel shame and concern for the terrifying and hopeless future that we are forging as contemporaries. And also, because the survival instinct is so important for survival, we would like to replace it with another instinct that is less dangerous for our survival and that of all living things. But, paradoxically, because our contemporaries’ addiction to consumerism and technological gadgets is so passionate and irrational, nothing is further from their concerns and desires than wanting to change this model for another. And this despite the fact that there is an almost daily stream of events that warn them of what is at stake.
An absurd and irresponsible way of behaving which, in addition to blocking the long lasting dialogue between people, opposes them and leads to their self-destruction; a self-destructive behaviour which, in short, has undermined “confidence in man and in his possibility of obtaining human reactions from other men by speaking to them in the language of humanity”, as Albert Camus noted in his day.
How, then, can we not consider this irresponsible and unworthy behaviour a humiliating and unbearable degradation of human intelligence and not say, with Fernando Pessoa, that “the consciousness of the unconsciousness of life is the greatest martyrdom imposed on intelligence”?
Indeed, how could this conscious unconsciousness not be “the greatest martyrdom imposed on intelligence”, since it is this that strangely prevents it, despite the fact that the instinct of survival is so fundamental for human beings and that humanity’s survival is so threatened today, from being its main concern? And given that it would be logical, in a context so dangerous for their survival that it should be.
In any case, given that the prospects for the future of mankind are so worrying, what is surprising is not only that survival is not its main concern, but that the vast majority of our contemporaries indulge in their unconscious passivity and resignation, almost never raising the question. As if this were an impossible reality to think about and the step, from observation to mobilisation, could only lead to impotence.
Hence the relevance of asking why they do not react or, if they do, why, despite the obvious responsibility of this lack of awareness for the current threats to our survival, their reaction is so passive in the face of announced catastrophes; whether these are the result of the warlike madness of those who exercise domination or of the criminal irresponsibility of the promoters and executors of capitalist development that is turning the Earth into an uninhabitable planet.
A disturbing passivity, since it is not the expression of serenity, but a testimony of resignation, and, in the end, of adaptation to the Darwinist and neoliberal world order of the climate-sceptics; of that order in which the “natural” thing to do is to force societies and individuals to “adapt” to a changing and competitive environment which, despite selecting the most “well adapted” and eliminating the “non-adapted”, continues to threaten the survival of all living things; an order that, in addition to being ecocidal, makes us accomplices – more or less willingly – to an end as absurd as ecocide will be if we do not prevent it.
Nothing, then, could be more natural than to worry about the dire consequences of such a surprising and distressing paradox, which prompts us to question what the state of the human condition is today. As well as, there could be nothing more logical than to try to understand why humanity persists in maintaining such contradictory, absurd and ultimately self-destructive behaviour.
Of course, because progress in the thought and practice of freedom has occurred through constant self-corrections of concepts and practices in socio-historical contexts over the centuries, it might be relatively logical not to fret too much and expect new self-corrections to occur again. And this could also hold for the progress inherent in the development of the desire for emancipation, which is the cause and the condition for achieving full dignity as a person; since this has already happened in France with the unexpected and surprising student protest movement of May 1968. Why worry and despair about what the thought and praxis of freedom are today and not have good reasons to hope that new corrections will take place that will make them progress again, together with the emancipatory aspiration that is inherent in them?
Well, indeed, if such corrections have taken place, there is no reason why they should not take place again.
Moreover, since humanity finds itself at a moment in history in which it is absolutely necessary to confront the ecological problem effectively in order not to disappear as a living species; it should be obvious for our contemporaries to wish to emancipate themselves from the tutelage of those responsible for making this problem what it is today. And it should also be obvious to know that the course of history, imposed by the exploiters and dominators, can only be changed by acting consequently to emancipate ourselves from them.
But, since what should be is not always what reality finally is, it should not be surprising that the evolutionary process of exploitation and domination does not necessarily lead to liberation. Moreover, since history shows us that the human being is always at the crossroads of certainties, probabilities and eventualities, we must constantly fear the interruption of the great chain of the deepening of human knowledge and the production of involutions.
Hence, there is the need to remain ever vigilant and to strive to find new ways of thinking about our relationship with the world. Vigilance and effort are even more necessary today because of the hopelessness of the future. But also to encourage us, in these times of post-truth and ideological and political regression, of serious pandemic, dystopian and ecological dangers, and of the absence of political projects that promote justice and equality, to reflect on the past and present of emancipatory struggles. And this not only to understand why humanity today is threatened by so many dangers – for our health, our freedoms and our lives – but also to know the reason for its worrying resignation in the face of the inequalities – present and future – that are already being announced.
And this is a necessary reflection, moreover, because of the extreme complexity of interactions, interrelationships and political, economic and human feedbacks that have brought humanity to where it is today, and because this complexity is a serious obstacle to becoming aware of the seriousness of the situation and the urgency of reacting against these deadly dangers that threaten our lives and the future of our species, as well as that of other species.
Especially now, when we know that the alienation of the “always more” of the capitalist system of domination and exploitation is what causes them; a civilizational paradigm that has led and continues to lead – more than ever – humanity to exhaust planet Earth, our home and source of life.
Replacing this paradigm with another that prioritizes what is essential for the life of all human beings and species on a habitable and sustainable planet is therefore a necessity and an imperious existential urgency. And this is even more so after noting the cost in human suffering and lives of the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world. An irrational and in some cases even criminal management, since once again prioritizing economic activity over people’s lives consciously exposes us to being victims of new pandemics, equal to or even more deadly than the one caused by the corona virus.
Changing the civilizational paradigm currently dominant throughout the planet is not only a necessity and an imperative urgency because capitalist competition is the generator of confrontation and wars, but also because capitalist consumerist habits have such a decisive influence on climate change. But it is obvious that, in order to give a consistent response to this need and urgency, it is necessary and urgent that we today become aware of it and act consequently in the face of the dangers that threaten humanity.
There is then the need and urgency to become aware of these dangers and to revive the desire for emancipation from any form of domination and exploitation of human beings over their fellow human beings, not only because this awareness and this desire are the true antidotes to the voluntary servitude prevalent in our societies today, but also to the individualistic illusion of believing that one can get ahead on one’s own in a world where the law of the strongest and the logic of every man for himself prevails. Furthermore, this awareness is necessary in the face of viral and climatic unconsciousness to contribute to the respect of the rights of nature.
It is therefore the conviction – although relativised by scientific doubt – with regard to the effectiveness of the “pedagogy of catastrophes”, as a trigger of awareness and changes of vision to organise the relationship with our fellow human beings and our metabolism with nature, which has prompted me to write this article. Not only because this awareness is so necessary and urgent to avoid new catastrophes, but also to be able to revive today the emancipatory aspiration. For it is obvious that, without this aspiration for a world of equality, where each human being sees the other as his equal and is responsible and supportive, neither the survival of living things nor the maintenance of practices of mutual aid and direct democracy seem possible to me.
There is thus the need and importance of reflecting on the role of consciousness in the evolution of Homo sapiens and on what the emancipatory struggles of the past really were, beginning with the revolutions that have taken place throughout history up to the present day, in order to evaluate their transformative potential and to see what traces they have left in history. Its role in the workers’ movement, which arose from the First Workers’ International in reaction to the disastrous effects of the Industrial Revolution in the world of work, is also fundamental, because it is through its historical development and its ideological evolution, until reaching the consumer society and digital information, that we can follow the process of the decline of the emancipatory ideal that animated it at the beginning; a decline that has led it to become a cog – more or less docile – of the dominant economic and political system, and an unwitting accomplice of the social and environmental disasters caused by this system.
This decline confirmed by the events of the 1980s and 1990s, so crucial for the workers’ movement in validating and spreading the idea of the end of ideological struggles and the definitive triumph of the market and liberal democracy, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc. The triumph that marked the “end of history”, according to the thesis developed by the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama – in his book The End of History and the Last Man – when he was an advisor to the Department of Defense in Washington.
Hence, as this thesis has strongly conditioned the collective imaginary and the functioning of consumer society and digital information, it is also important to reflect on what this society has been and still is. Not only because consumerism has not stopped expanding and technological development has accelerated since the emergence of the Internet and the web, but also because they have been determining factors for capitalism to be the hegemonic system in the world, while the workers’ movement is resigned to fight only to make exploitation less unbearable, the very same resignation that has made it an accomplice of capitalism, despite the obvious responsibility of this system in the emergence and development of viral, climatic and dystopian threats. This responsibility is accompanied by the sorcerer’s apprentice recklessness of this system, a system incapable of facing the catastrophes it provokes. The combination of irresponsibility and ineptitude should serve to warn us of what can happen if we do not react, if we continue to allow the promoters and defenders of this system to continue their work.
Capitalism is a system, which besides being predatory and irresponsible, shows little disposition to put an end to inequalities and stop its destructive action on the natural environment, not only because it is a hyper energy insatiable model, but also because, its objective being the accumulation of capital, it is impossible for it to reach – without abandoning its mechanisms and values – a minimum degree of containment in order to avoid the disasters that its functioning provokes.
Reflection is also necessary at a time of great deterioration of the public debate and of questionable ideological connections accelerated by the political management of the pandemic and the climate crisis. But, above all, it is necessary because these connections occur in a media saturated and confused context, where the political field and public spaces are leaning towards the extreme right, favouring the spread of reactionary conspiracy theories, carriers of serious negationist and fascist dangers, dangers concealed by a politics of confusion elaborated with theoretical elements and facts, speeches and references that evoke tragic events already lived. We must at all costs prevent the world from reliving such events.
These are, then, the reasons that compel us to consider it so important and urgent to make ourselves and our contemporaries aware of dystopian threats as well as of viral and climatic threats, because ethics and politics are decisive for the constitution and integral existence of persons and being a person is what gives meaning and value to our lives. It is therefore obvious to consider that physical survival is inseparable from ethical and political survival, at least for those who, for the love of freedom and the right to criticize, prefer to die on their feet, as persons, than to live on their knees, as individuals.
It is for this reason that it is so important and urgent to raise awareness of the dystopian threat; for, in addition to threatening our ethical and political existence, it is largely responsible for institutional inaction in the fight against climate disruption by both conveying negationist theses and for advocating capitalist developmentalism in a world that has already “exterminated the essential of insects, wild animals and trees”. We are witness to a biological extermination that makes “us, contemporary Westerners, the most murderous civilization of all time from the point of view of the biosphere. And the worst thing is that, in addition to being irrational, it reveals an ethical bankruptcy”, as the French astrophysicist Aurélien Barrot reminds us.
Faced with such a disastrous civilizational balance sheet, how can we not consider – with Barrot – that “the urgency consists in thinking” why such a disaster is possible and in asking ourselves “this essential question: what do we really want?” For, if the contemporaries of the beginning of capitalist civilization could not be aware of the environmental disasters that the development of their way of life was to produce, today’s contemporaries cannot ignore it, even if a vast majority of them are in a conscious unconsciousness that pushes them to an irresponsible and dangerous laissez-faire; a cognitive inertia that gives them a reassuring sense of security and prevents them from worrying about the disastrous consequences of letting those who decide for us do so.
This is why the existential urgency of today is to make ourselves and our contemporaries aware of the consequences of this consciously unconscious cognitive inertia; for, as Camus said in times as dark as today, besides the fact that the taste for truth should not prevent us from taking sides, as long as truth is accepted for what it is – even if only in a spirit – and such as it is, hope will not be in vain. True despair does not arise from being confronted with an increasingly obstinate adversity, nor from the exhaustion of a struggle that is too unequal; it comes from the fact that we no longer know what our reasons are for fighting and whether we should fight at all. For, now, in addition to the fact that the taste for truth should not prevent us from taking sides and even if the struggle is difficult, the reasons to fight are, despite the current confusion, very clear.
Source: Redes Libertarias, 09/01/2025