This is a recording of a book launch of Anthony Galluzzo’s Against the Vortex: Zardoz and Degrowth Utopias in the Seventies and Today — in which he examines our society’s techno-utopianism and attempts to chart a new way forward past our dead-end productivist society.
Okay I can vaguely see it now. Although as a degrowther, who also thinks we have too damn many people, I do stand by it that human overpopulation is as unsustainable as our growth-based economic model (wrt that quote).
I don’t mean it in the NIMBY centrist way: “Well we want cheap labor & races to the bottom. We just don’t want to see the people forced to do it. As long as they live in ghettos we never see -BabiesRUS hurrah! Yay capitalism! Infinite growth-fuck physics! Anyway who needs education or uncrowded quiet spaces for poor children anyway to study in when you can have a cheap phone connected to the net?”
If these things were discussed less superficially it would be clear that every human being requires a lot of investment (education that gives them a genuine understanding of the increasing complexity of the world we inhabit; spaces free of other humans to think, grow and contemplate in etc.)
Overcrowding and cheap technology have made us a noisy species opposed to thinking altogether. It is an Intertwined cancer-like phenomenon- the dynamics of mind destroying capitalism and the overcrowding caused by human overpopulation.
We never discuss these things except in stale cliches. “The poor” are supposed to be a different species who have none, but the most basic needs and while basic needs are the most poignant to strip people of, there are others. In Orwell’s “Down and Out in London and Paris” he mentions a street artist who says something to the effect that you have to let your mind escape the horror and indignity of daily penury…it is one of my favorite books
The way our world works suggests to me that we do have an upper limit on the number of people any truly egalitarian system can support.
Modern humans need more than lives where we are best case packed in like sardines with our bare necessities met and just enough education to rise above a struggling existence or worse abject poverty. This kind of growth of an aspiration al class wanting to escape abject poverty or struggles to then by default inherit the instincts of the crass rich with their private islands and fleets of cars and private jets results in a society where you are a person with some comfortable enough job (possibly bs) and enough comforts and luxuries to be yet another myopic brainless consumer/breeder (most of us) by choice where for some there still exists the constant threat of descending back into the “basic needs are not even met” category.
The more children say you have in a classroom per teacher, the less attention each individual child will get (with apologies to the Ayn Randians among us who come out of the egg never needing anything from anyone and build everything from scratch).
Of course I never mean it in the sense of the problem some people have with overpopulation stemming from dislike of the icky poor who need to be told what to think by everyone else. It just strikes me as a little utopian that anything (including human numbers) can lack finite limits.
I got off topic, but at least now I can see how the two themes go together. All I remember of Zardoz is that my ex (to be clear it was he - I otoh only watch sophisticated scifi like Lucy) would leave it on when it was his turn to pick the background channel and I would wince and avert my eyes every time I saw Sean Connery in that Mankini ;-/.
I will definitely check it out at some point Yasha-thanks! If for nothing else, out of sheer curiosity over how Degrowth and Zardoz are in the same cluster of ideas 😄. Soylent Green I can see by some stretch. And I get the general idea in a way.
But Zardoz as the specific example makes me feel I must have missed some major plot points-admittedly I was only half watching it (couldn’t stomach all the rape and so on).
Well I will buy it at some point and it will make more sense. I am still only on Kohei Saito’s first chapter in one of the books. That is not the most accessible book-it is probably written for academics more than the lay person. Jason Hickel’s book by contrast was a fast read-though I felt he left us animal rights people out of the equation entirely. I definitely got the sense that he is not a fan of the animal rights movement how he touched on so many topics while skirting that animal rights activists have made some of these same points ad nauseam. We are not a popular bunch and still very much the red-headed stepchildren of the left :). So we are used to being considered some silly people with frivolous concerns. That is one thing I am very grateful to Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs over -bringing us into the fold on the left more.
Huh…
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz
Okay I can vaguely see it now. Although as a degrowther, who also thinks we have too damn many people, I do stand by it that human overpopulation is as unsustainable as our growth-based economic model (wrt that quote).
I don’t mean it in the NIMBY centrist way: “Well we want cheap labor & races to the bottom. We just don’t want to see the people forced to do it. As long as they live in ghettos we never see -BabiesRUS hurrah! Yay capitalism! Infinite growth-fuck physics! Anyway who needs education or uncrowded quiet spaces for poor children anyway to study in when you can have a cheap phone connected to the net?”
If these things were discussed less superficially it would be clear that every human being requires a lot of investment (education that gives them a genuine understanding of the increasing complexity of the world we inhabit; spaces free of other humans to think, grow and contemplate in etc.)
Overcrowding and cheap technology have made us a noisy species opposed to thinking altogether. It is an Intertwined cancer-like phenomenon- the dynamics of mind destroying capitalism and the overcrowding caused by human overpopulation.
We never discuss these things except in stale cliches. “The poor” are supposed to be a different species who have none, but the most basic needs and while basic needs are the most poignant to strip people of, there are others. In Orwell’s “Down and Out in London and Paris” he mentions a street artist who says something to the effect that you have to let your mind escape the horror and indignity of daily penury…it is one of my favorite books
The way our world works suggests to me that we do have an upper limit on the number of people any truly egalitarian system can support.
Modern humans need more than lives where we are best case packed in like sardines with our bare necessities met and just enough education to rise above a struggling existence or worse abject poverty. This kind of growth of an aspiration al class wanting to escape abject poverty or struggles to then by default inherit the instincts of the crass rich with their private islands and fleets of cars and private jets results in a society where you are a person with some comfortable enough job (possibly bs) and enough comforts and luxuries to be yet another myopic brainless consumer/breeder (most of us) by choice where for some there still exists the constant threat of descending back into the “basic needs are not even met” category.
The more children say you have in a classroom per teacher, the less attention each individual child will get (with apologies to the Ayn Randians among us who come out of the egg never needing anything from anyone and build everything from scratch).
Of course I never mean it in the sense of the problem some people have with overpopulation stemming from dislike of the icky poor who need to be told what to think by everyone else. It just strikes me as a little utopian that anything (including human numbers) can lack finite limits.
I got off topic, but at least now I can see how the two themes go together. All I remember of Zardoz is that my ex (to be clear it was he - I otoh only watch sophisticated scifi like Lucy) would leave it on when it was his turn to pick the background channel and I would wince and avert my eyes every time I saw Sean Connery in that Mankini ;-/.
I will definitely check it out at some point Yasha-thanks! If for nothing else, out of sheer curiosity over how Degrowth and Zardoz are in the same cluster of ideas 😄. Soylent Green I can see by some stretch. And I get the general idea in a way.
But Zardoz as the specific example makes me feel I must have missed some major plot points-admittedly I was only half watching it (couldn’t stomach all the rape and so on).
Well I will buy it at some point and it will make more sense. I am still only on Kohei Saito’s first chapter in one of the books. That is not the most accessible book-it is probably written for academics more than the lay person. Jason Hickel’s book by contrast was a fast read-though I felt he left us animal rights people out of the equation entirely. I definitely got the sense that he is not a fan of the animal rights movement how he touched on so many topics while skirting that animal rights activists have made some of these same points ad nauseam. We are not a popular bunch and still very much the red-headed stepchildren of the left :). So we are used to being considered some silly people with frivolous concerns. That is one thing I am very grateful to Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs over -bringing us into the fold on the left more.