The Tree of Brass and Lead

The trajectory is like this: Israel is the last-established Settler-Colonialist project. It is also the last such project I see being feasible. Fundamentally, it is the same kind of state as America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa; other states have had Settler-Colonialist phases – such as the Japanese annexation of Hokkaido, the settlement of Taiwan, and basically anywhere you see (nation)-ification or -cization – Russification, Sinocization, Romanization. This refers to the replacement of an indigenous culture with a colonialist one. Sometimes, this is accompanied with political policies that lead to demographic shifts.

Living in the Burn Down

The world is burning down around us, and we’re going to work. We’re going to the grocery store and the laundromat and watching Netflix. We have no ability to productively imagine what we have to do in this situation, because the obvious option – taking to the streets, going on strike, making actual demands – are things that we have been conditioned not to do. We continue on as we have been, because the alternatives are either outright unimaginable or are the objects of horror and anti-fascination.

An Infliction of Sacred Wounds: On Mental Health Under Capitalist Realism (Fisher's Ghosts, part 4)

The system, which supposedly generates prosperity for everyone to an unprecedented degree, doesn’t. We’re told that it works, we’re told that doing all of these things should help, and we internalize this narrative. It becomes a subconscious mantra, the way that an Orthodox monk is encouraged to say the Jesus Prayer in time with his heartbeat. You see: we’ve been sold a fantasy that does not map on to reality. Human beings are smart enough that you don’t have to actually give us the reward. You just have to convince us that the reward is there.

Against Enclosure: Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" is a House Built on Sand

So, yesterday, I made the tremendous sacrifice of reading “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin, so you don’t have to. Hardin is not the canny thinker that they believe he is, and reading the original “Tragedy of the Commons” article he published in Science on 13 December 1968 shows just how flawed his reasoning is – and how bankrupt future ideological edifices built atop it are.

Buried in the Tombs of their Luxury SUVs: Notes on Exterminism

Because if we're all going to die then we might as well die in luxury SUVs with fuel economy measured in gallons per mile with the Pixar movie Cars playing in the back seat so the kids don't notice that they're breathing in poison.