This civilisation has learned to survive by extraction, exploitation and extinction. It is the teenager walking up to the fridge, taking whatever they need without ever wondering who went grocery shopping, how much it cost, and who paid the electric bill. This lazy formula of existence has been so easy and straightforward, so successful and consistent for so many millennia, that we falsely thought we could follow it forever. But there is little left to extract, exploit or drive to extinction. We’ve burned the house down and burned ourselves out in the process. Our generation will be the last one on Earth unless it discovers a completely new way to exist: one which no generation before it ever achieved, at the 8 billion population level.
There is a very simple way to describe our existence in financial terms: everything that this civilisation has ever achieved is built on ecological fraud. It is built on stolen habitats, consumed resources, assassinated species. We paid for it all through a series of heists which bankrupted this planet. Ever since its first baby steps, this civilisation has been in debt, printing fake Earth currency to finance its unsustainable existence. Every increase in GDP comes from a loan by our one and only lender, the Bank of Earth. Economic growth is a human-made illusion, and delusion. What we proudly call human civilisation is effectively a shopfront for a money-laundering operation concealing the pillaging of natural resources, chief fraud against the Bank of Earth, and mass genocide of its 10 million species. Human civilisation is a Ponzi scheme committing ecological fraud. It is a business which has never turned an honest profit, has too many dependents on its books, and is prepared to take everyone down with it as it collapses into bankruptcy. Everything we have is stolen, all human currency is symbolic, the only real currency being the physical resources of this planet. We have accumulated so much debt towards the Bank of Earth that we are literally made of debt. We know of no other way to exist, besides theft. Our future aspirations, dreams and ambitions are predicated on the foolish assumption that this ecological fraud will be able to go on. The Ponzi scheme is collapsing though. The planet has come to collect the debt. Liquidation of assets is happening as we speak.
However fragile they are, the planet’s resources can never be tamed or owned. They always have the last word: when there are no resources, there are no humans. We will most likely become extinct before learning the most basic lesson in economics: that on Earth’s economy there is no yours or mine, predator or prey, weak or strong. We are all just molecules, continuously converting into one another without the need for currencies, bargaining, or stock markets, all of which are vehicles for committing ecological fraud. The real economy of this planet is its forests and oceans. Its currency is water, food, oxygen, sunlight. Its stock market is the ecosystems and climate systems which balance the allocation of these resources, and its stakeholders are its 10 million species. In the Bank of Earth there are no doors, tellers, or security, because no one ever took more than they needed. Until humans came.
Our approach to economics is as empty, incomplete, and limp as our approach to happiness. Metrics, currencies, profits and budgets can only quantify, not qualify. They cannot “valuate”. How much is this planet worth? This is not a numerical question. What is happiness? This is also not a numerical question. The numerical value of life on this planet is infinite, and way beyond what any currency can purchase. But necrocapitalism has put price tags on ecosystems, on a flower, on a smile. It has devalued, in the cheapest way possible, things which are of infinite, immeasurable value. And it has criminally condemned them to obsolescence.
As the lies this civilisation told itself come crashing down, the farm of consumatrons must continue, even on a dishevelled planet. To do this, even more controlling dystopias and self-contradicting narratives need to be created. To keep the civilisational lie alive, humans have to continually dispute their own algebra: although basic math is a prerequisite for economics, most economists idiotically advocate for an absurd growth-based economic system which simply does not algebraically compute to a 3 year-old. This demonstrates the power of the Mind Prison to corrupt even the most indisputable facts, even at the heart of ivy-league academia.
The civilisational lie ignores the existence of the Earth economy within which civilisations develop, much like a fungal colony in a petri dish unaware it is sitting at the benchtop of a laboratory, which is in a building, which is in a city, which is in a world that ultimately determines what this petri dish will do and where it will end up. Civilisations collapse because they don’t even know what a collapse is. It is simply not in their DNA to understand it. Their very mode of existence, and even their self-awareness, are grounded upon unsustainable expansion, ecological fraud, and cannibalism towards the very people who have built that civilisation. This is the cognitive wall we are up against, which we have always been up against, collectively as a society and culture.
The civilisational lie also ignores the intelligence and sophistication of the Earthnet of Things. We are being watched and monitored by this planet on a 24-hour basis. This is the most expansive CCTV system that exists. Humans naively call the Earthnet of Things an “ecosystem”, as if this is another one of their machines which they can toy with. But in this machine there are no opportunities for “Beta testing”, no mistakes, apologies, second chances or magical “undo” buttons. Every action has a reaction. It is recorded, and responded to, in real time. And every extinction changes the Earthnet of Things forever, as it moves on to a new state of balance. Humanity’s 8 billion-strong overgrown population will soon either starve or destroy itself. No magical technology, machine, or “system” will outpower the power of physics: the power of the Earthnet of Things.
In the process of defrauding this planet, this species has defrauded itself. It has borrowed and spent what it cannot pay back, convinced that as long as the party drugs are in good supply, there won’t be a comedown phase. But the comedown phase is already here. We are coming to the end of an economic hallucination which lasted thousands of years. The financial scam of human civilisation is finally collapsing. The tables are turning as nature’s revenge begins, and we begin to steal from each other in this oversubscribed betting scheme we had affectionately been calling “the economy”.
If Earth’s age were to be compressed into a single year, modern humans do not arrive until approximately 11:36 pm on December 31st. Yet they have wasted no time. Only a terrorist with thousands of megatonic nuclear bombs can do so much damage, in such little time. It is very likely that humans will come and go from Earth without ever discovering happiness. Our concept of prosperity involves committing so much ecological fraud, telling so many lies to ourselves that, being honest at this stage would require denouncing almost all of our history and culture. That, would be a great start. But exposing the lies this civilisation told itself over millennia is a formidable challenge. It requires the humility to enter introspection, the courage to face the collapsing power structures coming from the domino of lies, and the willingness to face the day after: to be present, to be visionary, to genuinely want to progress, to want to do the actual work needed to inaugurate a new multi-species civilisation, one with actual values and principles, not currencies. It is becoming obvious that our entire system needs to be replaced not simply by a different economic model, but by a completely different concept of economics altogether, and a new model of human existence. We can only do this if we manage to access our Infinity State.
We have been in constant war with nature for hundreds of thousands of years. This narrative of conflict has run its course and reached a dead end, leaving both us and this planet bankrupt. If we want to continue, we have no choice but to replace conflict with cooperation, owning with sharing, and doing with simply being. This planet recycles everything, including civilisations. Those materials, nutrients or species which are of no use to Earth are always the first to be recycled. The only way to secure the survival of humanity, and of life on this planet, is to become useful to the planet again. And we can only do this if there is significantly less humanity, and significantly more of the natural planet.
George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons
George Tsakraklides 