Human Pets of the Consumaverse

As filler humans, we are entering a new slavery situation where our master is not even human.  We can’t see them because they don’t have a face, and we can’t attack them because they are virtually everywhere.

For a species who invented the concept of personal ownership, it was very ironic yet at the same time inevitable that, we would ultimately become owned by the very system of ownership we put in place.  The invention, legislation and deification of personal ownership was the open door for necrocapitalism to step in and own us, in every possible way.  As surveillance, automation and supermarketization of even the smallest physical or data real estate engulf everything, humans are not exempt: they are becoming commodities themselves, in order to survive the cruel world of the consumaverse.  Merging with the very products they buy, they become virtually indistinguishable from them to the point where it is no longer clear whether it is the human buying the product, or the product buying the human.  We may think we’re the ones making purchasing decisions and buying products, but the opposite can also be argued:  that the products are buying us, choosing us, changing our lifestyle, making us even more dependent on them.  Much like the arguments proposing that dogs domesticated humans just as much as humans domesticated dogs, it can be argued that consumers have been domesticated by products.  We became the favourite pets of the fashion industrial complex, gaming consoles and the marketing industry of the Unhappiness Machine.

Yet despite becoming commodified resources, we feel more liberated than ever.  This incredible cognitive dissonance is the result of the warping effect of the tranquilising, atomizing entertainment narcotics of The Thing. In this ruthless economic system where everything is aggressively put up for sale for the quickest return, it is easy for the buyer or seller to forget that they are part of this financial ecosystem themselves: they have become a product, with all the implications this may have. 

But it gets worse. By devolving into commodities, humans are undergoing a transformation: becoming the silent partner in a symbiotic relationship with technology-led governance.  As they merge with the very products they buy, much of their sensory system and intellect are habituated into atrophy.  Active thought and decision-making processes are replaced with prefabricated options and synthetic reality, all part of the colourful, soothing consumaverse which curates an illusion of comfort, fulfilment, and, ironically, freedom: modern humans are the most emancipated slaves to have ever existed. 

As consumatronic humans we may be “citizens” on paper, but our legal status is beginning to resemble that of the products we purchase: as we move large parts of ourselves to the unregulated marketplace of the necroeconomy’s metaverse, the line between the human and the product becomes thinner, greyer, vaguer than ever.

The productization of humans is a direct threat to freedom and individuality.  Products only have value during the brief period when they remain on the shelf.  During this time, they will need to stay silent, smile to the shopping trolleys zooming past them, and never give out any signals that something about them may be “different”.  Soup cans need to look exactly like all the other soup cans or shampoo bottles. To remain desirable, they need to relinquish any rights, opinions or objections which they may have had before they were abducted, canned and placed in the supermarket.  Any deviation in shape, size or colour is automatically a production fault, given that this product, or human, will be a “hard sell”.  It is marked as waste.  Those who make it to the shelf are marginally luckier: they are given a sell-by date which expires as soon as they become unmarketable. This is the day when they become waste, as well. 

In this new economic architecture, if something is not sellable, or doesn’t receive any monetizable “airtime”, then it is absolutely useless. Our birth and death are commodities, what happens in between is one, big consumatronic transaction.  The real tragedy of humanity is that it became wholly owned by its obsession to own everything. Humans themselves became products: their time, their thoughts, their space, their freedom, became monetizable assets, first through the slavery of money, then by The Thing.

This unsustainable system can only come to an end with the death of the single-use, monetised product. As long as everything on this planet continues to be treated as a product and not a resource, it will come with a price, a sell-by date, and ultimately a death sentence.  As long as the Unhappiness Machine is woven deep into our everyday social and cultural fabric, this civilisation will spin, spiral, crash and dismantle itself in one, big, spectacular collapse.

Such is the grip of this system on us that, the vast majority of humans today consider capitalism inevitable and cannot even imagine a different life. This effectively means that they consider natural destruction, the climate crisis, colonialism, exploitation, inequality and racism inevitable, as these are the values which sustain this system.  Those who believe that profit, free-market necrocapitalism and limitless technological disruption are inevitable, are essentially conceding that this climate crisis is also inevitable. This is the most criminal, defeatist and idiotic surrender to an existential demise which was entirely preventable. Future humans who may survive the implosion of civilisation will know that most of us were distracted on our screens, just as everything was collapsing. 

The new, atomized substitute of make-believe society we are being served is nothing but a collection of commodified, single-use life forms. It is not only anti-human. It is anti-life, in all its incarnations.  Yet despite having been reduced to monetisable, single-use commodities, we have learned to accept, and expect, our own exploitation by the necroeconomy.  

So far, the rewards of our obedience were enough to gaslight us into believing that this frenetic world is worth the stress, sacrifice and loss of personal freedom, and that there are no better options. 

But now that the rewards are vanishing with the collapse of the necroeconomy, all that is left is the stress, the exploitation, and the pain and regret for the freedom we have relinquished.  As profits vanish, The Thing will try to confiscate the last remaining scraps for itself, then charge us for it. Self-destruction is in the DNA of this economic machine. We need to get off this vehicle, before it jumps off the cliff.  And we can only do this by breaking our leash, and opening our eyes to the only viable way of existence: where nothing is owned, and everything is sovereign.

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons 

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