The Thing: It Is Alive and Intelligent 

Evolution has come a long way, perhaps longer than we thought.  We would like to believe that we, humans, represent the forefront of evolution on Earth.  But there are arguably other forms of existence which supersede us, including some which precede us.  The most terrifying life form on the planet is our own economic system: a logistical intelligence network developed by humans to serve humans, but increasingly able to think for itself, and only of itself.  Although humans are its creators, they have been reduced to a resource: they are the maintenance engineers working on its expansion while being exploited and monetized by it.  This civilisation is already working for its future boss: the algorithms whose raison d’etre is increasingly unknown to us.

It is a bizarre symbiosis having taken millennia to evolve.  What keeps humans enslaved to this system is the dogma that profit is the goal of any advanced social organisation.  The hard financial figures now rule everything on this planet.  Everything else is secondary, including humans. 

At the most fundamental level, a life form is defined as an entity that can replicate.  Our economic system is so efficient, adaptable and vicious in its search for profit that it fulfils all criteria classifying it not only as a life form, but as a semi-sentient one for that matter.  Nothing can kill it, not even its creators who have become servants and dependents within it.  This system has proven to be the ultimate predatory life form: capable of surviving on scraps, and even eat itself if it has to.  Most of all, this economic system feeds on death itself: it thrives on expiration dates, diminishing resources, extinction, disposable fashion, multiple forms of slavery and planned obsolescence.  It owes its existence and persistence down to its ability to live out of the carcass of its own mother, the Earth.  It is a death cult, and it is time we start calling it by its real name: necrocapitalism.   If all this sounds too much like the Matrix movie series, think about why we are heading full speed towards self-destruction.  The reason why we have not solved the climate crisis and overshoot of civilisation is because we are not really the ones in control of our destiny.  Our psychonomic system is in control of everything.  It is our boss, keeping us in check with alarm clocks, salaries and consumer propaganda.  We live under the delusion that we developed an economic system which works for us, when we are in fact the ones working for “it”.  Our economic system is our slave master: always ready to discard us along with its toxic waste if we refuse to participate in its sweatshop operation.  Whether this system represents a higher or lower form of intelligence really doesn’t matter.  What matters is who has the upper hand, and it’s not us anymore.  To avoid a pointless, philosophical and narcissistically human-centric debate on the sentience or not of this system, I will resort for now to refer to this necrocapitalist entity as “The Thing”, also to avoid direct comparisons with DNA-based biological life forms.  Some people, including myself, may at times refer to The Thing as capitalism.  Others may refer to it as a form of artificial intelligence.  

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist.

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