Our economic system has preyed upon our survival instincts to turn us into insecure consumatrons. The more we define ourselves by what we own, the more this system owns us. We have come to a point in our history where our sense of self-worth is drawn not from self-respect, but from our level of access to brands. Our very identity has been handed over to consumer brands, who offer to sell it back to us for a fee: it is these brands who decide whether we are happy or not, and what it is we need to buy next to feel more comfortable with ourselves. We are not simply inhabiting a sad dystopia. We have been owned. The more unfulfilled we are made to feel by the Unhappiness Machine, the more enslaved to greed and consumption we are. Becoming product-free is the only way for a consumatron to begin reclaiming their identity from the consumaverse. Outside this prison there are no fancy shoes or clothes, but the consumatron can walk with their head held high. They can gradually become human again.
Necrocapitalism is pushing every life form and resource down the supermarketization route: whereas consumers used to exercise power through the use of currency, they have now become currency themselves. The necrosystem has come full circle: training itself on the consumption data it collects to further exploit its most monetizable asset: the consumer. The role of the consumer is no longer only to consume, but to be a commodity in the hands of tech corporations. Each consumatron has a three-fold task: to buy products, to work for the necrosystem, and to produce a monetizable data footprint which trains the AI psychonomy. In this self-reinforcing loop of exploitation, humans are the losers. It is the greatest scam of all time, so perfectly executed that it is easy to miss. Each of us is a tradeable data set receiving all the exploitation and none of the proceeds. If this all sounds too perverted to believe, it is because of the clever work of the dystopia. We are all victims of self-endorsed blackmail.
The greatest casualty of the consumatronic dystopia has been our moral compass. The repercussions of digital supermarketization on ethics are catastrophic. We are habituated to treat others as inanimate products we scroll through as we increasingly interact with other humans purely on transactional terms. Whether it is an employee we are about to hire, a friend we turn to or a potential partner we just swiped right on Tinder, all facets of our life are beginning to resemble a consumeristic “browsing” process.
Within the necrosystem all things, people or ideas that are difficult to exploit, commoditize and weaponize are deemed absolutely worthless. Values such as dignity, compassion, equality, environmentalism, are red alerts for the necrosystem: they are loss-makers, extremely risky areas for our capitalist society to “invest” in. They only become profitable when weaponized for political campaigns or economic gain. Brands and politicians have learned to play the “equality” card well whenever they need the votes, pretending to support minorities and LGBTQ rights. Our police forces increasingly see people as objects, treating protesters as props in a videogame obstacle course. Soon it will be easier to program compassion into robot policemen, than “re-program” it into real humans. Yearly surveys by city authorities in the future will reassure citizens: “new survey finds that robot police forces continue to be more effective, compassionate, and less racist than real humans”. We are entering an era of incredible heartlessness as we gradually lose our social and empathetic skillset.
George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist.
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George Tsakraklides 
We moderns have been trained from birth to see life as a never ending war against ourselves. Contrary to what we have been taught, there is no other, all is one. What we do to our fictional other, we do to our selves. What goes around comes around. Our egoic blindspot has become too big in modern times and we are being sucked in to a selfish black hole faster and faster. Our natural psychological evolution would appear to progress from a prepersonal state, to a personal state, and on to a transpersonal state. Our hierarchy has blocked our progression to the transpersonal stage. Without reaching transpersonal (aka cosmic) consciousness we are doomed to murder the other, that is actually us. There is no other. Our tiny ego and “cult” ural hierarchy story has tricked us into only seeing other. All against all is a fictional reality that we are stuck in. We suffer from a tragic and fatal identity crisis. We suffer from spiritual amnesia. Love Rick
Beautiful
In the Keep Hope Dead department, all of our fossil fuel data center-delivered thought takes place in the context of the world’s number 1 oil-consuming nation having set a record of 1Trillion $ in retail sales during the monotheist-baby-in-a-cradle buying period, as r/collapse’s Wave of Anal Fury has researched.
Humans have the unenviable task of living out the evolution of the cosmic consciousness of the cosmos from pre to trans and possibly beyond. From evolution to involution to evolution to involution and on and on. We appear to be stuck in a self reinforcing feedback loop of behavior that is completely self destructive. Stress appears to be the evolutionary driver. We are obviously in di/bi stress and struggling with arrested development of our consciousness. We may have already failed the test we were inadvertently given by the cosmos. Our lot appears to be to achieve transpersonal consciousness or extinction. We are definitly heading for extreme stress. Are we going to pass the test? Did we already flunk? Love Rick
We are failing to recognize what “buddha” saw in his minds eye. I AM THAT ! “We are the cosmic giggle” As all are. We are in school. The school of “evolution”. Suffering from the great forgetting as the evolution / involution drama plays out. No point to it except to grow consciously and observe and experience the play. Outer to inner and inner to outer evolution. Everything else is a distraction. The cosmic EVOLUTION is experiencing itself through the life struggle. In all of it’s dichotomy. Life/ Death, Ugliness/ Beauty, Good/Evil, etc. etc. etc. It is all THAT. Pure sensory experience in all of it’s /THAT’s bipolar consciousness dream. THAT is both dreamer and the dreamed. No other. All is one. Oneness through and through. No dichotomy. No outside, no inside. Just experience. But there are con- sequences for the dreamed actors in the play/drama to keep it interesting.
LOVE Rick
All the “UNI VERSE” is the stage. We are all THAT’s many alter ego’s playing out the dream in real time. Some able to see the shadows on the cave wall partly recognizing all is not what it seems.
THAT, the DREAMER, the metaphysical aspect of UNIVERSE, is experiencing physicality, personality, emotionality, etc. through the dreamed forms. Without prejudice THAT can have an experience of creation from literally millions of physical forms.
Also interestingly the DREAMER has actually managed to forget that it is both the Dreamer and the Dreamed to make the experience more exciting, interesting and spontaneously evolutionary one could say.
It is hard to say if we “humans” are the only ones with this identity crisis/ amnesia. It is certainly possible and that scientism/materialism may be our dead end in the dream. Our block against the metaphysical aspects of reality.