Photo by Andreas Klassen on Unsplash
Productivity is mostly a vice.
Ah, the gods of productivity! How we worship them!
We act as if productivity is the most important thing on Earth, as if it’s more important than life itself. Indeed, we sacrifice the best days, years and decades of our lives to productivity. We work in offices and on factory floors, isolated from the planet, from the wind and stars and mountains and rivers.
We spend our time inside destroying that planet. And wasting our lives. In return, we (sometimes) get stuff…or at least the promise of more stuff. And, maybe sometime in the mythical future, we can stop going to the office and factory and—with whatever minimal energy and time we have left—finally live.
Unless, as we increasingly find, we can never retire and die at work. In which case, we wasted our entire lives working to destroy the planet and doom our children.
Don’t you think, just maybe, there’s something wrong with this?
Our Leaders and Systems Are Ridiculous
When people suffer because of austerity, they say it’s a necessary sacrifice which working people make to the god, Productivity. The executives and the wealthy and the authorities deem it so, and who are we to question them?
If the authorities say we need inflation through tariffs, some of us may object but we can do nothing. We put our heads down and go back to work—as we are told.
We are passive, obedient, and TRUE BELIEVERS that all of this sacrifice is necessary and good and character building. It must be! Otherwise, why would everyone be going along with it? And who wants to be the fool who brings attention to himself by openly objecting, by speaking out, by offering a better alternative and a way to get there?
I do. WE do. We are The Saners.
Not Just A Climate Group
The Saners is a small but growing worldwide movement. We are in more than 20 countries—but we plan to be everywhere. Our objectives and methods have broad appeal, because they reflect people’s hearts and because they are bold yet realistic.
We want out of the rat race. We don’t care about abstractions, ideologies, and all the lies told to keep us in line. We are done listening.
The Saners started as a climate group, pledging ourselves to listen to the science and do what’s necessary—over the objections of authorities—to prevent climate collapse. But our vision expanded. We now intend to solve the entire polycrisis.
We understand that to live, people don’t need money or jobs or “the economy.” We don’t need 90% of the crap we waste our lives producing.
And every single unnecessary thing we produce damages the planet with increased CO2 emissions and in other environmentally toxic ways.
We refuse to perform any production that’s not worth it, that does more harm than good. We won’t produce luxury goods for the wealthy—no private jets or yachts. But we also won’t produce useless shiny disposable commodities for ourselves—stuff we were taught to crave, to feel like we need in our obligatory role as consumers.
We need less stuff. We demand more time and freedom and life.
We will produce things—things people actually need or provide really substantial value, value that exceeds the cost in time and damage to the Earth. We will produce food and clothing and shelter and medicine—and share them with everyone so we can all live without unnecessary fear or suffering.
Nothing will be produced for profit. Nothing. There is no need or moral justification for servitude. We choose to live as human beings, not as mere human resources.
How will we make this happen? By building our movement, and our skills as activists, and by implementing a series of strategically powerful nonviolent campaigns, culminating in a new better culture and civilization worldwide.
How can we possibly do this? By learning from history—because people power has dislodged dictators and humbled empires and forced moral progress against the most fearsome of foes. We learn from Gandhi and King and countless less famous people who further expanded our knowledge and capabilities to fix a broken world.
Join us. Be a part of the solution. Sign up at WeAreSaners.org/join.
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