Profiteers talk about capitalism-a life of drudgery wasted producing endless crap to maximize the profits of an undeserving elite-in glowing terms. Let’s laugh at those lies and talk about truth and reality. With joy!
So, it’s beginning to seep in that our species is killing itself by producing mountains of useless crap (commodities and luxuries), a process that emits gigatons of CO2 and renders the Earth nearly uninhabitable.
It’s getting harder to put lipstick on the pig of modern civilization. Whether it’s capitalism, dictatorship or communism, people work hard every day in a dismal abdication of the joy of living-they work the best days, years, decades of their life for elites. This is an abomination.
But nobody says this. They simply see this as necessary, as unquestionable or—at minimum—unavoidable. But it’s completely avoidable. These worldwide systems of exploitation and waste and stupidity cannot exist without our active cooperation. They are fragile systems and they need us.
People can see the essential connection between a dying Earth (and it’s a homicide) and the various economic and political systems everywhere—all of which demeans human life in favor of service to elites.
Not much has changed since the world of monarchy. Only the method of keeping people in line has evolved. And it’s time we stopped seeing them as competing systems—communism and capitalism and nearly every other significant system currently in operation IS a system of exploitation. The main difference between them is who the beneficiaries are. In all of these cases, the beneficiaries are elites who do no work but issue all of the orders.
No system that abuses both human life and the entire ecosystem of the planet should be obeyed. I think we need a broader term for systems of exploitation that includes all of these systems. Let’s create a tentative neologism right now, for convenience: Stultitianism.
This term is taken from the latin word for stupidity. And it reminds me of the word stultifying which is an excellent description of what these systems do to human beings.
We Have Outgrown This
Our species possesses a valuable and hard earned skill: science. Now science isn’t everything but properly used, it is an excellent survival skill. Used stupidly, as it is under Stultitianism, it’s deadly.
We must be less stupid, and harness science properly to both survive the current crises and to enable future generations to live better than us.
We need to listen to the scientists. They told us publicly and in no uncertain terms decades ago: stop producing gigatons of CO2 or suffer the consequences. Of course, they were right. Our civilization chose to ignore them, to INCREASE CO2 emissions, and we see the beginning of the consequences of that decision today.
And yet we can’t seem to see the ending consequences of our continued willful stupidity: massive starvation and suffering and death. Much of it, even at this late date, avoidable.
We opt for devastation with the idea that, afterwards, we will try to mitigate the worst effects. It’s like we are steering our cruise ship towards and iceberg, with plans to use the (insufficient number of) lifeboats to survive. Our approach is both stupid and ineffective.
Let us resolve, from this moment forward, to stop having THEIR conversation using THEIR terminology and spreading THEIR self-serving lies. Let us describe reality in stark terms, directly with no apology.
Let’s make the entire planet uncomfortable with its decision to commit ecocide. And let’s begin the process of withdrawing our cooperation from Stultitianism, and let everyone know that we have an excellent alternative to universal doom—IF we decide to act on it.
Sorry, Doomers and Apologists for Stupidity. But It’s Ridiculous To Give Up and It Would Be Child Abuse.
I’m against child abuse. How about you?
Continuing to emit gigatons of CO2 is massive worldwide child abuse. It’s turning our children’s and grandchildren’s planet into a hellhole. Morally, it’s an abysmal and unforgivable crime.
I don’t want to cooperate with this. I don’t want to be a part of it. I want a better world, and even though the biosphere is already significantly and permanently damaged, we can change direction and stabilize it at some level. But if we don’t stop emitting all this CO2, we will maximize the damage and therefore the magnitude of our destruction.
The stupidity and cruelty and selfishness and defeatism ends with us, if we make the choice to end it. I have already made that choice. There is a small but growing group of people who made that choice. We call ourselves The Saners because we understand that to knowingly ruin the planet we all live on would be insane.
Degrowth And Scare Tactics Exposed
Yesterday, I saw and heard a guy in a car blasting loud obnoxious music. His car was emblazoned with Harris-Walz signs. He was a Trump supporter trying to antagonize Harris supporters in hopes of decreasing her votes.
It was obvious.
Well, it’s obvious to me that there are a whole slew of excuses for rejecting sanity. Some were created by well-meaning people and are being exploited by elites (as they exploit everything).
Degrowth is one of the newest. Degrowth is like an obnoxious loud car “promoting” Harris. The authorities and propagandists love the idea of degrowth because it terrifies their servants (us) into fearing change. It makes everyone worry that they will have NOTHING.
Actually, by producing less—if we limited our labor to producing almost exclusively necessities like healthy food, shelter, medicine and the like—we would trade lifetimes of drudgery and servitude for MORE LIFE.
Would you be better off spending an hour playing backgammon with your children, or “being productive” making gewgaws and emitting unnecessary CO2, making crap that ultimately ends up in landfills? You are not given the choice, of course. But nevertheless, you cooperate without question in the activity that dooms your children.
Taking An Alternative That You Are Not Offered
Sanerism, the alternative to what we have today, has evolved from a limited idea to an entire worldview and a course of action.
The original intent was to minimize the scope. We wanted to listen to the scientists, sharply slash fossil fuels, and stabilize the climate for survival. The approach to making the change happen would be nonviolent noncooperation—the force that powered most of the successful movements throughout history.
This is STILL the heart of Sanerism—but not the whole thing.
Two areas where Sanerism fell short became apparent. First, we needed a way to meet the requirement of slashing fossil fuels, ideally the least painful way. And second, we needed to make the changes to our society permanent, so that the destruction isn’t resumed after what would amount to merely a pause.
To meet these challenges, Sanerism expanded—and now focuses largely on a positive benefit. We envision a better more humane civilization going forward, replacing the current unsustainable shitshow.
The approach to forcing the required changes itself yields the biggest benefit: less work gets us less stuff—that’s true. But it exchanges mere stuff for more TIME and MORE LIFE. This is an incredibly appealing choice that isn’t offered.
But although it isn’t given to us, we can and must take it. We must disobey. We must refuse to do what is expected and even demanded of us. We must stop the activity that is destroying the ecosystem.
And we can. People have done this successfully throughout history. This is how ordinary people shut down the Soviet Empire. This is the most effective way to remove dictators. Nonviolent noncooperation is how people desegregated the American South over the objections of racist authorities.
And this is how we can—and must—prevent climate collapse and build the first humane civilization in human history. We begin by harnessing the goodness within ourselves.
We are not focused on revenge or making an enemy suffer.
We are devoted to bringing out the best in ourselves and, by setting an example, in others. We focus on making the necessary changes and improvements. We are making a better world to be enjoyed by everyone, even our opponents.
Remember, the evil they commit is rooted in stupidity. They cannot see that their greed and selfishness and ideology is a force that is destroying everything, including everything they love. It is destroying their children and if they are allowed to succeed, they will be despised by their own suffering children.
When we win, everyone wins.
Yes, Successful Movements Are Tricky and Authorities Worldwide Will Do Everything They Can to Dismiss Us and To Stop Us.
I cannot promise you that making these changes will be easy. I cannot even guarantee success. But we KNOW that continuing on our current course is climate collapse and a world of suffering that makes today’s world look like paradise.
We know that there is an alternative worth fighting for, a survivable planet and a beautiful caring civilization.
They want us to give up. And there are people with terms and clever nonsense who want us to give up: doomers, Big Oil, people who fear change, people devoted to ideologies that excuse Stultitianism.
Degrowth is useful to Big Oil and other climate criminals because it is unattractive to people and because it ignores the biggest benefit of lower production—which is MORE LIFE.
I can’t cover every aspect of Sanerism here. There is much more to the strategy and tactics, and to the objectives. But we—all of us even the elites who are committing atrocities against humanity—actually have a common interest. We all live on the same Earth. We all share the wonderful yet terrifying human condition and human experience.
We all want to LIVE LIFE and not merely waste our short period of existence as cogs in a factory or office.
We can. We must. Please join us. Sign up at WeAreSaners.org/join.
“Stultitarianism” is a great word!!
Thank you! I try…