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10:2

(In »The free and open Internet versus the ecological apocalypse«)

We thus live in an age that lacks a credible utopia, but that at the same time is coloured by a doomsday narrative that is every bit as powerful as it is threatening in the political discourse. Environmental issues are constantly on the agenda, as is the collective guilty conscience because these issues are constantly being down-prioritised by politicians who instead give priority to short-term measures on hip-pocket issues, measures that might perhaps yield the odd job opportunity but that also damage or preclude the necessary improvements in the environment. The growing plurarchy in a society where everyone talks at cross purposes, and increasingly vociferously focuses on pseudo-issues, evokes a paralysing state of hypercynicism (see The Netocrats). At the same time it is at precisely chaotic points in history of this type that new metaphysical systems are established – with Pauline Christianity in the crumbling Roman Empire and Kantian individualism in conjunction with the French Revolution as two very clear examples – and there is no reason to believe that our age should be any different in this respect.