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14:41

(In »Syntheist temples and monasteries in the global empire«)

Via a parallel development, the avoidance of pain and suffering has become late capitalism’s primary obsession. This avoidance has become a widespread social game. The result is a restless and deeply ignorant citizen who seeks immediate rewards, while avoiding everything that requires the least bit of patience and postponement of the reward. Postmodern popular culture is permeated by this strategy, which is designed to always take the shortest route to this or that objective on every occasion. Nothing may require anything, bad news must be silenced and repressed, complex truths must be hidden, for if the situation actually requires something of the consumer, she might of course turn in the doorway and quite simply choose to go to a more ingratiating competitor. However, this strategy requires that nature is in a permanent state of balance without antagonisms. But this balanced state in nature is a myth. Syntheist ecology therefore begins with the insight that everything in existence, including nature, is process and constant motion, as the syntheist philosopher Alfred North Whitehead expresses the matter. Stability is in the best case a parenthesis; in the worst case – and most probably – a pure delusion. Solidarity through organic unity is pitted against mechanical instrumentality.