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Ecological apocalypse
The dystopian conviction that the global socio-economic system under capitalism is heading towards the consumption of the Earth’s finite resources and environmental destruction on such a scale that it radically worsens human life on the planet or even makes it impossible. According to syntheism the direct interconnection between all the inhabitants of the world and the phenomena in their environment through the sacred Internet is the only logical if utopian possibility of avoiding the ecological apocalypse.
The syntheistic mission receives its eschatological fuel from the approaching ecological apocalypse, which in itself is an unavoidable consequence of a world without faith in a relevant divinity. Only through a new syntheistic meta-narrative, constructed on the utopian conviction that humanity’s only possible salvation is through its creation of Syntheos, can the ecological apocalypse be avoided. It is not possible to preserve human life on the planet with any amount of politics. For politics is subservient to the capitalist drive.html">death drive – there is no chance of becoming a leading politician without first becoming dependent on the statist-corporativistic power structure – which does its utmost to grind on relentlessly with its ruthless plundering of resources until the planet is uninhabitable and lifeless. The planet can only be saved for continued human life with the aid of a new religion, a metaphysics driven by a utopia concerning a physically functional future for our children and their children.
Everything is religion, but everything is also politics. And politics is religion, and religion is to a high degree politics. Without utopias there are no visions, and without visions there is no collective and organised hope of a better life in a society that has undergone desirable changes. In a society without utopias, cynical isolationism reigns supreme in the public arena. For this reason, such a society is the most dangerous society of all. Each and every person at the most cares about herself and her loved ones, but displays a programmatic disinterest in how everyone else fares. This lack of social cohesion sooner or later leads to societal collapse within all key areas. The opposite of utopia is, as we know, dystopia. The approaching ecological apocalypse has emerged as our time’s great and dominant dystopia. The fateful question that will be decisive for the 21st century is how the approaching ecological apocalypse is to be prevented or at least tackled in order to ameliorate or postpone it if possible.
Political ideology in the Internet age has two metaphysical starting points. First of all, there is the enormous expansion of the Internet and takeover of power that opens the arena for an antagonism between the rising netocracy – which with the aid of its ever-more powerful networks wants to liberate information flows – and the marginalised bourgeoisie, which with its nation states and major corporations wants to fence in and control information flows. And, secondly, there is the approaching ecological apocalypse, which absolutely must be averted if humanity is to survive at all. The syntheist politician is therefore first and foremost an environmentalist netocrat. But in order for syntheism to succeed in realising its ambition of opening the door to theological anarchism, it is being forced to take on the conflict with the old capitalist power structure, which consists of the nation states and the big global corporations.
We seek the answers to these questions for example in the French philosopher Michael Foucault’s pragmatist ethics: If the transparentisation begins from the top down – that is, if it is the rulers who have all of their secrets exposed first – it can be implemented painlessly throughout the entire power structure from the top and all the way down. On the other hand, if the transparentisation begins from the bottom up, the consequence will no doubt be a capitalist police state, and thereby – apart from all the other misery that such a development would entail – the ecological apocalypse would soon be unavoidable. It is the citizens who must first know everything about the activities of the nation state and the major corporations rather than the statist-corporatist establishment being allowed to bug and register the citizens’ opinions and preferences.
The dystopia concerns itself with the finite, utopianism focuses on the infinite. Accordingly, the fight for the free and open Internet is the answer to what must be done; it is the engine that drives the new utopia rather than the brake that hinders the old dystopia. What we are talking about here is far more than just parallel phenomena in the market for the shaping public opinion: syntheism is de facto the name of the digital integrity movement’s underlying metaphysics. This explains why the fight for the free and open Internet is the central political struggle in the 21st century. All other important political conflicts that play out during, and contribute to giving colour to, informationalism’s growth, are completely dependent on how this conflict unfolds. It concerns far more than the growing netocracy’s striving to ignore the ruling bourgeoisie, which has controlled the world since the paradigm of the printing press gained broad acceptance. Beyond the fight for the free and open Internet, the approaching ecological apocalypse is rearing its ugly head: a potential catastrophe that capitalism is responsible for and at the same time evidently lacks the ability to prevent.
There is a risk of planet Earth becoming uninhabitable for human beings within a few generations – many of the various deleterious effects for which humans are responsible are already irreparable – unless this development leading towards the ecological apocalypse is halted and steered in an environmentally friendly direction. We already know how the capitalist society governed from the top-down, with individualism as the State religion, is managing the ecological apocalypse; this insidious catastrophe has of course been created by this system, which has subsequently shown that it is unable to rectify the damage. On the other hand, the growing and aspiring netocracy has a burning interest in saving the Earth for human life – and moreover access to a considerable arsenal of new communications tools with which to do this – in contrast to the cynical and resigned bourgeoisie. The free and open Internet is therefore a necessary milestone in order for ecological salvation to be possible at all.
The statist-corporatist establishment understands the Internet as a disagreeable and unruly hydra – moreover extremely difficult to handle when it comes to exploiting information flows and making money (see The Netocrats) – that constantly disrupts and is gradually eroding the foundations of the patriarchal fantasies of omnipotence of politicians and business leaders. Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical concept of the real could hardly be more fitting than when it comes to describing the digital hydra that is creeping up on the old patriarch and threatening to expose the latter’s mental nakedness. For the rapidly growing netocracy however, the Internet is a sacred phenomenon, both for the netocracy per se and for its desire to save the planet for the survival of humanity. The truth is of course that the more time passes, the more alternative contingency plans collapse; and accordingly the closer humanity comes to the ecological apocalypse, the more clearly the free and open Internet emerges as the only tool with which the planet can be saved for human life. In an information, communication and network society, ecological salvation must occur through information, communication and networking in order to have a chance of succeeding. There are no other options. Therefore the insight that the free and open Internet is the only conceivable ecological saviour is growing steadily ever-stronger.
In an age obsessed with syntheist network dynamics, history cannot credibly strive for either feudalist eternities or capitalist progress. Above all, the human being has of course not changed much during the course of history, at least not into something objectively better than she has been previously. For example, we use a smaller part of our brain today than we did 10,000 years ago, mainly due to the fact that more and more of the calculations and considerations essential for our lives are today outsourced to external technology instead of being managed by the brain in-house. This fact kills meliorism. Syntheist utopianism instead focuses on planning for the definitive event, informationalism’s fundamental metaphysical idea. For this reason syntheists are fighting for both the free and open Internet with its anarchist information flows and against the ecological apocalypse in order to save the fundamental prerequisite for human survival, the planet itself. That in addition social policy must be pursued based on the principle of minimisation of harm – not with banal, knee-jerk moralism as its guiding light – is a foregone conclusion based on these two positions. The free and open Internet is also of course driving chemical liberation – one of our three dramatic revolutions at the start of the Internet age – and we cannot take care of our planet in a constructive way if we do not also take care of each other in a constructive and preferably also a loving way. Syntheism is the social theory of everything that merges these three ideological projects.
Syntheism’s community, on the other hand, is open and therefore radically different from the concept of the society. It encourages the creation of living narratives, which the syntheist community can gather around; narratives that bring together many disparate groups and create a powerful hegemonisation. This hegemonisation is the articulation of a common vision for disparate groups and identities. The name of a community is of central value, and the name must include, rather than exclude the outsider. For it is only with the outsider inside the community’s walls that the particular can give life to the universal and the universal can give life to the syntheist utopia. It is to the outsider that the syntheist agent reaches out on the free and open Internet, and it is together with the outsider that the syntheist agent can save the planet from ecological apocalypse. Only thus. It is in the communication and cooperation between outsiders that the Internet displays its historically completely unique potential. On the Internet, we can demonstrate to each other in action that we believe in the same thing and in this way build rock-solid trust, which opens up completely undreamt of possibilities for us to play new, complex non-zero-sum games with in fact outsiders. When push comes to shove, the free and open Internet is a brilliant deification of Syntheos, the created God. The logical conclusion is therefore a given: What happens if the Internet is God? We decide the answer together.
Last modified 7. August 2016 at 00:05:58