Socialising the Anthropocene or "Staying with the Trouble"

Credit:  Humans of Late Capitalism A new study published in Nature warns that ‘There is a 93% chance that global warming will exceed 4 o C by the end of this century.’ The rules have changed. It is no longer about awaiting for disaster (or mediating its creation) to make profit. It is now about accepting disaster as the norm and capitalizing on the need for revolution. Hyperabundance has lead to system saturation. We are at a critical juncture in human history where the conventional capitalistic approaches to the economy, the environment and to society have to radically reconfigure themselves to stay above the surface. While people are frozen by fear and/or confusion the system adjusts and brings new tricks out of its hat, novel solutions, new revolutions: The Problem The way we eat is fundamentally unsustainable. WWF reports that 60% of current biodiversity loss is down to meat-based diets. Amazon deforestation , ocean dead-zones – and this is only foc...

What do 9/11, a tsunami in Southeast Asia and the 2007 financial crisis have in common, investigates Naomi Klein in her book ‘ The Shock Doctrine’ . And the answer is simple: the after-effect that they produce, i.e. shock and awe. Populist world leaders, natural disasters due to exacerbating climate change , failed political negotiations with severe social and environmental implications; it proves hard to connect to this hyper reality and hold on. And this weakened, disoriented state that this hyperstream of information leaves us in only produces numbness. There is just too much happening to keep up with. Maybe this is why there was absolutely no social uprising following the release of the Paradise Papers . But what happens when political figures take advantage of this numbness and add to it with diversion techniques, only to aggressively push through their political agendas while no one is paying attention? Trump bickers with TIME magazine and makes interna...