Source: The Disaster of Philanthropy and Capitalism – YES! Magazine
“The idea is to pull off a digital version of the Enclosure of the Commons and put huge powers into the hands of an increasingly hardening police state.” —Arundhati Roy
“If brute force doesn’t work, you’re not using enough of it!” has been proposed as the central operating principle of the modern world. It is a plausible candidate because it captures the compulsive logic of the marauder, empire builders, clear-cutters, strip miners, corporate tycoons, militarists, and true believers of all kinds who shaped the past two centuries. Brute force does not negotiate with history, hubris, culture, biology, old knowledge, ethics, foresight, and the unknown. It eschews humility, persuasion by reasoned debate, and ethical limits, and it abhors empathy, compassion, and the discipline of place. In the fossil fuel era, the logic of brute force escaped from confinement and went on a planetary rampage and now pervades virtually all human activity. It masquerades as progress, but the disguise conceals a darker reality. A prime example, at the far edge of insanity, is the logically airtight, mathematically rigorous strategy of “Mutual Assured Destruction,” which informs our testosterone-saturated foreign policies and by which Armageddon hangs by an oh-so-slender thread. For what great cause, exactly, would one push the button to destroy the planet? What national interest, or reputational advantage, or great cause might be served? Who would be around to ponder such things and sift through the debris left by the most brutish of brute-force weaponry?
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