Let me be your prophet

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What we live today is the fast degradation of both natural and human-built environment. Human race reached a point in which, we all seem to agree, it can destroy its own habitat and thus commit suicide. And it seems quite inclined to do so. If we look back at the history of humankind, we realize that “humanity” is an over-rated notion: we humans have always suffered from the illusion that our race is the one which gives meaning to the word “life”. We learn at school how man tamed the other animals and the natural forces, how he is capable to rearrange the biophysical landscape for his own needs and survival, or how he deciphers the mysteries of the universe. We conquer the Space and we publish “Time”.

The history of politics has been maybe the best environment for this illusion: at the beginning there were the kings and priests. They and only they among all humans (and among, of course, all beings) represented gods, the ultimate principles of life on Earth and in the entire Universe. Then there was God, the god of all gods, the principle of all principles. And with him, his prophets, representatives of the representatives, kings of all kings, be them present or future, local or foreign. But the highest rank among humans was reached by the “chosen one”: not only simple representative of God, but flesh from his flesh. His son. The incarnated son of the ultimate principle of existence in the Universe. Throughout the next 2000 years of our civilization, politics was the process of continuous (re)arrangement of power between populations, their representatives, the representative of the representatives and God.

We live today the strange decline of representativity. It is strange because it coincides with its boldest claim human logics is capable of: since God himself is dead, and since the afore-mentioned illusion is structural, it might be that we are in fact gods. Or even God. It's not yet very clear how, but as long as there's no one above our heads anymore, we have the freedom to improvise the making of our godliness.

The best known tools: money and political positions. The two reinforce each-other, create power, change laws, start wars, destroy populations and their habitats, impose austerity, keep all individuals under surveillance. Left and right are the extremes of the internal power struggle between the two. The more a state is “social-democratic”, the fastest the politicians get rich and join the opposite camp. The more “liberal”, the more powerful the money-owners and the more dependent on them the politicians.

You allow political or economical power to grow, it will naturally never stop. Richest humans control the economical survival of millions; the most powerful politicians treat the globe as their personal puzzle game. And, on top of it, the natural environment with all other species, are just details pestering the main game. If humans can be collateral damage, animal, plants, rivers and mountains are just accidental urban landscape. The money-holders and the politicians wipe forests and populations from the face of the Earth, because they can and because there's no higher authority to judge them.

From Ecuador to Romania, and from Congo to United States, natural resources are ripped off at any costs (as long as they are not in the backyard of the companies' executives ) so that some numbers grow in the computers of some banks. From Syria to Ukraine and from Afghanistan to Kosovo, people are killed, for they are just pawns in the hands of the play-makers.

All this happens because we all suffer from the sick illusion of representativity. Even the poorest thinks s/he is superior to the animal s/he kills or the tree that s/he cuts. And any poor individual dreams of becoming rich and powerful, and so to represent humanity as the highest race, and to represent other humans as their authority.

It is each any every one of us who support the concentration of financial and political power in the hands of few, because we hope to become one of those few. We hope to find the meaning of life by squeezing the life out of the others and consume it. A little like the bloody countess Bathory. The only metaphysical gesture left is to raise your own head above the others.

This sickness might lose us all. Because the stones don't care about us. We are not more important than them, but the big realization is that we cannot destroy them. We cannot tame nature and we cannot destroy nature. We are just like any other population of bacteria, we take some place, we develop in a direction or another and we might disappear some day, like any species. What makes us “special” is that we developed self-consciousness and with it the ability to commit suicide.But self-consciousness is not superior to having fur or 15 legs.

So let's stop wining about how unjust “the world” is. The world doesn't care. While we consider normal that one individual or a few represent a whole nation and decide for the course of everyone else's life; while we consider normal that one individual or a few have a financial power equal to that of millions of other individuals; and while we consider normal to allow the powerful to decide the faith of the air we breathe; we deserve our faith, for we provoke it.

The crisis of representativity is so dazzling that it blinds us. Hopefully we will still be here when we'll decide to stop allowing our representatives to kill us. Or when we'll decide to listen to the stones' opinions.

Human communities have no higher goal than the existential cluelessness of any of its members, let's face it.