Monbiot: Lost in the 21st Century

By George Monbiot
Source: The Guardian
February 5, 2015

.....Now it appears that the feast to which we were invited is only for the few. Figures released last week show that wages in the UK are lower than they were 13 years ago. A fortnight ago, Oxfam revealed that [link:the top 1% now possess 48% of the world’s wealth;|the top 1% now possess 48% of the world’s wealth]; by next year they will own as much as everybody else put together. On the same day, an Austrian company unveiled its design for a new superyacht. Built on the hull of an oil tanker, it will be 280 metres (918 ft) long. There will be 11 decks, three helipads, theatres, concert halls and restaurants, electric cars to take owner and guests from one end of the ship to the other, and a four-storey ski slope.

In 1949 Aldous Huxley wrote to George Orwell to argue that his dystopian vision was the more convincing. “The lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience … The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency.” I don’t believe he was wrong.

Consumerism is at odds with common purpose: you could pay your taxes or you could spend the money on a new car. It stifles feeling, dulling our concern for other people. Freedom to spend displaces other freedoms, as lotus eating allows us to forget our losses. Most forms of peaceful protest are now banned, but no one stops us from devouring the resources upon which future generations will depend. All this helps the global oligarchs to rip holes in the social safety net, find relief from the constraints of both democracy and taxation, and enclose and privatise our common weal.

Just as human society has been pulled apart by consumerism and materialism, pushing us into an unprecedented [link:age of loneliness,|age of loneliness], so ecosystems have been shattered by the same forces. It is the consumerist mindset, raised to the global scale, that now threatens us with climate breakdown, catalyses a sixth great extinction, imperils global water supplies and strips the soil upon which all human life depends.....