What we need to do is figure out how we can participate in reality
Fascists don’t deal with reality. They say that immigrants are eating cats, dogs, or swans. They blame far-right on far-right violence as the work of ‘antifa’. They claim that black is white, up is down, and inside is out.
This post by J.P. Hill uses the recent hoopla around the Rapture supposedly coming yesterday as a way in to discuss all of this. It’s a distraction, it’s entertainment without cost: not even bread and circuses but just AI slopaganda for an abhorrent worldview.
We each have a choice to make right now. On the one hand, the most powerful people on Earth want to lure us away from the truth. They want us to believe their lies, they want us to live in an artificial reality while they steal the land beneath our feet and take the water beneath the land. The ruling class is betting trillions on AI, they’re betting trillions on fascism, they’re doubling down on a system that requires infinite growth on our finite planet. Instead of dealing with reality they tell us we’re all going to Mars one day. Instead of meeting our needs they’re telling us to blame the most marginalized people in society. Instead of offering us truth they offer us a series of lies, a series of imaginary carrots dangled to take us further and further from reality while they pillage the real world all around us.
It’s difficult to imagine changing this paradigm. It can be hard to imagine confronting the brutal nature of our reality and building something better in its place. As Mark Fisher said, “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” For countless people it seems easier to imagine the apocalypse or the rapture than it is to imagine a better world. And, in fairness, imagining heaven is simple. Imagining the restructuring of society, the construction of egalitarian systems, the implementation of real justice is complicated.
But we don’t need to figure out a perfect world right now. What we need to do is figure out how we can participate in reality. We need to stop seeking escape and seek instead plug in, play a part, take some action out in this world that so desperately needs us. It’s time to accept reality, accept that it’s ugly out there, and accept that we’re the only ones who can change this world. The forces of fascism rely on you tuning out, running from reality, indulging in their fantasies. We have to reject their lies, reject the carrots they dangle, and instead run toward reality and toward active participation in this fucked up world.
Source and image: New Means