When the climate crisis and the depletion of biodiversity should be the biggest concern on everybody’s agenda, the world is taking a different turn. The cognitive dissonances of the world couldn’t be more pronounced. On the one hand, the climate crisis is calling for the world to simply slow down. In fact, the scientific literature points towards the fact that solving the climate crisis is a ”people” problem. No matter the sector of operation, the best solution is always to do less of what has been done so far—such as building fewer cars instead of five-ton lithium-powered steel blocks, constructing fewer skyscrapers instead of shopping malls with green certificates, producing less food that we throw away, and so on. On the other hand—perhaps paradoxically—we are not witnessing the end of history, as Francis Fukuyama once put it, but rather an acceleration of history.
The geopolitical landscape has seen unprecedented disruptions, finally stating once and for all the end of the era of Candide-like positivism that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, symbolized by the collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9th, 1989, and Scorpions’ musical hit Wind of Change.
Who would have thought that the edge of the moment—the end of the COVID-19 pandemic—would be followed by the near-immediate invasion of Ukraine by Russia? The escalation of the conflict was accompanied by the nearly forgotten normalization attempts of Iranian and Saudi Arabian relations, leading to the events of October 7th and today's genocide in Gaza. With it followed the unprecedented attack on the Iranian consulate, accelerating a series of more or less tempered airstrikes between Israel and Iran. If that was not enough, the West saw the election of Trump in the U.S., the weakening of EU leadership starting in France and Germany, and the most recent disruption: the fall of the Assad regime in Syria as a result of the reallocation of Russian air-defense coverage towards the resource-intensive war in Ukraine (much more than anticipated).
Did anyone believe, toward the end of the COVID pandemic, when most started regaining their basic individual freedoms, that the world would take such a turn? How could this have happened?
The irony is that the end of COVID-19 was viewed similarly to the fall of the Berlin Wall—a transitional event that would make the world “wake up” and become more “sustainable”. A wind of change. It was not the case at all—or at least not in the way it was originally hoped. The exact opposite scenario unfolded. Even more ironically, and perhaps in contrast to the re-emergence of “Realpolitik” that we are witnessing, COVID itself proved that the world can display cooperation and solidarity despite its obvious divisions. “In Vielfalt geeint*” or at least that’s what we were told. It could only give hope to those utopians, dreamers, or idealists who envision a better world and are being told that it is impossible to have it any differently than the current status quo. The fact that billions were quarantined together and that the world managed to vaccinate 72.3% of the population in three years is simply unheard of in itself. (1)
What explains that humanity can swing in opposite directions so inextricably? What does it say about humankind when, at a moment when global governance is most needed, international cooperation and solidarity appear to belong to the most utopic and scarce of wants?
Analyzing the world today, understanding the parallels and commonalities with Friedrich Nietzsche’s world prior to the Second World War in the 1930s, one can truly grasp why the notion of the “will to power” emerged from such a thinker.
Nietzsche's teachings about humanity's constant, inherent, and almost animalistic condition of dominating “the other” have never resonated more than today.
He himself witnessed the growth of nationalism in Germany, all over Europe, and across the Atlantic—not to mention the Spanish Civil War, the inflation striking all over Europe, and the growing default risks of governments. The similarities are striking. When humanity needs help, humanity offers the will to power. The will to dominate its surroundings and others is the main driver of human relations, guiding geopolitics into a domination game. Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s framework offers a starkly accurate prism through which to understand today’s decadence of truth and reason. Truth and reason are gone because the will to power is an end in itself for humankind.
Photo by Andy Bodemer on Unsplash
This will to power is all too evident in the attitudes of our democracies and societies toward truth. We are living in a post-truth era, one where only 66% of millennials believe that the Earth is round. Ironically, our democracies are unconditional about the idea of wanting more freedom and voting, yet there is no consensus that the Earth is round. (2),(3)
But how can a political system truly function when its very sovereigns are simply unqualified to do so? If Plato is correct and society is a mere reflection of the soul, then we must tackle within ourselves the idea that not all opinions are equal, not all desires are equal, and not all freedoms are equal.
Because they are simply not. Some freedoms and pleasures must be given up for the prosperity of the city. We must stop building and sustaining a world where freedom and pleasures tyrannize justice and prosperity. Purchasing a Rolex will never be equivalent to enrolling in a philosophy class or paying for the education of the youth. Aspiring for the former over the latter is aspiring for a need that is lesser than the latter, which is a virtue. Has the democratic man forgotten the meaning of virtue?
A similar paradoxical collective cognitive dissonance takes place in the financial market. While low-carbon technologies should gain the most traction, these investment opportunities are completely disregarded. Instead, fully dematerialized cryptocurrencies gain momentum. The collective hysteria has reached a point where a company producing wind turbines—TPI Composites, with $1.5 billion in sales per year—is worth 890 bitcoins, and a single share is 0.002% of the price of that same dematerialized coin, which only derives its value from the fact that it can be sold for more to the next buyer. (4), (5), (6) If this resembles Tulipomania**, it’s not quite the same—at least tulips smell good and are pretty.
This same paradox is observed among financial investors, where the only real enthusiasm in the markets goes directly into utopic AI-generated tools and their associated microprocessors from companies like Tesla or NVIDIA, despite the fact that 80% of AI projects fail in their very first implementation stage. (7) Yet investors still speculate on a technology for the sole reason that it could provide massive salary cuts by replacing thousands of personnel, driving up profits in anticipation of a gold rush à la AI. From a psychoanalytic perspective, one might argue these investments are popular because they offer a cognitive collective escape narrative: “AI will do it; we are safe.”
How is it that, while the scientific community calls for a massive slowdown of the economy and the intelligent allocation of the remaining carbon budget, the so-called “science-enlightened” Sapiens invests his efforts into dystopian technologies completely disconnected from the material environment, rooted in clearly defined material and resource constraints, and uncompromising thermodynamic laws?
The idea that the cognitive dissonance we witness is solely the result of the will of the elite and big capital is, at the very least, questionable. The American elections perfectly embody this paradox: the “people” themselves have pushed for a convergence of the political and economic elite into a technocracy. A system where the billionaires of Silicon Valley—praised as geniuses who supposedly changed the world in their garages, conveniently ignoring the fact that they were heavily state-funded—become as powerful as states. Take Elon Musk, for instance, standing ever closer to the Oval Office. One might almost forget that, back in 2017, Musk left the Trump Advisory Council after the president announced the U.S. withdrawal from the historic Paris Climate Agreement. Time flies.
Photo by fikry anshor on Unsplash
Sustainability is, in fact, the opposite of what people seem to want. For many, sustainability entails a clear cessation of the satisfaction of unnecessary needs—needs that, over time, have become almost existential. These range from digital consumption to fast fashion, flights, single-use packaging, cars for most uses, accessories, cleaning robots, waterproof TVs, 8K displays, OLED screens, kitchen TVs, and an infinite array of other unnecessary items.
Most citizens continue living within the consumerist bubble, earning salaries to sustain their immediate, non-essential desires. All are trapped in an open-air prison of wants and freedoms, working in questionable jobs to perpetuate this cycle. Take, for example, the concept of economic “growth,” defined as the increase in the production of final goods and services within a territory over a given year. How much of this growth actually matters? How much of it is genuinely useful? Critical sectors such as food, healthcare, and essential infrastructure account for only about 20–30% of global GDP, with a higher proportion in developing countries. If we add art and culture, which represent another 5–10%, we might arrive at 30–40%. But even within these “critical sectors,” tremendous waste occurs. These are rough estimates, as no comprehensive study provides precise insights. However, they serve to illustrate that we assign value to things that are simply empty.
We have built a world that mirrors Plato’s critique of the democratic man in The Republic: a chaotic society of equality in desires, equality in freedoms, and equality in opinions. A world where all pleasures—however fleeting or unnecessary—are treated as equal, even when they tyrannize justice, truth, and prosperity. A world of chaotic disorientation.
We have even given a name to the art of this tyranny-triggering desires that perpetuate the cycle of overconsumption: Marketing. We have manufactured a world where most live through their lives to satisfy our collective non-natural and non-necessary desires which are the so-called “human activities” altering the very conditions of habitability on earth.
If that were not dramatic enough, most people are unable to perceive this crisis in their day-to-day lives.
How can we ignore the state of disempowerment that results from our total reliance on the market to satisfy every single one of our needs? This dependence has left us collectively unable to endure even minimal suffering. Our liberal, capital-market economies have bred a population incapable of resilience and true innovation. This inability to endure discomfort—to live simply—renders the altering conditions of habitability on Earth a mere detail, sandwiched between two fleeting desires. If there ever was a crystal ball, Plato must have kept it for himself.
Despite the evident need to consume less, the primary concern for much of the EU population remains “purchasing power.” This contraction of purchasing power is one of the key factors driving the rise of far-right movements since the 1990s. But what is purchasing power if not the desire to buy more goods and services with the same income? In short, we want to consume more when we desperately need to consume less. There lies yet another cognitive dissonance.
Epicurus offers us a stark alternative. He argued that the prosperity of civilization lies in our ability to embed happiness and pleasure within the framework of nature. Only then can man live “like a god among men.” Epicurean philosophy teaches that happiness is found in the satisfaction of desires—but only those that are both natural and necessary. In Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus suggests sculpting away unnatural and unnecessary desires to leave only the essential. If Plato is correct, and society is a reflection of our collective souls, then our extractivist economies and relentless drive for power can only be seen as a lack of Epicureanism within our collective spirit.
If one were to ask Nietzsche, he would go further, declaring that “God is dead.” Our collective murder of religion, he argued, didn’t just kill God but also obliterated truth and reason. When three distinct philosophers—Plato, Epicurus, and Nietzsche—arrive at similar conclusions about human folly, it might be a sign that truth is nearby.
We have lost truth because we have lost our ability to reason. We accelerate when we need to slow down, dominate when we need to cooperate, consume more when we should consume less, and speculate when we need to invest.
Whether we can look forward to 2025 remains to be seen. What is becoming clear is that the fall of the Berlin Wall was called too early. Communism, at the very least, was superior to capitalism in one regard: it did not die slowly.
Editorial Note:
In order to acquire a more thorough comprehension of the concepts associated with the two terms, the editor recommends consulting the following sources for additional reading.
*In Vielfalt geeint: "United in diversity", the motto of the European Union, first came into use in 2000. (https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/symbols/eu-motto_en)
** Tulipomania: The tulip craze was an early example of the greater fool theory—the willingness to buy an asset not because of its fundamental value but because of the belief that someone else is likely to pay an even higher price than you did. (https://www.britannica.com/money/Tulip-Mania.)
Sources
3-https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/04/04/only-two-thirds-of-american-millennials-believe-the-earth-is-round/
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