Why (Sexual) Capitalism Must Die, And How To Humanely Euthanize It (Updated Re-Post)

I have discussed before how that favorite evil brainchild of patriarchy, capitalism, is literally killing our Mother Earth as we speak, and is thus both ecocidal and ultimately suicidal since humanity is in fact part of Nature (despite frequent and stubborn protestations to the contrary).  And that the only way to humanely euthanize that vile system is to give it the one thing it cannot survive--ABUNDANCE--while harsh austerity measures of any kind (ecological or otherwise) will ultimately backfire in the end, leaving us permanently stuck in a very bad place while still ending up destroying ourselves along with our planet.  (That is, like futurist Walter Baltzley said, the best way to win a tug-of-war against a stronger opponent is to simply let go of the rope and let them fall down.)  But did you know that capitalism also has a sexual dimension as well?

Wait, what?  That's right--and it is one that would make Freud himself blush beet red.  So much so that capitalism should really be called "greed patriarchy", while patriarchy should really be called "lust capitalism" or "sexual capitalism".  Please allow me to explain:

• While financial rentier capitalism uses artificial scarcity of money, goods and services, etc. to control the masses, sexual capitalism uses artificial scarcity of sex (and sex substitutes) to do the same.
• Sexual capitalism, which is part and parcel of patriarchy, uses the "commodity model" of sexuality to make sex just artificially scarce enough for the conditions of the times to effect maximum control of the masses.
• In the commodity model of sexuality, sex (however defined) is seen as something of value (perhaps even a sort of "currency" at times) that men "take" from Women, but not the other way around, and is seen as a zero-sum game.  A Woman's worth is thus considered inversely proportional to her level of sexual experience, while the reverse is usually (though not always) true for men (i.e. the classic double standard, slut-shaming, etc.).
• Therefore, men have a vested interest to keep the "cost" of sex as low as possible, while Women have a vested interest in keeping the "cost" of sex as high as possible.  One can see how this does not exactly make for harmonious gender relations or mutuality, since the interests of Women and men are inherently opposed in this model.
• At the same time, the (mostly) male elites have a vested interest to keep the "cost" of sex as high as possible, or at least just high enough to control the masses.  This is typically done by punishing Women in one way or another for having too much and/or the wrong kind of sex (i.e. "giving it away" for free or cheap), imposing a very high cost on Women who then pass some of that cost onto men.  Or demanding for specious and spurious reasons that sex be only for procreation and claiming that sexual pleasure especially for its own sake is somehow "sinful".  Thus, they control Women in order to indirectly control men, while (in the days before modern birth control and DNA testing) also ensuring paternity certainty as well.
• That explains the patriarchy's arcane and archaic rules against not only "fornication" and adultery (note how usually only Women have historically been punished for these in practice), but also masturbation, homosexuality, non-monogamy, non-coital sexual activities, abortion, "artificial" birth control, divorce (albeit with some nuance), pornography (albeit with some nuance), and most ironically of all, prostitution (despite the fact that patriarchal marriage is often little more than long-term prostitution in practice).  It also explains why so many self-proclaimed "pro-lifers" have the GALL to oppose birth control despite the fact that it actually has the net effect of reducing the number of abortions due to fewer unwanted pregnancies.
• A high cost of sex (and its substitutes), ceteris paribus, leads to higher birthrates (Women are the brood mares in this system) and more work done by men (men are the work horses) in order to gain access to sex, which ultimately makes the rich richer going.  A low cost of sex (or its substitutes), especially sex for pleasure, leads to lower birthrates and theoretically less incentive for the serfs to work harder to make the rich richer.
• Thus, a relatively high cost of sex is seen as necessary for the oligarchs to keep the whole Ponzi scheme of growth for the sake of growth (i.e. the ideology of the cancer cell, which eventually kills its host) going to make them even richer.
• And the experience of physical pleasure, affection, and intimacy in general (not just sex, but overall) are restricted to one degree or another, so much so that people end up craving it even more through a narrow little keyhole called sex, particularly coitus.
• Not that such sexual strictures really make The System any more virtuous in any sense, of course.  A certain amount of male-defined prostitution, sex trafficking/slavery, rape, and even full-blown pedophilia and incest is virtually always tolerated or even tacitly encouraged (clandestinely or otherwise) to one degree or another in patriarchy provided it does not threaten The System or inadvertently give Women too much power.  And these ills tend to explode when sex in general is highly restricted and costly (see what happened in the Victorian era, for example).  It's all just "collateral damage" in the eyes of the patriarchy and the oligarchy, basically.
• And of course, Women primarily get blamed for "getting themselves raped", rather than the men who rape them, since under the commodity model, the onus falls on Women to be "gatekeepers" of the  "commodity" in question and keep it it from becoming "too cheap" in the "marketplace".  And the resulting fear of rape (and blame/shame for it) is used as a cudgel to keep Women "in their place".
• And much like in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, patriarchy relies on Women to police each other (enter slut-shaming, body-shaming, the "mommy wars", etc.), further enhancing the divide-and-conquer aspect of The System.
• And just like financial capitalism, sexual capitalism functionally sets itself up as a contest to see who cares the least, in more ways than one.  A contest that MEN, not coincidentally, nearly always win.

And really it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how this model perpetuates the 7000 year battle of the sexes, promotes rape culture (much like how financial capitalism promotes crimes motivated by money and possessions), and even contributes to the destruction of Mother Earth in the process via overpopulation and ecological overshoot.  At best, it inherently centers men at the expense of Women, and to say that is actually being quite charitable.  Fortunately, the whole "commodity model" of sexuality is indeed currently dying as we speak, and that is a GOOD thing. Such an outmoded, outdated, toxic, and sexist paradigm is downright dehumanizing to both primary genders, and we would all better off without it. Sex is a mutual act, and it is time we started treating it as such. And marriage for economic reasons rather than love is becoming increasingly obsolete, as it should in an increasingly egalitarian society. And while marriage can be re-purposed for a post-patriarchal society, the idea that everybody must get married as the sine qua non of "real adulthood" is outmoded and no longer holds any real water in the 21st century.  Ditto for the whole "everybody must procreate" mentality as well, which is now downright maladaptive in a world of overpopulation and ecological overshoot. 

(Note that I while I condemn the commodity model, I do NOT intend to disparage any actual sex workers of any kind.  They are, after all, some of the most honest people on Earth when it comes to their intentions, and in any case are not the real problem here.  It is the "little man behind the curtain"--the system of patriarchy and capitalism--that is the real problem.)

This inherently capitalistic and patriarchal model should be regarded as obsolete and outmoded, and replaced yesterday with the "performance model" or "mutual pleasure model" of sexuality.  And thus sexual capitalism will also be humanely euthanized by giving it the one thing it cannot survive--ABUNDANCE.  So what are we waiting for?

Let the planetary healing begin! 

Neoliberalism: The Religion Of The World, Flesh, And Devil (Updated for 2023)

Neoliberalism.  It is a rather obscure-sounding term with a somewhat nebulous meaning.  It's anonymity and vagueness shroud it in mystery.  And yet, it is the very ideology at the root of most, if not all, of the modern world's problems.

So what is it, exactly?  It is best defined as a dogmatic belief in the inherent superiority and supremacy of unfettered free markets and privatization (and commodification) of nearly every single thing in the Universe.  Inequality, however extreme, and even greed itself is recast as virtuous (think Gordon Gekko of Wall Street).  The rich and the poor deserve their lot in life, because reasons.  Or something.  Poverty is in fact a feature, not a bug, as the resulting desperation makes people that much easier to exploit.  People are just objects to be used, as are animals and Mother Nature herself.  Citizens are reduced to mere consumers and wage-serfs, if not full-blown slaves.  And like the robber barons of old, today's high priests of neoliberalism are totally fine with robbing from the poor, giving to the rich, and torpedoing what's left of the middle class.  The only difference is that nowadays they typically do it with a smile and a veneer of pseudo-progressivism, while laughing all the way to the bank.

Neoliberalism's warped and twisted code of pseudo-ethics harbors a massive, gaping void that is essentially a moral black hole, since this ideology lacks a truly moral and spiritual component underneath it all.  Its entire foundation is shaky, empty and morally bankrupt, totally rotten to the core.  And yet, it has such mass appeal on both the (pseudo-)left and right of the political spectrum that it transcends that very spectrum.  And while neoliberalism is clearly the darling brainchild of patriarchy, it is such a wily and devious shapeshifter that it even transcends patriarchy itself as well.

From Reagan to the Clintons, Thatcher to Blair, Milton Friedman to Thomas Friedman, Greenspan to Powell, Facebook to ExxonMobil, Purdue University to Perdue Chicken to Purdue Pharma, Trump to Trudeau, and Boris all the way to Natasha, it seems like no mainstream or pseudo-alternative politician, ideologue, technocrat, maven, or tycoon has been able to avoid being infected by neoliberalism to one degree or another, and sucked into its lifeless, soulless abyss.

(Trump, with the notable exception of opposing some of the "free trade" component of neoliberalism, otherwise supports essentially all of the rest of their evil and demonic agenda in practice, his disingenuous rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.  And ALL neoliberals, Trump included, are largely anti-union in practice, if not also in theory as well.)

Though secular in nature, neoliberalism has all of the zeal of a religion, even a fundamentalist one.  And its dogmas have basically become the new orthodoxy from about 1980 onwards.  And we can thus conclude that neoliberalism is essentially the religion of the world, the flesh, and the devil, filling the voids left by the implosion of the mainstream patriarchal religions.  One can even call it a cult as well.

In Christian theology, the "world, flesh, and devil" have traditionally been considered the three primary enemies of the soul, as a sort of "unholy trinity".  Now, I personally believe that there is some nuance to this in that the world is only evil because of who rules it (i.e. the devil who works through men, particularly the oligarchs and their sycophantic lackeys), and the flesh is only evil when we choose to make it that way, since matter is essentially just a slowed-down form of spirit.  Neither of these first two are inherently evil in themselves.  But under the current regime of patriarchy, living exclusively for these two things is believed to ultimately lead to the third member, the devil.  Or wetiko, if you prefer.  Whatever it is, it is pure evil energy that cannot ever be redeemed.  And neoliberalism, in its sheer vileness, vainglory, and wanton idolatry of money and worldly power above all else, effectively worships all three members of this unholy trinity.  There is really no denying that.

The rise of selected flavors of Christian (and other religious) fundamentalism since the 1980s has not stemmed the tide of neoliberalism, and the two increasingly seem to be joined at the hip nowadays.  And while patriarchy is currently in its death throes as we speak, the implosion of patriarchy and patriarchal religion is clearly non-linear, erratic, and chaotic.

And most notably, the recent rumors of neoliberalism's supposed death from the COVID-19 pandemic have been greatly exaggerated.  And by that, we mean that, if anything, neoliberalism has actually GAINED strength overall from the lockdowns and related restrictions which effectively robbed from the poor, gave to the rich, and torpedoed what was left of the already shrinking middle class.  And not only did these draconian measures not appreciably save lives in the long run, they actually cost lives, particularly among poorer people and people of color who got the brunt of both the virus itself AND the collateral damage disproportionately shunted onto them while the affluent got to "work from home".  There was certainly nothing genuinely leftist or progressive about doing that!  And the novel experimental gene therapies that self-identify as "vaccines" have been not only a major cash cow for the oligarchs, but also have been (via mandates, "passports", and segregation) an effective weapon of power and control over the masses, especially via divide-and-conquer.  Not to mention, dare I say, a bioweapon as well, given all of the excess deaths, injuries, and disabilities (sorry, "coincidences") that have resulted from these concoctions.

And, of course, Women have clearly gotten the brief end of the stick from the pandemic response as well.  Lockdowns have increased male-on-female domestic violence and Women have lost more jobs than men have as well.  Meanwhile, the majority of designated "essential" (read: expendable) workers have also been Women as well, especially in healthcare.  And school closures have also forced Mothers to either 1) stay home with the kids and lose income as a result, or else 2) take on a triple burden by trying to juggle it all at once.  It has led to nothing short of a collapse of Women's health and work.  Thus there is clearly nothing even remotely feminist about these toxic and illiberal policies, but rather these are things that neoliberalism salivates over the most.  The Rockefellers and their cronies must be grinning from ear to ear right now as we speak.

TO HELL WITH NEOLIBERALISM!

Neoliberalism: The Religion Of The World, Flesh, And Devil (Updated for 2021)

Neoliberalism.  It is a rather obscure-sounding term with a somewhat nebulous meaning.  It's anonymity and vagueness shroud it in mystery.  And yet, it is the very ideology at the root of most, if not all, of the modern world's problems.

So what is it, exactly?  It is best defined as a dogmatic belief in the inherent superiority and supremacy of unfettered free markets and privatization (and commodification) of nearly every single thing in the universe.  Inequality, however extreme, and even greed itself is recast as virtuous.  The rich and the poor deserve their lot in life, because reasons.  Poverty is in fact a feature, not a bug.  People are just objects to be used, as are animals and Mother Nature herself.  Citizens are reduced to mere consumers and wage-serfs, if not full-blown slaves.  And like the robber barons of old, today's high priests of neoliberalism are totally fine with robbing from the poor, giving to the rich, and torpedoing what's left of the middle class.  The only difference is that nowadays they typically do it with a smile and a veneer of pseudo-progressivism, while laughing all the way to the bank.

Neoliberalism's warped and twisted code of pseudo-ethics harbors a massive, gaping void that is essentially a moral black hole, since this ideology lacks a truly moral and spiritual component underneath it all.  Its entire foundation is shaky, empty and morally bankrupt, totally rotten to the core.  And yet, it has such mass appeal on both the (pseudo-)left and right of the political spectrum that it transcends that very spectrum.  And while neoliberalism is clearly the darling brainchild of patriarchy, it is such a wily and devious shapeshifter that it even transcends patriarchy itself as well.

From Reagan to the Clintons, Thatcher to Blair, Milton Friedman to Thomas Friedman, Greenspan to Powell, Facebook to ExxonMobil, Purdue University to Perdue Chicken to Purdue Pharma, Trump to Trudeau, and Boris all the way to Natasha, it seems like no mainstream or pseudo-alternative politician, ideologue, technocrat, maven, or tycoon has been able to avoid being infected by neoliberalism to one degree or another, and sucked into its lifeless, soulless abyss.

(Trump, with the notable exception of opposing some of the "free trade" component of neoliberalism, otherwise supports essentially all of the rest of their evil and demonic agenda in practice, his disingenuous rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.  And ALL neoliberals, Trump included, are largely anti-union in practice, if not also in theory as well.)

Though secular in nature, neoliberalism has all of the zeal of a religion, even a fundamentalist one.  And its dogmas have basically become the new orthodoxy from about 1980 onwards.  And we can thus conclude that neoliberalism is essentially the religion of the world, the flesh, and the devil, filling the voids left by the implosion of the mainstream patriarchal religions.  One can even call it a cult as well.

In Christian theology, the "world, flesh, and devil" have traditionally been considered the three primary enemies of the soul, as a sort of "unholy trinity".  Now, I believe that there is some nuance to this in that the world is only evil because of who rules it (i.e. the devil who works through men, particularly the oligarchs and their sycophantic lackeys), and the flesh is only evil when we choose to make it that way, since matter is essentially just a slowed-down form of spirit.  Neither of these first two are inherently evil in themselves.  But under the current regime of patriarchy, living exclusively for these two is believed to ultimately lead to the third member, the devil.  Or wetiko, if you prefer.  Whatever it is, it is pure evil energy that cannot ever be redeemed.  And neoliberalism, in its sheer vileness, vainglory, and wanton idolatry of money and worldly power above all else, effectively worships all three members of this unholy trinity.

The rise of selected flavors of Christian (and other religious) fundamentalism since the 1980s has not stemmed the tide of neoliberalism, and the two increasingly seem to be joined at the hip nowadays.  And while patriarchy is currently in its death throes as we speak, the implosion of patriarchy and patriarchal religion is clearly non-linear, erratic, and chaotic.

And most notably, the recent rumors of neoliberalism's supposed death from the COVID-19 pandemic have been greatly exaggerated.  And by that, we mean that, if anything, neoliberalism has actually GAINED strength overall from the lockdowns and related restrictions which effectively robbed from the poor, gave to the rich, and torpedoed what was left of the already shrinking middle class.  And not only did these draconian measures not appreciably save lives in the long run, they actually cost lives, particularly among poorer people and people of color who got the brunt of both the virus itself AND the collateral damage disproportionately shunted onto them while the affluent got to "work from home".  There was certainly nothing genuinely leftist or progressive about doing that!  And the vaccines have been not only a major cash cow for the oligarchs, but also are (via mandates, "passports", and segregation) increasingly becoming a weapon of power and control over the masses, especially via divide-and-conquer.

And, of course, Women have gotten the brief end of the stick from the pandemic response as well.  Lockdowns have increased male-on-female domestic violence and Women have lost more jobs than men have as well.  And school closures have also forced Mothers to either 1) stay home with the kids and lose income as a result, or else 2) take on a triple burden by trying to juggle it all at once.  There is clearly nothing at all feminist about these policies, but rather these are things that neoliberalism salivates over the most.

TO HELL WITH NEOLIBERALISM!

Neoliberalism: The Religion Of The World, Flesh, And Devil

Neoliberalism.  It is a rather obscure-sounding term with a somewhat nebulous meaning.  It's anonymity and vagueness shroud it in mystery.  And yet, it is the very ideology at the root of most, if not all, of the modern world's problems.

So what is it, exactly?  It is best defined as a dogmatic belief in the inherent superiority and supremacy of unfettered free markets and privatization (and commodification) of nearly every single thing in the universe.  Inequality, however extreme, and even greed itself is recast as virtuous.  The rich and the poor deserve their lot in life, because reasons.  Poverty is in fact a feature, not a bug.  People are just objects to be used, as are animals and Mother Nature herself.  Citizens are reduced to mere consumers and wage-serfs, if not full-blown slaves.  And like the robber barons of old, today's high priests of neoliberalism are totally fine with robbing from the poor, giving to the rich, and torpedoing what's left of the middle class.  The only difference is that nowadays they typically do it with a smile and a veneer of pseudo-progressivism, while laughing all the way to the bank.

Neoliberalism's warped and twisted code of pseudo-ethics harbors a massive, gaping void that is essentially a moral black hole, since this ideology lacks a truly moral and spiritual component underneath it all.  Its entire foundation is shaky, empty and morally bankrupt, totally rotten to the core.  And yet, it has such mass appeal on both the (pseudo-)left and right of the political spectrum that it transcends that very spectrum.  And while neoliberalism is clearly the darling brainchild of patriarchy, it is such a wily and devious shapeshifter that it even transcends patriarchy itself as well.

From Reagan to the Clintons, Thatcher to Blair, Milton Friedman to Thomas Friedman, Greenspan to Powell, Facebook to ExxonMobil, Purdue University to Perdue Chicken to Purdue Pharma, Trump to Trudeau, and Boris all the way to Natasha, it seems like no mainstream or pseudo-alternative politician, ideologue, technocrat, maven, or tycoon has been able to avoid being infected by neoliberalism to one degree or another, and sucked into its lifeless, soulless abyss.

(Trump, with the notable exception of opposing some of the "free trade" component of neoliberalism, otherwise supports essentially all of the rest of their evil and demonic agenda in practice, his disingenuous rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.  And ALL neoliberals, Trump included, are largely anti-union in practice, if not also in theory as well.)

Though secular in nature, neoliberalism has all of the zeal of a religion, even a fundamentalist one.  And its dogmas have basically become the new orthodoxy from about 1980 onwards.  And we can thus conclude that neoliberalism is essentially the religion of the world, the flesh, and the devil, filling the voids left by the implosion of the mainstream patriarchal religions.  One can even call it a cult as well.

In Christian theology, the "world, flesh, and devil" have traditionally been considered the three primary enemies of the soul, as a sort of "unholy trinity".  Now, I believe that there is some nuance to this in that the world is only evil because of who rules it (i.e. the devil who works through men, particularly the oligarchs and their sycophantic lackeys), and the flesh is only evil when we choose to make it that way, since matter is essentially just a slowed-down form of spirit.  Neither of these first two are inherently evil in themselves.  But under the current regime of patriarchy, living exclusively for these two is believed to ultimately lead to the third member, the devil.  Or wetiko, if you prefer.  Whatever it is, it is pure evil energy that cannot ever be redeemed.  And neoliberalism, in its sheer vileness, vainglory, and wanton idolatry of money and worldly power above all else, effectively worships all three members of this unholy trinity.

The rise of selected flavors of Christian (and other religious) fundamentalism since the 1980s has not stemmed the tide of neoliberalism, and the two increasingly seem to be joined at the hip nowadays.  And while patriarchy is currently in its death throes as we speak, the implosion of patriarchy and patriarchal religion is clearly non-linear, erratic, and chaotic.