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Title: The Sick Society Author: Miguel AmorĂłs Date: November 16, 2008 Language: en Topics: drugs, technology, Capitalism Source: Retrieved on 8th May 2021 from https://libcom.org/library/sick-society-miguel-amor%C3%B3s Notes: Originally published in the Spanish journal, RENDEREN, November 16, 2008. Translated from the Spanish: http://www.ahtgelditu.org/blog/albiste-orokorrak/2009/01/28/sociedad-enferma-articulo-de-opinion-de-miguel-amoros/
We live dangerously. Danger is part of the lifestyle that has been
imposed upon us, danger in the form of unexpected accidents, unforeseen
illnesses, slow poisoning or sudden death, danger linked to the new
technologies and, more concretely, to the morbid conditions of survival
in late capitalism. Despite the alleged advances brought by what they
call progress, never before has humanity lived amidst mountains of
cement and wastes, nuclear power plants, chemical factories, genetically
modified foods and industrial pollution. The outlook is not encouraging:
out of control urbanization, destruction of the land, pollution of the
air, the water and the soil, climate change, the hole in the ozone
layer, noise, loneliness, confinement, sedentary lifestyles, air
conditioners, industrial food … all of which bring about extreme
conditions that are not only optimal for the proliferation of diseases
related to the deterioration of the immune system, but for the emergence
of new, fatal epidemics linked to the lethal spread of previously benign
viruses, or to simple poisoning and iatrogenic illnesses. As far as our
leaders are concerned, this is the price the population has to pay in
order to enjoy the fruits of technological-economic development. In
fact, it is the essential precondition for the process of capitalist
production, which is itself a process of the destruction of life.
Illnesses accumulate along with capital and their management is a
fundamental part of the system.
The sheer scale of the damage and the depth of the disaster are
responsible for the fact that the situation is in many respects
irreversible. The productive forces are eminently destructive forces and
their incessant development only multiplies their catastrophic effects.
We have crossed the threshold. This feeling of chaos and of having
reached the point of no return is the basis of that dissatisfaction with
life felt by so many humans, which assumes the form of addiction,
substance abuse, anxiety, depression, hypertension and suicide.
Consciousness subjected to atomization is so contaminated by the
capitalist values that are broadcast without any possible reply by the
media, that poverty seizes control of the mind as much as it does the
body. The solution is offered from within the framework of the system
that caused the problem, with a blanket of psycho-pharmaceuticals. Thus,
each new generation of tranquilizers legitimates and reinforces the
system, while the mental health of the population only gets worse. The
disappearance of social consciousness is the most terrible result of the
sick society. It means that human beings lack the effective psychic
mechanisms required for the protection of their persons from the
repeated, increasingly more hostile and aggressive assaults of the
capitalist environment, and can perceive no other way to respond except
brutalization or illness. The extremely widespread compulsive
consumption of medicine is the most obvious form assumed by this trend.
A parallel process takes place with the mechanisms of physical
self-defense, which are just as precarious due to the harmful effects of
the environment and pernicious diets, which, when combined with
psychological damage, lead to cardiovascular complications, the cause of
one-third of deaths, immunodeficiencies, diabetes, asthma, lung
disorders, most cancers and the new illnesses whose etiologies are still
unknown and which have been given the name of “syndromes”. Pollution
causes ten times more deaths than traffic accidents.
Cancer is a metaphor for capital, which embeds itself in the social
fabric and incessantly accumulates until it leads to the death of the
patient. It is the typical disease of industrialized society; one out of
three humans will eventually be diagnosed with cancer and, despite the
capital that has been invested in research on cancer, its progression is
unstoppable even among the young. Any moderately informed person can
point to its environmental causes, that is, to nuclear and
electromagnetic radiation, the chemical substances in our foods or that
contaminate our surroundings, and psychological traumas. While living
near a nuclear power plant multiplies your risk of cancer by a factor of
ten, we should not overlook the relation between brain tumors and
leukemia and radar, television and cell phone antennas, or the relation
between skin cancer and the hole in the ozone layer. You do not have to
have lynx eyes to know that living near industrial zones entails real
risks of developing genetic anomalies and lymphomas. As a result of
doing something as ordinary as just repeatedly passing through polluted
metropolitan urban areas (all of them are polluted) one runs a higher
risk of getting lung cancer than tobacco smokers. The effects of the
thousands of compounds that the chemical and pharmaceutical industries
foist upon us each year are entirely unknown, but we do know that
numerous pesticides, plastics, fuels, drugs, and food additives and
preservatives are carcinogenic. And these compounds are found
everywhere: in toys, food, ceramics, packaging, electrical materials,
insulation, cosmetics, textiles, computers, CDs, etc. Some are also
hormone disruptors, allergens or immunosuppressors. Others are simply
poisonous, susceptible to military uses, responsible for syndromes like
that of the “toxic oil” (an organophosphate pesticide) or the decline of
the bee population (a neurotoxin). Finally, certain manic-depressive,
obsessive, ultracompetitive or repressed patients have a higher than
average likelihood of developing tumors. These latter cases reflect
forms of decline of the personality triggered by the prevailing
psychological conditions that nourish self-denial. Besides this latter
condition, the chemical and nuclear industries are the primary factors
responsible for the devastation of the immunological self-defense
mechanisms. This trend is intimately connected to industrial food, the
concentration of the population in megacities, the production of energy,
the manufacture of medicines, the system of wage labor and the
consumerist lifestyle. It cannot be altered without dealing with the
entire edifice, the whole dominant system. For example, the destruction
of the land wrought by deforestation or urbanization compels the further
increase of monoculture, with the concomitant increase in pesticides and
artificial fertilizers, the further development of Genetically Modified
Organisms and the squandering of energy, with their sequels of
pollution, disappearance of traditional cultures, release of greenhouse
gases, promiscuity and infectious diseases. The economy always reacts
the same way, aggravating the harm it has already done. Urban expansion
generates an increase in mobility and consequently a rise in the demand
for fuels, which causes a rise in the price of oil, which is used to
justify the construction of new nuclear power plants. Massive cattle
yards, global warming and unnatural feeds facilitate the spread of
diseases among animals (swine fever, bluetongue disease) and their
spread to humans (avian flu, bovine spongiform encephalopathy), which
trigger panic and in turn stimulate the pharmaceutical industry, which
sells its new prescription drugs to the national health programs and
creates new jobs. The unprecedented production of wastes fill the
landscape with black holes of high toxicity but also generate a major
recycling, treatment and waste management industry, whose treatment
facilities, dumps and incinerators continue to spread pollution
(particularly dioxins) and contribute to acid rain, although within the
limits of certain “security” zones conceded by the ruling economic
interests, a National Waste Plan is enforced; which is not the case,
however, for the waste that is exported to the poor countries. And so it
continues without respite.
Society is sick of capitalism and any cure must involve the eradication
of the latter. To fight disease it is not enough to dissimulate the
symptoms. This has been the shortcoming of environmentalism. The problem
can only be resolved by the construction of communities, that is, social
groups without commercial relations. These communities must be
self-sufficient, that is, they must function outside of the market,
allowing for a certain degree of direct satisfaction of real needs and
resisting the manipulation of desires. But this is not enough, it is
only the starting point, the terrain upon which the new dangerous
classes born from the breakdown of capitalist society, the dangerous
classes that must abolish the market and the State, have to be based in
order to heal themselves. We have to get out in order to fight our way
forward. This can be our motto.