I make the distinction between “real pornography” and “virtual pornography”: technological reification in photographic or filmed capturing of real people in sexualized behaviours or engaging in sex are distinct from animation pornography which does not capture real people in sexualized behaviours or sex.

The harm of “real pornography” is manifold (and “virtual pornography” is not without its ‘costs’):

At its heart, “real pornography” is often a de-personalized voyeurism subjecting real people to sexual surveillance – for the sexual consumption of strangers. It is akin to a “reverse -panopticon” where the many surveill (neologism for subjecting someone(s) to surveillance) the few. This is a form of exploitation inherent to “real pornography”.

“Real pornography” also allows for one-way sexual gratification without emotional connection, which is arguably socially aberrant: it is a form of sexual exploitation and objectification to gain access to another’s sexualized body, without emotionally investing in their personhood especially where is no sexual reciprocity by consumers of “real pornography”. It – “real pornography” is a one-way extreme version of casual sex but with anonymous sexual surveillance (often on a mass-scale). MacKinnon (1989) sees pornography as an exploitative gendered system, wherein men objectify women by gaining access to their sexual bodies whenever they want. I think “real pornography” does harm to male participants and consumers, here, when looking at the problem from a holistic perspective. So, I find MacKinnon’s perspective too totalizing and one-sided in her gender analysis, even though I, too, adopt a form of anti-(“real”-)pornography ideology.

Whilst not intrinsic to or an essence of “real pornography” there are currently issues of inequality between participants in accrued meta-knowledge, wealth and age for example exacerbating the inherent exploitation in “real pornography”, and of course not just between participants themselves, but inequalities between participants and consumers also. MacKinnon would say there are inherently power inequalities between men and women, where women always adopt a subordinate position or at least this is the pivotal norm around which all pornography is built or referential to (the standard arrangement… from [which] which all else is defined”) (MacKinnon 1989, pp. 332-333).

This ignores the gap in payment for pornography workers between women and men, where women pornstars out-earn male pornstars. It also ignores the power dynamics in which male pornstars are subjected to sexual and emotional humiliation, and sexual splitting of the masculine gender. However, we should not ignore the underage sex trafficking of young women in the (“real”) pornography industry and the subjection many women pornstars have in BDSM and sexually humiliating acts.

Without adequate sex education, pornography in general, can socialize for sexual objectification in sex outside of pornography.

Also, particularly views/consumers of hardcore pornography, undergo sexual desensitization: in order to reach orgasm, an equivalent level or evermore hardcore and/or humiliating sexual imagination or pornography is ‘needed’. This is at the cost of a more innocent (soft-core) intimate imagination.

Consequently (of all this), should the making and/or possession of pornography be or become a criminal offence”?

I argue, that no, in libertarian socialism, emphasis should be on choice, growing out of and beyond “real” pornography, at the level of raising social-and-political-consciousness towards restoring socially just monogamous intimate integrity and relations, without the sexual surveillance indicative of and inherent to “real” pornography. This would be preferable, along with a temporally intervening unionization of (all) sex and pornography workers.

Rubin (1984) gives an extensive account of the discrimination faced by marginalized sexual minorities, so we should not add to that persecution or shaming and should actively dismantle these forms of social exclusion.

I think that raising the consciousness of everyday people about the exploitation inherent in “real pornography” is the way to one day arrive at an abstinence consensus, whilst simultaneously enriching diverse sexualities outside of “real pornography” promoting the sacrosanctity of real intimate exchange and the sexual privacy we should afford to all agents.

In saying this, I make two exceptions: sexual humiliation and BDSM, which should be illegalized (but not criminalized). Sexual cuckolding is an extreme form of sexual humiliation (and yes, women (and all people) can be victims of this form of violence, too). Sexual cuckolding is a consensual form of sexual humiliation which is an attempt at the annihilation of a victim(s)’ symbolic social reproductive strategy. Especially when captured in filmed footage to be shared for the predatory consumption of anonymous strangers, sexual cuckolding (the symbolic extension of and socially transmogrified reproductive cuckolding – the manipulation of reproductive angst where a person unwittingly invests emotional and physical resources in the bringing up of genetic offspring which is not theirs (a manipulation which causes reproductive angst and ‘capitalizing’ on another’s or anothers’ reproductive angst by the perpetrator(s)). Sexual cuckolding is camouflaged in the liberal hedonist version of ‘consent’ and is often insidiously framed as a (liberal hedonist and overly permissive) ‘kink’.

We must acknowledge the reality that people can ‘consent’ (note: see my blog post on liberal versus structural consent: https://henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2021/05/11/liberal-consent-versus-structural-consent/ ) to acute harm in abusive power dynamics between sexualized agents. BDSM is the eroticization of abuse in sex, it subjects a victim or victims to physical and psycho-sexual harm which should have redress in legal (non-criminal) remedy/remedies.

Liberal Consent Versus Structural Consent

The interim between now and socially outgrowing BDSM and sexual humiliation in “real pornography” and “real pornography” itself, the legalization of sex work and of “real pornography” best protects those people(s) engaged in these forms of (sex) work, with the promotion and enactment/actualization of legal regulation of ‘these industries’ and unionization for these workers.

What is or should be considered “extreme pornography”?

There is a spectrum between soft-core, hard-core and extreme pornography. I think we should outgrow “real pornography” as a way to progress to a more equal and thus more mature sexually promoting “virtual pornography” over “real pornography” no matter where these sex acts lie on the continuum/spectrum. Extreme pornography, in my view, is in BDSM and sexual humiliation: BDSM and sexual humiliation merely refracts, ‘reflects’ and reproduces the highly abusive relationships we are mired with and normalised by and in the external world. Of course, this becomes more socially exploitative when technologically captured and reified when filmed and shared/diseminated (which is transformed into “real pornography”).

How do prevailing social norms around ‘good sex’ and ‘bad sex’ shape our understandings of pornography and its potential harms?

I would say that we live in a “porno culture” as a norm, which is sometimes at the expense of “true love” monogamous sexuality, which, is held to be the ideal intimate/sexual expression – this is often thought of as ‘good sex’ by conservative sexual ideology/morality (see Rubin 1984, p. 160), against the permissiveness practices inherent to the late capitalist sexual commoditization culture(s), often viewed as ‘bad sex’ by conservative sexual ideology/morality. The dominant ‘sex culture’ is at a cognitive dissonance – commoditized sexuality is taboo (‘bad sex’) yet liberally engaged in and consumed largely through internet pornography – notions of ‘good and bad sex’ are often hypocritical in today’s sexual climate. From the more conservative sexual moralities, and the norms which they attempt at making hegemonic, is that all pornography is seen as an intrinsic “sinful” evil and corruptingly deviant (against having good moral scruples) and thus is seen as acutely harmful. An unlikely alliance is found between the anti-pornography radical feminism (like MacKinnon’s position on porn) and Christian conservative morality.

Pornography has and can enrich sexual imagination, and help sate the human need for emotionally and psychologically safe sexual experimentation. The human need for sexual experimentation and the full spectrum of legitimate sexual fantasies and imagination can be sated and expanded through the creation, development and consumption of animation pornography (not virtualizing real people engaging in sexual acts), if people choose to this kind of non-exploitative pornography (single people or persons who gain consent of their partner or couples who mutually consent to consume). That way we don’t break with “real monogamy”, “real micro-monogamy within polyamory”, and break with, or a better term – socially outgrow – the sexual surveillance culture that real pornography entails. This is a “Buddhist middle-way” between the opposing camps of pro-porn and anti-porn positions.

The Ideal of Monogamy? The Ideal of Polyamory? The Choice is Yours! Rejecting Polygamy

There is the Marxist idea that pre the large-scale agricultural revolution (or the neolithic revolution) ‘hunter-gatherers’ or agricultural minimalists were living in primitive communism.

Nothing could be more wrong! They lived sustainably, new nothing of systemised warfare, maintained a strong sense of egalitarian solidarity, and enjoyed a work-life balance only labouring 15-20 hours per week.

Acute stratification and classism was birthed by imperial agricultural-dominant societies which denuded the local land-base and sought to conquer new lands with the storage of grains as surplus that could be hoarded and transported to feed populations and armies.

Jared Diamond has identified this imperial domination concurrent with the rise of the ‘neolithic revolution’ as the worst mistake in the history of the human race. Nutritionally poor (with the over-proliferation of grains and cheap carbohydrates) and politically unstable and belligerent, we are still paying the vast karmic penalties for such short-sighted epistemic socio-structural error and ecologically unsound manoeuvre in human relations.

We live in primitive capitalism – primitive and plagued by inefficiency in meeting human need, and ancient cultures were not primitive. I am not saying that many elements of ‘civilisation’ are not redeemable: there are many virtues of ‘civilised’ societies, and ones that we should retain. Progressive elements to governance and governmentality, separation of church and state, and unprecedented technological innovation are to name a few of these redeemable virtues.

Let’s not be too quick apply blanket labels to entire and complex social and political systems. But there is more of a case to give the taxonomic categorisation that capitalism is in fact primitive, compared with ‘hunter-gatherer’ or agricultural minimalists than the other way around!

I understand that it may seem primitive compared with an idyllic post-capitalist society which has never been achieved yet with advanced technology. However, First Nations Peoples have already achieved really existing egalitarianism.

Also, as a side-note, the form that an egalitarian post-capitalist social system would workably look like may be at odds with the communist ‘ideals’ of dismantling private property and the nuclear family (families with two parents of any gender). Marriage, and property – if fairly acquired (and reflects inclusive use-value – a personal conception of property, not capitalist bourgeois conceptions of property), should be retained in any humane post-capitalist egalitarian society with advanced technology. Whilst I am for retaining a small state, and state sanctioned private property upheld by a police force – for various reasons¹, see Fresco and Meadow’s resource based economy without state sanctioned bourgeois private property, but with ‘access abundance’² for an alternate or slightly different view to mine: (https://www.thevenusproject.com). Fresco’s idea was that ‘people don’t want to own things’, what they want is access to them. I believe the right to exclude others from using possessions and assets should be enshrined and upheld by a small state, enforced by the legal system and a policing force, with a separation of powers.

Some food for thought!

1. One main reason is that some individuals and groups of persons, have irrevocably chosen and pledged for an absolutist evil – rejecting and repudiating good-nature and worshiping immorality instead. I note that morality and immorality are consistent in their quest for greater power, it is just the kind of power where their differences are at stake. ↩︎
2. Obviously ‘abundance’ is a relativist concept meaning that a good or service is so numerous that is freely available to all. Please see Kubler, M 1 January 2018, ‘Michael Kubler : The Price of Zero Transition to an RBE, Zday [ The Zeitgeist Movement ]’, last accessed 12 November 2024, YouTube, 9:47 – 10:28, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ogy7sCAfJY&t=608s ↩︎

Human beings are dangerous animals generally with poor emotional, political, social and intellectual intelligence but with God-like technology. So, on its face, it would seem we would need to be governed by a police force to deter crime.

I argue, what we need is a strong and well-funded Police Force who implement ‘Transformative Justice’ approaches for less serious wrongdoings, as well as the ability to use force to protect innocent others within the full purview of the criminal law. Police intervene to prevent harm(s) and are a part of the state apparatus that enforces accountability to those who harm others. Transformative justice measures, applying to aberrant behaviours without attracting a finding of criminality, should include mandatory counselling, mandatory community service, mandatory written apologies, and attendance of appointments at rehabilitation centres (but with freedom of movement: people can go home at night if they wish, for example), as well as mandatory re-socialization tertiary humanities’ courses, and thus constitute a person approach. Feelings of guilt and shame may result from the causing of harm to another or others, so a comprehensive rehabilitation approach would involve strategies for dealing with these feelings. This would entail the further investment in training of the existing police force to uphold and implement transformative justice approaches to reducing harm and for social accountability. For serious crimes – murder, manslaughter, rape, sexual cuckolding, theft and property damage, prison sentences should be mandated for these serious and acute aberrant behaviour(s). This should setup a deterrent to achieve the socially pressing goal of zero incarceration.

In the wake of over-representation of incarceration of certain racial and ethnic identities, many socialists are calling for the defunding of the police, to stop the disproportionate black deaths in public, people’s homes and in custody. This disproportionate black incarceration is a result of their disadvantaged socio-economic status afflicted by colonial and now late-capitalist relative social inclusion. I propose instead we invest more in the training the existing police force(s), including in transformative justice principles. This should be done alongside closing the gap between rich and poor – structurally assisting in dissolving crime.

Whilst we need law and order, we can achieve this with a community-minded post-carceral approach for non-serious crime(s) which should not attract a criminal record, and a penal deterrent system for serious crimes along with a libertarian socialist dynamic which would reduce all kinds of crime through a more socially nurturing and cooperative environment. Again, to stress the point – zero incarceration is the authentic social and political goal and mandate.

Currently, police officers are working class, often working exorbitant hours for inadequate pay. It’s a tough job, for certain, often being put in harm’s way and in dangerous situations. We should better invest in their training, remuneration and work-life balance for better (socially just) outcomes.

We should note that closing the wealth-gap will assist in preventing crime, structurally, as impoverishment leads to crime and recidivism.

It is argued that the police serve a tiny elite. This is true in some sense as they uphold private property rights in a capitalist economy. However, it is overly cynical to believe that the police do not serve their local communities – they do – often keeping the people in their locales safe from crime and harm. This can be socially streamlined with a synthesis of the implementation of transformative (justice) approaches, along with a penal system for deterrence.

Whilst better training of police and more funding for this training is imperative and pressing for better social justice, we shouldn’t alienate the police who are working class, and instead seek to redress the over-representation of black persons (as compared with whites) and men (as compared with women) incarcerated and instead administer transformative (justice) training for aberrant behaviour(s) as an important adjunct to the penal system applied to criminal acts (seriously and acute aberrant behaviour(s) listed above). Criminal records should perhaps lapse, for less serious crime, in some cases, after a period of good behaviour post-imprisonment.

Blue and Black lives matter.

Wind turbines, a renewable energy source, kill bats and birds. We need to design mechanisms on these wind turbines which repel and deter bats and birds to save them from premature and painful deaths. We need less anthropocentrism in the manufacture, production and design of renewable energy technologies. I also propose a probable needed reduction in human population to limit and reduce the animal habitat destruction concomitant with mining for the precious metals and materials needed for renewable energy technology manufacture and installation. Eradicating planned obsolescence and/or cost-cutting in manufacture of green energy technologies, through high quality controls, is a must. Roadkill is another pressing issue; perhaps the installation of electronic mechanisms to deter animals from being in close proximity with vehicles could be very much possible, and definitely preferable.

I recently viewed a documentary called Bright Green Lies, which delivered some interesting and chilling analysis on the very real dark side of so-called green energy generation technologies. Whilst I remain a kind of technocratic green libertarian ‘anarcho'(small state)-private property ‘communist’ (see The Venus Project’s Resource Based Economy: https://thevenusproject.com/ for some social-technocratic ideas), there are contradictions between ecology and (even a minimalist form of) industrialism, when considering the wellbeing of all of sentient life on earth, which need careful redress and ongoing sustained political and ethical attention and transformation.

I believe industrial civilisation is salvageable if we drastically reduce human population and share wealth much more equitably, greening our activities as well as possible, in an ongoing and ever-sophisticated measure.

To grapple with the extent, scope, gravity and urgency of the problem, please understand the standpoint of ‘Bright Green Lies’ activists, who pose some really tough questions. You can rent or purchase the documentary at the links below:

YouTube:

Vimeo:

Libertarian legal mandates and constitutionally enshrined rights should be comprehensive, as well as well thought out and constructed. Authentic socialism is libertarian in character. We should strive for a state which shares political and economic power with rank and file organised workers’ councils. The crux of libertarian socialism is individual enlightenment emanating from maximizing freedoms in and for identity construction and formulations, without exploiting one another.

The harm in pornography is anonymous sexual surveillance of others who make or star in pornographic material. This is a kind of reverse panoptic power: where the many surveil (neologism: verb form of the noun surveillance) the few in voyeuristic anonymity. Hence, there is a tension between the right of an individual to star or feature in pornography versus the exploitation of pornographic actors by pornography consumers and/or by other pornographic actors. In a beyond good and evil synthesis, a gradualist policy approach to exorcising (sexual) exploitation or sub-optimality is preferable. Firstly, a protective law could be passed to illegalise acting pornographically for young adults. The brain continues maturation well into the 20s, with the male brain taking longer than the female brain. 25 years of age as a minimum legal requirement to consensually participate in pornographic acting would diminish exploitation considerably. Implementing this law and legal standard would drastically reduce exploitation of would-be younger porn-stars who have not biologically nor socially (in terms of accrued sexual meta-knowledge) matured to a humanizing degree by older porn-stars and by anonymous consumers who also may be older and have varying degrees of accrued sexual meta-knowledge: it would drastically reduce inequalities in biological and social (sexual meta-knowledge) maturation between actors and consumers. By sexual meta-knowledge I mean understandings about the nature of sexual exchanges and power dynamics and play between sexual agents. The gradualist abolition or out-growing of real pornography – pornography that technologically records and reifies sexual acts between real people shared for consumption – can be achieved with the development of virtual pornography – animations and artificial intellgience featuring sex acts of and between virtual porn-stars. This is, I allege, the ‘Buddhist middle-way’ between pro-porn and anti-porn positions. Gradually exorcising the exploitative surveillance of real porn-stars is overcome, whilst allowing for psycho-sexual growth, sating sexual desires, and fulfilling the very human need for sexual experimentation (without exploitation). The point at which virtual pornography becomes just as stimulating or even more stimulating than real pornography, is the point we may illegalise and/or just organically outgrow real pornography, its dissemination, consumption, and possession by people. I argue, at this said point in virtual pornography’s development – surpassing real pornography, becoming and rendering it entirely redundant or outmoded.

Similarly for sex work, we should first focus on mitigating exploitation in this profession, before we may socially outgrow it altogether. Sex work should be thoroughly legalised and legally regulated. As with increasing the legal age of participation in pornography to 25 years old as a minimum this could be adopted and enacted into law regarding sex work. This would promote safety and increase bodily autonomy and integrities of sex workers. Sex workers should also unionize to protect their economic interests. Exploitation is both inherent and exacerbated where there are economic inequalities between individuals and nation states. So the libertarian socialist project respects the authenticity of sex work whilst mending economic and social inequality as this will greatly diminish exploitation in this profession. Similar inequalities eliciting exploitation applicable to pornography, as discussed above, also apply to sex work.

Potential neuro-toxicity and residual neuro-toxicity of entheogen psychotropics used for recreational altered states of consciousness is a concern. Some persons may be more susceptible to cognitive damage from entheogens than others. Furthermore biological brain immaturity may predispose entheogen consumers to more neural damage than in biologically matured brains. Thus, legalisation for 25 year old’s and older, combined with moderation or abstinence in consumption may be desirable. Consumers would take entheogens at their own risk, with abstinence the safest and most encouraged option, until we know more about the brain, and entheogen effects on the brain. I suggest that governmental legalisation, regulation and manufacture such that recreational drugs such as psychedelics are only legally available for mature adults at 25 years of age or older every five years as a minimum quota, will substantially minimize their risks to residual brain functioning, allowing for their beneficial properties to users in regards to tapping the unconscious mind with spiritually nourishing, entheogenic and shamanist religiosity, and/or enlightening (peak) experience(s) benefits accrued. Use of any entheogenic psychotropic substance would exhaust each five year quota. So, users may choose marijuana in for the first five years, peyote for the second, ayahuasca for the third for example, or just keeping with the one drug for each five year period, from the 25 years of age legal cushioning restriction. Minimalist and careful consumption in this way, circumvents a lot their risks to brain health. It is well worth the endeavour of designing synthetic entheogens that could be provenly safe for use in the future. Legalisation promotes individual responsibility re entheogen consumption for mature adults.

The common themes for pornography, sex work, and entheogens are liberty, but for biologically mature adults – 25 years or older – as the conditional humanizing, humane promoting, and damage minimization caveat.

We have so far to go until we can authentically call ourselves ‘civilised’. With frontal lobes which take 25 years to reach biological maturity, and with social maturity ever-so elusive in our species, we need to turn to multi-disciplinary tertiary education to refine our minds and emotions.

At present we are ‘dangerous monkeys’: glorified primates who have the audacity to step outside of a reasoned ecological footprint through overconsumption (albeit the most wealthy of us have the largest and most disproportionate ecological footprints) and overpopulation.

We live in a virulent socially-pathogenic world with short-term rewards for behaviours which entail large-scale detrimental externalities thanks to a primitive system of exchange and production – i.e. capitalism.

Post-modern alienation is a bi-product of neoliberal capitalism, which accentuates specialisation and over-work at the expense and cost of universal polymath education and a work-life balance. Irrational cultural norms and (irrational) social facts are prevalent, and indicative of our crudity and infantilism. Of course these are sweeping generalisations and there are a lot of positives to garner a sense of self-esteem in the wake of it all.

I think Trumpism epitomises the ‘dangerous monkey’ phenomenon. To have such power and wealth, and yet to be so maniacal and to be such a megalomaniac is archetypical of grandiose and deluded dangerous primates who try to measure their superiority in terms of the myopic obsession with technology and language, and his superiority over other human beings by the wealth he largely inherited.

What’s the antidote? Holistic multi-disciplinary tertiary enlightenment in at least a third of the population! Then we can say we are enlightened primates with emotional prowess to go along with our awe-inspiring technological feats.

Multi-nationals and wealthy capitalist globalists treat people’s lives as opportunity to enforce indentured forms of labour through owning assets outside of personal use-value. Owning assets inside of one’s own personal use-value would include owning one’s own house and car for instance. Indentured labour arises where an external person’s asset portfolio encroaches on the use-value of a person’s legitimate ownership of land, housing and personal belongings, where they live.

Free market competition is thus a rigged game with a small minority of wealthy globalist oligarchs owning vast amounts of capital profiting from indentured labour of those who don’t own their own ‘use-value’ assets. Free market global competition is thus not an even playing field especially with the institution of familial inheritance.

Foreign ownership is one form of enforcing indentured forms of labour, instead of workers co-owning the means of production where they work, or a person owning the roof over their head in terms of the real estate market. Thus, these people are forced to pay rent to wealthy capitalists for where they live or take out loans and pay the banks a premium, which allows wealthy peoples to profit from a form of indentured labour.

Within countries there is also currently mass indentured labour as wealthy domestic peoples own assets that also encroach on the use-value and free and legitimate buying power from rightful individual sacrifice and effort of peoples in the workplace.

In developing countries a strikingly severe form of indentured labour is sweatshop labour, where people are forced off their land in subsistence living and must migrate to cities to work in factories for a pittance – dismal wages. They own very minimal use-value assets or belongings as these have been appropriated by, in many cases, rich capitalist foreigners and domestic capitalists.

Surplus value extraction from workers must be seen as indentured labour also.

Capitalist globalization, foreign ownership, and asset accumulation beyond use-value within countries give rise to indentured forms of labour, and are all a feature of capitalist economics that must be challenged by a sophisticated socialist movement, in the vein of Michael Albert’s participatory economics which gives a strong and cogent vision of a post-capitalist future without indentured forms of labour.

Social and community housing projects within capitalism are progressive and allow for disadvantaged peoples the affordability to have a roof over their heads, and should be encouraged and supported. However, ultimately we should see individual land and house ownership as economic rights, and pay out the existing owners the market value for the housing they own in excess of their own use-value. Owning two landed properties should eventually be the upper limit on house/land ownership.

I don’t endorse terrorism in any way. The way to change the world is through peaceful self-transformation and peaceful collective political organisation/organising.

September 11 was a tragic event, where innocent civilians were indiscriminately targeted.

What was the political and politico-spatial intent and effect(s) of the attack, particularly concerning the twin towers World Trade Center?

What were the effects of not only the attack, but the dissemination of images and footage of the attack across the world by media and news organisations, on the subconscious political minds of people all across the globe, where images and footage of the attacks were liberally and extensively circulated?

What, I argue, was implanted in the collective unconscious of the world’s people, was the symbolic castration of the (epi)centre of transnational capitalism – its twin phallic symbolic power centre (one phallus symbolizing hegemonic transnational capitalism and the other overtly patriarchal (read as ‘male dominant’) transnational capitalist class (‘TCC’ (Sklair)) power) (a sideways note: matriarchal power is inherently more covert and emotional) – the twin towers located in (transnational) capitalism’s centre and main capitalist mega-city: New York. New York is where the highest concentration of headquarters of the world’s largest transnational/multinational corporations are based and actions, agitations and manipulations in global markets, coordinated: the site of the most concentrated machinations of capitalist empire. The World Trade Centre towers were symbolic of capitalism’s patriarchal transnational capitalist class globalizing power, across the world, subordinating social and political space to its hegemonic centre in this symbolic power. The subconscious symbolic political meaning, as a twin-phallic symbol, was that of cooperation and narrowly-overtly patriarchal hegemony of the male dominant TCC and its transnational capitalism globalizing order: one (phallic tower) for male dominance and the other (phallic tower) for the transnational capitalist form of dominance.

Due to this post-modern hyper-reality simulacra (Baudrillard) of media dissemination of the destruction of the twin-towers, (transnational) capitalism, and its political, economic and social reproduction, entered into a new phase: capitalist psychosis. I argue that the monophasic and disenchanting (Weber) regimentation of capitalism has lost its stranglehold of political legitimization at the level of the unconscious. This concurs with Saniotis’ theory in ‘re-enchanting terrorism: jihadists as “liminal beings”’ that jihadists attempt to re-enchant the world in a religious imaginary (against the disenchanting practices of global capitalism, whose religion is increasingly that of conspicuous consumerism and acute global wealth disparities and exploitation).

I define monophasic capitalism as a social phenomenon which stifles socially-minded intrinsically motivated creative labour resulting from excessively obedient work in the capitalist hierarchy in the workplace, as well as from chronic over-work of the populace.

Capitalism as psychosis is the disconnect with and contradiction of key capitalistic values: amassing wealth does not buy happiness or satisfaction, and there is the shattering of people’s expectations and dreams promised by capitalism’s hollow ideological propaganda as compared with the harsh social and political realities which everyday people face instead, in a struggle to maintain a semblance of existential control. Social manipulation has become far more flagrant, obvious, abstracted and ubiquitous in marketing and advertising campaigns and in market-share maximization. People have lost faith in the major party duopolies, suspicious of corporate corruption and lobbying in the representative democratic political process. The majority of people in the world now understand, that something is terribly wrong with national and global political landscape(s). Corporatism (the logical corollary of capitalism) has been exposed for what it is – a delegitimization of transnational corporate capitalism catapulting the psyche of the populace into a psychosis, where their values are being torn apart in social squabbling and conflict which capitalism creates: ironically contradiction, and the fragmentation of social space due to collective psychosis, is the main unifying factor we witness in the realm of social values and praxis. Our waking and sober dreams are becoming more and more not based in reality: now more than ever, it is the illusion of control which fuels capitalist reproduction.

I am in no way saying that the this makes the end of capitalism inevitable, just that its promises are and have become increasingly largely socially and politically illusory.

A recent human history – its genesis and origin in the large-scale agricultural revolution – has witnessed an explosion in human population; a massive increase in animal (enormous emissions) and plant agriculture (often destroying naturally occurring carbon sinks in poly-cropped and prairies’ soil(s)); industrial exploitation of intensely carbon emitting fossil fuels; chaotically designed and unsustainably expansionist urban sprawl and burgeoning cities and mega-cities; mass deforestation; and a vast increase in wealth stratification, which impedes global cooperation on mitigating anthropogenic climate change, as the wealthy tend to want to keep their enormous carbon footprints.