The twilight of empire casts an unflattering light on those celebrated Western values, as the charming diplomatic language used to elevate this civilization is very much at odds with the real organization of power. The political turmoil these enthusiasts stir up is making the heightened reality of this precarious moment repugnant. For instance, no one in the neoliberal order considers it contemptible to enforce economic sanctions during a Covid-19 pandemic. The hollowness of the political class is evident in their indifference to the suffering of people. If we let them turn the Earth and living things both great and small into a commodity, then there will be no place left for the sacred. No room will be left to write poetry, no mystery or beauty will pass beyond the superficial, no moral center connected to love, no expectation of justice or privacy for contemplation and creativity.
If we don’t fight with every true instinct we have left, then it means that we don’t understand that the natural world really is being defiled. Greed and murder go hand in hand. A few corporations in the energy and mining sector are committing murder on a grand scale by poisoning ecosystems. Reports are emerging of companies tied to contract killing of indigenous people who face uprooting and expulsion from tribal land.
It is still possible to reach out and look at the grim face of slavery; and we live in a world where wars of occupation are justified, and where a settler-colonial ideology can still maintain an apartheid state, in defiance of protest all across the world. How much work do we have left to do?
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