Beyond The Petri Dish

Human Consciousness in the Time of Collapse, Apathy and Algorithms

De: George Tsakraklides

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

We are experiencing an era of unprecedented cognitive dissonance. Despite incredible advances in our capacity to access information and “truth”, we have reached a terrifying all-time high for apathy. The planet’s existential-level catastrophe is systematically edited out of the news, even as it spirals out of control. This counterintuitive phenomenon, which has taken even the most extreme pessimists by surprise, deserves more than the usual conspiracy explanation of “them” against “us”. A Great Silence appears to have taken hold not only in the media, but in a general population who is unable to cognitively register, let alone process, the global catastrophe unfolding. This civilisation is giving the impression that it wants to quietly go extinct, as Netflix plays on in the background.

In this book I set course to fully unpack the Great Silence, drawing insights from psychology, biology, neuroscience, anthropology and media studies. Because as much as the clinical picture of our mass desensitisation may be clear, the diagnosis is complex. The short answer is that our collective resistance to reality is as much about how our brain is wired, as it is about what our economic system has done to this brain. The book follows our brain through time, revealing what it was originally made for, what it was very good at, and what it was probably not so good at.

It turns out that The Great Silence has been in the making for thousands of years. Exposing the decisive role which power and religion played in the early days of reality manipulation, we arrive to today’s sophisticated digital dystopia where truth has almost become extinct. But beyond media dystopias and institutionalised censorship, this analysis establishes a new baseline in understanding the Civilisational Lie underpinning them: the collection of narratives we had to construct to keep calm and carry on, and to which we desperately cling even as we spectacularly collapse.

A great part of the analysis is dedicated to understanding how our necrocapitalist economic system (the necroeconomy) evolved symbiotically around our brain, as it gradually implanted itself into our highly susceptible neural structures, effectively zombifying us. If we seem to behave like remotely operated automatons heading for the cliff, then perhaps this is what we have become. The bold argument is made that the Great Silence is here because we are undergoing a terrifying transformation: from semi-conscious beings to consumatronic androids servicing the transaction economy. We have set adrift for a digital consumaverse where we cease to be in charge, having surrendered control to an AI-powered, intelligent incarnation of profit.

This new sentient entity, described as The Thing in my book, In The Grip of Necrocapitalism, is a key factor behind the Great Silence, having muted our capacity to see, feel, and touch. This lack of consciousness lies behind our failure to take stock of the crises of this world, let alone respond to them.

What if we had the courage to transform this civilisation? In the face of global, systemic, and cataclysmic civilisational collapse, our solutions at the very least need to be global, systemic and absolutely cataclysmic through and through. This cannot be achieved by technology, but by sweeping social change which is the result of a radical transformation of our consciousness.

As with all trauma, it is important to revisit the original event. By invoking the whiplash of successive wounds that capitalistic society inflicted at the single human level, this book aims to open a door into the timeless consciousness we desperately need. In a world where truth has become irrelevant and nature has been confined to TV screens, there is so much we can do to redefine our relationship with information, and with reality. But the more time we spend unconscious, the more likely it is that we’ll wake up in a burning house.