Primitiveness and civilisation are degrees of the same thing

It is a durable, ubiquitous, specious metaphor, that one about veneer (or paint or pliofilm, or whatever) hiding the nobler reality beneath. It can conceal a dozen fallacies at once. One of the most dangerous is the implication that civilisation, being artificial, is unnatural: that it is the opposite of primitiveness... Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth,  and primitiveness and civilisation are degrees of the same thing. If civilisation has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both.

Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (Orion Publishing Group Ltd, 2017) p. 101

The pores in the face of life

So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth. But once he was held, rootless, in mid-air, by Hercules, he perished easily.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (HarperVoyager, 2008) pp. 108-109

The future is over

Exhaustion is a cursed word in the frame of modern culture, which is based on the cult of energy and the cult of male aggressivity. But energy is fading in the postmodern world, for many reasons that are easy to detect.

Energy is fading because of the demographic trend: mankind is growing old, as a whole, because of the prolongation of life expectancy, and because of the decreasing birth rate. A sense of exhaustion results from this process of general aging, and what has been considered a blessing – the prolonged life expectancy – may prove to be a misfortune, if the myth of energy is not restrained and replaced with a myth of solidarity and great compassion. Energy is also fading because basic physical resources like oil are doomed to extinction or dramatic reduction. Finally, energy is fading because competition is stupid in the age of the general intellect. The general intellect is not based on juvenile impetus and male aggressivity – on fighting, winning, and appropriation. It is based on cooperation and sharing.

This is why the future is over, and we are living in a space that is beyond the future. If we are able to come to terms with this postfuturistic condition, we'll renounce accumulation and growth, and will be happy in sharing the wealth from our past of industrial labor and from our present of collective intelligence.

If we are not able to do this, we will be doomed to a century of violence, misery, and war.

Franco "Bifo" Berardi, The Uprising (semiotext(e), 2012) pp. 81-82

Our prospect is a paradigmatic shift

The prospect open to us is not a revolution. The concept of revolution no longer corresponds to anything, because it entails an exaggerated notion of political will over the complexity of contemporary society. Our prospect is a paradigmatic shift: to a new paradigm that is not centered on product growth, profit, and accumulation, but on the full unfolding of the power of collective intelligence.

Franco "Bifo" Berardi, The Uprising (semiotext(e), 2012) p. 64

Låt mig vara tydlig: arbetssamhälle = kapitalism = tillväxt = modernitet.
Att tänka sig ett uppbrott från detta är en ganska stor sak. Det går bortom allt trams om “nolltillväxt”, vilket mest är ett sätt att bejaka tillväxtens kris – ett nollmål förutsätter ett samhälle där det fortfarande är meningsfullt att mäta “tillväxten”. På samma vis är “postmodernismen” mest ett sätt att bejaka modernitetens kris, utan att avskaffa dess kategorier.

Rasmus Fleischer, 'Till kritiken av arbetskritiken' on Copyriot (08/04/13)

Var i vår omgivning finner vi en modell för den mänskliga organismens komplexitet, för levande varelsers samspel? Vad lär oss att vara människor på samma vis som havet är hav? Mänsklig förändring, mänsklig tillblivelse, söker sin analogi i knoppande träd, lövens fall vid höstningen, dagsmeja över snö, smältande is och frysande vattendrag. I frånvaro av detta ersätts växandet med tillväxt, mallen för formation av mänsklig vuxenhet blir ekonomins cancerartade expansion: ett ego i ständig utvidgning, växande inte genom förening utan genom övertagande. Barnet klarmrar sig fast vid kramdjuret, vid det uppstoppade djuret, vid husdjuret. Där han förväntar sig frändskap och ömsesidighet möter han en slät projektionsyta, en friktionsfri icke-relation att förfoga över efter eget tycke. Spegeln är krossad; mänsklighetens innebörd förblir oklar i ett kugghjulsuniversum av atomiska objekt med funktion som enda essens.

Helena Granström, Alltings Mått (Ruin, 2008) pp. 24-25