"Why do they want to convince us that the world is becoming more violent?" is the title of an opinion column recently published in El Espectador by Julián de Zubiría, in which there is a disturbing approach.
Echoing the research work of the famous academic and writer Steven Pinker, who presents statistics on the decline of violence in the present day, Zubiría insists that “we live in the most peaceful and secure period in human history”.
However, recent statements by Vladimir Putin during the invasion of Ukraine—and the skirmishes of leaders from North Korea and China, not to mention what the United States and NATO are not disclosing—make it clear that there is always the lurking possibility of a nuclear apocalypse on both sides of the Atlantic.
This means that the optimism of the aforementioned authors hangs by a thread. It takes only a minor indiscretion, a miscalculation, for the thread to break, making the outcomes of the First and Second World Wars seem like child's play.
But the thing does not end there, the era of mass destruction is not restricted exclusively to pressing the red button, it also has to do with the large-scale violence that we have been carrying out for a long time against the non-human.A massacre that goes unnoticed by many pseudo-intellectuals.
We've annihilated many soils, rivers, wetlands, mountains, valleys, forests, seas, lakes, and other ecosystems that were teeming with life. The techniques employed have been diligently perfected thanks to all scientific knowledge: bombing, poisoning, strangulation, dismemberment, incineration, and more.
This is how we have managed to transform what industrialists call “natural resources” —read water, soil, trees, animals, minerals, etc.— into raw materials, which we extract at alarming speeds, to produce ephemeral goods, which later become garbage,that we later throw into the landfill, which is what we have turned the planet into.
Doing all of the above requires huge amounts of energy, which we extract from burning hydrocarbons and forests, which, in turn, generate gases that increase the temperature of the planet, further complicating the situation and increasing destruction.
The annihilation of biodiversity has been systematic and has led to the disappearance of a large number of bacteria, fungi, plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates;which is what some call the “sixth mass extinction”.
Thus, it could be said that we live in the most violent and insecure period, not only in the history of humanity, but in the history of the Earth.And that the cause of all this disaster is us, the homo sapiens - ironically, "wise man" in Latin.
All of us, to a greater or lesser extent, are involved in this debacle, as we are part of a social organization based on capital accumulation and the limitless growth of economies, which is precisely the crux of the matter.
Unfortunately, to sustain the lifestyle we've created and our subsistence scheme, we're betting everything on the triumph of capitalism.
It is true, this is something that we did not consciously choose, we were only born and grew up within an economic system that had been consolidating for centuries.
However, that does not mean that we cannot explore other, less violent ways of being in the world and relating to others, including non-humans;and other alternative forms of production and consumption, which escape the industrial logic of extreme exploitation.
Perhaps for now we will not be able to get completely out of the old scheme, but we will move in another direction.Some believe that this new reality is already cooking from below, thanks to the daily practices of multitudes of people around the world.
Many believe that if we manage to escape the collapse of everything, perhaps we can shape a new civilization, one with another way of knowing, being and acting.They call this new image of the future in different ways: post-capitalism, post-extractivism, post-developmentalism, etc.
At Casa el Ocobo, we are journeying toward that new horizon. We are striving to become more dependent on the surrounding ecosystem to meet some of our basic needs for water, food, education, and community.
For this reason, we're working on rainwater collection, soil regeneration, organic farming, composting, homeschooling, and other topics. If you're interested in learning more about our transition process, we invite you to click here. click here.
Two questions remain open to address in future blog posts: Why is violence against non-humans not perceived as violence? Why is human history understood as a phenomenon apart from everything else?
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