From 66d5c74a7dda4b3bfd668b4ed286dc6b403fcee3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Tomislav Medak Date: Sun, 19 May 2024 10:04:16 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Update content/shard/abundance.md --- content/shard/abundance.md | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/shard/abundance.md b/content/shard/abundance.md index b8fb19d..64329e2 100644 --- a/content/shard/abundance.md +++ b/content/shard/abundance.md @@ -8,11 +8,11 @@ There are many bad, or at least non-productive ways, to think about abundance. O Now, digital abundance is a menace. There is too much stuff and the digital overload is intolerable. There is also too much stuff in general – in the Western world – and its quality is mostly poor. We usually hear this argument in relation to fast fashion, fast food and social media content. Such abundance relies on permanent consumption and ends up polluting people's brains, bodies, communities, beaches and forests, with whole countries designated as the rich world's rubbish dumps. From this point of view, a call for scarcity makes sense. Slow food, fewer material items, appraisal of relations in lieu of commodification reposition abundance and its relationship to scarcity. Here, the ecological cost of abundance is the planet. -Amongst projects attempting to address climate collapse then ![Ann Pettifor's](bib:fa8bd539-edaf-40ed-99cd-3fa86e7a6e25) *The Case for the Green New Deal* conjures an aesthetic of material scarcity as an urgent necessity. Classically, from Marx, scarcity is a “natural” condition, and now we must return to it, to combat commodification of people and relations and the destruction of the world. Abundance then is to be found in de-objectification, dealienation, conviviality, non-work and leisure, care, etc. These are older ideas, connected to the promise that when people are freed from the necessity of hard work (function of scarcity), they will be free to create (art), which is what brings meaning (God's replacement) and pleasure (engaging desire). However, generally speaking, the proposition of scarcity fails to intervene in the orchestrations of desire. It is hard to desire scarcity. Instead, what is needed is a reconceptualisation of abundance (alongside the narratives of any “natural condition” for humanity). This is also necessary to address existing practices of abundance that counter our current extractivist nightmares. +Amongst projects attempting to address climate collapse then ![](bib:fa8bd539-edaf-40ed-99cd-3fa86e7a6e25) conjures an aesthetic of material scarcity as an urgent necessity. Classically, from Marx, scarcity is a “natural” condition, and now we must return to it, to combat commodification of people and relations and the destruction of the world. Abundance then is to be found in de-objectification, dealienation, conviviality, non-work and leisure, care, etc. These are older ideas, connected to the promise that when people are freed from the necessity of hard work (function of scarcity), they will be free to create (art), which is what brings meaning (God's replacement) and pleasure (engaging desire). However, generally speaking, the proposition of scarcity fails to intervene in the orchestrations of desire. It is hard to desire scarcity. Instead, what is needed is a reconceptualisation of abundance (alongside the narratives of any “natural condition” for humanity). This is also necessary to address existing practices of abundance that counter our current extractivist nightmares. So, how to think of it otherwise? -Borrowing and re-purposing ![Murray Bookchin's](bib:5aa403d5-c826-4b6c-b084-3961bbddee23) *Postscarcity Anarchism*, we could say: +Borrowing and re-purposing ![](bib:5aa403d5-c826-4b6c-b084-3961bbddee23), we could say: 1. Scarcity is not primarily a “natural” condition. It is, first of all, a sense of insecurity; 2. Insecurity is produced socially and culturally (not only or not at all economically); 3. Such production is a function of exploitation;