The End of Reality

Abstract

In this article, I argue that in the age of neoliberal (postindustrial) globalization human relations to the environment have been “enframed” by capitalist ideology leading to the end of reality and the rise of human worldviews and ethos based on overconsumption and resource exhaustion as the determinants of existence over and against the environment and nature. Identity politics, the reification and commodification of (serial) identity practices, cultures, and “all of the accoutrements of the economy of spectacle and the manufacturing of images and fetish desires,” on the one hand, and the continuous atomization of the human subject in (neo) liberalism on the other are mechanisms for creating surplus-value and continuing capitalism’s domination over the world in the era of climate change. These two dialectical practices represent two fascist attempts to perpetuate capitalist relations of production and accumulate surplus value amidst its deleterious effects on all life on earth due to climate change, resource exhaustion, and pollution. I conclude the work by calling for an antihumanist philosophy and psychology with emphasis on subsistence living and maintaining a balance between nature and the environment as keys to planetary and human survival in the age of climate change.