issue: #0028
The Cancer of Growth
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. The same applies to the ideology of economic growth. It’s a ruinous and ultimately self-destructive fantasy, which leads to the wasting of the planet’s resources, the poisoning of our environment, the exhaustion of cheap energy sources, and the endangerment of future generations.
-- The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West, Edward Abbey
For Empire growth is blessed and good, it is the vaunted civilising mission of progress, our development which spreads upon the earth and these are the catechisms of our civilisation. Growth is right and it is so blessed that no growth is negative growth. For growth is the unquestioned, holy pursuit of our civilisation, for to grow is to progress and to progress is to grow. The economy must have growth in the Gross Domestic Product as gross, domesticity destroying, perpetual production. Growth is good, despite how grotesque it may be. The market grows, the economy grows, the population grows and madness grows, growth marches through our world an idolatry of the market being growth’s very soul. How did growth become so accepted? How did growth measurements become standardised? How did it overrun our political and economic thinking like a cancer. I don’t intend to answer these questions I would like to invite you to ask them and see where you end up.
Why Overgrowing?
At the Dystopia Unmasked Collective when we talk about action we talk about Overgrowing. We don’t talk about revolution, growth or rebellion, we focus upon overgrowing. Overgrowing is to reclaim humanity beyond empire’s colonisation of life, overgrowing it to overcome the biopolitics of empire, for empire must control and subjugate life itself. It subjugates even the plant in its urge to control and to colonise the plants biological growth, this is what GMO does. This is what corporate social media does.
Biopolitics & Necropolitics
Wherever there is biopolitics there is necropolitics, for that which does not fit with empire’s growth doctrine enters empire’s necropolitics. Necropolitics categorises which populations must be subjugated, how they must be controlled and unleashes structural violence upon them in order to subjugate them. This is what is happening in Palestine, Congo and Sudan. Necropolitics is in our societies too, cop cities train police to violently manage particular populations. As empire gathers more resources into fewer and fewer hands, it must increasingly unleash necropolitics upon more and more of the population, for the 1% biopolitics is unleashed to secure their markets, consumers and producers, all else must be governed by necropolitics. Overgrowing allows us to explore turning away from it all, overgrowing empire’s definitions, empire’s pattern thinking and empire’s exploitation. Whether we like it or not, as empire progresses more and more of us fall into the ambit of necropolitics. This is what Gen Z protesting against a genocide and Palestinians who have changed the script in standing up to the ongoing decades long genocide and ethnic cleansing have discovered.
Overgrowing Ain’t Doctrine
In overgrowing we reclaim the word to grow, for *gʰreh - the proto-indo european root holds the sense of to grow or to green for it is connected to plants, and has the sense also to cultivate plants. For us overgrowing is to unleash the natural greening of everything, with all its variety. Overgrowing does not submit to imperial standardisation, rather it unleashes the natural conversation of us with our environment, so that we in conversation may discover anew what is hidden within ourselves and things. Where empire establishes a control grid of what is to be copied, overgrowing must hold open a liberating zone of radical creativity. For if we know the conclusions of the conversations, what are the acceptable arguments and all the things we can and can’t say, then we are not having a conversation but we are enacting a script. What we see is that for empire to live, this is what it must impose; it must impose the script. Empire must harness your primary process creativity, free fluid, raw, innate, boundless, non-conforming creativity, and conquer it by education, socialisation and popular culture so that it manufactures secondary process creativity, which is ruled and harnessed for the imperial project by education and socialisation. This is why the artist is so dangerous to Empire. Overgrowing is setting primary process creativity free and putting secondary process creativity in its place where it must serve primary process creativity. From here the human being lives from their living centre not as a compliant node of empire. This is the Over in Overgrowing, it is the setting free of the wild spirit. We don’t reject the creativity of empire, we recognise that with empire you and your process must be conquered. We recognise that to overgrow empire we must let the creative essence of our humanity roam free. We must let the bio - life in biology free, so that the biological limits beyond empire reveal themselves.
Don’t Fight it Let Life Live
Empire thrives upon rebellion, it needs it. Empire thrives upon submission it also needs that and it polices rebellion to produce submission. Overgrowing does not care about empire, for empire is a parasitic machine that captures our creative spirits and enslaves us as a state or corporate machine and then rules the machine, unleashing us against ourselves. The people of overgrowing are creative spirits so free that enslaving them is impossible, for them the enslaving matrix of the machine is an impossible condition. Your research at university is being used against you and against populations, for mass genocide, control and domination. Your job at Google, Apple or Amazon, is harnessed by the parasitic machine for genocide and this is only what we know about! Overgrowing refuses to give its precious creativity to empire and instead makes use of the raw power of their creativity for themselves. We solve our own problems and laugh at empire’s castrated self, for the imperial must in Lacanian terms castrate the artist and as artists we don’t have to refuse to partake, we don’t have to be contained by dialogue, we just free the creativity with our own will and practice, for our own will and for and on our own biological terms, needs and limits.
Let’s Make A Social Media of Overgrowing
Instagram is Meta’s imperial genocide machine, welded from our creativity and harnessing our creativity, what we must realise is that we are the living creativity and we must craft a living overgrowing social media. If you think that empire’s tantrum about TikTok was anything, look at what happens when we unleash our own? When we do this, watch empire collapse into a heap, shitting itself in terror. Overgrowing shows you that the dystopian monster is in reality powerless. ‘The King has no clothes!’, and so it must subjugate you by stealing your creativity and the fruits of your creativity. Overgrowing doesn’t say no, overgrowing no longer cares and leaves the imperial monster to ‘rot in peace’. At this point the empire must reveal itself as the rabid monster that it is. Empire is rotting and how could it not rot for it is we who are alive, not it. Overgrowing is building our own social media and solving our own problems with it. Overgrowing is overgrowing because we can. Because that is what we naturally do!
Great article as always, thank you. No history lesson today! My thoughts are that this one's really helpful to break away from the capitalist growth mindset that many of us have. Your article is a guide to channel our thought process in a different direction, a reprogramming of sorts, helping to connect with our true human nature. Am I correct?
"We recognise that to overgrow empire we must let the creative essence of our humanity roam free." This !
I love how you took the term overgrowing in a completely different direction than where I thought this article would go. Amazing!