After imagining what the Balearic Islands will be like in 50 years, my manias have been reinforced. It's bad news for all those who have to put up with my daily nagging, but I don't feel bad about it. If our only truly effective weapon is consumption, we should use it. Voting as a tool for transformation is a thing of the past. Today, regardless of who governs, our lives don't change much, because there are institutions and powers not elected by the citizens who are unwilling to see the course of our miserable existences change in any perceptible way. And, of course, this makes the vocation for radicalism increasingly devalued, as if going to the root of the problems were an offensive attitude to a bloated system at full speed.
Consumption involves many things beyond buying in a store, a shopping center, and a platform. on-lineWhether we drive or not, which electric company we use, how much food we throw into the manure, whether we travel a little less, how we use our time, at what price we sell our labor, how much dedication we give to our children... There are things we cannot change on an individual level, because it is increasingly difficult to cover basic needs, and it is not a matter of playing with bread. We do have small gestures of coherence within our grasp that, at the very least, grant us a few seconds of spiritual peace, like when we manage to control the bulimic urge to buy things we don't need and that only serve to quickly send our hard-earned money into other hands, which are usually those of rich people who don't need them.
It seems we have forgotten that what we cannot face alone does have a collective solution. Now, the collective is like radicalism, a nuisance to order and "good" citizens. Organizing ourselves collectively is a utopia until we wake up from the social anesthesia, which has multiplied its effects thanks to screens and absurd concerns. The line between the important and the superfluous has blurred, and now we're like little children crying for any blessing. Everything affects us, everything makes us sick, everything upsets us. The consumption they've put on the table is a deception. They've swindled us. And they've made us believe that we're not powerful, that the only thing we can do before we die is pass the time.
