We live in a dog-eat-dog-world. The expression refers to an existence so callous that it becomes normal to eat the flesh of one’s own species. Basically we live in a world where the societal norm is cannibalism.
This is not to say in a literal sense that our canines and molars drip with blood from a meal of human carnage (although this may sometimes be the case behind the closed doors of obscure cults). In a figurative way, however, the practice of eating members of one’s own species accurately describes the quotidian relations between men and women under the present moment of modern capitalism.
Cannibalism is par for the course in a new social order where materialism is king. In order to amass a bottomless abyss of riches in the never-ending game of primitive accumulation, the relative deprivation and hardship for the have-nots is collateral damage. In other words, the haves must first eat their species in order to eat their cake.
The world in which we preside is one where the rich, the wealthy, and even the moderately well off eat their own—their neighbors, their fellow men and women, and especially the poor—in order to enjoy immense fortune and relative refuge from want.
Modern capitalists exhibit a compulsion to eat human flesh. They pride themselves upon the power of depriving others, in suppressing the life’s breath of members of their own species.
This behavior puts modern cannibals at the upper echelons of extreme transgressions of morality. They waste no time in harvesting organs and trafficking humans. From guillotines to electric chairs, modern societies have devised machines to eat one’s own.
They delight in exhausting psychological and physical limits of humanity by taxing hearts to their last beat and toiling their muscles to their last lift—anything to satisfy their desire to eat their own in myriad ways, in order to stay elevated above the rest at the true cost of dismantling livelihoods and deteriorating lives.
Under cannibalist-capitalism, savagery is the social norm. Modern cannibals, that is capitalism and its voracious practitioners consume the food, medicine, and emotional well being needed to sustain life. Such few deprive the many of essentials for existence in order to fuel their desires for excess.
Of course some would deny that cannibalism applies, however not in renunciation of the inhumane acts they commit, but only to the suggestion that the people who they devour are not members of one’s own species. They argue not of the morality of inhumanity but of the semantics of who should belong to the group and who should stand outside its parameters.
Lips moist with human carnage, some would qualify the phrase “one’s own species” to justify actions that harm others and benefit themselves. Since the existence of man, various terminologies go to great lengths to designate levels of “species,” in order to distance the haves from the have-nots.
To pardon themselves from barbarism, they reject the premise of a single species, a human race. Their philosophies project the existence of several unequal races, classes, and strata: Mongols, Negros, Caucazoids, Asians, Blacks, Whites, Latinos; princes and princesses, kings and queens; nobles, lords, earls, dukes, and dutchesses; royal families, pharaohs, and sultans; untouchables, goyim, and chosen people. These labels to foster societal divisions propose an outlet for cannibals to circumscribe around humankind boundaries that fit their agendas. In essence, this word play serves to make cannibalism appear to be an unfit term, for they are not eating their own species purportedly but eating another—an other.
But if we are to think of people as one species, one human race, would cannibalism not be an appropriate term to designate the callous treatment of individuals?
In another attempt to escape responsibility for vile acts, capitalist sympathizers deploy mental illness as an excuse for inhumane behavior, so as to convolute an unrelated, extant woe with the innate disposition germane to cannibalism. The obsession with finding pleasure in drawing human blood and eating one’s own species has never been so prominent as in this latest spell of world domination by brute means, to no end until the world’s demise.
This cannibalism is not one whose inhumane grounds can be recovered by logic. No explanation justifies the pleasure drawn from murder, violence, and brute force. Modern cannibals are neither suffering from famine nor scarcity. Amid vast expanses of earth and no humanly justifiable reason to oppress, the quest to waste and deprive is no survival of the fittest contest but rather a narcissistic cum a histrionic power play.
Modern society’s quest is a zero sum, winner-takes-all rat race to the top in which the victor gets all the spoils, which are rotten from excess and over plucking. Often overlooked are the cutthroat stakes necessary to have skin in the game.
The practice of and desensitization to the ritual consumption of one’s own species plagues the very humanity to which we lay claim. We pride ourselves of what distinguishes us as humans from “lesser” beings, yet our base acceptance of the cannibalism of modern capitalism suggests that our so-called humanity is not actual reality, but only an ideal, perched far away from reach.
The capitalistic world has become exceedingly convoluted, often too complicated to unravel its deeper complexity. But when you have Nefetiti to peel away the shroud, you are left with nothing but a straightforward serial configuration of the innermost workings of capitalism. That is cannibalism, only by another name.
Nefetiti has a diagnosis for capitalism, and it is one that shows unchanging unlearned behaviour from primitivism to today’s so-called modernism. In fact, except for the fine words heavy laden within needlessly confounding theories, capitalism represents the epitome of a dog-eat-dog world. The very acme of cannibalism. But the more I write, I spoil a prophet’s sermon.
Enjoy!
A very defining essay on capitalism. The ideas here are as clear as rain water in an unpolluted river, where the fishes swim clean, eat well, and adore their habitat. But for this capitalists the world would have been much like so, where humans could swim clean, eat well and adore the Earth. Capitalists are destroying the Earth, and in doing so, they are destroying us and by nature, as cannibalism goes, themselves!
The wages of capitalism is death. Not just human death but the death of the whole world, death of the planet, and the death of the only habitat of all mankind that God has given us!
I am lost for words after reading this piece. Nefertiti, with your permission, let me write a poem from the inspiration I’ve gained here. I will definitely let you be the first reader. You have challenged me greatly with the clarity of your writing. As a double major of chemistry and physics, I know I’m on the right with my writing too as a mathematician despite opposing views.