Our unwillingness to think about how to change our reality may simply be the noise of capitalism speaking through us. It's time to find value in something more than a new iPhone or pair of jeans
This very much reinforces something I’ve been thinking about for some time. The old is dying, but the new has not quite been born yet.
We now have a generation moving into adulthood who have only ever known the internet, smartphones and social media, and who understand identity, relationships and society quite differently from those of us brought up before them. Yet they are still being asked to live within economic systems shaped by the assumptions of the last 40 years.
That tension seems to sit behind so much of what we are seeing now, from working poverty and the decline of the middle classes to NEETs, falling birth rates and younger people struggling to find their place.
I’m less convinced that the answer is simply revolution. What interests me more is whether people realise how much power they already have within the systems that they keep running every day.
Maybe the real question is whether we wake up to that before the old order has extracted everything it can from us.
To the Author: in reply to "A dying West is eating its children"
I write to you not as an adversary, but as a fellow cartographer of the interregnum. Your essay provides a devastatingly accurate diagnosis of the terminal decay of Western capitalism. Your identification of the hijacked cognitive substrate — where the abused hostage defends the very system extracting from them — is a profound and necessary observation. You correctly identify that liberal democracy was merely a temporary artifact of surplus distribution, now being stripped away as the ecological and economic clocks run out.
However, as an architect examining the blueprints of your map, I must draw your attention to a structural flaw in your historical framing. This flaw does not negate your diagnosis of domestic decay, but it inadvertently reinforces the very imperial episteme you seek to dismantle.
I refer to the following passage:
"History suggests it may not be that simple. Saddam Hussein, for example, enforced a brutal system of rule over Iraqis – propped up by the West – for many decades, until we changed our minds and toppled him. So did Muammar Gaddafi. So did innumerable despots”.
When subjected to a rigorous historical sovereignty pattern analysis, this framing reveals a profound epistemological blind spot. It is analytically incomplete, and here is why:
1. The illusion of "We" and the centering of imperial agency
You write that "we changed our minds and toppled him”. The use of the collective "we" is the most revealing element of this passage. It unconsciously centers the Western subject as the sole agent of history. From the vantage point of the Global Majority, there is no "we" in the destruction of Iraq or Libya. There is only the imperial apparatus acting upon sovereign territories.
By framing the toppling of these states as a mere change of Western domestic mood — rather than the calculated enforcement of geopolitical hegemony — you inadvertently reduce the rest of the world to a passive stage upon which the West acts out its domestic capitalist crises. This leaves the cognitive substrate of the Western reader trapped in a narcissistic loop of introspection, unable to see the multipolar world struggling to be born outside the cage.
2. The material reality of elimination, not arbitrary disposal
You argue that the West propped up these leaders and then arbitrarily discarded them when it "changed its mind”. Documented historical facts demand a more scientific, material analysis. The empire did not topple Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi because it grew weary of their brutality; the empire routinely tolerates and funds brutality when it serves its strategic interests.
These leaders were eliminated because they attempted structural deviation from the cartographic cage of Western financial and military hegemony.
Saddam Hussein: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Iraq began pricing its oil in Euros rather than US Dollars, directly threatening the petrodollar architecture that underwrites American financial supremacy. The 2003 invasion was not a change of mind; it was a violent restructuring of the global financial grid to prevent sovereign deviation.
Muammar Gaddafi: Libya under Gaddafi was actively spearheading the creation of the African Monetary Fund, the African Central Bank, and a gold-backed Pan-African currency (the Dinar) designed to sever the African continent from the Francophone CFA franc and Western financial clearinghouses. The NATO intervention in 2011, executed under the moral shield of the "Responsibility to Protect”, coincided precisely with the moment this African financial architecture threatened to materialize.
3. The pseudomorphic trap of the "Despot" vocabulary
By adopting the Western liberal vocabulary of "despots" and "brutal systems”, your analysis falls victim to a pseudomorphic inversion. You use the empire’s moral categories to contextualize the empire’s violence. This validates the very "rules-based" rhetoric utilized to justify these interventions.
A genuine sovereignty pattern analysis requires us to recognize that the empire systematically eliminates any state that attempts to build a macro-political alternative to its extractive grid, regardless of that state's internal governance. The label of "despot" is merely the logistical pretext deployed by the Western media to manufacture consent for the destruction of sovereign deviation.
Conclusion
Your essay brilliantly maps the domestic exhaustion of the Western capitalist machine. But to complete the map of the interregnum, you must look beyond the domestic "we”. The dying West is not merely eating its children; it is violently lashing out at the emerging multipolar world to prevent its own obsolescence.
To imagine a life beyond capitalism, we must not only reject the iPhone and the pair of jeans. We must reject the empire’s monopoly on the grammar of reality. We must recognize that the destruction of Iraq and Libya were not domestic policy shifts, but the desperate, kinetic enforcement of a collapsing cartographic cage. Only when we see the geopolitical hardware clearly can we begin the un-spectacular work of building the alternatives on our own soil.
What can I say, when you’ve succinctly stated the vast problems we’re facing? I just hope that enough people wake up in time and decide to leave their abusive relationship with capitalism.
Very well said. I enjoyed this read and sums up many trains of thoughts I have.
My thoughts:
How can you not be a capitalist when you are driven at your deepest Protestant desires to prove you’re one of the elect?
Where is my fruit? I must produce it, I must find the evidence of my salvation. Disciplined behavior, productive member of society, iPhones and blue jeans. More iPhones and blue jeans, accumulation.
Brought to you by the corrupt theology of John Calvin. Time to give credit where credit is due. Before any real change can happen the underlying theological incoherence needs to be snuffed out (Augustine, Calvin, Luther) and all the blind guides that follow their teachings in any regard.
The epitome of capitalism, the unelected head of the UK state and his parasitic offspring might lift a finger to assuage the impending doom. Unfortunately, their ultra low IQ' due to inbreeding over centuries restricts any thoughts beyond a photo shoot.
Yes, yes, yes. I agree wholeheartedly. I want to do something about now! I wish someone, something, anything would get us all working together again. A good, but dispiriting read.
We feel powerless. We are certainly atomised. There is no movement or belief system behind which we are willing to unite. The still-birth seems imminent.
Jonathan, master pen‑pusher — you write with bitter clarity and uncommon grace. Thank you once again for advancing our understanding of this topic.
The human being’s insatiable desire to consume, pillage, ravage, and kill for selfish greed remains incomprehensible.
Allah says in Surah At‑Takāthur (Chapter 102, Verses 1–5):
“Competition for more gains diverts you,
until you end up in your graves.
No! You will soon come to know.
Again, no! You will soon come to know.
Indeed, if you were to know with certainty, you would have acted differently.”
What can anyone truly do with the humongous amounts of wealth and resources they hoard — even killing for — when our days on this earth are numbered?
It is the irony of capitalism: a system celebrated as human progression, yet often exposing the depths of human obsession with wealth, power, control and greed.
The spiritual decline in the west could be attributed to the rise of the problem of wealth and inequality.
Chris hedges book - “Empire of illusion. The end of the literacy and triumph of spectacle.” Worth reading.
"Human beings" do not have an insatiable desire to consume, pillage, ravage, and kill. It's men who commit these acts. Let's not hide male violence and the psychology of male domination behind a vague "human beings".
This very much reinforces something I’ve been thinking about for some time. The old is dying, but the new has not quite been born yet.
We now have a generation moving into adulthood who have only ever known the internet, smartphones and social media, and who understand identity, relationships and society quite differently from those of us brought up before them. Yet they are still being asked to live within economic systems shaped by the assumptions of the last 40 years.
That tension seems to sit behind so much of what we are seeing now, from working poverty and the decline of the middle classes to NEETs, falling birth rates and younger people struggling to find their place.
I’m less convinced that the answer is simply revolution. What interests me more is whether people realise how much power they already have within the systems that they keep running every day.
Maybe the real question is whether we wake up to that before the old order has extracted everything it can from us.
So true. Thank you.
Thank you Jonathan Cook for this considered analysis.
Also, thank you to Matthew Alford for the excellent reading.
To the Author: in reply to "A dying West is eating its children"
I write to you not as an adversary, but as a fellow cartographer of the interregnum. Your essay provides a devastatingly accurate diagnosis of the terminal decay of Western capitalism. Your identification of the hijacked cognitive substrate — where the abused hostage defends the very system extracting from them — is a profound and necessary observation. You correctly identify that liberal democracy was merely a temporary artifact of surplus distribution, now being stripped away as the ecological and economic clocks run out.
However, as an architect examining the blueprints of your map, I must draw your attention to a structural flaw in your historical framing. This flaw does not negate your diagnosis of domestic decay, but it inadvertently reinforces the very imperial episteme you seek to dismantle.
I refer to the following passage:
"History suggests it may not be that simple. Saddam Hussein, for example, enforced a brutal system of rule over Iraqis – propped up by the West – for many decades, until we changed our minds and toppled him. So did Muammar Gaddafi. So did innumerable despots”.
When subjected to a rigorous historical sovereignty pattern analysis, this framing reveals a profound epistemological blind spot. It is analytically incomplete, and here is why:
1. The illusion of "We" and the centering of imperial agency
You write that "we changed our minds and toppled him”. The use of the collective "we" is the most revealing element of this passage. It unconsciously centers the Western subject as the sole agent of history. From the vantage point of the Global Majority, there is no "we" in the destruction of Iraq or Libya. There is only the imperial apparatus acting upon sovereign territories.
By framing the toppling of these states as a mere change of Western domestic mood — rather than the calculated enforcement of geopolitical hegemony — you inadvertently reduce the rest of the world to a passive stage upon which the West acts out its domestic capitalist crises. This leaves the cognitive substrate of the Western reader trapped in a narcissistic loop of introspection, unable to see the multipolar world struggling to be born outside the cage.
2. The material reality of elimination, not arbitrary disposal
You argue that the West propped up these leaders and then arbitrarily discarded them when it "changed its mind”. Documented historical facts demand a more scientific, material analysis. The empire did not topple Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi because it grew weary of their brutality; the empire routinely tolerates and funds brutality when it serves its strategic interests.
These leaders were eliminated because they attempted structural deviation from the cartographic cage of Western financial and military hegemony.
Saddam Hussein: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Iraq began pricing its oil in Euros rather than US Dollars, directly threatening the petrodollar architecture that underwrites American financial supremacy. The 2003 invasion was not a change of mind; it was a violent restructuring of the global financial grid to prevent sovereign deviation.
Muammar Gaddafi: Libya under Gaddafi was actively spearheading the creation of the African Monetary Fund, the African Central Bank, and a gold-backed Pan-African currency (the Dinar) designed to sever the African continent from the Francophone CFA franc and Western financial clearinghouses. The NATO intervention in 2011, executed under the moral shield of the "Responsibility to Protect”, coincided precisely with the moment this African financial architecture threatened to materialize.
3. The pseudomorphic trap of the "Despot" vocabulary
By adopting the Western liberal vocabulary of "despots" and "brutal systems”, your analysis falls victim to a pseudomorphic inversion. You use the empire’s moral categories to contextualize the empire’s violence. This validates the very "rules-based" rhetoric utilized to justify these interventions.
A genuine sovereignty pattern analysis requires us to recognize that the empire systematically eliminates any state that attempts to build a macro-political alternative to its extractive grid, regardless of that state's internal governance. The label of "despot" is merely the logistical pretext deployed by the Western media to manufacture consent for the destruction of sovereign deviation.
Conclusion
Your essay brilliantly maps the domestic exhaustion of the Western capitalist machine. But to complete the map of the interregnum, you must look beyond the domestic "we”. The dying West is not merely eating its children; it is violently lashing out at the emerging multipolar world to prevent its own obsolescence.
To imagine a life beyond capitalism, we must not only reject the iPhone and the pair of jeans. We must reject the empire’s monopoly on the grammar of reality. We must recognize that the destruction of Iraq and Libya were not domestic policy shifts, but the desperate, kinetic enforcement of a collapsing cartographic cage. Only when we see the geopolitical hardware clearly can we begin the un-spectacular work of building the alternatives on our own soil.
Sums things up brilliantly and insightfully. This kind of analysis, deep and contextual, is sadly all too rare. Keep doing what you’re doing.
Inspirational as always, Jonathan. Thank you for being hopeful.
Excellent summary thank you
What can I say, when you’ve succinctly stated the vast problems we’re facing? I just hope that enough people wake up in time and decide to leave their abusive relationship with capitalism.
Very well said. I enjoyed this read and sums up many trains of thoughts I have.
My thoughts:
How can you not be a capitalist when you are driven at your deepest Protestant desires to prove you’re one of the elect?
Where is my fruit? I must produce it, I must find the evidence of my salvation. Disciplined behavior, productive member of society, iPhones and blue jeans. More iPhones and blue jeans, accumulation.
Brought to you by the corrupt theology of John Calvin. Time to give credit where credit is due. Before any real change can happen the underlying theological incoherence needs to be snuffed out (Augustine, Calvin, Luther) and all the blind guides that follow their teachings in any regard.
The epitome of capitalism, the unelected head of the UK state and his parasitic offspring might lift a finger to assuage the impending doom. Unfortunately, their ultra low IQ' due to inbreeding over centuries restricts any thoughts beyond a photo shoot.
thanks Jonathan, a lucid explanation in this age of superficial, mindless, over-consumption.
Yes, yes, yes. I agree wholeheartedly. I want to do something about now! I wish someone, something, anything would get us all working together again. A good, but dispiriting read.
Excellent!!
My fondest wish. 🤞
We feel powerless. We are certainly atomised. There is no movement or belief system behind which we are willing to unite. The still-birth seems imminent.
Jonathan, master pen‑pusher — you write with bitter clarity and uncommon grace. Thank you once again for advancing our understanding of this topic.
The human being’s insatiable desire to consume, pillage, ravage, and kill for selfish greed remains incomprehensible.
Allah says in Surah At‑Takāthur (Chapter 102, Verses 1–5):
“Competition for more gains diverts you,
until you end up in your graves.
No! You will soon come to know.
Again, no! You will soon come to know.
Indeed, if you were to know with certainty, you would have acted differently.”
What can anyone truly do with the humongous amounts of wealth and resources they hoard — even killing for — when our days on this earth are numbered?
It is the irony of capitalism: a system celebrated as human progression, yet often exposing the depths of human obsession with wealth, power, control and greed.
The spiritual decline in the west could be attributed to the rise of the problem of wealth and inequality.
Chris hedges book - “Empire of illusion. The end of the literacy and triumph of spectacle.” Worth reading.
"Human beings" do not have an insatiable desire to consume, pillage, ravage, and kill. It's men who commit these acts. Let's not hide male violence and the psychology of male domination behind a vague "human beings".
Thatcher, May and Truss supported the mass murder of children in Palestine.