NO FUTURE! AN EMOTIONAL OUTBURST By Theresia Pfister [This article published on December 29, 2016 is translated from the German on the Internet in Streitzuege 68/ 2016, www.linksnet.de.]
With what I have gathered in experiences and insights, I am convinced (and more everyday) we are marching straightaway to a deadly abyss. I must say “we” because I belong to the human species. I belong though I’d like to distance myself and feel alien (more alien the older I become). Marx and Engels described the development of humanity in the contemporary capitalist system and its ruinous laws like the growth and profit pressure. This has gone on for several thousand years and the cry “Stop!” was only rarely heard. The French and Russian revolutions and even the short-lived Paris Commune that did its utmost for the abolition of private property and for a more peaceful solidarian world failed magnificently. Nevertheless revolutionaries had the courage to swim against the stream and pointed to the possibility of a different cooperative life even at the risk of their lives. Finally, master and servant came to an arrangement when the whole species felt superior to the creation and practiced its subjugation although (or because) they saw their powerlessness daily or hourly. Sooner or later, death comes to everyone. The body and all its organs work without human help, the heart beats and breathing comes and goes without asking. We have no control over this. Despite this “thrownness” and our obvious delivered-up existence, we have the audacity to claim the earth is our property. We presume we can determine what belongs to whom, draw borders, build fences and walls and murder when these arbitrary dividing lines are violated. There is a story about Buddha who asked a murderer “Before you kill me, fulfill this one wish: cut off the branch of this tree.” The surprised malefactor did what was asked of him. Then the Buddha asked him to let the branch grow again. While destruction is easy, the creative act is hard to impossible. In the meantime, we can destroy all life on our planet several times. There are over 400 nuclear power plants, 10,000 nuclear weapons, the storage of burnt fuel rods of nuclear power plants is unexplained and no solution is in sight. Even after Tschernobyl and Fukushima, we persist in our ignorance, laugh about the simplemindedness of the sheep,