The Heart's Content

In a particular mood you can get me to believe that environmentalism is just an expression of late-capitalist ideology, an elite conspiracy, the apotheosis of scarcity. I know there are real issues, but efficiency, scale, etc. are, properly speaking, real issues too. They don't justify the amorality of the factory.

To construct an environmental limit on human industry strikes me as a decidedly third-rate solution. The limit on industry should always have been the human body's capacity for pleasure. When the worker is no longer enjoying his labour, the limit has been reached. When the body is not made healthier by the work it does, it should step away from the machine. The excesses of capitalism, including the destruction of the environment, is owed to forced labour and forced consumption beyond the natural desires of the bodies that work and consume.

Everyone should be allowed to work and to consume to their heart's content, and no one should be forced to work or to consume any more than that. Industry violates the heart's desire for work. Advertising violates the heart's desire to consume. It is not the planet that cries out against this violence; it is our own tortured flesh. Listen to your heart, man.