A moral critique of capitalism, emphasizing the ways in which it leads to suffering, only reinforces capitalist realism. Poverty, famine and war can be presented as an inevitable part of reality, while the hope that these forms of suffering could be eliminated easily painted as naive utopianism. Capitalist realism can only be threatened if it is shown to be in some way inconsistent or untenable; if, that is to say, capitalism’s ostensible ‘realism’ turns out to be nothing of the sort.

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

Hermetic quote Fisher Capitalist Realism moral critique capitalism suffering reinforces realism nothing of the sort

Consider also:

  1. “Death Is An Absolute, Life Is Conditional”
  2. “Time to stand down, maybe.” “Nope. Just because there’s no government doesn’t mean our oaths are over. We’ll keep doing what we were tasked to do. Save civilians.”
  3. ‘I am not out of breath,’ I said between gasps. ‘I appear to be out of breath because you assume that I should be but in fact I have no breath to be out of. You see, although you imagine my form, I exist independently from it. Although I appear to be a postman, I am not a postman. I have taken a form that is appropriate for this meeting but I can take any form. My form is meaningful; it is symbolic of my nature. Like a postman, I am a messenger.
  4. “Aleister Crowley added a battery of gnostic power techniques culled from diverse cultural sources”
  5. “It was a splendid discovery, and the clarity and purity of the solution was even more extraordinary in light of the confusion it had emerged from, as if I’d unearthed a shard of crystal from the floor of a dark cave.”