DAVOS: DEMENTIA, DECLINE & DENIAL.

Posted on January 25, 2026 by stutteringsteps

Dementia.

The recent meetting of at Davos was a spectacle indeed, with most eyes on President Trumps meandering gait up a lonely, unacompanied carpet walk outside the venue on arrival and his rambling speeches once inside. The international press had another field day with comments pointing out the deteriorating mental and physical condition of the president of the USA. However, they were sparing on the pathetic fact that one of the most wealthy and powerful national elites in the world, in the USA, can only put forward as their current representative another version of the previous geriatric president who could also not walk straight or remember how to finish his sentences coherently. The two recent partial-dementia political examples of Biden and Trump are certainly not the personifications of a stable capitalist Empire or one in ascendency. But the real crisis at Davos is not about Trump or any other political figurhead that is manipulated in to supreme positions of governing power. These despicable and incompetent figureheads are in fact just one more visible symptom of the hierarchical mass society system and it’s current capitalist mode of production’s continuing decline.

Decline.

A ruling elite which cannot, or will not, devote enough effort within their ranks to produce an adequate, or better than adequate, group of political puppets to represent them at the most senior levels, cannot be expected to make enough effort to do many other vitally essential things. For example a serious symptom of – any hierarchical mass society system in decline – is when the elite cannot, or will not, ensure that the bulk of their citizens – who actually keep the entire system functioning on a day to day basis – are adequately fed, housed and their health and fitness fully protected. Hence, the decline and eventual fall of the ancient hierarchical mass societies of Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome.

In addition the elite in a hierarchical mass society system in the 21st century that cannot, or will not, make efforts to maintain a healthy global biosphere which supports their own and their systems existence, is definitely a system in terminal decline. The current empire of the global capitalist mode of production is dominated by three large hierarchical power blocs (USA, RUSSIA and CHINA) and all three have elites and leaderships in control which are ignoring the condition of their workforces, ignoring the overall condition of their respective home territories and ignoring their economic productions impact upon the essential health of the global biosphere.

Deterioration.

None of these three elites, or their analogues in the so-called ‘middle-powers’ are making serious attempts to prevent further deterioration of the global environment in terms of preventing further deforestations, preventing further massive sea, air and soil pollutions – all of which provide the bio-chemical basis for the earth’s biological cycles of re-oxygenated air and the biological foundations of all animal and human food chains. Indeed, they are actively making things worse by increasing extraction, production and consumption in every conceivable military and commercial way.

This lack of positive environmental stewardship is no accident. These elites cannot adequately address the fundamental existential symptoms now threatening life on earth, because they and their supporters are focussed on maintaining the existing privileges of their elite designed system. The rich can only stay rich and can only get richer my maintaining the present mode of production based upon extracting from nature more than nature can continue to provide and pocketing the surplus financial value from that extraction, production and consumption process, for themselves.

The elites within the three big-power aggregations know the rough basics of the multiple crises which are now maturing yearly, even if they are not aware of the more detailed elements of them. Therefore, they are planning and manoeuvring to make sure that as the multiple crises deepen – and they certainly will – their particular share of the rapidly reducing global resources comes to them before a share of it goes to all the middle power countries. Hence the big three are signaling to each other openly and covertly that they are ok with the previous so-called rules based order established after the Second World War, being ignored or torn up, in favour of carving the globe up into three main spheres of economic and military control or ‘influence’ as they prefer to call it.

Every one who has bothered to follow their machinations, understands that United Nations was always a pretend attempt at limiting big power domination. At least now the pretence, which fooled many, is being openly abandoned. The entire record of the UN indicates that it was never seriously meant to do anything to inhibit big power policies and acquisitions and it never has. Resolutions unhelpful to the big capitalist players have been vetoed or ignored by the inner group. Therefore Trumps board of peace initiative is a tentative attempt to establish a similar big power national realignment, but without the funding and annoyance of other lesser nations presenting resolutions, for discussion and deliberation. Trumps, cynically named ‘board of peace’ will start with a like minded, invited cronies group, tasked initially to profitably carve Gaza up, between themselves and their close supporters.

If successful, the next phase of the ‘board of peace’ will be moving on to become a more naked, privatised, big power carve up replacement for the United Nations. Then negotiating to obtain bases for big power armed forces in and out of anywhere they choose to send them, will be up to the cronies staffing the board of peace. The entire history of the imperialist stage of hierarchical mass societies, from ancient Greece and Rome, to modern European states, (Spain, France, Portugal, Germany and Britain) suggests that once welcomed or unwelcomed armed resource-hungry guests are allowed to move in, getting them to leave becomes practically impossible. In addition an eventual Trump initiated ‘board of peace’ with armed back up sounds very much like a mafioso protection racket for people who didn’t need protection in the first place until the trumpist mafioso decided they needed ‘protection’ primarily from themselves.

Denial.

The false contrast Mark Carney made at Davos between Authoritarian big power nations and middle power Democratic nations when he implied that the latter are supportive of the poor and precarious, was a form of hard-faced denial. All Carney’ s middle power nations are authoritarian exploiters of the people and the resources of our planet. Just look at how most of them, including Canada’s elites either stood by and watched, or lent a hand to Israel in carrying out the most barefaced and heartless genocide of the Palestinian people in recent years. And note how his elites, the USA elites and those in middle-power Europe, also victimised and penalised any of their citizens who campaigned against Israeli crimes against humanity.

All the hierarchical mass society elites are following the same basic elite economic and political tactical game plan, whatever their relative military, financial or economic strengths may be. They are all in denial of class system reality; they are all in relative or absolute states of denial of their own economic and social decline and all are engaged in open and hidden upper class wars against their own relatively powerless citizens. Not forgetting that, with exception of their own domestic arrangements, they are all also in denial that they are at war against their own territories natural environments and engaged in an economic war of extraction against the global biosphere which is the essential foundation of all biological and social systems.

In the 21st century, the ordinary working citizens of the world are the ones who will be forced by their elites to bear the brunt of the ongoing climate, social, economic, financial and ecological crises which will peak in the coming decades. Their resistance is inevitable, the only problem will be what kind of resistance. The traditional reformist resistance which seeks by mass actions to improve the present hierarchical mass society form by reforming away its worst features, will not solve any of the five symptoms noted in this paragraph. Nor will the form of 20th century resistance which sought to simply replace the bourgeous conservative elites with petite bourgeois socialist elites as in the Soviet Union and Communist China.

These latter ‘reforms’ of the hierarchical mass society structure, were simply State-run Capitalist societies, in which non-elite citizens remained wage-slaves were exploited by a ‘new class’ of elites governing essentially the same hierarchical mass extraction, production, consumption and pollution creating society structures as previously. The only realistic way forward for working people now is to not to help save the hierarchical mass society system in any form but to organise to help save the biosphere of planet earth, by creating small scale, local low-consuming communities, living modestly and putting ecological sustainability above technical ability. For it is the latter, which for a century or so, has been driving excesive-extraction, excesive-production, excessive-consumption and excessive-pollution, to the point of ecological and climate collapse.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2026)

(See also my book;’ Life on Earth (Past, Present and Future) for further information on the social and economic history of hierarchical mass societies and their impact upon the planet.)

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ARTIFICIAL VERSUS HUMAN INTELLIGENCE.

Posted on January 23, 2026 by stutteringsteps

PART  2.

In this second section on an extended analysis of AI, I suggest it will be useful to pause and consider further the difference between Artificial Intelligence (AI), Individual Applied Human Intelligence (IAHI), and Socio-biological Human Intelligence (SBHI) that was referenced in the first paragraph of part 1 of this article. So what follows is a quick review of what we already know about the concept of intelligence. I suggest that human intelligence like all biological forms of intelligence, is the ability of any biological species with sufficiently developed sensory organs and a sufficiently developed central processing organ such as a brain to store and process sensory inputs from outside and inside its individual body form. This information is then used make decisions in the brain on how to act in response to those sensory inputs.

In social animals this bio-chemical process manifests itself in two forms; individual responses and socially mediated responses. A socially aware individual, (animal or human), at least from shortly after birth, is able to mediate and modify his or her particular individual response to their information processing to conform with family and group expectations, recognised social requirements or accepted social norms. For example, as an adult individual driver I may like to go fast, but I know I am expected to slow down going past schools, congested areas or where speed restrictions are in force. As an individual I may desire or fear something I see, hear or feel, but in the presence of others, or due to any socially acquired social responsibilities, my response to what I desire or fear may be modified, even to the extent of reversing my initial individual reaction. That is a collectively acquired or social form of intelligence.

I suggest it is also vitally Important to recognise that human social intelligence is the only form of intelligence that has evolved a critical and self-critical dimension to its functioning. As far as we yet know, no other species of life can mentally agonise over should I go there or not, should I do this or not. So since our 21st century socially acquired human intelligence is now aware that pollution, ecological, loss, climate change, and socio-economic employment pattern changes, are detrimental to socio-biological functioning as well as individual functioning then this adds an important dimension to our social intelligence. As I suggested in part 1, ‘intelligence’ now takes three, often competing forms; Individual Applied Human Intelligence (often the Bad) and Socio-Biological Applied Human intelligence (the Good), and now that computing based Artificial Intelligence (AI) that I provided evidence there as being the downright ugly form.

This doesn’t mean that the good social intelligence framework is always acted upon, particularly by those who stand to lose from its consistent application. Like seat belt and smoking type social responsibilities, pernicious individual resistance to beneficial changes can often be encountered. Nevertheless, in these days of climate change, ecological destruction and pollution there is now among human populations an early development of what I suggest is becoming an enhanced form of Socio-biological Human Intelligence. For probably the first time in the evolution of the hierarchical mass society form of human aggregation, nature and its entire species forms are no longer exclusively seen as useful resources to admire, exploit and pollute, but are understood as being the essential biological foundations that all forms of life on earth rely upon to survive.

Notably, however, Artificial Intelligence systems, like far too many capitalists have little or none of this socio-biological critical, social or self–critical awareness, nor have its designers and promoters. Nor, of course, do the out of date intellectual data sources AI processes have this enhanced, and I suggest is now a necessary 21st century form of socio-biological Intelligence. This socio-biological awareness perspective is so new that the mass of 20th and 21st century anthropocentric focussed, literature and images used as raw material data for AI processing, contains very little that is relevant in this regard for the future of life on earth. That missing ‘past’ dimension to the understanding of life on earth, and a lack of self-critical reflection from within its supporters, means that these few socio-biological understandings are already diluted and lost among the reams of anthropocentric self-absorbtions and congratulations.

For some considerable time, the data on the development of AI will also be overwhelmingly biased from the heavy promotion of its virtues by its investors and supporters and will merely add to the already overwhelming an anthropocentric based ideology that ”isn’t human life on earth technically progressive and wonderful’. Since AI algorithms just processes what it is anthropocentrically programmed to process, from its predominantly anthropocentric focussed historic data, it will hardly produce unbiased material or material which is authentically critical of AI or of the capitalist mode of production. Which interestingly and predictably, is a what the majority of most human individuals might do (and many are doing) due to a lack of critical and self-critical general observations and understandings of its processes, or due to vested interests in its success and therefore in the abscence of their own broader socio-biological concerns.

For example, Artificial Intelligence cannot and its individual investors and users, will not even metaphorically look at themselves and say; “what I am doing using these massive resource hungry data banks of plagiaristic extraction that are consuming scarce resources of metals, energy, minerals and are causing heat and water pollution of the environment and also plummeting a generation of intellectual workers into the relative or absolute poverty of unemployment. And for what?” “So someone somewhere can produce a faster jingle, a quicker novel, or an instant pop or blues song at less cost than someone living and earning!” Incidentally, whilst AI is a positive double whammy for a few investors, it is not hard to understand from part 1 that is a double negative whammy for ordinary people and the environment!

Similarly, we already know that individual Human Intelligence, (IHI) particularly when considering investment returns or social or pecuniary advantage, frequently does something social intelligence considers wrong or problematic. Some desirable personal things, left unattended are often stolen. Inventions if not registered correctly are consistently stolen. In terms of intellectual property rights, someone stealing ideas and falsely claiming them as their own would be considered a decietful plagiarist or a copyright thief. They would normally be condemned, shunned or even punished by their peers. Not so for the bandit billionaires who are currently bootlegging other peoples data via AI. Moreover, their hoodwinked naive punters are joining the bandwagon and boosting the billionaire’s capital investments by buying societies own recycled words and images back from them. Below is another enthusiastic snake oil ‘left’ perspective on AI but this time from the left;

“The recent developments in artificial intelligence have opened up vast possibilities for its applications across various fields. However, they have also sparked concerns about how this technology is being directed. From the perspective of digital leftism, AI can be a revolutionary tool that contributes to restructuring society toward greater justice and equality.” (Autumn 2025)

This left perspective on AI, considers it a revolutionary tool, restructuring society toward greater justice and equality! On what planet will that happen? As noted in part 1, even a moderately sized new 21st century AI factory construction may be using as much electrical power and water consumption as a medium sized township where its working class pensioners and single parents are unable to keep their old 19th century homes adequately warm or their stomach’s adequately filled with suitable nutrition. This contrast is another ugly symptom of AI investments. But who cares? Apart from the working class victims themselves – very few! And certainly not the left, right and centre political supporters of AI who have enthusiastically embraced the brave new world of digital plagiarism. Here is another example of the Individual Human Intelligence’s IHI) amazing ability to ignore the massive contradiction between ‘hoping to save the environment’ by means of launching another AI, energy crunching, job reducing, climate altering platform:

“BigEarthData.ai has launched as a new environmental intelligence platform dedicated to protecting the environment, climate, and people for global ecological sustainability. The platform helps the public, researchers, journalists, and decision-makers better understand the accelerating climate and ecological crisis through real-time data, science, and AI-assisted synthesis. A first-of-its-kind Deep Ecology GenAI tool is online now at: https://bigearthdata.”

According to the big earth data promoters of a ‘Deep Ecology ‘AI backed platform ‘tool’, which behind the scenes (or in the ‘woods’) will be using vast amounts of electricity and water 24/7, and tons of building materials extracted from here, there and everywhere. The fact is that this digitalised product of capitalism is rapidly replacing waged and salaried research labour, and yet in the above authors imagination it is going to protect “the environment, climate and people for global ecological sustainability”! Really? I don’t think so. We humans cannot protect things from damage by promoting and enthusiastically utilising the very things that do the damage in the first place. This is another example of a capitalist inspired ‘inovation’ which promises much, but which will deliver little except unemployment, pollution, ecological damage and further climate dislocation.

Of course, it is a digital ‘revolution’ which is as yet, in its early stages of development. It has not yet been not sufficiently developed and over-developed to reveal that its further progress will be every bit as socially, ecologically and environmentally detrimental to life on earth – in all its species forms – as the Industrial Revolution was in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. So let’s be clear, by AI data trawling, repurposing and re-selling our unattended archived ideas, stories, evaluations or images back to us, or as Bitcoin, crunching out abstract numbers for esoteric values, its capitalist owners get around this problem of vulgar plagiarism and golden fleece searching. For the capitalist investors in other peoples past creative narratives, borrowed assumptions or out of date opinions and still usable images, they have given themselves a get-out-of-jail-free card. They have also managed to avoid any sizable deductions of variable capital costs of wage-labour and hidden away from sight any intended or unintended biosphere negatives well out of sight from prying eyes.

Furthermore, Artificial Intelligence production allows the replacement of current paid intellectual labour by tax-deductable, mainly capital expenditure situated within its AI re-processing centres. This further shrinks the tax base which is available for social needs expenditure. At the same time this allows a disguised form of vulgar plagiarism of collective past intellectual labour to be both sold and amply rewarded and to go largely undetected. Again, it’s a double positive whammy for the owners of capital! But that’s not even the worst of AI because such large-scale data extraction of our collective past intellectual labour by AI comes at the intellectual cost of conserving all that is outdated mediocre and banal and is offering it up to current generations as something entirely new.

In fact, as noted in part 1, the only thing new is how this ancient and relatively recent intellectual raw material has been served up and delivered. This is particularly problematic when all the data which has been collected and stored for AI repurposing and reselling is undoubtedly 99% anthropocentrically based and biased. How could it not be? Serious global ecological concern was only triggered into international public prominence by a young Greta Thunberg this century and she has been consistently ridiculed and disrespected, so a large-scale, multifaceted Gaia-centric movement has still not caught on and still not produced the volume and quality of data necessary to render it incapable of being demoted, marginalised or totally ignored.

And in all such cases of computational or productive processing of past intellectual labour, the logical premise suggests the following! Anthropocentric biased and based data in = re-packaged Anthropocentric biased and based data – out. Its output may coherent  or incoherent and inconsistent, but what comes out will be a reassembled version of what has gone in and was thought to be rational and sensible in the past decades when climate change and ecological destruction was considered a hippy ‘tree-hugging fetish.

Furthermore, we have the spectacle, as above, and from what I increasingly read, the undoubted trend of human liberal and politically left individuals who at the rhetorical level claim to be concerned with protecting workers rights, animal rights and who are supposedly opposed to pollution, job de-skilling, climate change and ecological destruction, and yet many are welcoming and using AI to create or assist in the creation of their own free or paid-for-content in their various media outlets. So here is another view of AI from the left, resembling yet another modern version of snake oil salesmanship or promoters of ‘magic beans’.

“This vision aims to liberate AI from the constraints of the capitalist market and redirect it toward serving all humanity, transforming it into a means to improve quality of life, free people from burdensome routine labor, and enhance human creativity in all areas.” (Autumn 2025)

What’s this serving all humanity? Is it a call to nationalise Artificial Intelligence and replace current and future social intelligence by past social intelligence? What’s next, I ask? Perhaps it will be a plethora of Anti-capitalist and ‘green’ manifesto’s, constructed or largely assisted by AI algorithms which have repurposed past anti-capitalist slogans, juxtaposed and linked outdated socialist and ecological theses and outmoded biological understandings. Is this what is to be presented it to the masses as the latest and best in anti-capitalist intellectual shrewdness and competence? The opening question of this paragraph; ‘what is next’ is only rhetorical. I suggest this embrace of ugly Artificial Intelligence (AI) by some Anti-Capitalist and socialist activists (AC/SA’s) has already occurred on a number of occasions already, but crucially, without any full disclosure of doing so and without any accountability.

Yet any such left AI efforts will produce only  Manifesto’s which will only insert a facile understanding of the abstraction ‘nature’ and reference the term ‘green’ somewhere within them, because anything more ecologically critical and rigourous than “isn’t nature wonderful and modern technology extremely useful for exploiting it” before 2015, is not yet in the anthropocentric based data banks to be hoovered up for this greedily pernicious form of intellectual recycling. Meanwhile the out of sight AI and bitcoin factories are humming away 24/7 intentionally replacing paid jobs and intentionally consuming scarce resources whilst intentionally  producing profits for billionaire’s and their business buddies to help them become trillionnairs, whilst further undermining the biosphere upon which all life on earth depends.

These actual and potential examples that I have outlined are instances of some of the personifications of Individual Human Intelligence (IHI), intentionally or unintentionally, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to subvert the newly forming, enlightened biologically and ecologically informed Human Socio-biologicall Intelligence (SBHI), which is as yet only in its tentative historical beginnings. The real revolution in self-critical thinking within human ‘life on earth’ is still being drowned out by the reactionary hum, hum of the brave new world of previous generations of Anthropocentricaly focussed nationalist forces politicians and petro-chemical professionals who are still alive and monopolising information flow along with the increasing electrical hum of Computer generated Artificial Intelligence. Which, let’s face it, as outlined in part 1, is not really Intelligent at all even though it is thoroughly artificial.

The same goes for those capitalist individuals and capitalist collectives promoting and wealth extracting from the AI mining, repurposing and re-cycling of past sources of intellectual labour. Like all capital motivated producers these investors, promoters and gullible others have consciously chosen to not be critical or self-critical and have convinced themselves to be profitable AI extracters, producers and users first and climate, pollution, ecological damage and poverty creation apolgists or deniers second. These activists, for and against capital and hierarchy are also examples of Individual Human Intelligence (IHI) using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to subvert Socio-biological Intelligence (SBHI).

So to those who wish to, it is already relatively easy to spot the difference between the exercise of Artificial intelligence (AI) or Individual Human Intelligence (IHI) and the exercise of Socio-biological Intelligence (SBI). Whatever you hear, read or see, in AI production can be evidentially judged by the crudeness, the repetition, the disjointed phrasing of it, the cliches it contains, but most tellingly by the abscence of criticism of the hierarchical system of capitalist production. And, of course by the lack of self-criticism by the AI promoters, sellers and users of this new socio-economic incarnation of an elite-orientated extractive mass industry.

Underneath, the bonhomie bluster and media spin on AI, the form and function of AI like all previous extractive industries is based upon extracting easy to obtain raw materials in this case from the social environment and selling it back to people who created it in the first place. In this case it is data mining the raw material of past intellectual labour, written, visual and audible, and is doing so at the expense of and to the detriment of present intellectual labour, the ecological environment and the climate we live within.

The form and function of AI, (and bitcoin) production socio-economically, like all previous forms of capitalist production, is to create profits for the owners and controllers of capital; and its form and function ecologically is to continue the pollution, damage and destruction of the hidden (N-M-G-R + A-D) bio-chemical labour of all the species whose life-cycles contribute to the air we breathe and to all the food we eat and which keeps the biosphere and the rest of life on earth alive and in ecological balance.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2026)

For further analysis of the (N-M-G-R + A-D) life processes of all species of life on earth see; ‘Life on Earth (Past, Present and Future) by R. Ratcliffe. Available from Amazon,

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ARTIFICIAL VERSUS HUMAN INTELLIGENCE.

Posted on January 16, 2026 by stutteringsteps

(PART 1.)

I suggest that currently there are only three types of intelligence; the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. (Thanks to whichever Spagetti Western writer formulated that film title) The Good is Socio-biological Aware Human Intelligence (SBAHI); the Bad is Individually Applied Human Intelligence; (IAHI) and the Ugly is Artificial Intelligence (AI). I will try explain my reasoning for this analogy by what follows in the rest of this two part article. For some time now our societies have been bombarded by AI generated advertising, literature, news, music, images and information on internet blogs etc.

And the reason I classify AI as Ugly is down to five symptoms of its production and use. 1, the material used to produce the huge buildings etc., which house its production; 2, the energy sources needed to power its production processes; 3, the raw material (data) used in it’s manufacturing process; 4, the air and ground pollution caused by all its processes and 5, the social confusion its creators are causing by blurring the conceptual difference between skills and intelligence. A skill is the ability to do something complex in a sustainable and accurate manner. Skills are often impressive, but intelligence is different.

The eight characteristics (linguistic, logical, spatial, body kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal)  outlined by  Huawei Technologies, in their outline of AI intelligent systems are not actually outlines of intelligence, but outlines of human socially acquired skills. However, the authors of this seminal report seem not to have realised that human intelligence is not the same as a computer processing skill, no matter how complex that computing skill is. Human intelligence is something qualitatively different.

For example, Intelligence is knowing when the exercise of any skill is accurate enough for what is needed or intended, and whether and when the exercise of a skill is appropriate or not. Speaking is a complex everyday skill but intelligence is knowing what is accurate enough to pass on to others, when it is appropriate to pass it on and when it is best not to continue just pontificating but to just shut up. Computers and their programs, on the other hand, are not intelligent and will carry on processing output until the code corrupts, they burn out the central processor, the electricity fails or until someone switches them off. Fears about AI taking over the planet? Really? AI systems cannot even switch themselves on.

Lots of people (and some birds) have skilful use of speech, but not everyone (or every parrot for that matter) has the intelligence to know when and how to use the words appropriately. Many people have the skill to drive or fly various vehicles at rapid speeds and yet they frequently drive too fast, too recklessly, or in hazardous conditions and die every day – often taking others with them. Their skill levels frequently override their intelligence levels. Poor James Dean. The calculation skills of AI computer algorithms is impressive, far faster and often more accurate than human calculations. The more advanced ‘expert’ systems contain knowledge bases of stored facts and inference engines which apply logical rules to the knowledge base and find patterns, that are quicker and often more accurate than a human being can do in the same time. But that is not a symptom of intelligence.

Take for example, the dogmatic certainty of the programmers of the accuracy within the UK Post Office accounting software. That reliance on machine-level processing led to hundreds of people being wrongly convicted and jailed for fraud. Some of the wrongly convicted even committed suicide in desperation or despair. When in fact it turns out that the expert AI type programs housed within the accounting system were not accurate, but faulty. The programmers exaggerated confidence in their own programming skills and their machines calculation skills over-rode the operation of their social intelligence. A human intelligence applied to that outcome (unless deeply prejudiced) would have questioned whether so many Post Office managers could be so inept or so corrupt. Not so the computer programs or their programmers. Like their computers the latter ploughed on regardless until someone eventually switched them out of the chain of misery they had created. But far too late – people had already died.

The computers or their programmers did not jail them or prompt their victims existential distress, but a chain of people who dogmatically believed in the computational accuracy of their ‘expert’ machine learning programing did. Again this example indicates that skill levels are not symptoms of intelligence even when performed by otherwise intelligent human beings. That result to my mind was another downright ugly aspect of human reliance on machine learning and its latest digital offspring Artificial Intelligence. Indeed, I would argue that reliance upon machine learning skills are already eroding the application of human intelligence and skills. If we are too tired or busy to check our spellings or calculations, we don’t need to reason why we are too busy or to tired to complain, we can just get the software programme to check both, as the Post Office elite did.  The logic of profit making being if it’s cheaper to let AI do it why pay an intelligent  human being to do it?

AI: Capitalism on Steroids.

Metaphorically speaking, AI is an example of capitalism on steroids. Like any large-scale-capital-funded industrial factory building in the last 200 years, AI factories are large extensive and expensive buildings, containing high cost exclusively designed machinery, large raw material inputs, high power source usage, a complex manufacturing process, and a slick but completely one-sided brand of sales promotion, to expedite its completed commodity for sale cycle of production and consumption. AI data centres and their products are no different in this capitalist motivated essence, to car factories, mechanized bakeries, or factories producing televisions, mobile phones, biscuits or just streams of decorative pound shop tat.

The output and sales are what drive the capitalist production process forward and onward, not quality, equity, safety or sustainability. In this regard, two forms of capital are normally deployed in industrial and commercial capitalist processes: Fixed capital (expended mostly on buildings, machinery etc) and Variable capital (expended mostly on wages/salaries for workers). However, with little or no new intellectual labour needed for AI data and number crunching, the variable capital required for AI and Bitcoin production salaries and wages is practically zero.

Also like previous capitalist industries, all AI outputs are being generated from processed raw materials which are repurposed and then resold as entirely new commodities. In non-digital production processes, plastics, metals and glass are the raw materials processed by workers into smart phones, cars, laptops, etc, who are employed on various pay scales to do this transformation. Hence their wages and salaries are spent in the community which helps keep the lives of the rest of those working within the capitalist mode of production afloat. In the case of AI processing the raw materials being used are not past inorganic materials produced during the planets evolution such as powders, metals, plastics or even wood, but are the recorded past examples of human literary ingenuity, mediocrity and it has to be said, even banality.

Prior to the AI digital period, a capitalist had to employ living intellectual labour in order to exploit the difference between buying it and selling its output, but that is no longer necessary for mundane intellectual production. A way now exists to put new life into the dead and archive buried intellectual labour of the past. A reversal has occurred of Marx’s vampire analogy where the owners of dead labour live by extracting material from the living. In AI the living capitalists extract intellectual material from the dead or retired intellectual workers of the past.

The raw digitised material for AI comes in the form of humanities past products of social evolution, as embedded in their words, images, and sounds, previously stored mostly on paper or digitally but now contained in massive data holding ‘clouds’ and processing computing centres. This accumulation of past, once profitable intellectual labour-power, is being re-processed and resold back to humanity, for further profit making, as something entirely new. But in fact AI is old intellectual labour of varying quality being recycled, re-packaged and resold, to make very rich people even richer.

With regard to the normal capitalist formula presented by Marx, after studying Adam Smith (and many others) to explain how capital makes profits, he identified the following sequence. A sum of money designated as Constant Capital (c) is expended on Fixed Capital forms (buildings, machines etc) and another sum expended as Circulating Capital forms (on raw and auxiliary materials of production) plus another sum expended upon Variable Capital (v) which pays contemporary labour. The workers, by being paid less value in wages and salaries, than the value they add to the commodities or services they produce, thus also produce surplus value (s). The extra unpaid labour they perform during the production process creates this surplus-value in the form extra products or services, which enables profits to be extracted, once the extra products are sold.

Thus Marx in Das Capital utilises an abstract capitalist investment formula of 4,000 c + 1,000 v = 5,000 to calculate the total capital invested. But since it is the new labour (v) which adds extra value to the existing commodity value once sold, the finished commodity product value under capitalist investment is intended to be as follows. 4,000 c + 1,000 v + 1,000 s = 6,000 (at a 50% surplus value rate of labour exploitation). Thus the capitalist puts 5,000 in and gets 6,000 out – in whatever form of currency the capitalist operates within. So the total Capital advanced (C) = constant capital + variable capital or (C = c+v): But the total Capital returned after sale is constant capital value + variable capital value + surplus value or (C = c+v+s); (s) being the source of profits and interest on capital. (Marx. Vol. 3, Das Capital)

The limits of surplus-value exploitation of human labour (intellectual, physical or both) in such normal capitalist cases are not just technical but physical and biological. Generally, human labour becomes exhausted after eight or ten hours of continuous value adding activity, (hence formal and informal mandated time limits for working) but for AI without a workforce there are only technical and marketing limits to the extraction and realisation of profits or super profits. So in the case of AI factory production without needing the use of current labour as an expense, the same investment calculation would be 4, 000 in + whatever the AI entrepreneur is able to charge the purchasers for whatever residual value they still think remains within global societies currently stored past intellectual labour-power output.

To the capitalist investors in AI (and of course Bitcoin) this is the same type of business opportunity that ancient and modern piracy or ancient tomb or bank raiding theft offered or still sometimes offers. They just fund the costs of getting their hands on already salable merchandise, (i.e. a pirate ship and boarding crew for piracy or a van and gang for a warehouse or bank heist. “Hey I only said blow the bloody doors off!”). And at a capitalist system level scale, therefore, this AI worker reduced production process leaves more entrepreneurial capital available to be spent on more Constant and Fixed Capital, (bigger AI processing units) or on more interest bearing Loan Capital or leaving more capital to be utilised for Financial Speculation.

AI: And Financial Speculation.

Incidentally, what AI is currently in financial terms, is a huge capital funded financial bubble in AI and Bitcoin investment. AI investment is just metaphoricaly pumping up the presssure for its price to bubble up even further and eventually burst whilst at the same time before the burst ocurrs, spilling enough spare capital elsewhere to fund other available speculative bubbles. Hence, for example, the Blair and Trump family attempts to sell future hotels and condo’s on a bulldozed and repurposed Gaza Strip, fully stripped of it’s original buildings and original population; or selling some future shares in rare earth mining consortiums located in confiscated parts of Ukraine.

We should all know by now what happens to bubbles – they burst! Just like they did spectacularly in the 1930’s and again in 2008. But because the capitalist mode of production is a socio-economic, inter-dependent social ‘system’, it is not only the bubble makers who suffer loss. Everyone in the ‘system’ is effected albeit disproportionately, but invariably it is the poorest and most vulnerable who fare the worst from a huge economic or financial bubble bursting and the inevitable slump which follows. The quotation which follows is a typical liberal, bubble-encouraging bourgeois assessment of AI. Such examples are originating from a modern version of a snake oil salesman addressing a naive and gullible public. Note the self-satisfying motive of avoiding the costs of employing paid skilled, intellectual, salaried or waged labour;

“For the first time in history, it has become realistically possible to meet the needs of the majority of the population with minimal human effort, and to provide goods, services, and knowledge abundantly, sometimes even for free, without relying on intensive wage labor or traditional bureaucratic structures” (Autumn 2025)

This promise of meeting the needs of the majority is offered with minimal effort, by the writer without mentioning that this is providing that the human need is not for a paid job in intellectual literary, graphic, or musical composition of some kind, which AI is busy replacing. Instead, AI, like previous generations of snake oil salesmen are assuring their punters, is going to cure all ills and do it for free! Is it indeed? The above idealist scenario is a slimmed down version of Elon Musk’s science fiction utopia where robots do all the manual labour and the humans get a basic income from the state to keep them alive. The basic income will supposedly come from a tax on the wealthy corporations who will clearly carry on doing all they can to avoid paying it. It’s basically a total war type imaginary economy in which every citizen consumes (food and resources) but no citizen produces – the machines do all that faster than people and the waste stuff and pollution continues to pile up and up.

The above AI bandwagon jumpers, as with other, left, right and centre, AI advocates, make no mention of AI monopolising civic electricity and water supplies, they make no mention of the hidden social costs in job losses, no mention of accelerated environmental degradation, no mention of further pollution, climate dislocation, no mention of further species extinctions! In reality down this yellow brick road of fantasy metaphorically free meals, it is more likely that bits of our own patched together collective ingenuity, mediocrity or banality, will come back to those of us who are conned into buying the ersatz AI commodity based upon our previous collective intellectual output.

So in the case of AI, its enthusiastic promoters think we should not bother about the recycled mediocrity and occasional gems of wisdom already previously uttered, we just need to admire its sleek data-set packaged form and dream the dream of it meeting our ‘needs’. Peel back the rhetoric and the protective plastic film and plug into the fact that AI is just recycled old news, resuscitated old opinions, worn out old narratives, tattered old platitudes, long decayed old reassurances, old dreams, out of date social and scientific assumptions, clever and subtle falsehoods, past amusing anecdotes, threadbare repeated cliches and a general assortment of fabricated intellectual tat.

But the fact that such manufactured machine produced ‘brave new world’ digital culture is occuring, whilst human interactive community culture in many human communities, continues to be gutted, atrophied and undermined, doesn’t matter to the owners of capital. If the value of the last 100 plus years of recycled anthropocentric opinions and class based obsessions, can be hyped up to be of greater value than the value expended by the capitalist investor in order to recycle it, then that difference produces the profit or interest on the capital invested. The capitalist investor is only interested in the welfare and accumulation of his or her own capital not the welfare and future of citizens in general or the other particular life forms sharing the environment. The only difference will be the packaging and a new generation of slick snake oil type salesmen.

Their job will be to convince the gullible amongst us that purchasing our past collective intellectual products or crunching our accumulated statistical information (which paid workers could have done, with critically applied intelligence) will meet the needs of the majority and solve practically every known problem humanity can think of. Of course, the industrial era raw material inputs, (cottons, plastics, metals, etc) were themselves all products of stored up past human labour, which were then worked upon again by yet another set of paid workers to manufacture whatever commodities the factory or industry owner had decided to manufacture and sell. In the case of AI data centres however, there is an impossible to ignore essential difference. As already noted, the raw material in AI processing is the stored up results of past intellectual labour by living and dead authors, writers, musicians, artists, poets, publicists etc.

AI Production: Out of Sight out of Mind.

However there is another notable dimension to this digital new world. The vast AI data centres, (and their fellow travellers in making money out of selling ersatz dreams, the bitcoin number crunching centres) however are not based near locations of mass labour such as towns and cities, because these industries are not going to be crammed full of manufacturing workers, together with a sprinkling of maintenance workers. These new industrial-sized monuments of mammon are being erected in isolated places and are crammed full of banks of high powered computer hardware storage and processing units, with their own few technical and maintenance operatives.

Consequently, it has been reliably estimated that the total yearly energy consumption of bitcoin production (energy and resources used just to solve complex cryptographic puzzles, to produce a rare imaginary mathematical result) is already equal to, or more than, the power consumption of countries the size of Finland. Yes Bitcoin production is consuming more planetary resources than entire hierarchical mass society populations of modern countries! And of course, AI computer data centres are not far behind this resource consumption figure and the latest scaled up ones in the US and China are certainly in the same resource draining, polluting, eco-damaging superleague ball park as Bitcoin.

So of course, it should come as no shock that the power and water inputs for these hot running computer banks of AI and bitcoin, national and global production, are also far higher than 19th and 20th century industrial era polluting electrical and water supplies to 19th century factories and industries, which left, physical and social scars on the regions and communities in which they boomed, slumped and then went bust. These 21st century power and resource consuming capital-intensive, data processing investment factories now require their own dedicated power grids and large reservoirs of water to keep them running 24/7 and keep them optimately cool whilst doing so.

Consequently some AI providers are recommissioning abandoned decrepit nuclear power facilities, or old coal fired power stations, and even second hand large jet plane engines, patching them up to run again on full power to keep their AI banks running 24/7. If one or other of these desperate measures, is not another disaster in the making like bhopal, I will be pleased but surprised. AI is another case of out of sight, out of mind! These vast complexes are also out of hearing (noise pollution), smelling and tasting (aerosol pollution), feeling (liquid coolant pollution), and out of sight of ground saturation and detection as well as wild life micro and macro organism destruction. Yes! Doesn’t AI seem wonderful, when it avoids socio-biological focussed forms of human evaluation and is allowed to just individually evaluate itself? Like elite decisions everywhere – the dark side literally and metaphorically just ploughs on – protected and undetected – until it is too late.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2026)

Part 2, will consider further the liberal and left perspective on AI in the period of climate change, ecological destruction, human and animal rights violations, and the comprehensive, multi dimensional biosphere pollution.

PS. I included the  film references in this and other articles not just to be quirky but to clearly indicate that my writing  is not AI assisted, but a product of my own human quirky intelligence. AI would neither include or understand the meaning of such humerous insertions.

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VENEZUELA: IMPERIALISM OR DEMENTIA?

Posted on January 8, 2026 by stutteringsteps

The recent abduction of the Venezuelan president, by the United States of America, is not only or primarily, about narcotics, oil, any other particular resource materials or personal grudges or emnities. Elite dementia may have a role here, but not a dominant one. Although many of the above aspects, or even all of them may well be guiding some individuals within the corporate and military spheres of governance in the USA, there is a lot more to it than these issues. Corporate America, like all hierarchical mass societies, based upon the capitalist mode of production, is also in a social, an economic, a financial, a political, a climate and an ecological crisis. So too are the other two big military powers, China and Russia, within the current network of global trade.

We need to remember that Trump (and his revolving team of advisers) are the current spokespersons representing corporate America, and have hinted a number of times at taking over, Greenland, Panama and Canada during his second term in office. These revelations, were too easily dismissed by many pundits as only the meglomatic ravings of someone one not fully up to the job of taking the USA through the current crisis phase of its continuing decline and fall. These anti-Trump personal observations may be true, but in the end it depends on the ‘job’ spec drawn up by the powerful elites that are currently behind him and his team. More of that later.

We should also remember that Russia too is undergoing an economic, financial, social, climate, and ecological crisis and also the elite there hope to solve at least some of those problems by getting control of large areas of land and potentially lucrative strategic minerals within parts of Ukraine, as a first stage of gaining back even more of the territories once controlled by the former Soviet Union. Here again it’s not simply about gaining ownership and control of strategic metal ores, or settling a long held grudge against western powers, although these also feature in some Kremlin calculations. There is more to it than that. And then of course there is China.

It is difficult to say how bad the social, economic, financial, climate and ecological crises are in China, but this hierarchical mass society system also exists in the same interconnected global network as the rest of us and the fact that their production capability is one of the highest in the globe brings it’s own associated problems. Being the worlds leader in commodity exports of all kinds, means that China has a continually pressing need to secure sources of raw materials and places to sell finished goods. For some decades now its ruling elites and their alternating figureheads have promoted a new Silk Road, initiative with Road, Rail, Docks, and Warehouse networks strung along it. Moreover, China also thinks it is no longer big enough to manage the coming crises and has urgent ambitions to repossess Hongkong and Taiwan.

Solving the problems of obtaining reliable cheap raw materials to process into finished goods and finding markets to sell these has always been a recurring problem for the capitalist mode of production wherever capitalism has come to dominate the social production of hierarchical mass societies. This became particularly intense within the hierarchical mass society form when it began its mass production phase after the industrial revolution in Europe. The European solution to this problem of relative overproduction in the 18th and 19th century became known as imperialism and European gunboat diplomacy was used to put pressure on newly formed countries throughout the world to agree to the terms of trade favourable to Britain, France, Germany etc.

However, North America by that period in the 19th century, had also become an industrial power and its mechanized production was producing more than its home market could profitably absorb. So its intellectual strategists came up with a doctrine proposed by President Monroe. The Monroe Doctrine’s strategy was to prevent European capitalist countries from obtaining favourable locations and advantageous terms of trade with those countries developing in the Americas. At the same time the doctrine stipulated that the USA would use its power and influence to ensure that North American industrial and financial capital would continue its 19th century rapid growth and thus see the Americas (considered as their backyard!) as raw material resources and markets for sales. In this way the USA intended to dominate the politics and economic trade in that portion of the global trade – far into the future.

And indeed American Capitalists did dominate the trade and much else in the South and North of the Americas during their ascendency in the 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. Some recent commentators of global affairs having noted the similarity between what President Monroe advocated in the 19th century and what Donald Trump and his advisers are advocating in the 21st century. Some of them are even suggesting that this recent action against Venezuela and threats against Colombia, Cuba and even Greenland is nothing more than a return to the 19th century phenomenon of imperialism. However, I think only considering the similarities between then and now and ignoring the differences between historical events or even historical objects is always far too simplistic.

The differences between a rising USA potential super power in the 19th century, and a rapidly declining superpower in the 21st century are just too great for such a simplistic strategy to be successfully repeated. Also, the differences between 19th century Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Panama etc., are also now too great for them to just repeat how they succumbed to the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries. The form of diplomatic and military pressure has also changed over the centuries. Boots on the ground in the 21st century to enforce modern foreign dictatorships would face very different forms and durations of resistance than they did in the 19th century. Trump may continue to bluff and threaten those latin and Caribbean populations in the hope that this will ensure their total compliance, just like Putin initially tried to cower Ukraine with his special mission there, but that’s unlikely to work against modern populations.

So the current situation is not witnessing  a resurgence of imperialist expansion in the 21st century, but we are witnessing an aggressive defence of a system in another of its terminal phases of decline. If the capitalist mode of production is likened to a tyrannical dictator over mankind, it would be a dictator in an advanced stage of dementia. Which ironically is not unlike the condition of many of its current political representatives.  True, in any population numbering millions there will be those who will currently applaud what Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping  are doing and will do in the coming months, particularly those among the disgruntled middle class exiles from Latin American countries and the traditional media will amplify their protests and support for Making America Great Again.  That is to be expected. In a way snatching and kidnapping a president is a successful version of the bay of pigs failed US show of strength and the attempt at infecting the underwear of Castro, but that’s no consolation, for both failed against the tiny island of Cuba in the 20th century.

But to repeat; the 21st century is not the 19th century or the 20th and the modern generations are not replicas of their 19th century forefathers and mothers. At the moment these conflicts are primarily between hierarchical regimes, whose agreements are never meant to be binding anyway.  Meanwhile the working class masses are sidelined, defending themselves  or becoming collateral damage in elite regime changes by hostile elite regimes, none of whom are that popular or well respected by their own citizens. So what happens when the disaffected citizens around the globe begin to assert their essential needs for food, shelter, safety and peace remains to be seen, but these non-elite social forces by the billions in the 21st century are not what the millions were in the 19th century. Community defensive tactics will continue to develop.

Modern populations, like in Ukraine and those globally campaigning against the genocide in Gaza or demonstrating that black lives matter, are not proving easy citizens to manipulate or subdue by the currently armed bullies of their own countries, let alone those of other countries. All such elites are themselves extremely unpopular, their state institutions are technically bankrupt and all their countries are in social, economic, financial and political crisis. Unless significant numbers (in the millions) within the target communities become willing to be part of the Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping  Declining World Order, then the big three elites threats and actions are mainly posturing, strutting and blustering. And as yet there are no indications that giving in to the threats of this latest gang of three is even being considered by any ordinary communities, never mind being entertained as a probability.

And really! For those of us who haven’t slept through or been intellectually comatose during the last several decades just need to consider the USA’s record of repeated failed attempts at regime change and population compliance with US instructions. Even when perpetrated against lesser armed citizens masses, such as in Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan etc., these tough guy ‘adventures’ have dismally and disastrously failed. China’s communist governing party, may be able to field a more overwhelming military force than Hongkong or Taiwan can, to regain control over these Mandarin dynasty period throw backs, but even that may not be enough to control these communities if they are not willing to be oppressively embraced by a ‘big brother’ in a modern Chinese form. Of course, the chances of Trumps faction of the US elite succeeding in controlling South America territories are about as good as they were at controlling an unarmed attack by a tiny legless Covid 19 virus, in which, like many other countries elites, they failed to do so – miserably!

The other noticeable difference between the 19th century succesful gunboat diplomacy and an attempt to replicate it by helicopter and special forces parachuting troops in the 21st century, is the almost overwhelming disgust and animosity of most Global populations with the political, military and police force elites in charge of their own respective countries. In the 21st century, there is also no remaining residue of the head-bowed deference and ‘cap in hand’ servitude to ‘authority’ whether in royal, religious or political theatre form, as was once exhibited by most 19th century populations. Furthermore, the socialist/fascist authoritarian solutions to hierarchical mass society intractable problems by German and Italian dictators and their Bolshevik/Stalinist mirror images, had not then been tried and had not then also spectacularly failed.

So now the vast majority of human beings know that political domination in any form, (religious, secular, military, or democratic) under the present hierarchical system is no better than aristocratic domination and that none of these alternative elites will solve either the fundamental contradiction of the hierarchical mass society form, or those of the capitalist mode of production adopted by these hierarchies. Last, but not least, is the growing realisation of most human beings that something is wrong with the environment, including the part of the biosphere in which they live. The climate cycle has become unstable, the ecological balance has been disturbed, the pollution levels have saturated the air, the soil and the water, to such an extent that plastics and toxins have now entered our bodies in the form of microplastics, manufactured hormones and chemical poisons, within our blood stream and in our organs which are nutritionally supplied by it.

On top of this, the vast differences between the top elites wealth and the bottom ranks relative and absolute poverty, has been shown not to be because of any intrinsic species  differences within populations. The top elites in politics, in governments, in industry and in finance are clearly no morally, intellectually, or culturally superior to the citizens they exploit. Looking at them globally, from a humanist perspective they are more to be pitied than admired or feared. Even if most of the digitally or financially funded elites, never entered the Epstein world of obscenities, they have become the unattractive human beings who they are by means of ruthlessly gaming the capitalist socio-economic system in order to gain advantage by shrewdness and heartlessness. The fact that the big three are in competition with each other most of the time does not mean that in order to save their system,  they will not agree to help each from time to time – when its suits them.

Even the non-Epstein tainted royals are just fancy dressed up puppets, wearing fancy unearned medals and expensive costumes, whilst consuming energy, nutritional, and scarce resources in multiple palaces and means of luxury transport, whilst displaying no embarrassment or consciousness of their inapropriatness in a world which is now entering a self inflicted accelerated rate of decline which threatens the whole integrated, interdependent biological structure of life on earth. The fact that  all elites collude over denying their irrelevance and denying their overwhelming contribution to climate change, pollution, global warming, essential species loss, and to impoverishing the poor and precarious citizens, by claiming more social wealth, than they need, and by tax avoidance and other means of denying a share of it to those at the bottom of this hierarchical pyramid living in squalor, illness and poverty, says everything.

I suggest all these latent, pent up and active transformations in the general social consciousness and understanding will mean that wars over bits of land and to gain extra wealth for the already obscenely rich in America, Russia, China or elsewhere is unlikely to be meekly accepted by the vast majority and if they do somehow occur will need to be energetically opposed or transformed into civil wars to change the system. It’s been a ‘long time coming’ (as the blues song goes) but a social consciousness is arising that humanities task is to put a stop to the current self-destructive pattern of human living, which is  upheld and perpetuated by a dominating elite class, and it is the system which needs changing not just the individual character or political persuasion of those ruling us. Of course, there is as yet no general understanding of how bad the biosphere is getting and as yet there is no agreement as to what needs to be done to prevent it. Consequently anyone with an idea and access to AI assisted thesis composition and a means to publish it can broadcast their imaginative solutions.

However, eventually as the socio-economic and climate  crisis deepens, and avoidable ecological  and pollutant catastrophe’s continue to occur, the more bizarre and trivial green ‘surface symptom’ solutions will atrophy and a broad concensus will replace them. I suggest this is not just a possibility but is now a probability, because nearly everyone now knows something needs to be done and that more of the same post war  peace time boom fed oppressions and more of the same wartime devastations are only going to make things worse not better. In the wake of one or more future existential collapses of the hierarchical mass society system, human understanding will develop more directly in response to socio-biological reality of life on earth, and not as it does as yet mostly in response to anthropocentrically focussed, sociological ideology, promoted by established old-school elite intellectuals and their as yet uncritical copyists and pupils.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2026)

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POLITICS REALLY IS THE PROBLEM.

Posted on December 9, 2025 by stutteringsteps

During the last few weeks there have been two notable events in the UK which have relevance to the contemporary global political and climate/ecological situation. The first was an invitation only conference in London on the 27th November 2025 addressed by ten UK climate and nature specialists entitled ‘A National Emergency Briefing’; the second was a conference held in Liverpool on December 5th to form a new political Party in the UK, designated as ‘Your Party’. Unsurprisingly, both events were typically anthropocentrically focussed, in that the main concern of both sets of organisers, and presumably both sets of attendees, was the continued survival of the current hierarchically mass society social systems.

The two events differed only in their preferred political routes to achieve their general mass society aims. Faced with multiple aspects of social, ecological, economic and climate driven tipping points and consequent existential crises, astute political actors almost everywhere are positioning themselves according to the level of their understanding concerning the climate or ecological aspects of the crisis. In the case of these two particular examples they are adjusting their tactics and perspectives as best they see them, but both are doing so within the same anthropocentric paradigm of hierarchical mass society structures and the same political tendencies which created the crises in the first place.

The UK National Briefing: meeting was an attempt, in the wake of yet another failed (COP 30) United Nations Conference, to address the seriousness of the impending climate crises, and at the same time to stimulate the existing UK political class to take the latest scientific evidence presented by the ‘experts’ as a real National Emergency, needing urgent action. The UN annual COP 30, conference again heavily influenced by the 1600 fossil-fuel funded activist attendees, had typically managed to produce lots of hot air but crucially had redacted any mention of the role of fossil fuels in climate destabilisation, within COP 30 documents. In contrast, the National Emergency Briefing presented ten inputs each delivering robust scientific evidence and considered opinion, which implicitly condemned the current mode of production, and political processes. However, they did so without anyone mentioning that the current mode of production was based upon the domination of it by the owners and controllers of capital. It seems, eliminatng from discussion ‘sensitive‘ or ‘touchy‘ topics isn’t restricted to the fossil fuel investors.

The ‘business as usual’ tradition of fossil fuel energy powered extraction, production and consumption was of course identified as the problem by a number of speakers, but again without acknowledging its domination by the owners of industrial and finance capital. Yet to their credit the ten ‘experts’ bluntly pointed out the hard facts of life facing most of humanity, in the UK and elsewhere, particularly those among the low-paid and precariously funded citizens, if drastic action was not urgently taken.
Speaker after speaker supported by tangible and reliable evidence stressed that any further procrastination and avoidance of decisive Emergency action, to seriously cut emissions would be tantamount to condemning present and future generations to hardships and deaths on a scale currently unimaginable. The experience of previous generations over the last several thousand years of Near Eastern and European history had nothing comparable to what is to befall planet earth if emergency measures where not implemented immediately. I found the evidence and projected outcomes presented by the ten inputs valid and convincing, but their social and political strategy for promoting solutions and citizen participation in implementing such radical solutions was not at all convincing.

This is because it was based entirely upon the same hierarchical economic, financial, social and political structures that have created the existing capitalist mode of production and have simultaneously been consistently used by its elites to prevent any previous solutions from being implemented. There is a video of this particular event on Youtube (www.youtube.com/live/2-PFKT15Ne4) which I suggest is important for supporters or sceptics to listen to and is therefore well worth viewing. Having said that I still consider this hard hitting briefing will not be enough to energise the existing political, social, cultural, military, bureaucratic and educational elites to depart from their decades of acceptance of business, class, salary and investment differentials as per usual.

In contrast, the ‘alternative’ Liverpool event did not entirely focus on climate and ecology as the motivation there was to create an alternative political party to the existing mainstream bourgeois and petite-bourgeois focussed political parties. The lack of commitment to the low-paid, precarious masses along with the lack of accountability within all bourgeous forms of political parties, was the main reason for the participants wishing to create an alternative. Therefore although both events had distinctive motives and different political agendas they both concurred that politics was the only form of human activity which could deliver the solutions to solve and prevent humanities current multiple concurrent crises, from bearing down upon us all.

Despite the recurrent complaint by many of its participants that; “people are sick of normal politics” that is exactly what has happened according to a recent media report on the progress of the UK initiative to form a new political party describing itself as YOUR PARTY. The report describes that participants at, and even before, the founding conference of the ‘new party’ have been engaged in political manoeuvring and membership manipulations (and expulsions) that have been typical of all political movements that have occurred throughout the long history of politics and which still clearly exist in the 21st century.

The historical record illustrates that from the earliest versions of hierarchical mass societies in and around the pre-BCE ancient Greek ‘polis’, political intrigue and sectarian manoeuvring has been part of its socio-political DNA. Whilst it is true that politically based domination over hierarchical mass societies replaced the earlier ancient Kingly and Despotic family intrigues and cut-throat manoeuvres of the ruling dynasties dominating those ancient and medieval societies, not everything was abandoned. Formal politics did not entirely abandon the non-lethal wheeling, dealing and skulduggery at the time and of all ruling elites before and ever since.

The modern 21st century enthusiasts of political solutions to social, economic, financial, environmental and ecological problems currently facing life on earth (in all its forms including humanity) still seem to think some form of politics within hierarchical mass society systems is the only (or perhaps the best) way to solve the problems facing humanity. This is so even though these problems have actually been created by existing hierarchical mass society systems and their political representatives. Yet, once examined, politics, ancient and modern, is still fundamentally a system of organisational hierarchy within hierarchical mass societies which while it pretends to be representing the interests of everybody within society, it never has and never will.

The reason is that political systems are designed to only represent the interests of those with most power, wealth and influence within hierarchical social systems and politics has reliably done this since its inception in the ancient Greek ‘polis’. The almost universal dissatisfaction with politics by most citizens of the various Nation States, spread across the globe is a collective expression (often vaguely formulated) of that fundamental inate characteristic. The fundamental nature of the problem with politics becomes glaringly apparent by the fact that such public dissatisfaction is not limited to the politics and political parties headed by any particular political tendency. Dissatisfaction with politics, is directed against all forms of politics, whether from left, right, centre or religious leaning or military or semi- military governing tendencies and their leaders.

A serious study of history indicates that politics and the hierarchical mass society system has long been a problem for humanity, not a solution or means to solving its problems. The problem became so obvious that radicals within previous 18th and 19th century generations concluded that aristocratic and bourgeois political elite leaders and movements, were the fundamental problem for hierarchical mass society nation-state formations, as a whole. Therefore, their proposed solution was to form political parties and movements made up of ‘genuine’ (?) representatives of the oppressed groups and those classes drawn from among the masses. Consequently the active results of such ‘radical’ thinking in the early 20th century was the formation of revolutionary parties and movements allegedly based upon the needs of the industrial and rural working classes (the proletariat and peasantry) a typical rallying rhetoric being ‘workers of the world unite’.

In Russia, the revolutionary wing of the Social Democratic Party known as the Bolshevik Tendency, during a revolutionary upsurge of worker and peasant led uprisings, motivated during the 1st World War and commencing in 1917, took over the Russian State institutions, declared itself the Communist Party, staffed the highest State institutions with its own dedicated senior members and implemented a set of plans and measures aimed at overcoming the previous dissatisfaction of the Russian industrial and agricultural workers, by replacing feudal aristocrats by revolutionary minded politicians, such as Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin at the top and placing their ‘loyal’ party followers lower down the state apparatus.

The predictable result (mostly predicted by the anarchist trend) was just another hierarchical mass society with a different set of ruling elites, a different set of administrative elites and the same masses of industrial and agricultural workers being brutally exploited and oppressed. I have analysed this process in detail and at length in the document ‘Revolutionary-Humanism and The Anticapitalist Struggle’ (available as a free downloads in the above banner section of this blog.) The next similar ‘revolutionary’ event occurred In China, at a somewhat later date. There too a revolutionary movement led by a Chinese intellectual known as Mao’setung, led an insurgency against those previously in power and the successful insurgents in Mao’s group eventually declared themselves The Communist Party of China, and took over and staffed the old and new state institutions and began to carefully and often ruthlessly organise the functioning of their own version of a politically dominated hierarchical mass society designated as ‘communism’.

Whatever, the relatively short term  merits and long term demerits of these two Political Party led revolutions, (and there are many) need not divert us from the current assessment of politically led solutions to humanities problems, because the vast majority of the citizens living within both these anti-establishment led political ‘revolutions’ were (and still are) the oppressed and exploited masses who then continued to implement the policies of a newly privileged political elite and to serve their new elite needs and aspirations instead of the previous feudal aristocratic elites.

Furthermore, in both cases, (and other similar less massive ones) the over extraction, over production, over consumption and over pollution of these politically led hierarchical systems continued – why? Precisely because the mass of newly appointed unproductive rulers, administrative bureaucrats, and armed forces personnel required to control the extreme social contradictions of those politically governed hierarchical mass societies, had to be provided with food, housing, clothing, education, training and equipment. All of which had to be extracted from the dwindling natural organic and inorganic resources available within their particular national territory – at least until they could conquer more – which of course they did ASAP.

This is why the multiple crises caused by the entire history of fundamentally unsustainable hierarchical mass society social systems, can never be rectified by continuing with fundamentally unsustainable hierarchical social systems. Once human social systems and natures biological systems are adequately understood something becomes obvious. Humanity needs to remove the entire hierarchical class based social systems along with the political systems which enables the control of them by a minority. At the same time humanity needs to collectively agree to reduce the level of natural extraction for it’s own species, to below the level of the reproduction rate of humanities essential organic and inorganic requirements. However, no elites (not even liberal minded ones) are going to voluntarily agree to such a revolutionary Gaia-centric transformation. And in any case revolutionary changes to basic socio-economic systems are never top down elite led mass initiatives. They never have been.

Such changes are always local, small scale initiatives which by success, and example are copied and replicated by other small local initiatives. The first herders, were small scale local collective shepherds, before that caught on. The first horticulturalist were small scale local allotment type collective planters, before that caught on. The first farmers, using sticks to make furrows by hand, were small scale local collective horticultural initiatives before that caught on. The first merchant capitalists were local merchant sailors on small-boat trading journeys, trading surplus production, before that caught on. The first Finance capitalist bankers were small local goldsmiths, holding local deposits, before that caught on and became wholesale fraud and international based capital exploitation. The romantic fantasy of some revolutionaries who imagine themselves leading the masses in a heroic revolutionary upsurge to introduce a ‘green’ top-down ‘ten days that shakes the world’, has no basis in historical or evolutionary reality; nor in logic – once logic is deprived of its creative virtual world of imagination.

So the future of humanity as a species – sooner or later – lies in starting again with small and moderate sized groups of individuals living in classless egalitarian small-scale communities living frugally and sharing biosphere resources equitably and sustainably, whilst nurturing the rest of natures species, rather than destroying or damaging them. This form of living has already been successfuly trialled in many parts of the world and whilst these ‘intentional’  communities are viewed by our hierarchical mass society elites as being made up of idealists or deviants, that is only because the elites are blinded by their own socialised self-important image. Nevertheless, from a biological understanding of life on earth as a whole, it turns out the actual idealists are the ones who think humanity can go on indefinitely polluting and extracting from nature, at a massive level and volume, that nature is already demonstrating clearly that it can no longer sustain, without terminal extinction problems.

The real fantasists and idealists among the climate and ecology  deniers, then think that when nature can no longer sustain humanity – in its present hierarchical mass society form – the privileged ones remaining alive can just rocket off to another planet and re-create in a short time a viable supportive biosphere which took billions of years to form on planet earth. Which is, of course, just extreme fantasy nonsense. Whether such above noted small and moderate sized community initiatives are to  continue to be developed sooner (preferably) or later (predictably) after one or more serious existential collapses of the hierarchical mass society mode of production and those dependent upon them, is uncertain. However, one thing is certain. It is that small scale, classless, egalitarian forms are the only preferable ones that life on earth – as a whole – can maintain, whilst the human species continues to exist and evolve within planet earth’s limited biosphere.

Roy Ratcliffe (December 2025)

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NEW BOOK RELEASE.

Posted on November 27, 2025 by stutteringsteps

November 28th 2025, is the release date for my new book entitled ‘Life on Earth’ (Past, Present and Future)’ initially in ebook form, later in paperback form. It is currently available on Amazon and other book sale outlets. For those considering purchasing a copy, I last week published the back page blurb on this blog, to provide an overview of its contents.  This week I publish  the foreword which gives more detail on how I have approached the question of the increasingly contradictory relationship between the human species and all the other forms of life on earth, millions of which are both invisible to the naked eye, missing from mainstream anthropocentric climate discourses, yet are vital to the future of life on earth.

“FOREWORD

As far as we humans can ascertain, life as it appears on our planet, is an occurrence which is an exception within the entire universe. This is both with regard to the huge expanse of our solar system and within the even larger expanse of the Milky Way Galaxy of which the huge solar system is merely a small part. Moreover, the Galaxy in which our solar system resides appears to be just one of many millions if not billions of other Galaxies within the vast expanse of inter-stellar space. Clearly, there is as yet, no tangible evidence that life in any form, let alone the forms which exist on our planet, exists beyond the outer gaseous boundaries of the planet we call earth.

Yet life, as it exists in its many various forms and myriad of shapes on earth, is actually not exceptional. Life is everywhere. Life is under our nails, on our skin, in our mouths, within our stomachs, up our noses and even living in our butts. In the form of microscopic cells, organic life forms make up our skin, and are inside and outside of our bones, our body organs and tissues, blood, urine and faeces. Furthermore, life in the form of plants assisted by pollinating, wind, insects and animals, captures the suns energy and transforms this and other inorganic gasses and minerals into the air we breathe and the food we eat. We humans could quite literally not exist without the ceaseless activity of millions of life forms both symbiotic and non-symbiotic within us, upon us and all those billions of forms existing outside us.

Life in some form or other also exists in the coldest, the hottest, the driest, the wettest, the most acid, the most alkaline, the highest and deepest parts of the planet, whether on land or in the sea. Indeed, it is estimated that life on earth has existed in single celled bacterial forms for billions of years, and in multicellular forms for multiple millions of years. On planet earth, life is literally almost everywhere. Consequently, in contrast to what we know of the universe beyond the planet earth, ‘life on earth’ cannot be regarded as exceptional at all. Indeed ‘life on earth’ is normal, quite routine and ubiquitous.

Yet despite this fact and in spite of the fact that humanity is totally dependent upon the whole interdependent chain of life forms on earth, from the smallest cells and microorganisms, to the largest plants, insects and animals, a problematic trend was set in motion during the previous five or six thousand years of human existence. Sections of the human species during a particular historic part of its evolution came to see themselves as so exceptional that they needed only their own skills and intelligence to survive and prosper. This trend was a form of anthropocentric exceptional arrogance and conceit which was (and still is) totally at odds with the actual existential dependency of humanity upon every other aspect of organic and inorganic life on earth.

So human life on earth is in a very real sense, the opposite of the anthropocentric ideologies humanity has created concerning its own exclusive and ‘privileged’ place on earth. Although the rest of life on earth is not at all dependent upon humanity to survive, humanity is certainly totally dependent upon the rest of the interconnected and inter-dependent organic/inorganic support functions of life on earth as a whole. Despite the concept of Gaia, (life as a whole planetary system) being suggested in ancient Greece and re-stated in the 20th century, we humans are only just beginning to understand that we absolutely need the complex inter-connected web of life to exist. Minute life forms harness energy from chemicals or the sun and convert this energy into forms suitable for human and animal life to process internally in order to continue to exist and to reproduce.

Therefore, although humanity, as a life-form species, is far from exceptional in this bio-chemical dependency regard, this realisation has yet to thoroughly sink in and be sensibly acted upon. Moreover, the exceptional and narcissistic, short-sighted self-regard and ecological disregard of some human beings reached a tipping point in the 20th and 21st centuries. It was then that some people were encouraged to not only damage and destroy each other by the millions, in two world wars and do the same to most other forms of life on earth, but to do so in pursuit of personal or collective acquisition and satisfaction.

This damage and destruction was done at the most extreme levels to plant species (by forest and prairie clearances), to insect and animal species (by chemical dumping and spraying) and to the human species at the levels now known as crimes against humanity and genocide. In the course of examining the information and evidence presented in the following chapters of this study, the biological origins and organisational impetus for this myopic process of human, self-conceit, self-destruction and ecological devastation will also be explored.”

Roy Ratcliffe (November 28 2025)

ebook copies can be obtained from Amazon. Paper back copies from Amazon; Browns Books (www.browns bfs.co.uk); Bookshop.org and Ebay.

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LIFE ON EARTH

Posted on November 14, 2025 by stutteringsteps

Life on Earth’ (Past, Present & Future)
(From a Revolutionary-Humanist & Giaia-centric Perpective)

The above heading is the title of a book I have written and will soon be published. The back cover of the book bears the following blurb.

“Of all the millions of species of life that have existed on earth over billions of years of cellular and multi-cellular evolution, only the members of one species has consciously and systematically done the following.

Over-polluted, seas, lakes, rivers, air, top-soil and land in general.
Destroyed – on a huge-scale, members of its own species.
Dismembered on a massive scale, members of many other species (forests, animals, insects, fish).
Elevated a minority of its own species  to live in obscene luxury.
Relegated huge numbers of its own species (male and particularly female) to low and subordinate status.
Have  attained  the most profound amounts of knowledge.

However, it is only in the last five or six thousand years, out of the 500,000 plus years of hominid and Homo sapien evolution, that the human species began to initiate such actions and only in the Middle/Near East and Europe.

Until then, the rest of the planet remained populated by humans but largely unpolluted and ecologically undisturbed, by them.  Now in the 21st century every corner, every height and every depth of the earth’s biosphere is extremely polluted and ecologically and climatically imbalanced.

In exploring the main species categories of life on earth, this book is intended for those who are puzzled by how in one relatively short period of human evolution their activities  resulted in the six characteristics listed above. The book will also be of interest to those who have begun to consider what can be done to halt and even reverse those unnatural  symptoms.”

Apart from a preface and introduction, the book contains the following chapters;

Chapter 1.  The inorganic elements of life on earth.
Chapter 2.  Cells. Bio-chemical (organic) beginnings.
Chapter 3.  The inorganic/organic composition of Soil.
Chapter 4.  Plant and photosynthetic  organisms.
Chapter 5.  Insect Organisms.
Chapter 6.  Animal Organisms.
Chapter 7.  The social evolution of Hominid life.
Chapter 8.  The social evolution of  Homo  Sapiens.
Chapter 9.  Hierarchical Mass Societies.
Chapter 10. Hierarchical mass society reflected in ideology.
CONCLUSION.

This book offers a genuine revolutionary perspective in that it starts from the following propositions that;

“Hitherto, ‘life on earth’ in general has always been studied from the particular perspective of humanity. The study of humanity from the general perspective of life on earth, has hardly begun.”

This book is the authors contribution to redressing that historic and devastating imbalance.

It can be obtained in ebook form from Amazon at £2.99 or later in paper back book form to be announced.

Roy Ratcliffe (November 2025)

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MORE MISGUIDED HUMANITY SAVING PROPOSALS.

Posted on November 10, 2025 by stutteringsteps

The frequent brutal conditions under which the majority of human beings are living in the 21st century is exercising the minds or more than just the left in general and the Anticapitalist left in particular, but is also exercising the minds of the middle class liberal professionals. The latest example I have come across is someone called Jeremy Griffeth who is anxious to save humanity and also claims to have the support of many professionally qualified educators, doctors and intellectuals. His literary diagnosis and prognosis has been advertised in several posts on YouTube. In these he confidently attempts to answer the following rhetorical question;

“..why we humans are the way we are, so brutally competitive, selfish and aggressive that human life has become all but unbearable.” (J. Griffith. YouTube)

The first thing to note in the above extract is that this intellectual identifies a definite trait of some human beings – which does exist – but, just like all religions and right wing secular intellectuals, he applies this trait to all human beings. Which, of course, is just childish nonsense. This assertion is either an expression of ignorance of the existence of alternative characteristics in humanity or an expression of a prior ideologically position, which is overwhelmingly prejudiced. The extract above is not being proposed by someone with a neutral or rational frame of thinking or balanced experience of human life in general. In real life not all human beings are brutally competitive, selfish and aggressive and those that manifest those characteristics do not display such negative characteristics all the time and against all other life forms. Indeed, daily experience of life confirms the fact that human beings in most places and in most cases, if not neutral, are frequently unselfish, cooperative, gentle and supportive.

These alternative characteristics are obvious from the direct experience of everyday human life and from a consideration of animal and human behaviour across continents and across historical times. If we exclude the tiny minority of predatory species within the millions of biological species of life on earth, the overwhelming biological characteristics of the vast majority of species, from plants, insects, animals and humans, does not support that assertion by Jeremy Griffith. Even predatory species of life once their nutritional needs are met by killing and consuming their prey, cease to exhibit these characteristics and rarely display them against their own species or their own particular offspring. So even in the worst case examples of brutality the characteristic he mentions are not sustained or universal. This suggests that during the long evolution of life on earth, from single celled bacteria, to multi-cellular organic species of various sizes, morphological forms and environments, the biological norm has been overwhelmingly neutral or supportive to the existence of the rest of life on earth.

These more rounded observations will also suggest even more conclusions for thinkers who can approach the subject of humanity from non-ideological perspectives. It suggests that the characteristics of competition, selfishness and aggression are not some inner biological tendencies (or ‘instincts’) which will inevitably surface or burst out, but are more likely to be the results of particular existential or environmental circumstances which bear down upon life forms, in such a way as to disturb the above noted evolutionary biological norm. However, the author, Jeremy Griffith, the biologist, although he claims his theories are based upon biology goes on to assert that;

“our species’ divisive behaviour is due to a psychosis” (ibid)

So although repeatedly claiming his theory is based on biology when it is considered closely it is in fact based on individual psychology as his above diagnostic assertion of “species psychosis” indicates. It is at this point we can begin to suspect that his approach contains some ancient as well as 18th, 19th, and 20th century anthropocentric assumptions and prejudices. Indeed, the term psychology stems from the ancient Greek concept of psuche, and from the 19th century, the discipline of psychology has been defined as a ‘science of the ‘mind’. And of course the term ‘mind’, like the term ‘psyche’ is itself a pre-scientific term for the bio-chemical and electrical processes of a biological organ within animals now generally known as the ‘brain’. Since the 19th century it has been known that, this biological organ of the human (and animal body) has several physical layers (the cerebrum, the cerebellum, the thalamus, neocortex etc.) and the whole complex organ functions as a central processing and storing of information received from the sensory organs located on the bodies of most animals.

So already the language and thinking of this particular individual author is of ancient rather than modern understanding of the human condition. Therefore,  when he describes our human condition as psychologically troubled, he demonstrates that he has no clue what underlying socio-biological factors create the troubled condition he chooses to classifies as psychological. Indeed, he seems to have little understanding of the bio-chemical basis of life in general or the contradictory socio-biological life of humans in particular.

Despite extensive experiments in social conditioning by animal and human psychologists in which the manipulated social experiences of life have been demonstrated to ‘condition’ the behaviours and emotions of those experiencing them, he draws no inspiration from these science based conclusions. Instead, he goes on to speculate about what he classifies as an intellectual “predicament” arising in a hypothetical ‘transition’ between the pre-human condition currently designated as hominid to the one now designated as Homo-Sapien, and begins to wonders about it;

“the predicament faced by an animal whose life had always been controlled by its instincts suddenly developing a conscious mind,'” (ibid)

Once again we encounter an intellectual who has not extricated himself from ancient and later anthropocentric assumptions about animals who are pre-supposed to function on the basis lf ‘instincts’ rather than various forms of conscious processing of information about the world around them. The concept of ‘Instinct’ itself is rather like the concept of ‘gravity’, it merely identifies an observed effect whilst having no knowledge of the cause. Its use, as with ‘gavity’ is a pretence to knowledge, when in fact there is none. In reality, animal behaviour is not entirely or even in a major way controlled by something we don’t know (i.e. instincts). We do know that at least from birth forward, each individual animal is determined and effected by three external natural forces; the first is the inorganic forces and materials of the biosphere, such as gravity, air, sunlight and water. The second is the species multi-cellular body form the individual animal is born with, which determines how the individual animal and its senses interact with and within the biosphere.

The third is the immediate species community the individual animal is born among. At the very least, for most animals and mammals, that will be with the female animal who bore the individual. Even the offspring of many egg laying animals once they leave the shell, will imprint on the sight, sound and scent of the first entity they identify by their conscious perception and normally that will also be the female who bore them and who they will then receive nutrition from her – and often from the male partner also. Thus from leaving the female body they too become aware that they are part of a social group, whether it is a large or small one. During that formative period the new borns will learn by watching and imitation and part of that learning will be appropriate behaviour with those of their own species and with the other species sharing the same section or environment of the biosphere. That interaction will have multiple sources of social, environmental and behavoural inputs and adjustments depending upon the complexity of the particular species sensory organs and cells. But considering a broad spectrum of science based understandings is not the direction this author is taking.

In order to advance his thesis on human nature and convince the reader on how he thinks we ought to cure its so-called psychosis, this author next creates a fictitious character called Adam Stork (I assure you I am not making this up) who supposedly represents the average hominid proto-human being and writes the following;

“Adam Stork doesn’t think about or question his behaviour, he just follows what his instincts tell him to do..” (ibid)

Now just note here that the authors line of imaginative story telling has the verbal abstraction ‘instincts’ (which I suggest do not exist as entities or even as useful descriptions) telling the imaginary Adam Stork what to do and this is not the end of this imaginary nonsense. The author continues taking his readers on a trip down his Alice in Wonderland type rabbit hole by suggesting that Adam Stork has been trying to be different but then we are informed that;

“Adam’s instincts realise he has strayed off course they are going to criticise his deprogrammed behaviour and dogmatically try to pull him back on his instinctive flight path, aren’t they? In effect, they are going to condemn him as being bad.” (ibid)

Note that in this imaginary ancient narrative, ‘instincts’ have gained some conscious understanding of the world and that his ‘instincts’ have condemned him as “being bad”. I won’t bore you with much more of this mad hatters tea party type fantasy and finish with this last quotation, in which the abstract religious concept of ‘evil’ is introduced into his diagnosis.

“Adam doesn’t have this self-understanding. He’s only just begun his search for knowledge. In fact, he’s not even aware of what the problem actually is. He’s simply started to feel that he’s bad, even evil.” (ibid)

This example, and the many others I have pointed out in numerous earlier articles, indicates that there are many shades of opinion and anthropocentric focussed solutions among the intellectual classes. Each one is competing to attract us to their perspective of how to change the current human reality into something they think will be better, whilst helping them in preserving and conserving the existing hierarchical mass society class form and structure. For example, in a recent 2025 Lancet report by 128 multi discipline experts the Executive Summary notes the following;

“Preventing climatic changes that exceed the world’s capacity to adapt requires high greenhouse gas-emitting countries and corporations to urgently reduce their emissions. However, amid backsliding of commitments from some key decision makers and world leaders, the growing leadership of other actors—local governments, civil society organisations, private sector organisations, local communities, and, importantly, the health sector—offers promise for delivering the urgently needed system-wide transformation that prioritises prosperous economies and improved health. Community-led action, litigation, and civil society organisations are forging new avenues to hold governments and corporations to account in their duty to respond to the evidence and protect people’s lives, health, and wellbeing. Crucially, the economic momentum provided by the growth of the clean energy sector can offer new opportunities to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector—the biggest single contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions—while providing access to healthier energy and cleaner air.” (The ‘Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change. Executive Summary’ emphasis added. RR.)

Note although having so many multi discipline experts, the urgent priority in this prestigious and lengthy report is still “prosperous economies and improved health” for the human species. Prosperous societies  are what have accelerated the rapid disintegration of the biosphere’s supportive species matrix! Yet again – other species are not even mentioned in passing. Therefore, implicitly and explicitly what is being conserved in such proposals, is the hierarchical mass society class-based social form and its exploitative relationships with the rest of the earth’s species. This is because none of the authors of the examples considered so far have adequately understood the biological structure of life on earth itself,  nor how the hierarchical social form of human aggregation since its inception, has been both consuming and simultaneously eroding the ecological species foundation of the biosphere upon which all forms of life on earth are totally dependent. All the examples considered so far, from left, right and centre, are all starting from a set of common anthropocentric focussed assumptions which serve to conserve the status quo of the hierarchical mass society form, whilst only offering different political and social reforms of their political superstructures. For a further example German left researchers considering the lack of working class activism, failed to mention the effect of class based overproduction upon the ecology of the biosphere but concentrated on redistribution;

“The widespread criticism, anger, and biting dismissal of political elites shows that the legitimacy of capitalist democracy is under strain. “Just because I live in this system doesn’t mean I like it,” one of our interviewees put it. The current crises will only deepen these problems of legitimacy — though it is unclear what the consequences will be. Right-wing actors will seek to harness the all-too-understandable impulse to defend one’s slice of the pie first. The left, in turn, must develop a strategy that credibly promises to enlarge the pie for the working population as a whole: a strategy that highlights the strength that comes from fighting for shared goals, and that names the real opponents standing in the way.” (Moral Disapproval. The Political Consciousness of the Demobilized Working Class.” Critical Sociology. Emphasis added RR) 

The claim by some on the anti-capitalist left that some of these anthropocentric political and economic reforms (de-growth etc), are revolutionary is spurious, for their proposals neither aim to transcend the existing class and gender contradictions within human societies, nor end the competition between human communities for monopolising the largest resources (i.e. ‘enlarging the pie’) that can be extracted from the rest of nature (i.e. all species of life on earth). It will take a serious study of the reality of the biological and ecological processes of life on earth – as a whole – and a serious study of the reality of the hierarchical social forms to produce a revolution in the thinking of a critical – mass of humanity and then a genuine revolution in humanities actual interactions with its millions of kindred and supportive multi-cellular life-forms. But of course, this revolution in thinking and actually doing does not need to wait for elite permission or top down direction, it can also begin (and indeed has begun) on a small scale, one person, one small group and one community, at a time. Others can always follow, when circumstances permit or when existing social disintegrations leave no alternative social form for them to pursue.

Roy Ratcliffe (November 2025).

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ON PLANETARY BOUNDARIES.

Posted on October 12, 2025 by stutteringsteps

The nearest approach to my own understanding of the present and future threats to the integrity of life upon earth, that I have recently come across has been developed by members of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. This group  have been monitoring what they classify as; ‘functional biosphere integrity” for a considerable period of time. In doing so they have created computer models of nine characteristics of the global geo-biological system, which they consider are general indicators of systemic problems. They recently published an Environmental Studies  research paper entitled ‘Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries’ This research was issued by Katherine Richardson and 28 other international researchers, who provided considerable evidence to back up its findings. It suggests that six of the nine identified categories (listed below) have been taken beyond the limits (boundaries) of natural/sustainable reproductive recovery and beyond the capacity of some species of life on earth to continue their supportive role in maintaining the biosphere of the planet. The nine problematic characteristics they suggest are the following;

1. Stratospheric Ozone depletion. 2. Atmospheric Aerosol absorption. 3. Ocean Acidification. 4. Bio-Geo-chemical flows. 5. Fresh water contamination. 6. Land system depletion. 7. Biosphere integrity.  8. Climate Change. 9. Non-evolved entities. 

In identifying that the excesses in these nine areas are caused by what they identify as anthropogenic activities, this research team have clearly pushed the contemporary debate beyond the climate and weather pattern concerns of the mainstream media and beyond the limits that industry and commerce have been prepared to admit have become seriously problematic. As far as it goes, this nine symptom categorisation is to be welcomed, but I suggest it does not go far enough and misses the essential problems caused by modern production by a very long way. We shall read that this research project is still predominantly limited to and focussed upon inorganic planetary material as these criteria predominantly effect elite human concerns.

Consequently, the essence of this approach presents a complex dialectical biosphere relationship of species from within a rigidly dualistic framework of thinking. It has also reduced the complex multi-species matrix of life on earth, into an ahistoric framework of thinking linking humanity on one side of a dualistic relationship with the natural world being on the other. If this is one of the most serious and detailed research projects on the effect of the current mode of production upon the earth’s biosphere so far, and it is still lacking a biological and sociological dimension, then the rest of the suggestions and remedies being put forward by left, right and centre governments and influencers, are exponentially inadequate. For example, this report paper in its introduction describes it in the following;

“The nine boundaries all represent components of Earth system critically affected by anthropogenic activities and relevant to Earth’s overall state. For each of the boundaries, control variables are chosen to capture the most important anthropogenic influence at the planetary level of the boundary in focus. For example, land system change arises from myriad human activities, ultimately aggregating to alteration of biomes.” (Introduction)

The above extract makes clear that this is an abstract systems approach to the problems the planet and its multifarious life forms now face. The biosphere and the millions of active and interactive species within it are abstractly and mechanistically characterised as “components of Earth’s system”. The effects of elite directed human activity upon soil and its complex living community of organic life existing upon it, in it and under it, from microorganisms, plants, insects, birds, animals and species or fungi is abstractly characterised as land system change. That characterisation misses out the detailed content which is essential for any study of the biosphere. In general, it is necessary to have a detailed understanding of how something complex functions before considering what has gone wrong with it and in this particular case it applies to both the human social system and the biological system upon which it rests. Yet this Potsdam approach has abstracted away both the biological complexity of life on earth (nature) and the social complexity of the hierarchical mass society structure which has historically evolved upon the pre-existing biological structure.

The fact is that these millions of biological, life forms, clustered in the biosphere, by their life cycle processes, have created the oxygen life needs to breathe, and the plant based nutrients which land based species need to digest. These life-forms are not simply passive components of an ‘earth land system’, but active, creative and dynamic biological entities sharing common parts of DNA and other biological cellular elements (similar or almost  identical) with the rest of life on earth – including us! It is also a fact that the social history of the hierarchical mass society system has demonstrated that small oligarchic cliques positioned at the pinnacle of governments, institutions and now firms, have had and still do wield enormous power to start, stop, reward, or punish ideas and actions they prefer or reject. Just consider the glaringly obvious fact that the bulk of their respective citizens are incapable of directly (and also indirectly) seriously altering or halting the policies and actions that these oligarchal elites are implementing. For example, global Stop the War demonstrations of millions were ineffective against the Bush and Blair orchestrated and elite-supported invasion of Iraq.

Just consider how few elite individuals (a dozen or so out of millions of citizens) in the UK that it took during the Covid Pandemic to lock-down most human activity and to enrich themselves by manipulating the purchasing of certain resources. Just think of how few in the Trump controlled White House it took to send troops into States whose citizens did not support Trumps vision of Making America Great Again. Or how the half-dozen or so in the oligarchic Musk-led sub-clique it took to begin firing people on salaried jobs under the pretext of ‘draining the swamp’. and no one in the USA could or would prevent it.

Just consider how few in the Israeli cabinet oligarchy it took to unleash total war and genocide on all Palestinians in retaliation for the Hamas orchestrated armed breakout of Gaza. And remind yourself that no one in the rest of the worlds elite oligarchies could or would even censor the two year crimes against humanity there, let alone stop them. This Potsdam type of abstract systems analysis approach ignores or marginalises all this social and biological reality in the evolution of life in general and in the history of humanity in particular which stands in the way of change. It continues the same trend by adding the following;

“There is an enormous need for civilisation to utilise the biosphere – for food, raw materials and, in future, also for climate protection,” says Fabian Stenzel, lead author of the study and member of the PIK research group Terrestrial Safe Operating Space. “After all, human demand for biomass continues to grow – and on top of that, the cultivation of fast-growing grasses or trees for producing bioenergy with carbon capture and storage is considered by many to be an important supporting strategy for stabilising climate. It is therefore becoming even more important to quantify the strain we’re already putting on the biosphere.” (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.)

And;

“The ocean is becoming more acidic, oxygen levels are dropping, and marine heatwaves are increasing.” (Levke Caesar, co-lead of the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.)

Note that this perspective on the biosphere, whilst not directly co-opting an Abrahamic spiritual anthropocentric creation myth, nevertheless indicates an entirely anthropomorphic and anthropocentric focussed one. It clearly takes for granted a continuation of the ancient ‘god-given’ primacy of the human species to Lord it over (“have dominion over” Gen. 2 v 28) all other species. It also becomes clear that this perspective is not premised upon a fully scientific approach of looking at life on earth, and human history critically or self-critically. Its authors remain content to keep regurgitating a handed down anthropocentric, ideological based approach, to the erosion and destruction of a complex biological system that humanity as a species was only an extremely late evolutionary development from within and has as yet a long way to go before it fully understands its complexity.

Like all the other less systematic dabblers in so-called ‘climate science‘, the Potsdam Initiative is merely using some extra methods borrowed from science – not to understand those social and biological complexities – but to confirm its deeply entrenched Anthropocentric ideology and its commitment to the current capitalist mode of production. In their own words, the Potsdam Initiative is primarily concerned with “human demand for biomass” which is in fact a demand by a certain class within humanity (based in industry, finance and commerce) who are the ones promoting the elites who actually control what is extracted and produced, when it is produced and how much is produced. Consequently the Potsdam team take for granted that the hierarchical mass society system will need to “grow“, at the same time as admitting that the systems existing productive ‘growth’ output has already exceeded six of the nine inorganic boundaries identified by them.

Despite any individual good intentions by its members, the Potsdam Research Institute are effectively becoming a more sophisticated schizophrenia part of a massive science and industry collaboration confidence trick perpetrated by the global economic and political elite. This elite, spread across politics, finance, commerce and industry, have no intention of gelding the golden goose that makes them into billionaires and trillionaire by removing the obstacles to ‘growing the economy’. They have even been persuaded into making suggestions that some selected organic growth will be needed – but only as a supporting strategy – not for the biosphere sake – but for stabilising climate – so that elite humanity can continue to produce for the purpose of continuing to accumulate wealth. The rest of the occupants of the multi-millions of years old, inter-connected and interdependent species created biosphere, are only of limited value to the functioning of the current mode of production based upon capital and extracting surplus-value for the elite. From this narrow hierarchical mass society perspective, based around profit making, ‘life on earth’ has no intrinsic value either to the rest of humanity or to the life-cycles of all the other species inhabiting the biosphere. And the situation is getting worse from month to month as they go on to report Thus;

“The seventh boundary: The latest boundary to be surpassed is ocean acidification, which is closely linked to climate change. The ocean absorbs some of the excess CO 2 in Earth’s atmosphere, which in turn lowers the water’s pH and depletes seawater of certain carbon compounds that corals and other shell-building animals need to construct their protective homes. If the pH gets low enough, those shells and skeletons can dissolve.” (Potsdam Institute. Quoted in ‘Scientific American. 8/10/25.)

Despite, some scientific sounding vocabulary and methodology, the complete lack of an integrated biological understanding of life on earth, as well as the history of the various hierarchical mass society modes of production and the interconnected and inter-dependent links between the two, the members of this research project are destined to be part of the problem facing the future of ‘life on earth’ and are not part of the solution they think they are. The problem is the past and current socio-economic system of humanities relationship to nature and the class-based purpose of its functioning.  In effect these and other reformist efforts are merely attempting to extend the life-span of this unnatural ‘system’ by a few more decades.

It has often been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and this road of ever increasing organic and inorganic extraction, production, consumption, waste accumulation and pollution is interspersed on the one hand, with a mixture of high return interest, profits and salaries for some among the elite. On the other hand for the poor and displaced that ‘road’ is increasingly littered with hardship, bad health, devastated communities, depleted environments, polluted air, seas, rivers, lakes, soil, along with extinctions of species essential to maintaining a biosphere suitable for all life, not just the lives of the elite.

The entire history of the hierarchical mass society form of obtaining and managing the necessary cyclical biological processes of Nutrition, cell Metaboloism, Growth, Reproduction, Ageing and Death (N-M-G-R + A-D) for life in general and humanity in particular, weighs heavily upon the modern generations. The division of our species into ancient hierarchical mass society formations competing with each other for the local, then regional, then international resources of nature has also layered other diversions and divisions upon those original socio-economic divisions. Divisions of class, gender, culture, and religions have become further social manifestations which serve to gloss over the fundamental biological unity of our entire species. These and other socially created and socially reinforced distinctions such as ‘nationality‘ are now being deliberately used to obscure and overlook the long evolutionary history of the Homo sapien species, which whilst mass killing each other nevertheless still shares the same DNA, the same morphological form of body and limb shape, the same blood types and the same higher cortical brain functions.

These undoubted shared biological characteristics and abilities along with common skills and knowledge have been utilised by the elites in these ‘social’ systems to create and promote unnatural social values such as; superiority over equality, violence over nurture, warfare over cooperation, hatred over compassion, genocide over liberation and overproduction over conservation. The hierarchical mass society system has twisted and distorted all the actual and potentially positive attributes of the human species into self-destructive, self-deforming and self-denying tendencies, until even obscene levels of wealth do not bring individual peace and contentment or social acceptance and collective support to the members of them. Despite vast differences in wealth accumulation, loneliness, anxiety, and numerous forms of deprivation are shared universal experiences among young, middle aged and old people of all classes whilst in actual fact they live amid societies of vast numbers and huge wealth accumulations.

Humanity, by its successive hierarchical modes of production has created and progressively locked itself into a social dystopia for itself and at the same time has created the scientific and technical means for achieving a current and future disintegration of significant parts of the earths essential biosphere – not just its climate. Yet the biosphere, which in its fully evolved, species-rich form, is the only system which supports life on earth in general as well all the other species including the human species. How self-destructive is that for a species congratulating itself as being wise? We need to wake up from the soporific lullabies of the elites. Humanity can never support nature or replicate its complex functions. Indeed, it is nature which supports humanity and has done so for millions of years. However, nature can no longer sustain itself and humanity at the levels of extraction and consumption now demanded by the modern hierarchical mass society forms of human aggregation.

Unlike all previous generations of those who have lived within one or other of the successive hierarchical mass societies during the last six or seven thousand years, those born in the 21st century are the first humans who have had access to enough information concerning the biology of life on earth and the socio-economic structure of these hierarchical societies to understand that the hierarchical form of human aggregation and its purpose, elite wealth accumulation, is ultimately incompatible with maintaining a dynamically balanced ecology and biosphere. Previous generations as a whole, took for granted that the earth’s organic material would always renew itself in sufficient quantities and sufficiently rapidly to always be available in whatever amounts humanity wished to extract from it. That is no longer the case.

Sadly, it is the case that only a tiny minority of the worlds citizens are aware of the full extent of the problems facing ‘life on earth’ now and in the future. In fact the vast majority are made up of those who have a) not been able to seriously consider biology, sociology, economics, and the insoluble contradictions inserted between these processes by the hierarchical mass society form; b) those who have dabbled with economics and think all the problems of mass production can be solved once the governance of hierarchical mass societies has been humanely and democratically reformed; c) those with a vested interest in denying that there is an unsolvable problem and that the science and technology of mass production can learn to solve the problems that the science and technology of production has already created. This huge difference in the levels of global understanding means that the combined inertia of a, b, and c, citizen categories is unlikely to support the adoption of any radical measures, to slow down or stop the continuous extraction, production, consumption, and destruction of organic species and inorganic materials before all of the above noted nine boundaries have been irretrievably crossed.

However, if the reader on examination and reflection of this article and the recent articles on this blog and in my forthcoming book ‘Life on Earth’ (Past, Present and Future), accept in part or whole, the diagnosis and prognosis presented within them, there is no need to despair or abandon hope and do nothing. The fact of life on earth existing, in any of its initial bacterial forms getting started and becoming Eukaryotic and multi-cellular in the wake of the post-primal volcanic, gaseous, condition of the cooling planet we call earth, was far more unlikely of success than a tiny minority of those of us with a Giaia-centric perspective eventually influencing the rest of the planets citizens. Yet life, faced with those hot-house and turbulent impediments, did get started and after billions of years of existence and evolution now clings on whilst self-replicating and evolving in practically every available hot, cold, wet or dry, light or dark nook and cranny possible.

If that is insufficiently convincing for you, the reader, to remain actively supportive, of changing humanities over extraction and over-production, over-poluting way of living, then how about reminding yourself that you (like all mammals, etc.) in all your wonderful complexity and amazing skill levels started off as just one almost invisible biological cell (ovum) which had been impregnated by a microscopically tiny sperm cell and then; against all the internal challenges facing your undiferentiated and differentiated form in the womb of your mother and later through the ups and downs of childhood and adulthood, until there you are now at this moment reading these words. The biology of life on earth, across all species from the tiniest to the largest, of which you are an example, is amazing and persistent; isnt it?

And is it not time that the idea of life on earth – as a reflection of the whole biosphere reality – is also promoted by members of the only fully conscious species – us? So no matter how few of us keep persistently reminding others of the need to change our relationship to nature and why we should do so, we do know that persistence can eventually prevail. Improving the chances that humans can once again become ecologically compatible with the rest of the millions of amazing species existing within the earth’s biosphere cannot be written off just because the vast majority of those around us have not fully understood the biology of nature or the existential dangers to it that some economic systems of humanity have created and are therefore currently motivated differently than ourselves.

Roy Ratcliffe (October 2025)

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APPOLOGIES TO READERS.

Posted on October 2, 2025 by stutteringsteps

I wish to apologise to my readers for the fact that I have been unable to access my editing process on this blog site for some days now. Consequently I have been unable to correct a number of typos and reduce paragraphs which were too long. I have consulted WordPress help line and they have suggested a number of things to try, but so far nothing has worked. So I will keep trying but in the mean time please bear with me.

Roy (2/10/25)

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