The NEW WORLD hoarding disORDER
Economic growth as a mental pathology
Growth, Maturity, Senescence
Upon maturity, individual organisms, populations, and ecosystems reach a state of comparative equilibrium. In other words, they stop growing. Eventually, the natural order sees to it that they decline, or senesce, and die away. Like growth and maturity, senescence happens to individuals, populations, and ecosystems alike, because that’s how nature works.
In the natural world, the stage of ‘growth’ is temporary, except where it emerges as a growth disorder out of the chaotic, unintentional experimentation of random genetic mutations. It sure as hell isn’t a permanent concept of worship with no end game. However, growth has been so acculturated that the very concept has extended into every area of life, frequently being applied where maturation could provide a more suitable descriptor. The problem is that we are living in the most materialistic age known in human history, and our attachment to economic growth acts like a collective hoarding disorder.
Hoarding disorder
If you’ve ever known anybody with a hoarding disorder, you’ll know how difficult it is to understand, and deal with. It isn’t an attitude, or lack of virtue, it’s a serious pathological brain disorder. You can’t reason with a person who has a hoarding disorder because biologically-driven emotion dictates their behaviour, not rationality. However, they often don’t recognize this and usually justify what they’re doing, or not doing. While the hoarder’s arguments rarely make any sense, probing them will invariably result in an angry backlash. This happens because what you see as mess and pointless disorder, the hoarder sees as part of themselves. On an emotional, and unaware, level, they identify their very existence with the objects that litter their living space. So, challenging this can trigger extreme distress, leading to a vicious fight or flight response. You might as well be asking them to cut off a pound of flesh.
Hoarding disorder isn’t simply collecting or accumulating. To qualify as a mental illness, a number of criteria need to be met. Four of the key points that distinguish hoarding as a disorder, as opposed to collecting as a hobby, are:
the habit of placing heightened value in useless or low value items.
the disorderly nature of their accumulation, leading to unusable or hazardous living space. (For example, a bedroom or conservatory becoming a storage dump rather than a viable, practical area for daily living.)
trying to keep the mess out of sight, often by preventing people from entering the living space, or by hiding it under cloths and blankets.
it’s not temporary or caused by incapacitating physical sickness, or other mental illness such as debilitating depression.
You might be acquainted with someone with a hoarding disorder, but you might not know it. However sociable and organized they seem, chances are they’ll never invite you in for a cuppa; if they do, it will be out of necessity (workmen), or they’ll keep you confined to their less cluttered spaces. The people who live with them may not want to invite you into such a space either.
Hoarding has been around for most of known history. It might have a genetic basis, more broadly linked with heightened threat sensitivity, disrupted emotional regulation, and poor executive function. However, its manifestation is associated with early deprivation, material uncertainty, trauma, or being raised by someone with hoarding traits, within a culture that values material wealth. It’s basically the arrested development of emotional regulation and decision-making; cognitive processes stuck in a juvenile phase.
Historically, hoarding was commonly considered a spiritual disease; immoral, or even evil and demonic. It makes sense to be disparaged—nature doesn’t do hoarding. Animals collecting food aren’t hoarding (in the pathological sense), they’re storing a valuable resource in an organized and orderly manner for later use. And nothing is more valuable than food in times of scarcity.
There’s a reason nature doesn’t do hoarding. Accumulating possessions has little to no use in terms of survival, in most cases it’s detrimental. As any mature nomad will tell you, you carry what you need and no more. That’s the only way to live freely. Most nomadic cultures have been killed off now, some by tribes of invasive hoarders, others due to developing their own growth disorder; falling from ‘the way’ into Wetiko.
The NEW WORLD hoarding disORDER
The hoarding disorder of contemporary society isn’t a manifestation of respect for the practicality of material things, but idolatry of the symbolic value represented by those objects. Possessions have become enmeshed with identity so strongly that people are willing to sacrifice others in order to retain, or obtain, more objects. However, it’s the status association with the acquisition, or even the renown gained through the process of acquisition, that underscores the addiction. Think of warmongering invasions rebranded as a ‘bold move’, or a violent robbery described as ‘fearless cunning’; kudos for idiocy.
Like any hoarder, the NEW WORLD hoarding disORDER likes to hide its mess and justify its activities. A popular excuse for its obscene avarice is that wealth is a rising sea that raises all boats, or that wealth trickles down from the top, like a slow flow of urine. However, this is demonstrably false as reality shows that wealth has been trickling upwards for decades. Additionally, it might seem that the materiality of our habitat is relatively orderly, but it’s actually a chaotic dump. We don’t see it because much of this tat is microscopic, forming a sea of invisible toxins littering our planet, from the air in our homes to the ocean under the polar ice caps. Our crap is everywhere. That said, there’s growing visibility of the issue. Not just on the litter-strewn verges of slip roads, but as tonnes of garbage and faeces washes up on beaches, illegal fly-tipping evolves into a national mafia-led business, and images emerge from giant landfills in distant countries; places that have been bribed to become a distant dumpster.
Most homes also have an accumulation of stuff that is excessive from any practical point of view: clothes, shoes, jewellery, books, old tech, televisions, fragrance bottles, and so on. In some cases, cars, boats, and even houses. Somehow, the right to accumulate material possessions has been conflated with freedom, and so this sickness has become entrenched as a fundamental aspect of contemporary identity. And if you challenge that, you get a hot emotive response, just as you do when you point out to someone with a hoarding disorder that their living space looks like a hazardous tip.
The pathology of economic growth
So, how did this pathology become such an ingrained part of our world? Many of you won’t like the answer, but money is the reason. Actually, the real reason is power, a means of control for feeding the pathological hoarding disorder of the elite. However, the mechanism for such control is money, they’re inseparable. Like it or not, money is the most worshipful master of the modern age, and contemporary hoarders never seem to have enough. Deny this, and you deny objective reality. I’ll show you why. Then, I’ll explain how this collective hoarding disorder is the true cause behind our imminent extinction.
Consider these two similar situations:
Situation A
A small rural village in ancient times. Let’s call it Sapieburgh. Its population of 300 live independently, lightly cultivating small areas of land with diverse species including fruit trees, bushes, edible roots, and herbs. They don’t clear or plough land, but just dig out a few spaces and plant seeds here and there.
The culture of Sapieburgh ensures its people never overharvest, never clear essential canopy cover, or destroy deep root systems. Everything is hand to mouth, but nature provides plenty, so there’s never a shortage so long as they maintain their culture of respect, including keeping their own number at replacement levels. People who fail to behave in line with this paradigm are shunned. If they fail to fall in line they are exiled, perhaps after being permanently marked to warn other surrounding cultures. In severe cases, where an individual is found to be ‘possessed’ by an evil pathology, they might be executed.
Periodically, another group from a day or two’s hike away come over to trade crafts, discuss environmental developments and observations, have a little party, and enable some inter-village marriages. If there are instances of either settlement trespassing into another’s territory and taking or using their resources, they are discussed, reminders given, and perhaps gifts made to maintain the peace. This system of informal compensation is the only concept of debt that exists. Any trade made between the two groups is direct, not tokenized. Usable, material objects for usable, material objects.
Nobody sensible in either group seeks to buck the trend or subvert the culture. Why would they? As far as life can be good, this is good. The biological program of survival and reproduction is fulfilled. The community does minimal work, most of which is social, relaxed, and enjoyable. They spend a lot of time watching the world around them, absorbing its cycles, how different species interact, and building on millenia-old libraries of embodied knowledge. When someone becomes ill, the advice of an elder is sought. Perhaps they know of a plant or concoction that can help with the ailment. Either way, they know that making the person feel valued and cared for can help enormously. So, they make a fuss, providing physical nourishment, personal cleaning, and doing a song and dance around the ‘patient’, perhaps wafting some pleasant smelling incense around in the process. This simple act of value and attention is often enough to help the person fight off the ailment, and if not, it helps ease their pain. Later cultures, infested with a cognitive sickness, came to view such invaluable things as weird archaic practices.
In Sapieburgh, a typical day’s activity might consist of:
Harvesting and preparing food for 300 people.
Mobility and personal care for twenty elderly and sick people.
An informal communal nursery for thirty younger kids who play nearby as their parents craft essentials by hand.
Refurbishment and repair of two huts.
Tutoring and mentorship of thirty youths.
Evening story telling, music, and dance.
Ten night watchmen to guard the village, mainly from wild animals.
Five observers who monitor the sky, observing the moon cycles and movement of the stars.
The total economic value of all this activity in monetary terms is nil. Zilch. Nothing. No exchange mechanism. No banks. No measurable economic growth. No tax. No statistics. Nobody thinks of things like that, why would they?
Now, let’s consider another location, somewhere more contemporary.
Situation B
Wetikoville, population 300. This place is a small village in a wealthy rural location, some distance from the nearest major urban center. Beyond the households, the surrounding land is private farmland, so there’s no scope for subsistence gardening. In fact, the land the houses are on is ‘private’, in the sense that it had to be paid for, not by the original claimants who parcelled it off using the authority of god, but by all subsequent incumbents. Unlike Sapieburgh, the people of Wetikoville have to pay for their accommodation through rent or mortgages. Some don’t, they inherited their properties, but they still need to pay tax to the local authority for living there.
Many of the activities the Wetikovillers engage in are quite different to Sapieville, but some are very similar. The essential needs of human existence are the same. For simplicity, we’ll focus on the comparative elements from the above list describing the main activities in Sapieburgh:
a) Harvesting and preparing food for 300 people.
Aside from some garden-grown home treats, everyone is Wetikoville is dependent on shop-bought food. On average, they need to pay around £5 per person per day.
b) Mobility and personal care for twenty elderly and sick people.
Most people have family and friends who help out in some way, and are unpaid, but paid care is still essential. Many people now have to live away from their relatives due to work, or have daytime commitments that mean they can’t provide the necessary level of care. Around fifty hours of care per day is bought at a cost of £30 per hour.
c) An informal communal nursery for the younger kids who play nearby as their parents craft essentials by hand.
Most parents need to work, so thirty younger kids have to be placed in nursery at a cost of £80 per head, three days per week, for 48 weeks of the year.
d) Refurbishment and repair of two huts.
DIY is popular, but due to work commitments, complex building regulations, and lack of expertise, people pay for a lot of work, especially structural maintenance, heating systems, drainage etc. In the long-term, this averages at around £10 per day per property. The village has 120 houses (occupation levels average at 2.5 per household).
e) Tutoring and mentorship of thirty youths.
All are required to go to school at an average cost of £30 per child per day for 190 days per year.
f) Evening story telling, music, and dance.
Most people spend the evenings watching TV, or using their computers. Some go to the pub, or venture farther afield for more nightlife. None of it is free. For example, there are licence fees, broadband fees, subscriptions, equipment costs, taxis, drinks, dinners, and entrance fees. On average, people spend £8 per person per day on comparable leisure activities.
g) Ten night watchmen to guard the village, mainly from wild animals.
Wetikoville does have a neighbourhood watch scheme, but this coordinates with the police, who provide the official security for the village at an average cost of £1 per person per day.
h) Five observers who monitor the sky, observing the moon cycles and movement of the stars.
While Wetikoville has a couple of keen amateur astronomers, astronomical knowledge is garnered and curated by specialists elsewhere whose activities are funded vicariously through tax and private capital, including the student loan fees paid for a university education. This equates to the equivalent cost of around £1 per person per annum, roughly £0.82 per day for the whole village.
Hopefully you’re getting the gist? Here’s a comparison of these two cultures as valued by GDP over a year.
Sapieville: £0
Wetikoville: £2 927 850 **
As you can see, it’s insane to consider GDP, or economic productivity, to be an appropriate measurement of the true value of a society. In fact, it has absolutely no correlation, and nothing to do with the value of the experience of daily life in either community. To find out which seemed better, or more accurately, better for you, you’d need to speak to the people and live among them for a while to gain first-hand experience. An abstract measure of currency flow tells you nothing of substance.
Value is experiential, not monetary
I’d like to hammer this home with another short example:
Bob
Bob works at a local manufacturing firm. He earns £40k a year. Due to stress, exposure to traffic fumes, indoor pollutants, lack of exercise, and industrial chemical exposure, he develops cancer aged 45. Expensive new treatments and drugs keep him going, and knock back the disease. He returns to work after two years, but after five years the cancer re-emerges, becoming more aggressive. Again, he’s kept alive, but becomes too ill to work, and the cancer gradually kills him at 55, the final year of his life is spent in intermittent states of appalling agony, and increasing isolation.
Bella
Bella is a cave dweller. She earns nothing, but helps her group survive by hunting and gathering food, and collecting dry wood for their evening fires. With a few scars from encounters with wild animals, and one from a vicious fight with her cousin, she looks quite worn by the age of 50, but is well respected as one of the elders of her tribe. Surviving some nasty illnesses, and a parasitic infection, has given her the beneficial wisdom of how social bonding and plant medicine helped her to heal. She shares this knowledge freely, crafting events into memorable tales that she tells others over the camp fire. Some stories are put into songs used for celebration and dance. This is fun, but also helps memory retention and social cohesion.
Important things are stored in the hearts and minds of the people. It’s efficient that way. Books, scrolls, or stone tablets would be too cumbersome, both physically, and dogmatically. They’d also be prone to damage and loss. Besides, between the tribe, they have an excellent knowledge base that enables them to thrive. Anything else would interfere with the spaciousness of their inner life; information overload is not a concern. Eventually, a harsh winter takes Bella out of the game at age 55 when she dies to the sound of tribal drums and singing near a camp fire. The words herald her life, granting her a peaceful passing, and celebrating her transition into the world of ancestor spirits.
Bella and Bob as GDP
Over his lifetime Bob earned £900 000, most of which was spent on his own upkeep, including the mortgage, bills, and taxes that helped pay for his medical care. Some of his earnings, around £85 000 went toward a private pension, which he preferred to invest in, rather than save money. He was hoping for a lump sum on retirement, and so his pension fund did not contribute to GDP directly (a payout on death might apply, but we’ll ignore that here). The cost of his medical treatment was around £50 000 which counts toward GDP as spending.
Based on this simple analysis, Bob’s life was ‘worth’ £865 000 *** to the UK economy. Both the daily activities that contributed to his life-ending disease, and the fact that he contracted this disease, made a significant contribution to the ‘value’ of this figure.
By contrast, Bella’s life was worth nothing in GDP. Zero. In contemporary economic terms, the entirety of her existence was a senseless waste of time.
But I ask you, whose life was the most ‘valuable’ really?
Growth isn’t ‘progress’
Economists and politicians who measure ‘progress’ in terms of GDP, or monetary measurements of any sort, especially growth, are deranged fantasists. They’re gripped by a terrible disease. This same sickness is what drives people to value themselves, and others, on the basis of wealth and (financial) status. Our global economic framework is built on assumptions of endless growth, something that is materially impossible. If you want to make progress, you define a goal and then move toward it. You don’t just stay where you are, expanding like an overinflated balloon, hoping that the sides will touch something meaningful if you get large enough.
The people who built this system knew full well what they were doing. They were taking control by using money as the puppet string that steers people’s behaviour. By placing social and physical survival firmly within monetary mechanisms, and eradicating all practical possibility of opting out, they have taken quiet control over life. They decide the wind and tide, and demand that you set sail. Declarations are made about your ‘freedom’; you choose which direction to point your boat. But, you can’t sail against the tide and wind, and they know it. These puppeteers are unlikely to be aware they have a hoarding disorder. Their greed being framed as a god-given bloodline right, Atlassian virtue, or some such nonsensical thing.
The true nature of this constructed system is largely hidden because most people have been entrained to its ontology. That is, the world of productive consumerism has been normalized, glorified, even deified. Daily brainwashing reinforces it, from advertisements to celebrity game shows, news bulletins to the glorified gambling of ‘investment’. So long as people feel shamed by being poor, and ingratiated by being rich, the population can be harnessed for the benefit of those at the ‘top’*, the ones with the most extreme hoarding disorder.
This is a system where individuals, companies, and organizations make themselves wealthy by externalizing the extraordinary costs of their activities, including disease-causing irreversible pollution, war, genocide, ecosystem destruction, and physical and mental health Armageddon. Things are so bad, the extinction of the species is imminent. Why? Because some El-ites have an uncontrollable compulsion to get everything and keep it for themselves, despite most of it being of little or no real value to them. Oh, and f*** you if you happen to find yourself in their path. It’s all fodder for their pathological addiction.
How it all began, maybe
We can speculate about how all this may have started. A long time ago, in a small community of civilized people who lived within the means of their environment, an El-ite with a hoarding disorder was found guilty of dishonest greed, and exiled. On leaving, they took everything they could carry, along with immediate family, and camped out somewhere remote. Over time, through a program of inbreeding, they expanded their numbers considerably. Most of their offspring carried the dysfunctional genetic program, and experienced the scarcity associated with exile, so their hoarding disorder was triggered. Despite soon accumulating much more stuff and no longer living in scarcity, their kids learned to be hoarders from their parents’ habits, many of which had become ritualized; their right to hoard, now a religious declaration of superiority.
Once the hoarders were strong enough in number, they returned to invade their old community, taking it for themselves. A habit they turned into a culture, and so it continued. Sometimes overtly, but mostly covertly through media control, propaganda, secret services, infiltration, private banks, offshore domiciles, and other deep state organizations. They did it in the name of their sun god, a placeholder for the unconscious program that dominated their brains. Now they sit proudly as one-eyed kings atop the mound of those they have cognitively blinded and enslaved. Vampires, incapable of seeing their own reflection. The NEW WORLD hoarding diSORDER.
*Being top of a toxic dump isn’t anything to be proud of, is it kids?
** [a) £5 * 300 * 365 = £547 500; b) £30 * 50 * 365 = £547 500; c) £80 * 30 * 3 * 48 = £345 600; d) £10 * 120 * 365 = £438 000; e) £30 * 30 * 190 = £171 000; f) £8 * 300 * 365 £876 000; g) £1 * 30 * 365 = £10 950; h) £1 * 300 = £300; total - £547 500 + £547 500 + £345 600 + £438 000 + £171 000 + £867 000 + £10 950 + £300 = £2 927 850]
*** (900 000 – 85 000 + 50 000 = £865 000)