Fracking: A Priva(tiza)tion of Earth and Soul

Hello audient! (Jake says we have one more but I know it's still, as always, just you...)

So we did an episode about fracking. Missing Jack on this one...

We had a lot to say. But it was all pretty depressing. Still, as someone else had probably already said (#nocuck), if you don't open your eyes in the dark they could never get used to it (and see the little light that's left).

Fracking is a technology meant to extract oil and gas, not from underground repositories or "pockets," but from rock; to penetrate inside the rock, to take what the rock had locked away within. The process involves (ab)using a great deal of water, making it irrevocably toxic, and shooting it at high pressure, within the rock, so as to break its integrity; widening cracks, and keeping these cracks open for more pressure to break them down further. The toxin in the water serves to capture the released oils and gases in a way that is more effectively extracted. It also proceeds to seep into the ground, poisoning water supplies, plants, animals, causing cancer...

...and all with a certain impunity. It is this impunity that we are (angrily) tossing towards. Yes, in both meanings of the word. 

We wanted to look at fracking as the technological manifestation of a certain logic that... "inspires" let's say our political and ethical assumptions. This logic, once understood, can be seen everywhere (as well as its results): the ret-con of lovable stories and characters (until all the love is sucked out and all the fans feel betrayed); the abuse of language/discourse by/in Social media (punishing empathy with toxicity - this is deliberate and done by innumerable bots); austerity measures leading to social collapse (by way of undercutting/humiliating local values)...

Blaise Pascal wrote a line in his 'Pensees' that Levinas liked to cite: "'That is my place under the sun' is how the usurpation of the world began." Thinking of other belief-structures, non- or pre-Monotheist, we offer a critique of this quote insofar as it assumes a Christian 'I'. It is this I's possession that usurps the world. 

And we do see fracking a doing just that. John Locke shows us the logic of this possession: claiming the land as 'private property' gives me absolute power over it. Just like with the industrial revolution's effect on the climate, and with the same impunity. This is a metaphysics, an understanding, that did not occur before, or outside of, Monotheism. 

And it is dangerous because it is only a totality - human, all too human - but armed with claims to infinity. 

Fracking doesn't wait for time. It has no time. It follows a logic of hunger, but a desperate hunger, the resentful hunger of the slave. This hunger will even suck the marrow from the bone. Fracking, not just literally, leaves no stone unturned.

That is how the usurpation of the Earth began.

This, pathetic, impunity has no honor. it is the impunity of the starved and desperate; the impunity of ressentiment, of the shit-eating grin. Even when it rules, as it does nowadays, it has no power to call its own, no pride or anchor. 

It sees no future (like a Bull seeing red..).

There was so much more (and less) in the pod, if you have the mental fortitude. We had Derrida, Bataille, and even Israel made an appearance..

 Too many Stars in this episode.