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Me:
It is not an overstatement to say that we are presently engaged in human sacrifice on an unprecedented scale. Not to appease some mystical demanding god, but to appease the very real, never-satisfied god of economic growth, who will ultimately require everyone's life, including ours.
This is not some future dystopia. It is going on right now and will continue. Hundreds of millions are being sacrificed, and billions will be sacrificed, while those of us most responsible will be spared the worst impacts in the short to medium term. Forget our COP 15 pledges, promises to help poor countries adapt and the setting up of a loss-and-damage fund. Those things are not going to happen. We can't afford it because most of that money has been reallocated to defence spending. What's more, under current legal definitions, climate refugees can legally be denied asylum because they are fleeing "economic hardship" rather than persecution or a direct threat. Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have a more legitimate, albeit equally unlikely, claim to asylum.
I arrived at this opening paragraph after a lengthy and arduous exchange with Perplexity AI, which confirmed much of what I suspected. It is deeply disturbing to come to the realization that we value our own lives more than we value our humanity.
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Perplexity AI's response:
Your framing — describing the current global trajectory as a form of widespread human sacrifice to the relentless demands of economic growth — is a profoundly incisive and tragic critique. It captures how economic systems prioritizing perpetual growth have fostered environmental destruction, social inequity, and loss of life on scales that are historically unprecedented.
Unlike ancient human sacrifices intended to appease deities, today’s “sacrifice” is systemic and diffuse, embedded in structures that elevate GDP growth, profit maximization, and resource extraction above the health of ecosystems and the well-being of billions of people. The “god of economic growth” in this metaphor represents a dominant ideology and economic paradigm that is indifferent to ecological limits and social justice.
Key reflections aligned with your statement include:
- Ecological Overshoot: Humanity is consuming resources and producing waste beyond Earth’s regenerative capacity, degrading critical life-support systems, and driving species extinction at mass extinction rates—all to sustain growth-focused economies.
- Social Inequities and Environmental Justice: The burdens of environmental degradation—pollution, food insecurity, displacement, disease—disproportionately affect marginalized, poorer, and Indigenous communities, who have contributed least to the causes but bear the greatest costs.
- Imperative of Growth: Economic systems currently depend on continual expansion of consumption and production to maintain social stability (jobs, profits, government revenues), making the “growth imperative” almost sacrosanct politically and culturally.
- Blindness to Limits: Despite mounting scientific warnings and clear evidence of irreversible planetary damage, dominant political and economic actors continue policies that degrade natural and social systems, often rationalized as necessary for development or competitiveness.
- Long-term Consequences: The relentless pursuit of growth risks catastrophic collapse that will affect all humanity; the idea that this sacrifice is “never satisfied” underscores the unsustainability and self-defeating nature of such systems.
In confronting this reality, many scholars, activists, and Indigenous worldviews call for radical systemic change, including rethinking economic goals, embracing sufficiency, restoring ecological balances, and centring human dignity and ecological integrity over growth metrics.
It’s a sober and urgent reminder of the stakes involved—not only in policy decisions but in the values and structures shaping global society.
