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Will the Miracle of Capitalism Destroy Us All?

In 2003, the literary theorist Fredric Jameson wrote that it was “easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Trevor Jackson seems to agree, but only to a point. In “The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World,” Jackson says that the prevailing economic system has already gone a long way toward destroying our “finite planet.” He argues that if we don’t find a way to change course, the end of the world won’t be something we have to imagine; it will actually arrive.

Jackson, an economic historian at Berkeley, is a critic of capitalism, which he defines as a system that turns things like labor and land into assets for market exchange. Capitalism remade the world, transforming the Earth and reconfiguring social relationships.

Unlike boosters who insist that capitalism is natural—the inescapable result of a propensity for competition and trade—Jackson wants to draw attention to how strange its history is.

With the advent of capitalism, traditional modes of enduring scarcity, like custom and kinship, were replaced by accumulation.

Jackson briskly connects the creation of a global monetary system and the development of financial instruments and institutions to the growth of chattel slavery, industrialization and imperialist expansion.

Capitalism, in his telling, is reflexively voracious: “It obeys the dumb, inhuman logic of its own unthinking operation. It cannot stop growing or expanding.” Still, the capitalist machine was “made by people,” Jackson says, “which means it can be unmade by them.” He compares owners of capital to “gut flora”—“necessary for the metabolism of the whole entity” but “individually unimportant.”

Whether intentional or not, Jackson’s overall message is that the system becomes so self-reinforcing that it pushes individual humans into insignificance.

Excerpted from an Essay by Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times
“Will the Miracle of Capitalism Destroy Us All?”
March 25, 2026

The note I wrote myself after I first read this review appears below:

[SCA: Replace “Capitalism” with “AI”—same, same]

And even now, people who I follow are already backing down on the ubiquitous “solutions” AI seemed to promise mere months ago. And don’t forget its bag of chips.

I understand that AI has some magical potential, but it doesn’t have a heart, it doesn’t have a soul, it doesn’t have a spirit. It has a processor. I can’t imagine turning to a processor for care or comfort, but people do.

I think that’s why the review on the book about capitalism so spoke to me. Capitalism is one economic system. One. It’s a system that definitely works until it doesn’t.

That’s true of most systems, actually. It’s because systems are only as adaptable as are the persons who create and use them. Then they hit their limit.

Any metaphysician worth her salt knows this. Our planet is based on a principle of balance called the Complementarity of Opposites, or Polarity.

Picture it like a playground seesaw. Both sides go up and both go down but never at the same time. That’s not built into the system.

So expand-expand-expand only goes so far because it’s only half the system when it comes to capitalism. If there are three consecutive expansions, there will be three consecutive contractions. Its built into the nature of our reality. Not necessarily right then, but the balancing contractions are queuing up.

It makes me laugh sometimes that contraction freaks us out so much when we know how it works, when we’ve seen repeatedly how it works, and then we behave like we’ve never in our lives ever even heard of contraction.

After big expansion, there’s always big contraction, and I’m not talking about physically, I mean this energetically. You get a big promotion and are walking on top of the world, then your dog gets sick and you contract.

The goal is to find and preserve a balance knowing full well that a true balance, a static balance, a permanent balance is impossible. Nor is it desirable. Balance is a place you visit, or pass through on your way to handle the next imbalance.

It’s really too big a project for just one person. That’s why it works best in communities, but still, the little each one of us can do to foster balance contributes to the overall balance needed for all of us to thrive.

And what better purpose for a life than thriving?

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When focus meets structure, plans take shape.

Rick Levine, Daily Horoscope 4.20.26

The Question:

How do I make plans that stick?

&mpersand Answers:

Humans spend an awful lot of time planning, don’t we?

In fact, think a moment on this. How many times in your life have you been disappointed, not because something didn’t happen, but something you planned for didn’t happen? The classic example is the party planned for outdoors, and Mother Nature deciding that is the day the Earth is thirsty and needs a good quenching.

Now, go a little further. Did you have the party anyway? Did you improvise? Did someone’s dad have a barn? (ref. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland) Did it go off without a hitch? No. Was it fun anyway—maybe moreso.

Focus is a fascinating word; it means hearth, the center of the home. Mr. Levine recommends focus first, and allowing structure (code for plans) to arise organically from your focus. One of the reasons we’re so often thwarted in our planning is that we do this, but we do it backward.

We plan, and then we focus. That means our plans are most likely ungrounded, disconnected from reality, and not clear enough to create their own momentum. When, instead, we start with focus, then plans arise out of the right place inside you, and those are the plans that stick.

Which means: first, hold still. Focus. What is it you want to accomplish? The best Fourth of July party ever. Now, sit with the idea of your party, and pad and paper, and go mad. Write every crazy Fourth idea you ever had. It’s even better if there are two or more doing this process.

Then compare notes. Watch the plan shape itself. When the plan shapes itself, you know you’ve done the process in the best order, and so, plans stick.

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Here’s a universal affirmation. It works every time, for everyone, always and forever …

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Okay, I reread Besieged in full, and made a list—a four-page list—of storylines I left unresolved so now I know some of what I want to pick up in Book Two, Betrayed. I also, despite our best efforts, found two typos. Honestly, I think they sometimes crawl into prose when we’re not looking.

And I have started Betrayed. Very exciting. Very. This means I figure out an average daily segment—it’s different for each book—and write +/- that amount every day. At what used to be a cocktail hour in my grandparents’ home, my editor and I sit, and I read the dailies aloud. It’s totally fun to get back into that rhythm.

I’m still waiting for the light to turn green on writing two books at the same time. I think it’s around the corner. Basically, I have to get the rhythm of Betrayed settled in my body, and then Spirit will give the go-ahead for the eleventh Mex Mystery. It’s called Shrew This! and it takes place during the Covid-19 shutdown. Anchored in an all-female production of Taming of the Shrew presented by the residents of a safe-house shelter, it addresses intimate partner violence. The spiritual healing modality is the use of mandala.

I know this is about to happen because every night-dream I have had lately includes a mandala.

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Please make this indie author happy. Choose one of my series, and read all of them. Then review all of them. That’s the way others find books.

The entire series of The Subversive Lovelies is one option, or how about The Mex Mysteries—all eleven of them. Fall into the stories of a high femme intuitive investigator that definitely has her own way of being in this crazy world we live in.

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Special Request:

Send me your spiritual questions please. As of now, which I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’m posting &mpersand Answers twice a week.

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Aside from staying intent upon his, sometimes, more than fulltime career writing and editing, especially for LGBQT+ authors, Tony Amato, yes, my deeply beloved spouse, has taken care of our home, our needs, our cat, and me impeccably. And let’s add in the capital T Truth, for more than a solid year. During that time I’ve been in five hospitals, and had more doctors’ appointments than ought to be legal, and he’s been with me every step of the way.

That kind of dedication is what he brings to the authors he serves—whether it’s editing a piece to be read aloud at the last minute, or doing a slash and burn edit for a big publishing house, or coaxing a young writer in finding their authentic writing voice—he’s with them a hundred and fifty percent.

The medical merry-go-round (we hope) is easing up, and we’re about to get off it for a few months we hope, and let those horses entertain Mary Poppins, Bert, and Jane and Michael Banks. So let me ask you something crucial: Is it time you invested in your dreams of writing?

Tony Amato is a full service, one-stop shop. Find this genius—yes, I’m saying it, who has been nurturing authors for more than thirty years, here.

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This has been the strangest period of reading I’ve ever experienced in all the years since I taught myself to read at age three—which means, for 65 years.

I have absolutely no idea why, but I am on a re-reading kick like never before. I almost never re-read books either—there are too many more I want to read!

Anyway, I re-read all of Harry Potter, all of Outlander, all of Emily Bex’s Medici Warriors, all of J. R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood, all of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series, and all of Joely Sue Burkhart’s Vampire Queen series.

I’m in the middle of Victoria Laurie’s Psychic Eye mysteries, and still want to re-read all the Kathleen McGowan books on Mary Magdalene as well as R. A. Steffan and Jaelyn Wolf’s Circle of Blood, my favorite of all the vampire popcorn. Phew.

Who knows what She is doing?

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Are you waiting for a sign?
How about this one?

I loved this when I found it.

Believe it or not,
it’s a rainbow lamp
from the foyer of one
of the top
gyms
in China.

I’ve spent a little time there,
and everything I saw
was beautiful like this.
Even if it’s not your style.
Look around your home,
Belovèd,
is there a little something
that you’d like to make
more beautiful?