Laboured to Extinction: How We Became the Planet of the Working Zombies

As societies grew into increasingly complex economies, the need for specialised skills gave rise to specialised humans. Each successive era of civilisation placed new demands on populations to further specialise: general craftsmen became dedicated to a single craft, farmers were confined to a single crop, and the tribe’s original healers eventually evolved into a myriad of medical specialities. As learning curves became steeper, educational institutions were tasked with preparing humans for long careers in their chosen specialty, years before they even knew who they were. Today we spend incredibly long parts of our lives acquiring the skills that will turn us into cog wheels within an incredibly complex machine. With the transaction economy monopolizing human existence, there are only three avenues an adult human can follow today: become a diligent worker, a faithful consumer, or both. There is little time or opportunity for an individual to become a complete human instead, given that complete humans are of limited commercial value in the necrocapitalist psychonomy.

Forcing humans to put all their eggs in one career basket so they can hopefully one day occupy increasingly obscure professional niches is a recipe for identity crisis. Having specialised itself to death, it is no wonder this society is experiencing a crisis in big picture thinking. We are forced from an early age to neglect, abandon and disown huge parts of ourselves in order to “succeed”, as we are taught the lesson that values, morals and ethics are there to be compromised along with our silly, childhood dreams. The only values we end up upholding are those of the transaction economy: instead of learning to care for others, we learn to service them. Instead of learning to think, we learn to obey. And instead of learning to value ourselves, we strive to excel in “valuable” tasks. The blind spots of our educational system have become so immense that humans are limp versions of who they could be, hopelessly looking for their long-gone missing parts in dehumanizing careers and bullshit jobs. The bigger the bullshit, the bigger the paycheque.

This system has broken us much like wild horses broken into subordination. We’ve domesticated ourselves into consumatrons and working zombies terrified to look for their real selves, much like animals afraid to exit their cages. The tragic disaster of today’s society is that it has forgotten to take care of its members and has dedicated itself to servicing the economic monster instead. Humans are one of the most exploited species: having surrendered their time, energy, physical and mental health to a system ruthlessly using them to destroy the planet. The entirety of humanity has become one big business, and each of us is, willingly or not, part of this ever-growing, destructive, polluting, utterly pointless corporation. What is the point of working when there is hardly a job left on the planet which doesn’t guarantee the end of civilisation? The problem with jobs today is that they have stopped servicing society and have prioritised servicing the annihilation of climate and ecology. The primary goal of work today is not to provide a service, but to generate profit. This shift in priority has not only damaged services and job satisfaction. It has put the planet firmly on a path of destruction. No matter which industry we work in, we are all working on the same project, the biggest one we have ever worked on: Project Collapse.

Even those who think they are doing “ethical” jobs are deluding themselves. Their work may be ethical on the surface, but they are making money for an employer who works with suppliers and big corporations that have no ethics whatsoever. Doctors are part of wasteful healthcare systems kept hostage by the global chemical and pharmaceutical corporations who supply plastic single-use products and overpriced drugs. But other than that, yes, they are saving lives. Farmers are largely nature destroyers: wasting water, depleting the soil microbiome, poisoning Earth with forever chemicals. But other than that, yes, they are feeding us. Office employees, of any and every type, are the coordinators and administrative assistants in all this destruction: pushing paper, pushing money, pushing the marketing campaigns which push consumers towards consumption.

This economic system monetizes extinction itself. But at least you can rest assured that the destruction of the planet is supported by a well-educated, highly experienced and dedicated team here to assist you on every step of your extinction journey. This necrocapitalist system has enlisted all of us as employees in its self-destructive project. Scientists research it, and engineers design it. Lawyers endorse it and project managers organise it. Bankers and insurers finance it and marketers announce it. Politicians normalize it and religious leaders evangelize it. Teachers ignore it and journalists censor it. Bosses delegate it and you, the employee, tolerates it. These are just some of the most important bullshit professions.

The working zombies used to be humans, but capitalism treats humans in the same way it treats its most profitable, high-turnover products: cheap, replaceable, and rapidly expirable. We are one of the most exploited species on the planet: having surrendered our time, energy, physical and mental health to a system which only ever sees us as workhorses.

But the rewards are not what they used to be, which explains why many young people are resigning before even entering the workforce. They have clocked this system as a trap already, and they know it is killing the planet they were planning to inhabit. They know that corporate culture and bullshit professions reinforce everything wrong with this civilisation: ecocide, genocide, racism, corruption and a compulsion for self-destruction. The number of people working because it gives them meaning as opposed to simply paying their unaffordable rent, mortgage or dependents has now reached peak low. As for the proportion of people whose work agrees with their deeper ethics, values and beliefs, it is close to zero.

The first lesson we learn as we approach adulthood is that if we want to survive this system, we first and foremost need to put aside our values. These are the same values missing from our educational system, as well as our jobs: respect for individuals. Respect for nature. Doing what is right, not what is profitable. Most jobs are not productive anymore. They only exist to make bosses rich by forcing employees to do things they don’t believe in, say things they don’t agree with, and dedicate time to things they never cared for. All this, to convince consumers to buy things they never needed. By surrendering our values to employers for the reward of a salary, we have sponsored a global necroeconomic system which makes money out of the four most unsustainable yet most profitable businesses: the climate crisis, ecological catastrophe, genocide, and war. Work has become a means to self-destruction, nature is irrelevant, and Project Collapse is on track to hit its profit target before everything closes down for good. In the planet of the working zombies the trail of money always leads back to ecocide and emissions. Our economic system is a chain of Chinese whispers beginning with “people, progress, prosperity and planet” and ending in the smudged fine print of ecocide and genocide right when everyone has stopped paying attention.

Yet we all believe the glossy brochure, because deep down we want to believe that our job is ethical and meaningful. Knowing that abandoning these jobs is not an option, we are heavily primed to accept all arguments of the type: “hey, at least I am doing something good, some of the time”. Employees are desperate to be convinced that they have not joined a death cult, and this is why companies find it incredibly easy to convince them that they care about both them and the ethical and ecological footprint of the business. Companies have developed clever ways to make us feel “fulfilled” by distracting us from the “end” and focusing us only on the “means” - an ancient practice of the Civilisational Lie.

When I worked in consumer marketing and advertising, the whole exercise of finding ways to deceive and manipulate consumers was dressed-up by company culture as “social science” or “advanced psychology”, in the same way that inventors of the atomic bomb had convinced themselves they were working on “quantum physics”. By reframing and glorifying our job descriptions companies convince us that what we do is highly intellectual work beneficial to planet and society. However fake, this glossed-over version of civilisation is incredibly difficult to resist.

But the bullshit is beginning to reach peak level, and some of us are waking up. There are always ways to resist and change the world, but it won’t happen if we keep selling ourselves short, is it? Imagine if employers saw their employees as a sustainable investment as opposed to a replaceable consumable. Imagine if companies preferred to hire emotionally and ethically balanced humans, as opposed to toxic narcissists. Narcissists are incredibly valuable to our economic necrosystem, which is why all corporate cultures tolerate, condone, promote and generously reward psychopathic master manipulators that can quickly ascend the management hierarchy. Modern work culture sponsors and promotes the most selfish, dishonest and toxic psychopaths (i.e. your boss), and the reason why the climate crisis and civilisational collapse are upon us is that they are the most lucrative businesses that ever existed. It is about time we put humans and planet above business.