While I was working on this painting of US oligarch Jeff Bezos I kept thinking about a speech he gave in 2019 where he laid out his nightmarish vision for the future of the human species.

Bezos described a future where the overwhelming majority of humans are shipped off to space to live their lives inside “O’Neill colonies” — giant cylinders which rotate to simulate Earth’s gravity. Only a privileged few would get to remain on humanity’s home world, where the ecosystem would be able to repair and thrive now that it’s not being overburdened by more humans than it can handle.

One doesn’t have to stretch the imagination to guess which side of the equation Bezos envisions himself and his family winding up on in this scenario.

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As I was painting I kept thinking about how horrific it would be if Bezos’ plan for humanity was ever put into place, because you know hardly anyone would leave this planet voluntarily. Billions of people would be forced onto space ships bound for these giant spinning space stations, their hearts breaking at the unimaginable loss of their indigenous home world.

It would be like a planet-wide Nakba. A Trail of Tears for our entire species.

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The freaks who rule our world do not have a healthy vision for humanity’s future. Their best ideas are a normal person’s worst nightmare.

Jeff Bezos envisions ecocidal capitalism being allowed to tick along completely unrestricted and unhindered, with humanity rescuing itself from disaster at the last minute by shipping most of itself off planet to live inside giant Amazon space dildos. That’s his best and brightest plan.

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Our rulers are not good people. They are not wise. They are not compassionate. They aren’t even particularly intelligent. They just happen to be good at winning the capitalism game by moving the circumstances of our society around in such a way that the numbers in their bank accounts grow very large.

This is not a healthy way for us to live. We cannot keep doing this.

Reading by Tim Foley.