Extinction is inevitable under semiocapitalism, only by giving up the obsession with growth forwarded by the aff solves

At the end of the acceleration cycle, extinction looms. Beyond the pandemic threshold we enter a period of exhaustion: not only have our physical energies been drained by the virus, but nervous energy has waned, abruptly breaking the rhythm of social mobilisation. At the economic level the demand is in free fall not only because consumers are forced to stay home but also because of the deflation of consumerist excitement. This collective excitement has deteriorated, and this is not merely an economic deflation; it is the cause of the persistent economic downturn. The recession is the outcome of a psychological disinvestment, the consequence of a widespread withdrawal of desire. This downturn brings about a conceptual reconfiguration of the very concept of Future: first of all we should disentangle the concept of future (and also the psychological tension towards future) from the expectations of growth, expansion and acceleration, which shaped the concept of future in modern culture and imagination. Although the widespread consciousness and perception of this deflation of future is an effect of the abrupt interruption provoked by the lockdown, we should not forget that deflation was already underway. For at least two decades before the pandemic, the fact that expansion was nearing its end for non-economic reasons (environment, mental suffering) was obvious to every thinking person on the planet, with the noticeable exception of economists. Expansion grows impossible when the physical limits of the world and the neurological limits of the brain have been reached. Since that point on, the acceleration of the rhythm of communication and life has a destructive effect on the social mind, as the nervous system is disturbed by permanent hyperstimulation. The neoliberal cycle, which lasted around four decades, was essentially an attempt in postponing the big psycho-deflation and deferring the economic stagnation by the acceleration of mental productivity (nervous exploitation) and the devaluation of physical productivity (low salaries, precariousness). Extractivism of the physical resources of the planet and of the nervous resources of the brain has been the neoliberal reaction to the tendential fall in the rate of profit, but it has rapidly brought about the exhaustion of physical and nervous resources. The virus obliged the reluctant authorities of the world to accept the evidence: the age of expansion is over. They do not dare to recognise this apertis verbis, of course. But they are paralysed, or panicking, as the truth has been exposed: capitalism is dead. Now our cultural task is to think future out of the conceptual framework of expansion. Decoupling the concept of future from the expectation of expansion and acceleration means getting free from the framework of capitalism. But the separation of production from accumulation, of the useful from exchange value, of pleasure from consumption is unthinkable. Escaping from the capitalist frame implies the reactivation of a social energy of solidarity that seems unachievable after forty years of neoliberal reform and of connective mutation. Since the triumph of neoliberalism we have been taught that there is no alternative to capitalism, capitalism being the economic and cultural insurmountable border of human history. Now it’s crystal clear: if this neoliberal assumption is true, then we have to resign ourselves to the idea that extinction is the only future that our progeny can expect. However, I think that the neoliberal assumption is not true, and an alternative does exist: it is based on liberation from the obsession of economic growth; it is based on the redistribution of resources, on the reduction of labour time, and on the expansion of time dedicated to the free activity of teaching, researching, healing and taking care.