mind reader

When you think about it, a striking indictment of capitalism’s fundamental absurdity is that, humans remain the only species on Earth forced to pay for shelter. While other animals engage in the genuine labour of creating and maintaining their dwellings – think beaver dams, magpie nests, or ant cities – humans alone have been convinced that surrendering most of our life’s labour to access basic shelter is not only normal but desirable. This perverse arrangement is not a natural way of being – it has been generationally deliberately constructed through centuries of enclosure and dispossession, transforming what should be a fundamental right into a commodity to be bought and sold. And the capitalists like to remind you that not engaging with capitalism – not securing a dwelling – is a personal failure which will be punished (see also architecture which punishes those without homes). The fact that we accept this as “normal”...