Civilization – a glossary

Or: The lives of the primitive arenasty, brutish and short.

The following is a translation of a German article I didin 2011 featuring words, phrases and terms that name destructive forces and their consequences to everyday life in industrial civilization. 

abuse of office, administration, advertising, agritourism, air pollution, animal abuse, anthropogenic climate change, anthropogenic mass extinction, antibiotics resistance, apocalypse, arms exports, asylum seeker, assassination, average citizen
bankruptcy, battery farm, blasphemy, booking fee, bra burner, bubble economy, bureaucracy, burn-out syndrome, butter mountain
calendar reform, cap & trade, carbon storage, cartel, casino capitalism, certificate, cheap labour, christianization, chemical spill, child abuse, clearcutting, clone, commodification, computer virus, consumerism, control, copyright, coral bleaching, corruption, crop failure, crown of creation, curriculum, customs duty, cyber attack
debt, depression, development aid, dictatorship, dioxin, discrimination against…., disease of civilization, distortion of history, divorce judge, draft, dragnet investigation, drawdown, drill sergeant, drug abuse, dying forest syndrome
economic crisis, egoism, electric chair, elite school, emulsifier, endlösung, energy slave, espionage ring, exceptionalism, exploitation, explosives
fad, fake democracy, falsification of documents, fangirl, fastfood, fetishism, financial crisis, firing squad, flavour enhancers, food dye, food riot, forced labour, foreclosure, forest of traffic signs, Fortress Europe, fracking, fraudulent labelling
gate keeper, genealogy, genetic engineering, genocide, getto, gift shop, glacier melt, globalization, gold rush, government, grass mower, green revolution, Grim Reaper, guardians of the status quo, guerilla tactics
heavy metal poisoning, hell, heretic, highrise, holocaust, homeless, homophobia, hooligan, hospital bug, housing shortage, human resources, human superiority, hunger catastrophe
ideology, illegality, illiteracy, imperialism, indefinite detention, industrial farming, infallability, inflation, inquisition, interest rates, invasion, iron curtain
jihad, juuggernaut, junkyard
killer game, Ku Klux Klan
labour division, landmine, land use plan, large hadron collider, lawyer, legislation, life insurance, long-distance relationship, loss of the sense of reality
machine gun, manager salary, maneuver training, market analysis, mass grave, mass hysteria, mass migration, mass murder, mass unemployment, mass poverty, mass production, mass uprising, materialism, McJob, medical-psychological assessment, milk pool, mining disaster, misanthropy, money laundering, monocrop, monopoly, moralism, mortgage, mountain top removal
nanny state, nationalism, nation state, neo-liberalism, nervous breakdown, nihilism, noise pollution, no-man’s-land, nuclear bomb, numerology, numerus clausus
occultism, ocean acidification, oil spill, original sin, otherness, overkill, overpopulation, overview of grades, ozone hole
palace, pandemic, panic buying, pay freeze, peak-oil, penal system, pension fund, permanent nuclear repository, pesticide, pillager, pipeline, plane crash, plastic bag, plattenbau, politics, police, pornography, precariat, presidential election, price war, prison population, privatization, proletariat, property, psychotherapy, public utility, punctuality
quality management, quantum theory, quarry, quisling
radioactive waste, racism, railway mission, reactor accident, rebel movement, recreation, reform deadlock, refugee crisis, regulation mania, religion, revolution, rip-off, risk group, river control, robbery, Russian roulette
sanitarium, school massacre, secret diplomacy, secret service, secret societies, serial killer, sewage treatment plant, sexual offence, shareholder value, shortages of…, shylock, slaughterhouse, smuggler, soil erosion, social insurance, solar radiation management, spending spree, spiritual bypassing, squatter scene, stalker, standard period of study, standardization, state of emergency, stock market crash, street-walker, strike breaker, structural violence, subsidy, supertanker
tar sands extraction, tax increase, tax injustice, tax payer, terminator seed, technical failure, terminator technology, terrorism, therapy, think tank, thrashmower, time constraint, time keeping, toilet attendant, torture camp, tourist trap, toxic waste, traffic offense, traffic rush, trash trade, trash vortex
ubermensch, underdeveloped country, uniform, urban sprawl, usury, utilitarianism, Utopia
vacccine, vacuum cleaner, vandalism, vermin, virtual reality, vivisection
wage slavery, war crimes, war on…, waste of energy, weapons of mass destruction, weeds, welfare scrounger, workaholic, World Bank, world war
xenophobia, x rating, XTC
y2K bug, Yakuza, Yankee, yeoman, youthism, yuppie
zealot, zero-dimensional space, zoo animal

(Endlessly expandable)

What’s wrong with “recreation”? Are our lives not better than that of primitive man? – Go and find out.


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