EXTINCTION BURST

An extinction burst occurs when bad behaviour intensifies before stopping. Undesirable qualities can become entrenched through positive reinforcement. But if the world changes and no longer provides us with the same feedback, we lose our minds: to the privileged, equality feels like persecution. Extinction bursts are forms of active denial; refusals to accept the past as gone, and desperate attempts to preserve the potential of an impossible reality. Today, modernity’s worst tendencies return intensified: patriarchy, racism, plutocracy, colonialism, exploitation, rentierism, genocide. Even attempts at redemption, restoration and stasis accelerate the decline.