Márton Zalka Márton Zalka Virgil Widrich Virgil Widrich My thesis Anaesthetics dissects the global north’s predominant fascination with smooth and optimized aesthetics and unfolds, how our ungrounded, secular self is constantly seeking to anchor itself onto populist aesthetic trends. A dynamic that is directly affecting, if not at its core of our stalling transitions towards meaningful sustainable practices. Our growing collective mortality salience as a result of the growing threat of a total environmental and social collapse only provides fuel for said consumerist ontologies. PDFDocument eng 2026-01-20T16:32:30.642573Z aesthetics dialectic materialism affordance ontology waste abjection mortality salience tmt terror management theory sustainability circular economy decay 16032323 b application/pdf http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/