Here are Derrick Jensen's Endgame Premises. His point: civilization isn't sustainable & industrial civ (I'm sure he'd incl 4IR) can only be sustained thru violence of those higher on hierarchy vs those lower@Philly852@elleprovocateur@WinterOakPresshttps://t.co/GV3W1PWVCy
— Richard Bailey (@RealRichardBail) May 30, 2021
"Nature" does not need any investment to be "saved". #NatureNotForSale https://t.co/vlfyIwnyuv
— Stop WWF's New Deal For Nature (@nodealfornature) May 27, 2021
Yes, there absolutely needs to be the creation of a new culture with new values (or, really, tens of thousands of cultures, each emerging from its own landbase, including the re-emergence of extant indigenous cultures). But the people involved in that cultural creation must see themselves as part of a resistance movement that supports and encourages action against the forces that are dismembering our planet, or, at least, that doesn’t actively discourage organized resistance whenever the subject is raised. Otherwise that nice, new culture is simply a fantasy, unhooked from anything in the real, physical world, incapable of ever being effective, and, ultimately, a position of privilege. Maud Gonne, for instance, was intimately involved with the Gaelic Revival, promoting literature and language preservation. She also did prisoner support, worked with the Land League, and got arrested herself. She almost died on a hunger strike and won some basic rights for Irish prisoners in the process (and her son Seán MacBride eventually became chief of staff of the IRA, helped found Amnesty International, and in 1974 won the Nobel Peace Prize). It is insulting to her memory and to the memory of so many other brave people to state categorically that resistance doesn’t work. Of course it works. But people have to actually do it, and keep doing it for the long haul.
Why are even those who call themselves environmentalists not talking about what really needs to happen to save this planet? Burning fossil fuel, for example, has to stop. This isn’t negotiable. You cannot negotiate with physical reality. It doesn’t matter how or why this burning stops. It needs to stop. We need to stop it—need to stop doing it ourselves, and need to stop others, especially giant corporate others, from doing it too.
We need organized political resistance. Power needs to be named and then dismantled systematically. This requires joint action of whatever sort is deemed necessary. While the frontline actionists are taking apart systems of power and fighting to defend wild nature, the culture of resistance is providing loyalty and cooperation and material support, as well as building up alternate institutions—from means of bringing justice to economic systems to food supply chains to schools to new literary forms—that can take over as the system comes down. The template is not hard to understand. It will take its own culturally appropriate forms. The same actions have been undertaken by resistance movements everywhere—the Spanish anarchists, the American patriots. It’s not conceptually difficult.
But instead of supporting the necessity for action (and we’re not yet even talking about what forms that action should or could take), or at the very least not attempting to discourage action at every turn, so much of the environmental movement keeps insisting that only personal lifestyle change is possible. No other oppressed group in history has ever taken such a stand. Right now, a small group of half-starved, poverty-stricken people in Nigeria have brought the oil industry in that country to its knees. They remember what it is to love their land and their communities—perhaps because they are not drowning in privilege, but in the toxic sludge of oil extraction. Is that what it will take to get environmentalists in the U.S. to fight back?
Read the Responses
The Psychology of Previous Investment, by James Howard Kunstler: The conditions of the permanent global energy crisis we face will create a lot of economic losers, and they are going to be very angry over the loss of their entitlements.
Ripping up Asphalt and Planting Gardens, by Derrick Jensen: This culture is killing the planet. It must be stopped. We evidently do not have the courage to stop it ourselves. The natural world will stop it for us.
The Primacy of Ecology, by Richard Register: Nature and agriculture must work its way back into what presently is a massive, disastrous design mistake fueled by weakness, laziness, greed on ego as well as gasoline.
The Simpler Way, by Ted Trainer: Above all, the basic feature of the new suburbs and towns must be their highly self-sufficient local economies.
Stop Catering to Cars, by Al Cormier: Al Cormier lists a number of strategies for municipal and/or provincial governments to help suburbs prepare for the end of cheap energy.
Self-Reliant Suburbs, by Dan Chiras: The suburbs could be the raw material for a sustainable revolution.
Retrofitting the Suburbs for Sustainability, by David Holmgren: As we in Australia take the first hesitant steps beyond 'rugged individualism' and begin to re-learn the skills needed to govern ourselves in community, the private-within-commons system tends to sit more comfortably with many.
Saving the Suburbs, by Paris Rutherford: The challenge of reinventing the suburbs is difficult for even the most enterprising town leaders.
bio; another bio, but in GermanZerzan's arguments are as compelling as they are radical. Originally, he writes, there were no signs. People lived without symbols, in a Zen-like mindfulness, existing in the eternal present. As "primitive" hunter-gatherers, we existed in a state of equality, mutual cooperation, and harmony with nature. Then came agriculture and civilization, and inevitably, some people became haves, and other became have-nots. To justify this power imbalance, religion—the art of inventing and manipulating symbols—was invented. All symbols, Zerzan argues, come ultimately from religion, and they all exist to exert power and justify imbalances: God loves me more, so I get all the stuff. There can be no civilization without a priesthood.So how did they communicate, if not with signs? Can there be the exercise of intelligence without language development? One would think not. (I'd have to ask Fr. Sherwin for his thoughts on this.) As for religion between a justification of power--this sounds almost like something from Marxism. As for "God loves me more, so I get all the stuff"--is this not the critique some have made of Calvinism?
