Hi all, here's an interview that I feel is about as relevant as it gets for all people, and people with an interest in nature may be especially interested. Be warned tough, this is tough stuff.
Derrick Jensen appeared as the October 2009 guest on the Living Hero Podcast with host Jari Chevalier. You can stream or download the 52-minute interview here.
“We need to bring down civilization, because it’s killing the planet,” says our guest, author and activist Derrick Jensen.
Formerly a college professor and a commercial beekeeper, Jensen’s prolific career as an author has given us A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Endgame, Listening to the Land, Strangely Like War and Walking on Water. He also co-authored Railroads & Clearcuts and Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control. He has written for The New York Times magazine, The Sun, Audubon, and many other publications.
In 2008 Derrick Jensen was named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.”
Posted by Ross Warner on October 10, 2009 at 11:06 AM
I guess Derrick is on the right track. "We need to bring down civilization", that will allow a cleansing of the species. The useless will be purged from the gene pool. The strong will survive and those that need welfare, health care, or government support will perish.
Hmm.. I thought it was in civilization that those needing welfare, health care, or government support are constantly perishing and that the strong (financially that is) are surviving. And then of course you have those even worse off, in situations and/or places where welfare, health care and government support might actually sound good, but that just don't get it.
I don't think presidents, CEOs, businessmen, pop stars and football players will do all that well when civilization ends. I think that the falling of the pyramid, which you could liken the fall of civilization with, would benefit the people currently at the bottom of the pyramid. It would level everything and no one would be the better of someone else, at least not for reasons as meaningless as in this culture. The fall would give an opportunity for truly functional communities to start forming. Truly functioning communities don't need welfare or this culture's kind of health care, because it is provided for everyone. And since there wouldn't be governments anymore, nor money quite likely, government support loses all its meaning too.
Posted by Stan Rose on October 11, 2009 at 4:31 PM
By the time a 'sufficient' number of people realize that we are destroying the planet, it may be too late. Then, we'll simply discard it, as we do most things we feel we no longer need, and move on. Doesn't stop me from trying to avoid that endgame.
Posted by John W. Wall on October 12, 2009 at 6:53 PM
I'm with Dave Foreman in this interview snippet with Jensen:
http://www.ecofuture.org/pk/pkar9510.html
DJ: How does the possibility of a socio-industrial crash impact your conservation strategies?
DF: I've tried to develop a strategy where it doesn't matter. I personally believe there's going to be a crash. I don't know when or how it will take place, whether it will be a pandemic, a massive economic crash, a clash of centralized state governments, a massive famine, or whatever, but I do know industrial civilization cannot go on. The anthropologist Marvin Harris talks about the industrial bubble. As this bubble expands its skin becomes thinner. It is going to pop.
From that perspective, The Wildlands Project is trying to protect as much land as possible, and to protect breeding stocks of all species, so that after industrialism collapses there will be enough building blocks of natural diversity to recolonize the world.
On the other hand, if we come to our senses, build some kind of sustainable society, control overpopulation and see a steady decrease in human population, develop a steady-state economics, develop the kind of agriculture Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and others are working on, the kind of forestry Orville Camp is working on, and reinhabitory communities like folks in northern California or the Oregon backwoods are trying to create, the results are the same. This kind of North American wilderness recovery strategy becomes a key element in that new society, and becomes sacred space where the new people will fully become human beings.
I just got back from Uganda, East Africa yesterday helping out with a humanitarian project where we are helping about 3000 aids orphans get out of dire grinding poverty and giving them opportunities to have a life and make a positive difference in the world (through education). It is ironic for me to then read the comment "We need to bring down civilization." I think this comment may underestimate the awesome potential for humans to come up with balanced solutions for the problems of this world as we also keep love a priority. It is interesting that in your quote under your Avatar, Daniel Quinn implies that "specialness" of humans somehow relates to Hitler? The value of human life (specialness) is exactly what he did NOT understand causing his extreme abuses to both humanity and nature.
I take the position it is all special, including civilization, and all should be preserved, can be, but maybe not perfectly, balance being key.
Posted by Stan Rose on October 14, 2009 at 3:09 PM
I don't see it that way, Mark (your Ishmael comment). Quinn was equating "specialness" with "superiority", he used both terms interchangeably. I think we can agree that all life is "special" and that it is wrong to view any particular group as superior. I certainly don't believe that other species have any particular rights over humans--we have a "special" position in terms of our intelligence (some folks dont see it that way!)--but I think it is when we regard ourselves as "Godlike" without any regard to the sacredeness of all life--that's when the problems arise!
BTW, I commend your humanitarian work
Mark, the link you see between the specialness of man ["humanity" would be much preferred in my view] and Hitler is not what Quinn means, nor what I mean. The idea is that in this dominant culture it is perceived that we humans (and especially "developed" white men) are on top of everything else, either because we are the crown on creation from a religious point of view, or the end result of evolution. Either sets us apart from the rest of the world and makes us superior and allows us - as betters - to use the world around us as we see fit. This is where the comparison with Hitler comes in, as he clearly saw an even higher distinction of specialness, where Aryan people were superior to everyone and everything else. It is fairly commonly held these days that Nazi German views are nonsense, but the view that we can do whatever we please with non-humans is still broadly accepted and evident in so many things we see around us each and every day. Take factory farming, take sacrificing a natural forest for a tree plantation, take converting a perfectly functional bit of wild land into a house bordered by a grass-covered lawn with a few flowering bushes along the sides, take animal tests, etc. etc.
I too commend your work in Uganda, Mark. The suffering there is terrible. I have a friend from Kenya who was full with horror stories of what she saw there. But.. I think that if we are very honest that the vast majority of the problems in Africa and in all developing nations (if not simply in the whole world) are caused by civilization and development. Before the times of colonisation, I think the African tribes, like tribes all around the world, generally lived pretty fulfilling lives. Of course every tribe lived differently (diversity!) and some of these cultures were better for the people themselves than others, but there was balance then.
It went dramatically wrong when the whites came in and started telling people there that they lived like beasts, that they should burn the forests down, till the soil, grow food instead of hunt and gather (which the land in Europe could usually deal with relatively well, but as we know most of the land in Africa cannot sustain intensive agriculture and turns to dust), forget about their old ways, convert to the one true faith (while there is great sense in "religions" being as diverse as people, because a religion could be said to give you guidelines for how to live and there is no one way of life which is good in every part of this very diverse world, as the example about agriculture shows only too well) and adopt that most harmful of ideas that humans are above all else (although black people are of course slightly (or quite far sometimes) below white people) and are therefore allowed to take and take and take and never return. Before colonisation and thus civilization, this idea would never have come up. All tribal people I know of, before contact with civilization at least, knew that they were just another part of the world around them, no more and no less sacred than any other animated entity. In fact... quite a few tribes perceive themselves to be only descendants from trees for example. And because almost all other life was there before them, they feel that they should be respectful to the elders and listen and try to learn from them.
I therefore think there is no solution in trying to help developing nations to develop further. I think that it only further destroys the few remnants of the many generations-old wisdom of how to live in a certain part of the world. Education, in my view, should be about how to live. In our culture it is about how to produce and amass as many products and make as much money as possible. The question of how to live is not interesting and hardly ever addressed. I certainly have learned nothing about it in school!
Yes, civilization is special. It is, however, an evolutionary unstable strategy. One of its purposes is clearly - although hardly ever pronounced - to reduce diversity. It gulps up all other cultures it finds in its way, destroys all other ways of life (life that is not based upon exploitation, production and converting the living into the dead) and thus also reduces the species diversity (currently an estimated 200 species die out forever each and every day). I think we can do without this one special culture. Eliminating civilization would give rise to an explosion of diverse new cultures and it might even very quickly slow the crashing species diversity. There is much to be won for all other species by civilization going down the drain. There is much to be won for most people, especially those not very well off in civilization because they are being trampled beneath the boots of their supposed betters.
I'll end with a quote:
"I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men [sic], so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him" Éttiene de La Boétie, 1564
Thanks for your reply. I think there is truth in it but with quite a negative slant. There is too much for me to reply to but I'll comment on this portion:
"The idea is that in this dominant culture it is perceived that we humans (and especially "developed" white men) are on top of everything else, either because we are the crown on creation from a religious point of view, or the end result of evolution. EITHER SETS US APART FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD AND MAKES US SUPERIOR AND ALLOWS US – AS BETTERS – TO USE THE WORLD AROUND US AS WE SEE FIT.”
Yes, that is one of the potential side effects of that idea, but not the only one.
If we are “set apart” it is not to dominate (in the negative slant) but to SERVE. Problem is that we have not seen enough value in serving people and serving the world, and the general meaning of power, leadership, dominance and “specialness” has been twisted by some misguided people.
Just recently I had a life changing epiphany about this in my own practical life. I have worked extremely hard over the years to rise up as a professional photographer. I have almost obsessively compared my growing work with all the other folks out there and felt, sort of, like I was in a competitive race to try to compete and out do everyone. I spent a lot of time comparing myself/work with all the others. I thought a lot about what the photography community thinks… I worked at, and thought a lot about building my “name.” I did what a many others do.
Then somehow something really hit me! It AINT ABOUT ME! This is not about the photo community. It is not about photographers and forums and other people’s opinions. This is not about my “name.” This is a truly awesome and unique responsibility to have the great and wonderful privilege to SERVE the public with something that might have the ability to effect and change lives.
The specialness or uniqueness of humanity (in my life) that I have been given is to make a positive contribution to people and this world before my numbered days expire. Put another way: BEING ON TOP IS BEING UNDERNEATH! It is real power.
So, yes, some may distort their religious or evolutionary idea of power, leadership, dominance, and "specialness" but some will not.
In many ways I've lost interest in what sets people apart from the rest of life on earth. Oh yes, we are definitely unique; sacred even, and there are things in us that set us apart from everything else. But maybe it is one of civilization's bigger faults to make us stare ourselves blind on that. Classifying and hacking the Larger Picture into ever smaller pieces. Divide and rule! If you can see yourself as superior over someone or something else, then you can do with these someones or somethings as you please. And the more you divide, the more you can rule over. If you consider yourself better than plants, you have no scruples to destroy them if they are in your way. If you consider yourself better than "lower animals", you can kill them without worrying about hurting something worthwhile. If you think you are better than even your fellow mammals, than you can just use them all in labs, or annihilate them if they are in the way of your own plans. In that way, Hitler just went a few steps further than most of us, or he just let those divisions carry him further in his actions than most people with such opinions do. He put the ultimate division not between humans and the rest, but between Aryans and the rest.
Many, if not all, big modern religions divide too. I must first tell you, though you may have guessed already, that I have lost my faith in modern religions quite a few years ago. However, I don't mean to insult anyone here! But although not the biggest, this is a very important reason for my loss in faith. Science divides too. I am a biologist with a MSc degree in ecology and environmental biology and have learned pretty well how to divide and have seen how science in general is about dividing the Larger Picture into ever smaller pieces. And when the dividing is done, then science (or decision makers using the findings of science) asks how to put to use what is found out. What is not, or hardly ever, asked, is what these findings tell us about how to live our lives. We study things so we can use them and make profit, we don’t study them to find out how to live our lives in balance with these things. I have come to hate this utilitarian kind of science, which is in many ways a modern religion of its own. I think you could well say that all this has robbed us of the meaning of life. It is an obsolete question in this culture, while it was one of the very most important ones before civilization. I think that if you would have been able to ask tribal people in Uganda if they knew how to live, they would have looked strangely at you for asking a question that so obviously has to be answered with “yes”. The people devastated by disaster right now may not have the answer. They might not care too much, because all they can focus on is just to survive.
So, instead of being interested in what sets us apart from all other life, I am now much much more interested in what connects us; in how we are the same as all other life on earth. The similarities are much greater than we often think, even between us and plants, and even between us and rivers (we too are systems through which water and nutrients and countless other lifeforms travel for a while) and us and rocks. The similarities are also much more important than we often seem to think. If we first see the similarities and then the unique points of each and not just of our own clique, then it becomes truly possible to see how unique and sacred we are: namely exactly as unique and sacred as everything else on earth.
In reaction to your writing then:
So, yes, some may distort their religious or evolutionary idea of power, leadership, dominance, and "specialness" but some will not.
I will grant you that. Of course there are still good people in civilized cultures. Unfortunately they apparently don’t have much say in what happens. People can complain all they want about having to work a job they hate most of their waking life, about climate change, about habitat destruction, about suppression of people and complete nations, but as long as they are captives of this civilization that prizes development (converting the living into dead material to be used and disposed) over anything else, all their complaints will achieve nothing. Nor will letters to governments asking nicely to manage resources (utterly utilitarian formulation) better and more sustainable or to treat a certain people nicer. In other words, those that do not fall for the ideas of power, leadership and dominance, still follow in the same machine, or at least don’t stop the machine.
I think that this is what is needed: to get this machine to stop, to let civilization fall. For a myriad reasons I think it will happen pretty soon anyway, even if we don’t do anything about it. But it would be rather good if those seeing what civilization is really doing to the world and to all life on earth would say that this has been quite enough.. and then act on those words too. The sooner it is achieved, the more life will still be left to pick up the pieces after the endgame has played out.
Posted by Roger Rouch on October 18, 2009 at 10:02 PM
I've read a few of Jensen's books and several articles. I find them so depressingly accurate that I have to pace myself reading them. One of his recurring themes is that of denial. And also the perceived need to dominate. For anyone interested in a convincing discussion of this, I'd really suggest reading his book, A Language Older Than Words. I've read it three times. His other books are a little more tedious to follow. He also has a few interesting shorter articles in Orion which can be googled up and read for free.
We (collectively) actually do see the problems the world faces, but we choose to go about life like it will continue in it's current state. Denial. And the greed and domination of what he tends to call the "industrial economy" pulls the cart of denial further along. And it will be our planets undoing. Our best hope is actively participating in a paradigm shift in the core operation of governments and business. He has called the general "going green" movement an ineffective feel good approach. For me that's Jensen in a nutshell.
I may come back to the discussion when I'm a little more refreshed (long day), but would recommend exploring his books and articles. They are sort of hard to swallow, because I think we would, by our nature, like to deny their reality. But he has made a believer of me.
Thank you for your thought provoking comments here again. I very much appreciate that you do not like some things you see in this world, and I hope it produces a rewarding life for yourself that changes things for the better. Since I am stuck here behind the computer for a couple of hours with nothing to do (extremely unusual) I'll write some of my thoughts about yours.
I have to say that I really understand, but don't adhere to much of the pessimism. I can not generalize toward the negative as much, but believe in proactively doing good and keeping with believing in the awesome potential for human action to creatively overcome problems, even huge ones.
As far as your first paragraph, yes, some divide and "rule." And yes it may seem like they have all the power and this image is exacerbated, do to the mass media brainwashing of negative sensationalism. But in the world in which I live there are a lot of great folks making a very real and very powerful difference in changing things for the better (and most often going unnoticed) by not getting caught in the brain, but the heart, leading them to real world, one foot in front of the other, positive work. As only one example, in Uganda, we are slowly changing an entire country from total annihilation to one of life, hope and opportunity.
As far as religions dividing, yes, religiousness most often does but simple faith is an entirely different thing altogether. It often frees people of this sort of lunacy. I am free of this “divide and conquer” due to my simple faith. I am free and empowered to love and accept others as they are. I am free from manipulation and control, as well as free from manipulating and controlling. I am free from the idea that "power" is control and dominance. I also am freed to know that real "power" is service. I am free to find out who I really am and then make a very real positive contribution to this world, which is my ultimate responsibility with the gift of the days I have been given.
BTW, the Ugandans really love Muzungus (foreigners or whites). I have asked many and they have told me that it is because they really appreciate the very real benefits of civilization that the Brits helped to bring them (although not perfectly). I have found that it is different in different countries on that continent, but that is how the Ugandans feel. They appreciate clean running water, education, medicine, smooth roads, food production, having police on the corner to protect and serve, the justice system... To destroy this infrastructure would be to kill them, and would be very Hitler-esc. Civility is the glue holding things together.
I do like your third paragraph particularly. About being interested in "what connects us." This reminds me of the story of Jonah in the ancient Hebrew biblical literature. God is about to destroy a group of humanity (a city specifically) because they are destroying themselves and the world around them. He asks Jonah to try to get them to “repent” (the word here is not religious but literally means "change the way they think and act".) Jonah thinks himself religiously "special" and does not even want those people to be saved (he is so indignant he wants them destroyed) and does not even think a thought of the environment. He runs from his assignment. Jonah is forced to half heartily (actually much less) do his job, does it terribly, then the people respond (astonishingly) but Jonah has a really bad attitude about it. He does not think those people are as good as himself. He does not want them to be “saved.” In the end God personally confronts Jonah about his wrong attitude and says something interesting "should I not be concerned about (the destruction of) a people who don't know their left hand from their right, let alone the animals (and natural world)?" Some English versions omit the animals/natural world implication part BTW. Metaphor or not the last phrase says a lot about finding commonalities, and coming together to fix the things destroying people, civilization and the natural world. Jonah was a great example of distorted “religiousness.”
Addressing your fourth paragraph about the power of (lack of power) small "good" people. I think we have been conditioned to believe only the "big" people have the power. That is a flat out lie, from the pit, leaving us feeling hopeless powerless and worse! It is the fewer, grass roots, “small” people who really have the power! If we expect the "biggies" to do it (and get dissapointed when they don't) nothing will ever get done. Problem is that we are not given much direction or training and many just sit around philosophizing without doing anything or much.
Case in point: one extremely "small" man in Uganda named Osborn Muyanja. He came through Masaka Uganda, the epicenter of Aids, during the 80's right after the horrendous genocide of Milton Obote, Idi Amin, then Obote again. He had not even finished his basic high school education, had nothing but the shirt on his back and a tooth brush, and was moved by compassion to try to single handedly fend for the growing amount of aids orphans in the region where it all began. A small one room dirt walled shack was loaned to him by a Muslim man where he began to clean, feed and help kids whose families died by the barrel loads weekly. In one house he stayed in for a short time he ended up burying every one the the 25 family members from grand parents to infants (I have some pictures of all the graves). After three full years in dire grinding poverty, and now having 20, 30, 40 babies toddlers and kids, and having to bury 12-18 people a week, and having all the big name scientific and religious organizations come, use him and promise support and then not help him at all, and after almost dying doing this work, eventually ONE person came who actually cared. So now two "small" people had decided to make a difference. Fast forward through about 20 years of unrelenting "small" people and now there are over 3000 aids orphans who are getting water, food, clothing, medicine and a full education (up through university) and then coming back to their communities to make a big difference (as teachers, doctors, head masters...) all based on super “small” people doing small things (volunteering - absolutely no monetary profit) massively impacting and transforming an entire country that previously was one of the blackest holes in history.
Because Osborn is somewhat of a celeb being a popular and powerful inspiration to his people he was encouraged to go into politics. He got his PHD (studying at night) and gave it a small trial run. After being in the political world a couple of years he came to realize that going down the political road would make LESS of a difference than the work and vision he had already been doing. He immediately quit and went back to work. One guy putting his positive passion into practice walking the hard road changing an entire country.
What if two people heeded the call?
What if three people?
What if more heeded the call in their sphere of influence?
Again, it is an utter lie that the small individual does not have the real power in this world. And this thinking enslaves people retarding change. Problem is that many don't do what they should. Also being upset about the things we see does not help either (unless the anger leads us to positive action). WE have to be the leaders! We have to teach by EXAMPLE what the meaning of true power is.
In my opinion civilization is not the problem, people are. And people need to change the way they think and the way they act. But the real question is this: Who will be ones leading by example? Who will be the real teachers? Who will put one foot in front of the other and change the world? We can philosophize all day long about the destruction of the world, the destruction of civilization. We can more importantly be that one empowered person who actually changes things.
BTW, if you want, you can go to:
http://ugandamatters.wordpress.com/
and see a bit on the story with images about Osborn. The "Before" is below and the "After" is above.
Posted by Carl Donohue on November 24, 2009 at 5:24 PM
John Wall wrote:
I'm with Dave Foreman in this interview snippet with Jensen:
http://www.ecofuture.org/pk/pkar9510.html
hey John
That looks like the interview from Derrick's book, 'Listening to the Land' - fantastic book. The Dave Foreman/Derrick Jensen conversation is great, but the whole book is superb - highly recommended.
Discussion
12 repliesDerrick Jensen appeared as the October 2009 guest on the Living Hero Podcast with host Jari Chevalier. You can stream or download the 52-minute interview here.
“We need to bring down civilization, because it’s killing the planet,” says our guest, author and activist Derrick Jensen.
Formerly a college professor and a commercial beekeeper, Jensen’s prolific career as an author has given us A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Endgame, Listening to the Land, Strangely Like War and Walking on Water. He also co-authored Railroads & Clearcuts and Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control. He has written for The New York Times magazine, The Sun, Audubon, and many other publications.
In 2008 Derrick Jensen was named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.”
I don't think presidents, CEOs, businessmen, pop stars and football players will do all that well when civilization ends. I think that the falling of the pyramid, which you could liken the fall of civilization with, would benefit the people currently at the bottom of the pyramid. It would level everything and no one would be the better of someone else, at least not for reasons as meaningless as in this culture. The fall would give an opportunity for truly functional communities to start forming. Truly functioning communities don't need welfare or this culture's kind of health care, because it is provided for everyone. And since there wouldn't be governments anymore, nor money quite likely, government support loses all its meaning too.
http://www.ecofuture.org/pk/pkar9510.html
DJ: How does the possibility of a socio-industrial crash impact your conservation strategies?
DF: I've tried to develop a strategy where it doesn't matter. I personally believe there's going to be a crash. I don't know when or how it will take place, whether it will be a pandemic, a massive economic crash, a clash of centralized state governments, a massive famine, or whatever, but I do know industrial civilization cannot go on. The anthropologist Marvin Harris talks about the industrial bubble. As this bubble expands its skin becomes thinner. It is going to pop.
From that perspective, The Wildlands Project is trying to protect as much land as possible, and to protect breeding stocks of all species, so that after industrialism collapses there will be enough building blocks of natural diversity to recolonize the world.
On the other hand, if we come to our senses, build some kind of sustainable society, control overpopulation and see a steady decrease in human population, develop a steady-state economics, develop the kind of agriculture Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and others are working on, the kind of forestry Orville Camp is working on, and reinhabitory communities like folks in northern California or the Oregon backwoods are trying to create, the results are the same. This kind of North American wilderness recovery strategy becomes a key element in that new society, and becomes sacred space where the new people will fully become human beings.
I take the position it is all special, including civilization, and all should be preserved, can be, but maybe not perfectly, balance being key.
BTW, I commend your humanitarian work
I too commend your work in Uganda, Mark. The suffering there is terrible. I have a friend from Kenya who was full with horror stories of what she saw there. But.. I think that if we are very honest that the vast majority of the problems in Africa and in all developing nations (if not simply in the whole world) are caused by civilization and development. Before the times of colonisation, I think the African tribes, like tribes all around the world, generally lived pretty fulfilling lives. Of course every tribe lived differently (diversity!) and some of these cultures were better for the people themselves than others, but there was balance then.
It went dramatically wrong when the whites came in and started telling people there that they lived like beasts, that they should burn the forests down, till the soil, grow food instead of hunt and gather (which the land in Europe could usually deal with relatively well, but as we know most of the land in Africa cannot sustain intensive agriculture and turns to dust), forget about their old ways, convert to the one true faith (while there is great sense in "religions" being as diverse as people, because a religion could be said to give you guidelines for how to live and there is no one way of life which is good in every part of this very diverse world, as the example about agriculture shows only too well) and adopt that most harmful of ideas that humans are above all else (although black people are of course slightly (or quite far sometimes) below white people) and are therefore allowed to take and take and take and never return. Before colonisation and thus civilization, this idea would never have come up. All tribal people I know of, before contact with civilization at least, knew that they were just another part of the world around them, no more and no less sacred than any other animated entity. In fact... quite a few tribes perceive themselves to be only descendants from trees for example. And because almost all other life was there before them, they feel that they should be respectful to the elders and listen and try to learn from them.
I therefore think there is no solution in trying to help developing nations to develop further. I think that it only further destroys the few remnants of the many generations-old wisdom of how to live in a certain part of the world. Education, in my view, should be about how to live. In our culture it is about how to produce and amass as many products and make as much money as possible. The question of how to live is not interesting and hardly ever addressed. I certainly have learned nothing about it in school!
Yes, civilization is special. It is, however, an evolutionary unstable strategy. One of its purposes is clearly - although hardly ever pronounced - to reduce diversity. It gulps up all other cultures it finds in its way, destroys all other ways of life (life that is not based upon exploitation, production and converting the living into the dead) and thus also reduces the species diversity (currently an estimated 200 species die out forever each and every day). I think we can do without this one special culture. Eliminating civilization would give rise to an explosion of diverse new cultures and it might even very quickly slow the crashing species diversity. There is much to be won for all other species by civilization going down the drain. There is much to be won for most people, especially those not very well off in civilization because they are being trampled beneath the boots of their supposed betters.
I'll end with a quote:
"I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men [sic], so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him" Éttiene de La Boétie, 1564
Thanks for your reply. I think there is truth in it but with quite a negative slant. There is too much for me to reply to but I'll comment on this portion:
"The idea is that in this dominant culture it is perceived that we humans (and especially "developed" white men) are on top of everything else, either because we are the crown on creation from a religious point of view, or the end result of evolution. EITHER SETS US APART FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD AND MAKES US SUPERIOR AND ALLOWS US – AS BETTERS – TO USE THE WORLD AROUND US AS WE SEE FIT.”
Yes, that is one of the potential side effects of that idea, but not the only one.
If we are “set apart” it is not to dominate (in the negative slant) but to SERVE. Problem is that we have not seen enough value in serving people and serving the world, and the general meaning of power, leadership, dominance and “specialness” has been twisted by some misguided people.
Just recently I had a life changing epiphany about this in my own practical life. I have worked extremely hard over the years to rise up as a professional photographer. I have almost obsessively compared my growing work with all the other folks out there and felt, sort of, like I was in a competitive race to try to compete and out do everyone. I spent a lot of time comparing myself/work with all the others. I thought a lot about what the photography community thinks… I worked at, and thought a lot about building my “name.” I did what a many others do.
Then somehow something really hit me! It AINT ABOUT ME! This is not about the photo community. It is not about photographers and forums and other people’s opinions. This is not about my “name.” This is a truly awesome and unique responsibility to have the great and wonderful privilege to SERVE the public with something that might have the ability to effect and change lives.
The specialness or uniqueness of humanity (in my life) that I have been given is to make a positive contribution to people and this world before my numbered days expire. Put another way: BEING ON TOP IS BEING UNDERNEATH! It is real power.
So, yes, some may distort their religious or evolutionary idea of power, leadership, dominance, and "specialness" but some will not.
First this line of thought:
In many ways I've lost interest in what sets people apart from the rest of life on earth. Oh yes, we are definitely unique; sacred even, and there are things in us that set us apart from everything else. But maybe it is one of civilization's bigger faults to make us stare ourselves blind on that. Classifying and hacking the Larger Picture into ever smaller pieces. Divide and rule! If you can see yourself as superior over someone or something else, then you can do with these someones or somethings as you please. And the more you divide, the more you can rule over. If you consider yourself better than plants, you have no scruples to destroy them if they are in your way. If you consider yourself better than "lower animals", you can kill them without worrying about hurting something worthwhile. If you think you are better than even your fellow mammals, than you can just use them all in labs, or annihilate them if they are in the way of your own plans. In that way, Hitler just went a few steps further than most of us, or he just let those divisions carry him further in his actions than most people with such opinions do. He put the ultimate division not between humans and the rest, but between Aryans and the rest.
Many, if not all, big modern religions divide too. I must first tell you, though you may have guessed already, that I have lost my faith in modern religions quite a few years ago. However, I don't mean to insult anyone here! But although not the biggest, this is a very important reason for my loss in faith. Science divides too. I am a biologist with a MSc degree in ecology and environmental biology and have learned pretty well how to divide and have seen how science in general is about dividing the Larger Picture into ever smaller pieces. And when the dividing is done, then science (or decision makers using the findings of science) asks how to put to use what is found out. What is not, or hardly ever, asked, is what these findings tell us about how to live our lives. We study things so we can use them and make profit, we don’t study them to find out how to live our lives in balance with these things. I have come to hate this utilitarian kind of science, which is in many ways a modern religion of its own. I think you could well say that all this has robbed us of the meaning of life. It is an obsolete question in this culture, while it was one of the very most important ones before civilization. I think that if you would have been able to ask tribal people in Uganda if they knew how to live, they would have looked strangely at you for asking a question that so obviously has to be answered with “yes”. The people devastated by disaster right now may not have the answer. They might not care too much, because all they can focus on is just to survive.
So, instead of being interested in what sets us apart from all other life, I am now much much more interested in what connects us; in how we are the same as all other life on earth. The similarities are much greater than we often think, even between us and plants, and even between us and rivers (we too are systems through which water and nutrients and countless other lifeforms travel for a while) and us and rocks. The similarities are also much more important than we often seem to think. If we first see the similarities and then the unique points of each and not just of our own clique, then it becomes truly possible to see how unique and sacred we are: namely exactly as unique and sacred as everything else on earth.
In reaction to your writing then:
I will grant you that. Of course there are still good people in civilized cultures. Unfortunately they apparently don’t have much say in what happens. People can complain all they want about having to work a job they hate most of their waking life, about climate change, about habitat destruction, about suppression of people and complete nations, but as long as they are captives of this civilization that prizes development (converting the living into dead material to be used and disposed) over anything else, all their complaints will achieve nothing. Nor will letters to governments asking nicely to manage resources (utterly utilitarian formulation) better and more sustainable or to treat a certain people nicer. In other words, those that do not fall for the ideas of power, leadership and dominance, still follow in the same machine, or at least don’t stop the machine.
I think that this is what is needed: to get this machine to stop, to let civilization fall. For a myriad reasons I think it will happen pretty soon anyway, even if we don’t do anything about it. But it would be rather good if those seeing what civilization is really doing to the world and to all life on earth would say that this has been quite enough.. and then act on those words too. The sooner it is achieved, the more life will still be left to pick up the pieces after the endgame has played out.
We (collectively) actually do see the problems the world faces, but we choose to go about life like it will continue in it's current state. Denial. And the greed and domination of what he tends to call the "industrial economy" pulls the cart of denial further along. And it will be our planets undoing. Our best hope is actively participating in a paradigm shift in the core operation of governments and business. He has called the general "going green" movement an ineffective feel good approach. For me that's Jensen in a nutshell.
I may come back to the discussion when I'm a little more refreshed (long day), but would recommend exploring his books and articles. They are sort of hard to swallow, because I think we would, by our nature, like to deny their reality. But he has made a believer of me.
Thank you for your thought provoking comments here again. I very much appreciate that you do not like some things you see in this world, and I hope it produces a rewarding life for yourself that changes things for the better. Since I am stuck here behind the computer for a couple of hours with nothing to do (extremely unusual) I'll write some of my thoughts about yours.
I have to say that I really understand, but don't adhere to much of the pessimism. I can not generalize toward the negative as much, but believe in proactively doing good and keeping with believing in the awesome potential for human action to creatively overcome problems, even huge ones.
As far as your first paragraph, yes, some divide and "rule." And yes it may seem like they have all the power and this image is exacerbated, do to the mass media brainwashing of negative sensationalism. But in the world in which I live there are a lot of great folks making a very real and very powerful difference in changing things for the better (and most often going unnoticed) by not getting caught in the brain, but the heart, leading them to real world, one foot in front of the other, positive work. As only one example, in Uganda, we are slowly changing an entire country from total annihilation to one of life, hope and opportunity.
As far as religions dividing, yes, religiousness most often does but simple faith is an entirely different thing altogether. It often frees people of this sort of lunacy. I am free of this “divide and conquer” due to my simple faith. I am free and empowered to love and accept others as they are. I am free from manipulation and control, as well as free from manipulating and controlling. I am free from the idea that "power" is control and dominance. I also am freed to know that real "power" is service. I am free to find out who I really am and then make a very real positive contribution to this world, which is my ultimate responsibility with the gift of the days I have been given.
BTW, the Ugandans really love Muzungus (foreigners or whites). I have asked many and they have told me that it is because they really appreciate the very real benefits of civilization that the Brits helped to bring them (although not perfectly). I have found that it is different in different countries on that continent, but that is how the Ugandans feel. They appreciate clean running water, education, medicine, smooth roads, food production, having police on the corner to protect and serve, the justice system... To destroy this infrastructure would be to kill them, and would be very Hitler-esc. Civility is the glue holding things together.
I do like your third paragraph particularly. About being interested in "what connects us." This reminds me of the story of Jonah in the ancient Hebrew biblical literature. God is about to destroy a group of humanity (a city specifically) because they are destroying themselves and the world around them. He asks Jonah to try to get them to “repent” (the word here is not religious but literally means "change the way they think and act".) Jonah thinks himself religiously "special" and does not even want those people to be saved (he is so indignant he wants them destroyed) and does not even think a thought of the environment. He runs from his assignment. Jonah is forced to half heartily (actually much less) do his job, does it terribly, then the people respond (astonishingly) but Jonah has a really bad attitude about it. He does not think those people are as good as himself. He does not want them to be “saved.” In the end God personally confronts Jonah about his wrong attitude and says something interesting "should I not be concerned about (the destruction of) a people who don't know their left hand from their right, let alone the animals (and natural world)?" Some English versions omit the animals/natural world implication part BTW. Metaphor or not the last phrase says a lot about finding commonalities, and coming together to fix the things destroying people, civilization and the natural world. Jonah was a great example of distorted “religiousness.”
Addressing your fourth paragraph about the power of (lack of power) small "good" people. I think we have been conditioned to believe only the "big" people have the power. That is a flat out lie, from the pit, leaving us feeling hopeless powerless and worse! It is the fewer, grass roots, “small” people who really have the power! If we expect the "biggies" to do it (and get dissapointed when they don't) nothing will ever get done. Problem is that we are not given much direction or training and many just sit around philosophizing without doing anything or much.
Case in point: one extremely "small" man in Uganda named Osborn Muyanja. He came through Masaka Uganda, the epicenter of Aids, during the 80's right after the horrendous genocide of Milton Obote, Idi Amin, then Obote again. He had not even finished his basic high school education, had nothing but the shirt on his back and a tooth brush, and was moved by compassion to try to single handedly fend for the growing amount of aids orphans in the region where it all began. A small one room dirt walled shack was loaned to him by a Muslim man where he began to clean, feed and help kids whose families died by the barrel loads weekly. In one house he stayed in for a short time he ended up burying every one the the 25 family members from grand parents to infants (I have some pictures of all the graves). After three full years in dire grinding poverty, and now having 20, 30, 40 babies toddlers and kids, and having to bury 12-18 people a week, and having all the big name scientific and religious organizations come, use him and promise support and then not help him at all, and after almost dying doing this work, eventually ONE person came who actually cared. So now two "small" people had decided to make a difference. Fast forward through about 20 years of unrelenting "small" people and now there are over 3000 aids orphans who are getting water, food, clothing, medicine and a full education (up through university) and then coming back to their communities to make a big difference (as teachers, doctors, head masters...) all based on super “small” people doing small things (volunteering - absolutely no monetary profit) massively impacting and transforming an entire country that previously was one of the blackest holes in history.
Because Osborn is somewhat of a celeb being a popular and powerful inspiration to his people he was encouraged to go into politics. He got his PHD (studying at night) and gave it a small trial run. After being in the political world a couple of years he came to realize that going down the political road would make LESS of a difference than the work and vision he had already been doing. He immediately quit and went back to work. One guy putting his positive passion into practice walking the hard road changing an entire country.
What if two people heeded the call?
What if three people?
What if more heeded the call in their sphere of influence?
Again, it is an utter lie that the small individual does not have the real power in this world. And this thinking enslaves people retarding change. Problem is that many don't do what they should. Also being upset about the things we see does not help either (unless the anger leads us to positive action). WE have to be the leaders! We have to teach by EXAMPLE what the meaning of true power is.
In my opinion civilization is not the problem, people are. And people need to change the way they think and the way they act. But the real question is this: Who will be ones leading by example? Who will be the real teachers? Who will put one foot in front of the other and change the world? We can philosophize all day long about the destruction of the world, the destruction of civilization. We can more importantly be that one empowered person who actually changes things.
BTW, if you want, you can go to:
http://ugandamatters.wordpress.com/
and see a bit on the story with images about Osborn. The "Before" is below and the "After" is above.
hey John
That looks like the interview from Derrick's book, 'Listening to the Land' - fantastic book. The Dave Foreman/Derrick Jensen conversation is great, but the whole book is superb - highly recommended.
Cheers
Carl