My greatest fear is that my expectations for the future will come true before I die.
I’m reading Derrick Jensen’s book “Endgame: The Problem of Civilization” and its taking quite a toll on my already battered and bruised psyche. I’m about a third of the way through it and it’s like all my inner darkest fears appearing in type before my eyes. So many of the concepts align with my view of where we are heading (over the edge) and even his writing style is a little similar (with far too many ideas per paragraph requiring heavy use of brackets!). I believe that the depth and breath of his thinking are several orders of magnitude beyond my own, but we are definitely reading from the same page (or writing to it if you will).
Derricks position is that we were inexorably doomed from the moment we started forming cities, for cities were responsible for the fundamental concept of a centralised (and more important, in their minds) group of people who needed to exploit (steal) the resources of surrounding groups of (less important) people, non-humans and landmass to be able to survive and grow. This concept scales from the small town right through to the global economy, the only thing that changes is the scale of the damage required to sustain the increasing vampiric centralised entity, damage (often through violence) to nature, eco-systems, plants, animals, and people – to the entire planet in fact.
To Derrick we sailed off the edge of the cliff some time ago, after 6000 years of building up momentum. We have already reached the zenith of our flight and the only future is the one gravity has in mind. We can certainly not go back, we cannot turn away either, or even go forward, our only path is the one projected when we left the cliff and there is a big X marking the spot where we are going to hit the bottom. At the moment the bottom is still a bit too far away to see clearly, but its rushing up to meet us pretty darn quickly.
So given this position, even Derrick’s suggestions that we ‘bring down civilisation’ to minimise the impact is not really going to help much either, though the notion of revenge is enticing. The only thing we can do is use what is already on the bus (lets call it a bus for this analogy) to try to cushion the impact. This means protecting as much of the natural world as possible in the hope that some remnants of it will crawl away from the twisted wreak that is our inevitable future. Our governments have been spending most of its time helping corporations collect fares from the passengers, from some as cash, from others in blood. More recently the bus drivers (scientists) have pointed out our current predicament and logical terminus, and the government is now drawing up plans to bolt papier-mâché wings onto the bus, and doubling the price of tickets while they are at it.
My only hope is that the time of impact will be some time after old age has done its work and I’m either dead or beyond caring. Is this a cop out? Maybe, I could go out in a blaze on glory, striking a blow against the machine, but what for? What’s the point of throwing myself on my sword if those in power are selling the swords in the first place. I also wonder the point of even trying to prevent the destruction sometimes, but it’s all we can do. I’m not going to blow up damns because I personally like not being in jail (the logical holding pen for dissenters), and want to live a meaningful (what ever that is) life with the ones I love, even if the end is neigh. I cannot see that I (or millions like me) can really make that much of a difference now, even blowing up damns, except to buy up as much of the natural world as possible for preservation, and try to keep it from those wanting to destroy it (though I accept in the end they, the all powerful corporations, will take it anyway through violence when the crunch comes).
Some days I think we might as well join the rest of the vultures feeding on the still thrashing carcass of the natural world. In what way are all my personal sacrifices making any different at all? At least our bellies will be full (immoral obesity) while we watch the inevitable disaster play out in slow motion before us.
* Warning: Don’t read Derrick’s book while carrying sharp implements or crossing high bridges. I really is that depressing because you know deep in your heart he is right.
scott-hamilton.com
http://scott-hamilton.com/blog/article.php?story=2007052417360714