Tearing Down the Master's House (Endgame)

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/engel08122006.html

An Interview with Derrick Jensen

-snip-

Engel: What about the "mainstream" like Al Gore and his whole environmental thing?

Jensen: I'm doing this little book right now with Stephanie McMillan about 50 simple things you can do to stay in denial while the world is being murdered and it's based on Al Gore going around the country showing this film. It's great that he's increasing awareness, but according to the filmmaker, Timothy S Bennett, who's directing a documentary, "What a Way to Go: Life at the End of the Empire," if every single American did every single thing that Al Gore's suggest that that would reduce carbon emissions in the US by about 22%. The scientific consensus at this point is to revert further disaster it needs to be reduced to 75%.

Engel: It should be obvious to everyone that bad things are happening, even if you "don't believe" the facts about global warming. Just common sense tells us that we are going to run out of oil - civilization is going to crash- you look outside and the seasons are not what they were 20 years ago. So why speed it along? I think what people are asking..okay if it is going to happen anyway, I might just as well sit back and enjoy my Budweisers so why take it down?

Jensen: Because it is systematically dismantling the infrastructure of the planet and the sooner it comes down the more that remains for the humans and non- humans that come after. Even from a purely selfish perspective, if someone were to have "brought it down" 200 years ago, then people in the East would still be able to eat pastured chickens - if it happened 50 years ago, people in the West would still be able to eat Salmon. There are going to be people sitting along the banks of British Columbia 40 years from now saying "I'm starving to death because you didn't take out the dams that were used to create electricity that were used to change phosphates into aluminum beer cans" and that's inexcusable. So that's why we have to hurry it along. Because everyday more of the ecological infrastructure is being destroyed. From a more moral perspective of course the reason to do it is because those in power have no right to drive us down to extinction.

There's something else. People say "what do you mean" when you talk about "bringing down civilization." What I really mean is depriving the rich of the ability to steal from the poor and depriving the powerful of the ability to destroy the planet. That's what I really mean.

-snip-

Engel: You spend a lot of time debunking the myth of pacifism, as if, as ultra-pacifists believe, we can somehow come to an agreement with the politicians and CEOs who are trashing the place.

Jensen: Part of the reason I wrote the book is that when I've done talks that have to do with violence. I should say counter-violence, fighting against this system that is exploiting us. The response by the audience has been really predictable and if the audience consists of peace and social justice activists and mainstream environmentalists and also non-activists a lot of times they are just horrified and put up what I call the "Ghandi-shield" to protect themselves from evil thoughts and keep saying "Martin Luther Kind, Ghandi, Dalai Lama." Now if there is a different kind of audience, if there are grass roots environmentalists they would do the same thing, and then come up to me afterwards and whisper in my ear, "thank you for bringing this up." If I do a talk that has anything to do with fighting back to an audience of prisoners, American Indians, a lot of people of color, the poor, survivors of domestic violence, family farmers, their response is to look at me like - "tell us something we don't know." I realized really quickly the difference is that if you have suffered violence in your own body it is no longer an abstract, or spiritual or theoretical question and so you don't make it into something bigger than it is, it's simply a part of life and you deal with it. It doesn't mean you do it by yourself, but it means you deal with it, it's simply a part of life! As opposed to "oh, my God - capital V violence." I realized very quickly that pacifism is a cult and it's a cult much like Christianity that can brook no heresy. So it is very interesting that dogmatic pacifists don't want to think about it themselves, which is fine, I couldn't care less about what they think about, but they won't let anybody else talk about it anywhere around them. They have to shut that down.

-snip-

Engel: As you say in the book, it's all situational. Whether violence is appropriate or not depends upon the circumstances, really.

-snip-

Pacifists say I'm calling for violence and the truth is I am not. I am calling people to think for themselves. Look at the situation, let's just look at it. What is happening? 90% of the large fish in the oceans are gone. Many of us have diseases of civilization. Civilization is killing us, it's putting us in jobs we don't like and it is killing the planet and committing genocide against everyone it encounters and that is what this book is really about: what are we going to do about this? What do you want to do about it and what are your gifts? As I say near the end, that's why I go on so long, and I express my puzzlements and I go off in one direction and then another direction. What I am trying to do is model a process for people to go through to figure out their own answers. What I really want is for people to think for themselves and feel for themselves and to listen to their own land base and to ask that land base. Start a relationship with the land where you live. Ask that land what it needs from you. Because the truth is the land is the basis for everything. It's embarrassing to even have to say that, but -- and this is something else I think is really important -- the only measure by which we will be judged by the people who come after is the health of the land base, because that is what is going to support them. They are not going to give a shit whether or not we were pacifists; they are not going to give a shit if we supported Israel or we didn't support Israel; whether we voted green or democrat or republican or not at all. What they are going to care about is whether they can drink the water, whether they can breathe the air, whether the land can support them. One of the important questions is to ask what does the land need from you.
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read the whole interview for logic and reason and don't miss the part about mothers of every specie

[donsu]

1. kicking back to 1st pg. so more DUers can read the interview

nt

[Sir Jeffrey]

2. kick