A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [109]
The intentional fabrication of thirteen quadrillion lethal doses of plutonium seemed nonsensical to me until I was able to begin drawing lines of connecting thought and understanding from point to destructive point of our culture's behavior. The greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet. Ubiquitous genocide leading to the deaths of scores or hundreds of millions of people. Race-based slavery, leading to the deaths of scores or hundreds of millions more. Class-based slavery. Child slavery. Mass rapes. Vivisection. Factory farms. Irrational, deadly, and suicidal military budgets and policies. What picture emerges when you see all these together?
The deforestation of the Middle East, Europe, North America, the Amazon, now Siberia. The depletion of fishery after fishery. Just yesterday I read that scientists now predict that bluefin tuna will go extinct within the coming generation. The elimination of passenger pigeons, Eskimo curlews.
There can be only one end to this, of course. Apocalypse. Götterdämmerung. The destruction of the world in the final war of the gods, gods we have first, as I mentioned before, projected, and then reintrojected. Stasis. Death. The end of all life, if the dominant culture has its way. It's where we've been headed from the beginning of this several-thousand year journey. It is the only possible end for a culture of linear—as opposed to cyclical— progress. Beginning, middle, end. Self-extinguishment. The only solace and escape from separation: from ourselves, from each other, from the rest of the planet. Plutonium. DDT. Dioxin. Why else would we poison ourselves? No other explanation makes comprehensive sense. Apocalypse. "The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up." American Chestnut. American Elm. Idaho White Pine. Redwood. Tallgrass Prairie. Shortgrass Prairie. "And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died." Blue Whales. Right Whales. Cod. Halibut. Tuna. "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." Salmon. Bull trout. Western Cutthroat. Alabama Sturgeon. Western Sturgeon. Snail Darter. Arizona Pupfish. Each of these and so many more, individually, communally, and as species, destroyed not by angels nor by God, but by a culture aspiring toward the conclusion set forth from the beginning.
For me, at least, it was a relief to finally acknowledge and articulate this understanding I long had held in my bones, that underlying all this otherwise incomprehensible behavior is a desire to destroy other and self. The culture's terminus: the destruction of all. It's primary intellectual task: to simultaneously rationalize, justify, and obfuscate the actions leading to this goal. Clarity. No longer did I have to ignore smoke from next door's burning synagogue, nor try to take at face value the myriad self-contradictory claims to virtue that daily front for destructive behavior, nor find myself befuddled by the false choices that bind us to the annihilation of our planet. Clarity.
Examples abound. They are as near as many children's bedrooms and as far away as the stars