A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [126]
He's right. But his voice—as I imagine it—has more to tell: "If, as you say, our religion, philosophy, science, economics, politics, and so on are manifestations of cultural desire, and if"—the voice hesitates, then spits the next words—"as you say, that means these fields have as their purpose the rationalization of exploitation, what makes you think we could expect anything different from a revolution that comes from this same culture?"
"Shit," I say out loud.
"Checkmate," the voice replies.
Today I read in the newspaper that across the globe, sea turtles are dying from massive tumors afflicting up to 90 percent of some populations. The tumors, noncancerous growths called fibropapillomas, are killing turtles much faster than turtles can reproduce. The article reports: "The tumors themselves don't kill as much as they smother. Eyes and noses get covered. Lungs and the heart are constricted by the tumors on the inside." Tumors have been seen on turtles from Brazil to Florida, from Hawaii to Indonesia, and can grow to be at least half the size of the turtle him- or herself. The best guess as to the specific cause is fertilizer or manure runoff from factory farms. Changes in water temperature may also be affecting the creatures' ability to ward off viruses.
Also in the newspaper, I read that McDonald's opened its first restaurant in Bolivia, the one hundred and sixth country into which the company has metastasized. I suddenly remembered seeing an ad the company placed in business journals showing a photograph of the globe, with the caption, "Our expansion plan." Just as presumably fertilizer and manure runoff is good news for the fibropapilloma-inducing viruses, the expansion of McDonald's, and more broadly the culture it represents, into ever-new territories must be good news for the global domination virus, or better, dementia.
Finally, I read an editorial stating that attempts to mandate a reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases to ameliorate global warming—which disaster even the editorial admits may result in "melted ice caps, rising seas, swamped coastal cities, floods, storms, diseases, devastated wildlife"—constitute "an unfounded assault on industry." The editorial labeled those who believe global warming is occurring, including the vast majority of climatologists worldwide, as the "Chicken Little crowd" and as a "fringe-minority." Jaded though I am to the absurdities to which we are necessarily forced the moment we begin to value production over life, I still had to read the column several times to make myself believe it.
Years ago I asked one of the editors of this paper what is the purpose of his editorials. His reply was the only honest statement I've encountered by him: "To tell people what to think."
The world is burning up. The powers that be obfuscate and lie. What are we going to do?
It was unfair of me to pick on the Cassini probe as an egregious example of our culture's death urge. The truth is that Cassini is not unusual, which I guess was the point all along. We are irradiating the planet. Hundreds of tons of nuclear waste litter the bottom of the ocean, everything from sunken nuclear submarines to thousands of tons of plutonium, ruthenium, americium, cesium 137, radioactive iodine, and other toxic wastes routinely released from, among many others, Britain's Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant. As author Marilyn Robinson remarks: "The first questions that arise in attempting to understand Sellafield, and more generally the nuclear and environmental policies of the British government, are: How have they gotten away with so much? and Why on earth would they want to get away with it?" A few months ago the former secretary of Russia's National Security Council revealed to United States officials that at least one hundred one-kiloton nuclear weapons were missing. Called "suitcase bombs," these warheads are small enough, as the name implies, to be carried inconspicuously in a suitcase. Neither the