A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [38]
There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others. I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer. I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine.
I was frightened, and lonely. Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion. I began to cry.
The tears stopped soon enough. I realized we are not so outnumbered. We are not outnumbered at all. I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another. I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies. I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling. I knew in that moment, as I've known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life— every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale—and it is only our own fear that sets us apart. All humans, too, are struggling to be sane, struggling to live in harmony with our surroundings, but its really hard to let go. And so we lie, destroy, rape, murder, experiment, and extirpate, all to control this wildly uncontrollable symphony, and failing that, to destroy it.
Claims to Virtue
"Exploitation must not be seen as such. It must be seen as benevolence. Persecution preferably should not need to be invalidated as the figment of a paranoid imagination; it should be experienced as kindness....In order to sustain our amazing images of ourselves as God’s gift to the vast majority of the starving human species, we have to interiorize our violence upon ourselves and our children, and to employ the rhetoric of morality to describe this process.” R.D.Laing
FOR YEARS I’VE BEEN haunted by a fantasy involving someone like Jesus. This person—woman or man, it doesn't matter—comes into a community and talks about love. She, or he, tells people they should treat each other with respect, and that this respect must extend to humans and nonhumans alike. A crowd gathers as this person says they should do unto others as they'd have others do unto them, and they begin to murmur quietly as they hear that they should share with each other everything they own. The discomfort of especially the crowd's children grows more noticeable as this stranger tells them they should love each other, love the land. (He or she says nothing about loving the enemy.) The children hide giggles behind their hands, and now even the adults bite the insides of their cheeks. Finally, after much hesitation, one of the community members responds, "Friend, we respect what you have to say, and thank you for telling us, but can't you tell us something we don't already know?" The stranger looks closely, and seeing the obvious well-being of the people, realizes that her (or his) words are redundant. The stranger merges into the community, and all continue with the dailiness of their lives.
The reality of our Judeo-Christian culture is of course far different. A primary purpose of Judeo-Christianity has not been to move us toward a community where the teachings of someone like