• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2386 0

we combine the arrogance of the dictionary definition, which holds this civilization superior to all other cultural forms; hypermilitarism, which allows civilization to expand and exploit essentially at will; and a belief, held even by such powerful and relentless critics of civilization as Lewis Mumford, in the desirability of cosmopolitanism, that is, the transposability of discoveries, values, modes of thought, and so on over time and space. The twentieth-century name for that grimly alchemical transmutation is genocide: the eradication of cultural difference, its sacrifice on the altar of the one true way, on the altar of the centralization of perception, the conversion of a multiplicity of moralities all dependent on location and circumstance to one morality based on the precepts of the ever-expanding machine, the surrender of individual perception (as through writing and through the conversion of that and other arts to consumables) to predigested perceptions, ideas, and values imposed by external authorities who with all their hearts—or what’s left of them—believe in, and who benefit by, the centralization of power. Ultimately, then, the story of this civilization is the story of the reduction of the world’s tapestry of stories to only one story, the best story, the real story, the most advanced story, the most developed story, the story of the power and the glory that is Western Civilization.

CLEAN WATER

A sense of place is critical. For people who live with the land, the land becomes the center of their universe. It’s a marriage. We are in a symbiotic relationship with the land where we live, and the notion that this relationship should or even can be transcended is central to many of our problems, and to many of the problems we’ve created for others. Land is something to be respected, and this respect for land makes respect for self and others possible.

Richard Drinnon 28

OR MAYBE I SHOULD RESTATE THAT. THE STORY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION is not the story of that reduction, but of its attempted reduction. Certainly it has already succeeded in eliminating many of the stories—the stories of great auks, passenger pigeons, many of the indigenous of Europe, North America, Africa, and elsewhere, the great herds of bison, the stories of free-flowing rivers—but it will never succeed in reducing all stories to one. The world won’t let it. And, to the very best of my abilities, neither will I.

An action’s morality—or at the very least its perceived morality—can shift depending not only on one’s perspective, but also of course on circumstance. For one example of this, let’s talk for a moment about sex.

I have a friend who was a virgin into his thirties, mainly because he was terrified of women, terrified of life, terrified of himself. One day he somehow got hooked up on a blind date—the first date of his life—with a woman, also in her thirties, who had one child. This woman, too, was frightened, but of something else. She was afraid of raising a child by herself, of growing old with no one at her side.

That first night they had sex, at her instigation. My friend, who had never before spent any real private time with any woman, was hooked. It felt good to have someone want him. She, in her desperation and loneliness, I thought, took advantage of his naïveté and fear to quickly reel him in.

That’s how I saw it at the time. And though I felt protective of my friend, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t feel it was my place. I’m glad now that I didn’t because I was wrong. Meeting her, and having sex with her, and entering into a relationship with her, was the best thing that ever happened to him. Their love became the centerpost of his life, and he is a far better and happier man for it. She, too, is happier than she would otherwise have been.

I knew someone else who, by the time he was thirty, had long lost count of his sexual partners. They had to number in the hundreds. The number really doesn’t matter. His compulsion does. He knew only one way to relate to women, which was, to use his word, to “bone” them.