• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2444 0

passionately and often very positively about the changes that need to be made, and the changes that are already being made. They spoke of the need for different models for farming, different models for community organization, different models for schooling. But no one spoke of power. No one discussed the self-evident fact that those in power destroy sustainable communities. No one spoke of the fact that even if farmers develop different models for how to live on their land more sustainably, those in power may decide that the farmers’ land is needed for a Wal-Mart or should be drowned behind a dam, and those in power will simply take their land. And no one spoke of psychopathology. No one spoke of the dominant culture’s need to destroy. No one spoke of the dominant culture’s implacable destruction of indigenous cultures.

Not only our actions but our discourse remains inside the confines of this concentration camp we call civilization.

WHY CIVILIZATION IS KILLING THE WORLD, TAKE THIRTEEN. I recently shared a stage with a dogmatic pacifist, who said there are no circumstances under which the shedding of human blood is appropriate. “Violence schmiolence,” he said. “I wouldn’t kill a single human being to save an entire run of salmon.”

“I would,” I shot back.

But I wasn’t happy with my response. Here is what I wish I would have said, “Thank you for so succinctly stating the problem—why civilization is killing the world—which is the belief that any single human life (mine or anyone’s) is worth more than the health of the landbase, or even that humanity can be separated (physically, morally, or any other way) from the landbase. The health of the landbase is everything. A run of salmon is worth far more than my life, or any other individual human life. The continuation of the existence of the great ocean fishes is worth more than any individual human life. The continuation of albatrosses is worth more than any individual human life. The continuation of leatherback sea turtles, redwoods, spotted owls, clouded leopards, Kootenai River sturgeon, all these are worth more than any individual human life. If we do not understand that, we can never hope to survive.”

That is what I wish I would have said.

WHY CIVILIZATION IS KILLING THE WORLD, TAKE FOURTEEN. The United States is currently planning to build at least three new bioweapons laboratories dedicated to the creation of new classes of toxins, including genetically engineered toxins.

This is, from the perspective of those in power, a good thing. From the perspective of the rest of us, this isn’t quite so good.

How will they use these “bioweapons,” and to what purposes?

Their own language provides a hint. They wrote about bioweapons, among other things, in the document Rebuilding America’s Defenses [sic] put out by The Project for the New American Century, which, according to their website, is “a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership.”229 In other words, it’s a right-wing think tank which has as its goals U.S. domination of the world. Who cares, right? It’s just a few lunatics, right?

Well, yes, it is just a few lunatics. Unfortunately the lunatics include vice-president Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense [sic] Donald Rumsfeld, the president’s brother Jeb Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz, generally considered the master-mind behind the invasion of Iraq.

You really should get a copy of Rebuilding America’s Defenses [sic].230 Just don’t read it late at night. But if you do get a copy, take a look at page sixty, where the authors state that “advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.”231

Pretty clear, no?

These are the people with their fingers on the buttons. This is why civilization is killing the world.

WHY CIVILIZATION IS KILLING THE WORLD, TAKE FIFTEEN. The Unabomber/Tylenol rule of threat perception.

I think about this rule every time I stand in line at the post office, which is fairly often. I live in