Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [129]
Maybe this means that if members of the ELF really want to cause economic damage to those in power, instead of burning SUVs they should just play fantasy baseball.
Or maybe not.
Instead of the Unabomber/Tylenol rule, I could have called it the Terrorism rule. Although members of governments around the world and members of the capitalist press like to talk a lot about terrorism, the numbers aren’t that high. Using their definitions of terrorism,237 there have been about 1,300 people killed per year by terrorists since the September 11, 2001 attacks, and precisely zero in the United States. Contrast that with the numbers above. But the politicians talk incessantly about terrorism (or at least terrorism by enemies of states), and they do not talk about these other deaths. This is partly because of premise four of this book, and partly because of the Unabomber/Tylenol rule.
Think of that whenever you hear those in power mention the word terrorism.
Abusers are volatile. They may be pleasant one moment, and violent the next. I go back and forth on whether I believe their volatility is real.
Argument in favor: Abusers are fragile. They’re frightened. Because they have no identities of their own (which also means that they could never identify with their bodies nor with the landbases that give them life) they have no capacity to react fluidly to whatever circumstances arise. They must then control their surroundings. So long as those surroundings remain perfectly under control abusers can maintain at least an exterior calm. But threaten that control (or their perceived entitlement to control and exploit) and the fury that forever seethes beneath their surface bursts full-blown into the world.
Argument against: I strongly suspect, based on my own experience of abusers, that their volatility is at least quite often fabricated for manipulative purposes, making the volatility of abusers akin to the planned “outbursts” of CIA interrogators when victims refuse to fall into the trap of abusing themselves, refusing, for example, to stand for days at a time. In other words, the volatility may not be real at all, but part of a calculated strategy to keep victims off guard, to get them to police themselves.
But there’s another argument for the fundamental falsity of an abuser’s volatility, which refers instead to the first half of the statement: it is possible that an abuser’s pleasantness is never real pleasantness, instead being a mere temporary (and probably tactical) lessening of the relentless tightening of attempted control. Instead of an abuser being like a jug of gasoline—noxious enough, but often not immediately fatal until and unless some spark sets it off, meaning ultimate responsibility for your own immolation rests on you for being silly enough to ever let flint strike steel—perhaps it’s more accurate to say that to enter or to be forced to enter into a relationship with an abuser is more like being bound tightly by ropes tied by someone trained in the Japanese art of hojojutsu, about which one expert wrote: “Knots were developed that could hold almost anybody in any position. The knots were so designed that if a person tried to wiggle free the rope around the neck would tighten, restricting the airflow and choking the victim.”238
This, for me, is the experience of being in a relationship with an abuser: if you do not struggle but only lie motionless, the abuser merely confines you, but every slightest movement in any direction on your part—and I want to emphasize every movement in any direction—tightens the abuser’s hold