Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [144]
That’s a lot of practice. If we just put our hearts and minds and hands to it, it probably won’t take very long before we get pretty good at it, so that taking down towers becomes something natural, like breathing, like taking long deep breaths of cool fresh air. Soon enough, we’ll wonder what took us so long to get started.
A teenager approached me after a talk. His eyes were on fire with intelligence and eagerness. He said, “I want to help you bring down civilization. I want to burn down factories.”
Sometimes when people say things like this to me I distance myself from them. This is partly in case they’re feds trying to entrap me—it’s a classic trick: the feds suggest the action, entice you into doing it, provide the materials, and when you acquiesce you find yourself saying good-bye to your life for the next sixty years. It’s partly because I don’t know these people, and they could very well be crazy: the last thing I’d want to do would be to associate myself with some pyro who gets off on the flames, and who masturbates in the corner as the building crumbles (well, that’s actually the second to last thing I’d want to do: the last thing would be to associate myself with a fed agent provocateur who gets off on putting people in little concrete cages). And it’s also partly to protect myself from people with bad boundaries: to come up and semi-publicly tell a complete stranger you want to burn down a factory would seem at the very least to be a fundamental breach of security.
But I immediately fell in love with this kid’s fierce sincerity. I thought a moment. There was no one around. I said, “Now, I would never want to discourage you or anyone from burning down a factory. But at the same time I want to emphasize that you have to be smart. One stupid mistake can cost you a lot.”
He nodded.
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
He nodded again.
“Have you ever had sex?”
He shook his head.
“If you do this, and you get caught, you won’t be having sex for at least twenty years. I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m just saying this isn’t a game, and there are real consequences for acting against the wishes of those in power, for effectively opposing production. That doesn’t mean we should be afraid of those in power. It means we should be very, very smart. Think it through, and then think it through a hundred more times. And then follow your heart.”
He nodded again.
I don’t always respond that way. Sometimes, as I said, I get as far away from them as I can. But once I was approached by someone who said, “I know how destructive dams are, and I know what’s at stake. My people are people of the salmon. Our entire way of life is centered around them. If you can get me the explosives I’ll take out a dam.”
I’d never met this man before, but I knew him by reputation. He wasn’t a fed. Nor was he crazy. Nor did he have bad boundaries. Nor was he young and inexperienced. He knew what he was talking about, and he knew what he would be risking.
He said, “I have young children, so I can’t do it for a few years. But when they’re old enough, I’ll do it.”
Unsaid, but hanging in the air between us, was the fact that once his children were old enough to understand, he would be prepared to die or go to prison to help the river run free.
“I don’t know how to do it,” I said. “And I don’t know how to get explosives.”
He nodded and smiled wryly, then said, “That’s okay. You’ve got a few years.”
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.
Arthur Miller263
WHEN I WROTE ABOUT THE CIA’S HUMAN RESOURCE EXPLOITATION Training Manual, I forgot to mention that the Agency also put out instruction manuals on how to commit murder. The manuals make pretty fascinating reading in a ghoulish sort of way,