Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [173]
John Osborn, an extraordinary activist and friend who, when I met him, was the heart and soul of the Spokane, Washington environmental community, has often given his reasons for doing the work: “As things become increasingly chaotic, I want to make sure some doors remain open. If grizzly bears are still alive in twenty, thirty, and forty years, they may still be alive in fifty. If they’re gone in twenty, they’ll be gone forever.”
But no matter what we do, our best efforts are insufficient to the dangers we face. We’re losing badly, on every front. Those in power are hell-bent on destroying the planet, and most people don’t care.
Many of us know we’re fucked. But many don’t talk about it, especially publicly. We believe we’re alone in this feeling. But we’re not.
Just today I got this email: “I attended your talk last night, and was deeply surprised. I hadn’t read your works (except in the middle of the night last night), and was skeptical of your message, but not as you might normally think. I stopped going to hear Enviro speakers quite a while back, call it estrangement. I work as an environmental regulator, EPA Water Pollution, and have been doing that for 15 years. I’ve seen a bit of water go beneath the bridge. I know what’s in it.
“I’m a little tired of utopian environmental theory. It’s hard to hear someone talk about some perfect future society (spirituality, free love, etc.), when I’m trying to figure out what to do with some damaged place, or a slag pile, or the siting of a new chip mill that can eat 10,000 acres of forest per year. It ain’t about theory. It is very, very real.
“In the role of regulator I have to live in the world of what has been done, and what is doable. I’ve had to understand the brutal limitations of physics, history, law, technology, money, politics, and human folly. We’ve busted some things we can’t fix. We’re still doing it. I’ve had to witness more than I care to. I’ve had some very sweet victories, even been a Champion a few times. But, we are so FUCKED!!! I’ve never stated that anywhere. It just seemed like too difficult a truth to share. Thank you for saying that out loud. Hope bashing is OK, we can make more.”
I’ve been bashing hope for many years. Frankly, I don’t have much of it, and I think that’s a good thing. Hope is partly what keeps us chained to the system. First there is the false hope that suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or Santa Claus. All of these false hopes—all of this rendering of our power—leads to inaction, or at least to ineffectiveness: how, for example, would Philip Berrigan have acted had he not believed—hoped—God would help solve things?
One reason my mother stayed with my father was that there were no battered women’s shelters in the fifties and sixties, but another was because of the false hope that he would change. False hopes, as I’ve written elsewhere, bind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities. Does anyone really believe that Weyerhaeuser is going to stop deforesting because we ask nicely? Does anyone really believe that Monsanto will stop Monsantoing because we ask nicely? If only we get a Democrat in the White House, this line of thought runs, things will be okay. If only we pass this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. If only we defeat this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay.311 Bullshit. Things will not be okay. They are already not okay, and they’re getting worse.
One of the smartest things Nazis did to Jews was co-opt rationality, co-opt hope. At every step of the way it was in the Jews’ rational best interest to not resist: