Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [191]
NECK DEEP IN DENIAL
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn344
ANYBODY NOT NECK-DEEP IN DENIAL MUST BY NOW UNDERSTAND that the global economy is utterly incompatible with life. That much is clear. But why is that the case? Understanding that took me years, even though, when you get to the bottom of it, it’s pretty damn obvious. Here it is: A global economy effectively creates infinite demand. There you have it. That’s a problem, because no natural community—not even one so fecund as the salmon used to be, or passenger pigeons, or cod, and so on ad absurdum—can support infinite demand, especially when nothing beneficial is given back. All natural communities survive and thrive on reciprocity and cycles: salmon give to forests who give to salmon who give to oceans who give to salmon. A global economy is extractive. It doesn’t give back, but follows the pattern of the machines that characterize it, converting raw materials to power.345 Combine an extractive (machine) economy with infinite demand, and you’ve got the death of pretty much everything it touches. Duh. I first gained this understanding from an email someone sent me. She lives in Canada and wrote that until a few years previous her valley had been full of grizzly and black bears. She used to see maybe a dozen bears on an average spring, summer, or fall day. Now she was lucky to see one a week, and it was usually the same bear. The difference, she said, was that hunters had discovered the Chinese market for bear gall bladders. The market would consume as many gall bladders as the hunters could take. So they took them all. It was immediately clear to me that the local human community could have killed basically as many bears as they wanted for gall bladders, because I’m sure the market is pretty small there. And besides, if they kill all the bears, how will they get more gall bladders tomorrow? But as soon as you open up the market to the entire world, not only do you lose the face-to-face feedback of seeing your future supplies dwindle on the altar of today’s profits, but the demand for something even as esoteric as gall bladders becomes more or less infinite. No population can support that. That is exactly what happened to great auks, passenger pigeons, Eskimo curlews, cod, salmon, sperm whales, right whales, blue whales, humpback whales, roughy, sharks, white pine, redwood. Everything. No population can support infinite demand. No population can survive a global economy. The problem is inherent, not soluble by any amount of tinkering.346
The same argument reveals, by the way, how it is that within this culture every technological innovation is turned to evil. Let’s say I live in a human-sized community, less than a hundred and fifty people or so.347 I invent something. Within that functioning community—one in which we know we’ll be living on this land we love forever, and so we have to get along not only with each other but with all our nonhuman neighbors—we will then have ways to make decisions how to use (or not use) this technological innovation. I’ve been told, for example, that the Okanagans of what is now British Columbia divide their community for decision-making purposes into four groups by proclivity and expertise. One group is the youth, which doesn’t necessarily mean the young, although they often are. These people have tremendous creative energy, and yearn for change that will bring a better future. They’re creative, and theoretical, and they tend to move and think quickly. The next group are the elders, who are concerned with protecting traditions. They move slowly. They’re interested in the sacred and in deeper awareness. The next group, the fathers, are more action-oriented,