Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [200]
Several pages ago I outlined some possible courses of action for those who don’t want to personally participate in bringing down civilization but who agree that: a) civilization will crash, b) the crash will be messy, and c) because civilization is systematically destroying the planet, the longer civilization lasts the worse things will be. Now, however, I want to ask the other half of that question: if we agree with each of those premises, and if we do want to bring it all down, how do we do that?
FULCRUMS
So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.
Samuel Butler 366
IF WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT BRINGING DOWN CIVILIZATION, WE NEED TO talk about fulcrums.367
If you recall, Archimedes said something to the effect of “Give me a long enough lever and a place to stand and I can move the world.” Well, he was being concise; by emphasizing the length of the lever and the place to stand he left off the lever’s other crucial component: the fulcrum. Archimedes could have the longest and strongest board in the universe, and the most solid place to stand, and he still wouldn’t have been able to leverage his strength without that pivot point.
The purpose of a lever is to transmit or modify (often magnify) power or motion. I can bend metal with a crowbar I couldn’t budge using muscles alone. I can crack nuts easily with a nutcracker, and moving heavy weights is a piece of cake with a wheelbarrow.
What does this have to do with taking down civilization?
Everything.
So long as the dominant culture is still dominant—by which I mean so long as its exploitative mindset holds sway over what’s left of the hearts and minds of the people who run this culture—there will always be a disproportionate number of people willing to kill to perpetuate it (to gain or maintain the power, or the promise of power, associated with being an exploiter368) compared to the number who are willing to fight to protect life. It’s Jefferson’s line all over again: “In war they shall kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them.” And those who are willing, ready, and oftentimes eager to destroy those who threaten the hegemony of those in power often include their hired guns: Those in power worldwide have about 20 million soldiers and 5 million cops at their command. In the U.S. alone, these numbers are about 1.4 million soldiers and 1.4 million cops (one-third of whom are prison guards), the primary function of whom is to use violence or its threat to serve those in power. Far worse, nearly all of us have allowed ourselves to become convinced of the righteousness of Premise Four of this book: that violence flows only one direction, that it is right and just for servants of power to kill in that service (yet it is proper for their leaders to inevitably declaim on the regrettability of these inevitable murders), and it is blasphemy for the rest of us to fight back.369 This latter is as true for mountain lions who fight back against those who wish to destroy their habitat as it is for humans who fight back against those who wish to destroy their habitat.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that those in power have the luxury of using that power inelegantly. They can and often do simply overwhelm us with sheer force. (“Shock and awe” is one of the currently preferred terms.) Those of us fighting for life, on the other hand, need to learn how and where to find appropriate fulcrums to amplify our efforts.
From the perspective of members of the German resistance in World War II, Hitler was certainly one such fulcrum. Killing just this one man would have multiplied their efforts to the tune of saving millions of lives. Had someone killed him before the war started—and some tried—the effects of