Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [203]
Just so we’re clear that there are lots of bottlenecks, and that a little creativity can discover them, here’s another bottleneck from World War II: industrial diamonds. Industrial grinding and drilling is almost impossible without diamonds. Both the Nazis, who had on hand only an eight-month supply, and DeBeers, which controlled the world’s diamond supply, knew this. The Nazis smuggled several million carats into Germany. DeBeers could have acted to stop them—and thus effectively stopped wartime production, which means effectively stopped the war—but did not.
The new questions become: What are some of civilization’s bottlenecks? What are some of civilization’s limiting factors? Like transportation networks, oil, and industrial diamonds for the Nazis, what are some of the objects or processes that, if interdicted, could cause civilization to grind to a halt?
Similarly, where can we find fulcrums, pivot points, to magnify our efforts? Where do we put the levers, what do we use for fulcrums, how and when and how hard do we push to help topple this culture of death?
Are these fulcrums psychological? I hear all the time that it would do no good to take out dams, for example, because that would leave intact the mindset that leads to their erection in the first place. We need to change hearts and minds, I am told, and once these hearts and minds have been changed everything else will fall into place. Civilization will disappear because people are no longer insane enough to want it.
But maybe that question is too vague. Whose hearts and minds are we trying to reach? Where do we place our efforts in changing hearts and minds to achieve the most effect? Is it among the politically and economically powerful? Is it among the “mass of Americans”? Is it among the disaffected? Is it among the poor? Is it among the so-called criminal classes? Is it among the cops and the military? These latter, after all, have a lot of guns.383 Where will we achieve the most good?
Are the fulcrums spiritual? People value what they consider sacred. They sacralize what they value. Perhaps we should attempt to desacralize power for power’s sake. Perhaps we should attempt to break down the divine right of science, the divine right of corporations, the divine right of production, the divine right of nation-states. Perhaps we should attempt to help people to remember that spiders who live in their bathrooms are sacred, as are salmon who spawn in rivers outside their homes, plants who push up through sidewalks, salamanders who live high in the hollows of ancient redwoods, their own bodies, their own experiences, their own sexuality, their own flesh free from industrial carcinogens. Where do we place the levers, the fulcrums, to help people remember that they are humans living in a landbase, that they are animals?
Are these fulcrums personal, such that, like Hitler, the “removal” of this or that person will make a tangible difference? Would it help the redwoods and workers of northern California to make sure Charles Hurwitz, CEO of MAXXAM, does not damage them from his high-rise home in Houston, Texas? If so, where and how and when do we act in this way?
In cases where it’s not the individual CEO, but the position—where social framing conditions make it so that most people who would take up that position share the same deadened worldview that would cause them to commit the same atrocities—where then do we place the levers and fulcrums? Do we go CEO to CEO, “removing” them one by one? We always hear that the machine-like characteristics of corporations mean that CEOs are simply cogs—albeit large ones—in these community-destroying institutions, and so it would do no good to remove them. It’s an odd argument to make, even when I make it myself (as I did a few pages ago).384 There are few who suggest that simply because arresting or killing one rapist does not stop other men from raping, that this means we should not stop whatever rapists we can through any means necessary. Yet when it comes to CEOs the argument seems to hold: Someone else will