Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [213]
After a talk I gave last year in Portland, Oregon, several of us anarchists wanted to grab a bite to eat. One said he knew of a place that served great organic food and paid workers a livable wage.
“Sounds perfect,” I said.
“One problem,” he responded. “None of us can afford to eat there.”
Heck, what does it say about this culture and its economics that people must pay for food? And what does it say about this culture and its economics that a very few very large corporations control a very large majority of the food supply?
Worse yet, if people are going to be forced to pay for food, what does it say about this culture and its economics that we face a two-tier system of paying, where it’s cheaper to buy food that has been raised using poisons than it is to buy food that has been raised without using poisons, which means where the rich have enough money to buy organic, and the poor do not? How strange is it that you have to pay extra to be exposed to fewer poisons? It is for this reason, by the way, that I am opposed to labeling genetically modified foods.409 It’s not good enough for me to simply make it possible for the rich to pay extra to not ingest these artificial mutations. That is morally wrong. And because the government has not stopped and will not stop those who can make a buck by releasing these organisms (and pesticides) into the world, and into our bodies, it falls upon us to stop them. How are we going to do it?
Sure, it’s a good thing to try to do good with your money. And sure, because this strange and destructive economic system based on ownership and exploitation has pretty much overrun the globe it is extremely difficult to avoid participating in it (which means, among other things, that we shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much for purchasing the vehicle we need to carry explosives to dams [or kids to soccer practice], nor should we beat ourselves up if we buy some pesticide-laden, genetically modified pseudofoods at the grocery store [smothered in monosodium glutamate they taste so very yummy, don’t you think?]). But we must never forget that if we attempt to economically go head to head with those who are destroying the planet, we will always be at a severe, systematic, inescapable, and functional disadvantage. Not buying an airline ticket won’t do squat. But all is not lost. The question, yet again: Where are the fulcrums? How do we magnify our power?
Here’s the problem. Two people walk through a forest. One considers how extraordinarily beautiful the forest is, and how wonderful it is to be alive. The other notices how much of this forest could be turned into immediate fiscal profit, and thinks about how that could be done. Question: Which of these people will probably make more money off the forest? Question: Within this culture, which of these people is more likely to end up in a position of power, making decisions that affect the human and nonhuman communities in and around the forest? Question: How do those of us who care stop them from destroying the forests?
EMPATHY AND ITS OTHER
All places and all beings of the earth are sacred. It is dangerous to designate some places sacred when all are sacred. Such compromises imply that there is a hierarchy of value, with some places and some living beings not as important as others. No part of the earth is expendable; the earth is a whole that cannot be fragmented, as it has been by the destroyers’ mentality of the industrial age. The greedy destroyers of life and bringers of suffering demand that sacred land be sacrificed so that a few designated sacred places may survive; but once any part is deemed expendable, others can easily be redefined to fit the category of expendable. As Ruth Rudner points out in her article “Sacred Land,”