Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [3]
Do you believe that our culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living?
For the last several years I’ve taken to asking people this question, at talks and rallies, in libraries, on buses, in airplanes, at the grocery store, the hardware store. Everywhere. The answers range from emphatic nos to laughter. No one answers in the affirmative. One fellow at one talk did raise his hand, and when everyone looked at him, he dropped his hand, then said, sheepishly, “Oh, voluntary? No, of course not.” My next question: how will this understanding—that this culture will not voluntarily stop destroying the natural world, eliminating indigenous cultures, exploiting the poor, and killing those who resist—shift our strategy and tactics? The answer? Nobody knows, because we never talk about it: we’re too busy pretending the culture will undergo a magical transformation.
This book is about that shift in strategy, and in tactics.
I just got home from talking to a new friend, another longtime activist. She told me of a campaign she participated in a few years ago to try to stop the government and transnational timber corporations from spraying Agent Orange, a potent defoliant and teratogen, in the forests of Oregon. Whenever activists learned a hillside was going to be sprayed, they assembled there, hoping their presence would stop the poisoning. But each time, like clockwork, helicopters appeared, and each time, like clockwork, helicopters dumped loads of Agent Orange onto the hillside and onto protesting activists. The campaign did not succeed.
“But,” she said to me, “I’ll tell you what did. A bunch of Vietnam vets lived in those hills, and they sent messages to the Bureau of Land Management and to Weyerhaeuser, Boise Cascade, and the other timber companies saying, ‘We know the names of your helicopter pilots, and we know their addresses.’”
I waited for her to finish.
“You know what happened next?” she asked.
“I think I do,” I responded.
“Exactly,” she said. “The spraying stopped.”
FIVE STORIES
Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings.
Ben Okri 4
Unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of a culture. Therefore, if an individual can express what is undeniably real to him without invoking any authority beyond his own expe rience, he is transcending the belief systems of his culture.
Robert Combs 5
LAST TUESDAY THE TWIN TOWERS OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER collapsed, killing thousands of people. That same day a portion of the Pentagon also collapsed, killing more than a hundred. In addition, a jet airliner crashed in Pennsylvania.
Let’s tell this story again: Last Tuesday nineteen Arab terrorists unleashed their fanaticism on the United States by hijacking four planes, each containing scores of innocent victims. These terrorists, who do not value life the way we Americans do, slammed two of the planes into the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. Courageous men and women in the fourth plane wrestled with their attackers and drove the plane into the ground, sacrificing themselves rather than allowing the killers to attack the headquarters of the CIA or any other crucial target. Our government will find and punish those who masterminded the attack. This will be difficult because, as President George W. Bush said, “This enemy hides