Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [67]
If someone put a plastic bag over your head, or over the head of someone you love, and said he would give you money if you leave it there, would you take the money?
And if you said no, what would you do if he insisted, even to the point of a gun?
Would you take the money?
Or would you fight back?
When they don’t have anything better to do—which frankly seems like most of the time—anti-environmentalists are fond of pointing out the hypocrisy of environmentalists. You live in a house, don’t you? You wipe your ass with toilet paper. Your books are made of paper. Every one of these activities is environmentally destructive. You are not pure. Therefore what you say is meaningless.
It’s an interesting argument on several levels. The first is that it reveals the weakness of their own position: they cannot rebut the substance of our message, so they simply attack the messenger. It’s one of the most overused rhetorical tricks going. But there’s something even more interesting about their arguments—fundamentally stupid as they are—which is that they’re right, and in being right they make one of my central points better than I do. Building houses is destructive. Manufacturing toilet paper is destructive. Printing books is destructive. But there’s no reason to stop there. The industrial economy itself is inherently destructive, and every act that contributes to the industrial economy is inherently destructive. This includes buying my books. This includes buying something from Global Exchange. If we care about the planet, we then have a couple of options. The first—and this one is often suggested by anti-environmentalists—is that we simply off ourselves. I prefer the second one, which is that we dismantle the industrial economy.
I want to be clear. When people tell me population is the number one environmental problem we face today, I always respond that population is by no means primary. It’s not even secondary or tertiary. First, there’s the question of resource consumption I mentioned earlier. Second is the failure to accept limits, of which overpopulation and overconsumption are merely two linked symptoms. Beneath that is our belief we’re not animals, that we’re separate from the rest of the world, that we’re exempt from the negative consequences of our actions, and that we’re exempt from death. Beneath these beliefs is a fear and loathing of the body, of the wild and uncontrollable nature of existence itself, and ultimately of death. These fears cause us to convince ourselves not only of the possibility but the desirability of not being animals, of separating ourselves from the world. These fears drive us crazy, and lead us to create and implement insane and destructive economic and social systems.
All of this is a roundabout way of getting to my ninth premise, which is: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population may occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some will be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear Armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by a crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of