Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [69]
Today, of course, we have so internalized the ideology of centralized control, of civilization, that most of us do not consider it absurd that people have to pay someone simply so they may exist on the planet, except perhaps to grumble that without rent or mortgage (or second mortgage) payments we wouldn’t have to work so hard at jobs we don’t like, and could spend more time with people we love, doing things we enjoy.
Although I have understood all of the above for a long time, it was only last week that I realized—and my indigenous friends are wondering where I’ve been these last six thousand years—that just as those in power must control access to land, the same logic dictates they must destroy all stocks of wild foodstuffs. Wild salmon, for example, cannot be allowed to live. Why would I go to Safeway if I could catch coho in the stream outside my door? I wouldn’t. So how do those in power make certain I lack food self-sufficiency? Simple. Eliminate free food sources. Eliminate wild nature. For the same is true, obviously, for everything that is wild and free, for everything else that can meet our needs without us having to pay those in power. The push to privatize the world’s water helps make sense of official apathy surrounding the pollution of (free) water sources. You just watch: air will soon be privatized: I don’t know how they’ll do it, but they’ll certainly find a way.
This destruction of wild foodstuffs has sometimes been accomplished explicitly to enslave a people, as when great herds of buffalo were destroyed to bring the Lakota and other Plains Indians to terms, or as when one stated reason for building dams on the Columbia River was that dams kill salmon. The hope was that this extirpation would break the cultural backs of the region’s Indians. But the destruction of wild foodstocks doesn’t require some fiendishly clever plot on the part of those in power. Far worse, it merely requires the reward and logic systems of civilization to remain in place. Eliminating wild foodstocks is just one of many ways those in power increase control. And so long as the rest of us continue to buy into the system that values the centralization of control over life, that values the production of things over life, that values cities and all they represent over life, that values civilization over life, so long will the world that is our real and only home continue to be destroyed, and so long will the noose that is civilization continue to tighten around our throats.
Once again I had dinner with my friend who used to date the philosopher. We sat down. She jumped right in. “What is the relationship between drinkable quantities of clean water being good, and rape being bad?” In the days after our dinner conversation, her enthusiasm had run up against the clear leap of logic—her ex-boyfriend would have said faith—in my argument.
“We’re animals,” I said.
“I know that. So?”
“So we have needs.”
“I’ve heard some people—men, mainly—say that’s one reason for rape.”
“No. Needs to survive, to develop into who we really are.”
“Who are we?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“I’ve read science-based analyses suggesting rape is a demonstration of power—”
“No arguments from me there.”
“—and serves the evolutionary purpose of getting women to bond with powerful men,” she said.
“Lemme guess,” I responded, “the scientists were males, right?”
“They also say rape serves to pass on the genes of more aggressive men—”
“Which might seem to make superficial sense if you presume life is based on competition, not cooperation.”
“Right, and if you presume relationships don’t exist, and presume also that sperm is way, way more important than love, joy, or peace.”
“Very odd presumptions, aren’t they? Makes