Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [94]
There are certainly other fears I’ve not afforded the energy to move through. Because when I was a child there were beatings associated with water skiing and rapes associated with alcohol, to this day I carry powerful fears of both. But neither of those is particularly worth the effort to work my way through: I can happily live a life without water skiing or alcohol. I was not willing to live a life without my heart.
We can ask the same questions on the cultural level. Are we willing to live a life without clean air, clean water, wild animals: a livable planet? For what, precisely, will we face down our own fears?
We have the best excuse in the world to not act. The momentum of civilization is fierce. The acculturation deep. Those in power will imprison us if we effectively resist. Or they will torture us. Or they will kill us. There are so many of them, and they have weapons. They have the law. And many of them—probably in the final analysis nearly all of them—have no scruples, else they would never support the current system in the first place. Because of all this, there really is nothing we can do. We may as well admit that.
But the question becomes: would you rather have the best excuse in the world, or would you rather have a world?
Here, once again, is the real story. Our self-assessed culpability for participating in the deathly system called civilization masks (and is a toxic mimic of) our infinitely greater sin. Sure, I use toilet paper. So what? That doesn’t make me as culpable as the CEO of Weyerhaeuser, and to think it does grants a great gift to those in power by getting the focus off them and onto us.
For what, then, are we culpable? Well, for something far greater than one person’s work as a technical writer and another’s as a busboy. Something far greater than my work writing books to be made of the pulped flesh of trees. Something far greater than using toilet paper or driving cars or living in homes made of formaldehyde-laden plywood. For all of those things we can be forgiven, because we did not create the system, and because our choices have been systematically eliminated (those in power kill the great runs of salmon, and then we feel guilty when we buy food at the grocery store? How dumb is that?). But we cannot and will not be forgiven for not breaking down the system that creates these problems, for not driving deforesters out of forests, for not driving polluters away from land and water and air, for not driving moneylenders from the temple that is our only home. We are culpable because we allow those in power to continue to destroy the planet. Yes, I know we are more or less constantly enjoined to use only inclusive rhetoric, but when will we all realize that war has already been declared upon the natural world, and upon all of us, and that this war has been declared by those in power? We must stop them with any means necessary. For not doing that we are infinitely more culpable than most of us—myself definitely included—will ever be able to comprehend.
To be clear: I am not culpable for deforestation because I use toilet paper. I am culpable for deforestation because I use toilet paper and I do not keep up my end of the predator-prey bargain. If I consume the flesh of another I am responsible for the continuation of its community. If I use toilet paper, or any other wood or paper products, it is my responsibility to use any means necessary to ensure the continued health of natural forest communities. It is my responsibility to use any means necessary to stop industrial forestry.
The next characteristic of abusers is that they get upset easily. They’re hypersensitive, and the slightest setback is seen as a personal attack. Much of the reason for this has to do with the fourth premise of this book, that violence in our culture flows only one way. This is true not only for violence, but for all control, all initiative. Those on top are allowed to have control and initiative. Those below must have them only insofar as control and initiative make them more effective proxies of those above.