Discuss: World at Gunpoint

I, too, appreciate the thoughts expressed by Jensen here and in his other writings. We do have to get down to basic causes and realities of the planet. But like commenter #5, I believe Jensen went right past the most basic action, and ended at yet another environmental platitude. Rather than “listening to the land” which to me will also be something that future Earthlings will not care that we did (even if it’s a correct idea), what we must do is stated in a previous line: “Nothing matters but that we stop this culture from killing the planet.” That tells us what action to take with all our hearts and strength, from personal living to community involvement to personally confronting and challenging the industrial, corporate and political system. For example, laws about energy use that have at least a saner direction are being written in Washington now—go and engage your President and representatives to make them much stronger; enough to actually protect the planet right down to the land where you live. As Wendell Barry says, “You cannot regulate an abomination.”

Jensen’s last paragraph takes my breath away. His anger at human culture which he and presumeably other readers are part rings true. We are indeed the problem. The culture of ravaging the earth and its many species.

The simplicity movement is just as radical and credible as destroying dams, roads and bulldoziers. Lessening the footprint impact of the individual, decreasing consumption and energy use, limiting population growth, writing comments, questioning the treatment of forests, attending city meetings, stopping roads built for the pleasure of engineers and the trucking lobby. All these measures work together. We are indeed in a deep and ugly hole. We are indeed a destructive species. Individuals must be educated and empowered to intitate change.
I appreciate Jensens whisper to action. He has heard the forests calling….

A Language Older than Words is one of the most beautiful and painful books I’ve ever read. I think the real question Derrick is asking most of the time is: How do we value life? It’s hard to put in a column the kind of meditative thought Derrick puts in his books. But maybe he should try.

Fascinating and important, although a large question is just how we are to “hear” the land.  I asked my back yard what it wanted me to do and, even though I’ve got a touch of a mystic streak, I couldn’t hear anything.

I know Jensen believes our associates in creation speak to us, and he may be right. But if the ultimate point of his piece was that we must have the guts to do what the land says, how do we know what it says?  Anybody know?  And if he says “by any means necessary” what if the land says, no, not by “any” means? Perhaps it might say we’ve had enough violence already…

One commenter suggests that it will speak to her, “for me.”  Will her land say something different than my land?  Than Jensen’s land? This could get complicated, eh?

I appreciate the deep ecology of this, and want to believe we can discern some insight from listening well.  Perhaps I’m tone-deaf.  Or is this just gnostic nonsense that can’t be critiqued reasonably?  That is, if he says the land told him to blow up a dam, who is anybody to argue?  Heck, I could justify nearly anything if I get my marching orders from listening to the dirt.

We’ve got an epidemic of Lyme carrying deer tics near us here, in the local land—- partially a result of terrible suburban sprawl.  Still, they are in the neighborhood now, too.  Should I ask them what they think, even as they ruin the health of loved ones?  Or if I ask them to get the hell out, will they listen?

Some who have commented have affirmed Jensen’s hearing the whispers of the forest.  This is fine poetry, good metaphor, if that is what we mean.  Our strategy must be argued amongst our neighbors in the public square, though…can this stuff possible ring true to others, this peculiar Dr. Doolittle approach that insists that “nothing else” matters?  I’m perplexed.

I agree that the suggestion of listening to the land is cryptic. I haven’t read anything else by Jensen, so I don’t know what he really means. I do know that he interviewed Martin Prechtel, a few years ago in the Sun, and Martin’s explanations of the Mayan culture that he was a part of in Guatemala, begin to tell us what Derrick SHOULD be meaning when he tells us to listen to the land. Where industrial civilization went wrong is in forgetting that our existence here puts us in debt to the spirits that make us live, and so we think we can take endlessly without giving back. There is something greater than ourselves, that makes this all happen, and which knows what we must do to keep in balance with the whole. Every indigenous culture I am aware of had this understanding of the greater thing to which we must be held accountable. That is what kept them from becoming the cancerous growth that our empty “culture” has become. If we wake up to this, and remember how to listen, so that we can learn what is required in terms of giving back, we have a chance of keeping this life alive. Here is the link to the interview with Martin Prechtel that Jensen did in 2001. http://www.hiddenwine.com/indexSUN.html

I looked through Jensen’s article and through the comments to see if ayone would proffer a correction to his correction, but no.

So here goes: Jensen says this culture needs to stop killing the planet. In a way his statement presumes we’re separate from nature. We’re not. We ARE nature. Nature has always killed its own kind.

So the planet will go on and heal itself over the years, probably by killing us off. It’s us humans who just might go extinct—we’ve been declared an endangered species. We’re killing ourselves, nature turning in on itself.

This culture—over the last 50K years—has done that. Ever since we were able to use finer tools, such as bone, we could make close-fitting garments and get into colder climes, and thus go further away from Africa.

Ever since that time, whenever humankind has set foot on a new continent for the first time, the megafauna have been killed off within a few thousand years.

Now there’s no other planet to get to.

I agree with the first poster (Carol H), in that I often have very mixed feelings and responses when reading Derrick Jensen. I am in agreement on a deep level, so there is a sort of ‘hum’ of resonance and relief at someone articulating these ideas. And then there is a sense of unsettled, uneasiness. There is something unabashedly aggressive in these writings. That tends to put me off.

And yet, I think Jensen is expressing what most of us don’t want to, or can’t. What is happening - and has been happening at least since industrialization has become the dominant mode of practice - IS unacceptable, IS genocidal, IS violent and sinful (paraphrasing the excellent Alexander Wilson’s Culture of Nature). And we need to tackle this directly, including our complicity. But it’s more than that. It’s about shifting the very frames and discourses we are embedded in, that enable industry and exploitation to continue. Jensen points out how it’s become seeded into our very questions, the way this ideology is threaded into our very language and ways of seeing. So what is called for IS radical and revolutionary.
I only wish there was more suggestion of creative ways of responding, rather than hinting and hoping we will get what they may be. Not that we need Jensen to tell us what to do, but its evident his ideas can be interpreted as quite violent acts. I want to channel my rage and sense of injustice into ways that are dismantling, but I don’t know how. And I am not ready to ‘shoot’ the perpetrators. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the language Jensen uses tends to be very violent. What we encounter against species and ecosystems ruined and destroyed because of our rampant greed is violent; but I don’t want to be pulled into a way of life coloured by rage, and violence. Maybe this makes me a patsy, a wimp. Who knows. But I want us to think about creative channels for using our rage and anger, without being drawn into replicating violent acts.

Jensen is exactly right that we are asking the wrong questions (because we ask from a selfish, anthropocentric perspective). For eons, human creatures understood that they were but one small strand in the Web-Of-Life. It is our relatively recent (and deranged) view that we are its Lords and Masters that is the root of today’s ecological dysfunction.

However, Jensen’s antidote is every bit as naive (though well-intentioned) as the comments of some of his critics (as posted here).

As soon as one says “by any means necessary”, it becomes clear that person has gone over to the dark side. No one can be blamed for self-defense or the defense of one’s family (however broadly that is defined). But to engage in deliberate offensive action against a perceived adversary is to indulge in the same criminality that one pretends to oppose.

On a Jensen fan club discussion forum, I was brutally trashed for suggesting that Jensen’s understanding of non-violence was limited (at best).

To be responsible members of the Web-Of-Life, we must all be willing to give our lives to protect and defend it. But to take lives for It’s sake would be the very same desecration that we should be striving to thwart (and no different from the Crusades or Islamic fanaticism).

Jensen is a brilliant thinker, engaging writer, and a good soul who is willing to let his desperation inspire his action. That is never a good thing.