Discuss: Resistance Resisters

Alpha Griz and Leigh,

Don’t get me wrong - I’m with you in believing and hoping and working through shenpa for that karmically lovely pie in the sky where feminine power is balanced with masculine, animal with human, landscape and cityscape, and some kind humanized industry. I’ve seen the difference in action in small community settings like the one I currently live in when individuals approach problems with full recognition of the possibility of that higher consciousness.

However, I don’t look to Derrick Jensen for those Gaia-nesses. I do think it’s there, though, in his writing. It’s that deep and fierce part that is in all of us - an often marginalized emotion, but to me, one we should acknowledge as legitimate. When I read Jensen, I read knowing that I’m seeking that ferocity, that unapologetic, ass-kicking stance that asks us to act now.

And even over beer, I wouldn’t ask anyone to kill themselves. This strikes me as counter-productive if we are seeking a more just, lovely place to live for all species.

My partner asks the same question of Jensen - what exactly is Jensen directing us to do with all the bad news he keeps telling us. For me, I have to translate Jensen’s message to something useful in my life. I can’t expect Jensen to answer that question and I don’t go to him for answers. He is, after all, just a guy trying to do right in the world and to encourage more right-doing in the world. I go to Jensen to get fired up, to get worked up, to feel that anger that is there inside me. Then I have to figure out for myself how to use it to the earth’s advantage. He helps me fight Plum Creek and the extraction mind-set. He also helps me realize where my own extraction mind-set lies unacknowledged.

I was raised a Catholic, so that guilt stuff actually still works on me (there’s supposed to be a softening here and a smile if we were in human contact).

In love and solidarity,

h

Here we go again.  Same as last year when I first read Jensen here and he’s the activist.  Meanwhile in my small incremental way I’m still listening to and living on the land, and this ol’ world is still turning and beautiful.  Could I please get a list, even partial of those 120 extinct species, that would be 43,800 in the last year, 219,000 in the last five years.  Really?  Did you get this report from the IPCC?  I for one am tired of living in a state of fear.  If we all just took care of our own, it would and will be just fine.

PS Plowboy, thanks for playing the BS card.  If I weren’t a married woman I’d love to discuss creation with you, as unsustainable as that may be!

how can we do what it takes to shut down the burning of fossil fuels when we can’t even park our cars? I just don’t understand how these two things can be separate. I want to do more, Derrick, and I appreciate your call for me/us to do so. But what exactly is it you are looking for?

The question I have for Jensen is this: how many people who didn’t already give a damn, have been inspired to do something different with their lives by Jensen’s confrontational fear-mongering anger. I’m all for giving ourselves a proverbial kick in the butt frequently, but I believe that compassion goes a lot farther in getting people to agree with you than the approach that Jensen loves to take. I know people who use his approach in their personal and political lives, and all it does is make the people around them want them to go away. So I could go so far as to say that his approach is counter-productive. He is free to do what he wants with his own life, but if he is trying to convince others to do the same as him, he’d be better off if he stopped beating us over the head.

We’re lucky to have a stooge like “plowboy” here to tell us all how things **really** are.

Apart from the cheap-shot ad hominem attacks on Derrick Jensen, what has “plowboy” offered?

Facts?  Naaaaah.  Too much work for a spittle-casting angry apologist for America.

Logic?  Nope.  Not within the tool kit used by a dissembling poster of deflection and distraction.

Fear?  Yep!  100% fear!  “Plowboy” is afraid of what Derrick Jensen writes, and so he tries to undercut any support or following that Jensen’s writing may muster.

I wish I had fear of autonomy and personal responsibility.  Then I might understand why “plowboy” is so incredibly frightened by words on a page.

Dialogue and spirited dialogue is much appreciated, but civil dialogue is valued. Calling each other names will not be tolerated here, please.

Orion

Yes, that’s perfectly understandable.  In all polite societies it is perfectly acceptable to use implicit put-downs and denigrating remarks, as long as they are polite.  Civility is key!  Especially when it prevents people from saying what they really mean, or talking about how they really feel.  Best to keep things under a heavy, wet blanket.  Wouldn’t want any embers to spark into flames.