Discuss: Resistance Resisters

Why is there only a link to amazon to buy Jenson’s latest novel?

Signior Plowboy!

Wasn’t all this dealt with pretty good back when the Big Monkeywrench wasn’t rusty? The surface is to the square, but the volume to the cube.  Take heart.

That does it!  I’m tired of being dissed by Derrick Jensen for composting.  Not that he is against it, but I am tired of the way belittles it as totally ineffectual.  Sorry, but I’ve always thought of composting as a form of resistance (and resistance must take a thousand forms). Compost and gardens will bring down the system.  No matter where we in America live, or under what circumstances, gardens should be returned to the center of a local, sustainable food production economy along with community-supported agriculture, small independently owned organic farms, and food co-operatives, an economy that challenges, subverts, and replaces the current industrial food production system, the world of Monsanto, GMOs, ADM, and terminator genes.  Get enough of us gardening an we could bring down this system without firing a shot, or committing one act of sabotage, tempting as that may be.  To those who say we cannot put up an effective resistance by merely composting or riding our bicycles, I say, hogwash!  I do admit that in some places, especially Nigeria that it may be necessary for survival to blow up pipelines and kidnap oil field workers when oil development is laying waste to the land, destroying indigenous society, and causing people to sicken and die while the money goes to line the coffers of corrupt government officials.  Ditto for Ecuador where the same abuses are going on. Whatever form resistance takes it must match the particular situation.  In Nigeria, sure, sabotage.  As for America, compost piles, farmers’ markets and bicycles may be the weapons of choice, all we need to topple the corrupt, bloated, and enfeebled agro-industrial crackpot regime.

And like Derrick, I am horrified by mass extinctions. Humanity is in a crisis.  But protracted resistance movements like that in Nigeria last for years.  Meanwhile, 120 species a day are still going extinct.  So resistance alone is not going to be enough.  The only way, ultimately, we are going to get to a culture of sustainability, a culture of wildness is that humanity is going to need to evolve.  However, the next step in human evolution is not going to be genetic or even to higher intelligence, which will make us even worse, even more adept at destroying the planet than before.  No, if we are to survive and the planet is to flourish, the next step in human evolution will need to be to a higher consciousness.  Not even the forms of resistance that Derrick advocates alone are going to do it, they will not be enough!  Humanity is going to need to take the next step.  Essentially, we need a new story.

Jensen is right about green consumerism. It isn’t going to fix anything. But neither is thinking that destroying civilization itself and voluntarily returning to the Stone Age is something that any practical agent of resistance can seriously recommend. And that’s basically what Derek Jensen advocates, and while it might sell a lot of books, and while it might look interesting and “provocative” in Orion Magazine, it’s not going to get us or the planet anywhere.

I agree completely with Jensen’s sense of urgency. And I am glad to see that he realizes that we need to create something different to take the place of the status quo which continues to greedily gobble up the earth and excrete it as waste as though it were all here for our own immediate comfort. I am not against people resisting and we do need to all radically change our lifestyle if we are going to live in harmony with the rest of the planet.

But I think there is another way, besides angrily beating people over the head with guilt and fear, to help people come to the conclusion that living differently is necessary. When your heart is open to the pain and suffering (and not just of people, and not just animals, but the plants and soil and rocks) incurred on our behalf by the “system” that currently sustains us, you want to do something different. Especially if you see another way presented that offers abundance and happiness through joining with the earth and with other people.  When you realize that all living things are imbued with a spirit, like your own, then you want to figure out ways of living that involves less life-taking and more giving back.

The reason our culture turned into this gobbling monster in the first place is because we lost touch with the reality that we are all put here as a community of spirit-imbued life that is designed to work together for the good of all. Every indigenous people that I am aware of has this understanding and that is why they live the way they do.

We have a lot of work to do to get to that place again. It is uncomfortable and difficult work, of rediscovering our own souls, and of listening to Nature. But it is also the most rewarding, and the most likely to produce radically different results in our lives. Without it, we will continue to be rude children stealing from our Mother without asking, and without gratitude, and fighting among ourselves because we are afraid there isn’t enough to go around.

Isn’t this backlash against Jensen exactly what he’s writing about? If we continue to bad mouth Jensen because his writing unnerves us, we’re just murdering the messenger, simply resisting the resister.

Instead of hearing his message, too many people get caught up in his delivery – urgent, angry, and hell bent. What is wrong with such a delivery given the implications of our current MO?

Current studies that show that greenies often begin doing LESS precisely because they believe they are doing so much with their compost piles and bicycle rides. It’s greenie narcissism or the age old one-upmanship, where, instead of power in the form of corporate interest, we have power in an intellectualized sustainability hierarchy: I’m more sustainable than you are, na na na na na na.

Jensen does not posit that we lifestylers get off our bikes and take long showers and turn our thermostats back up to 70F. He says these choices are simply not enough.

Some humility here seems to be the point: I know my garden – for all its reduced carbon footprint and yummy deliciousness – is not stopping Plum Creek in Maine or Montana. Indirectly, perhaps. But really, really indirectly.

Jensen lives a green lifestyle himself. He ALSO takes direct resistance action against the powers that be. He’s worked tirelessly in his own state, in the courtroom, in the woods, and at his computer.

It would be a shame to lose his totally pertinent voice.

Lorna and Alpha Griz:

Don’t know if you read theoildrum.com (specifically, the Campfire discussions), but I’d said basically the same thing (as you, Lorna) there in response to a question posed this past weekend (2/27/10). We can have all of the PV arrays, electric cars, whatever in the world, and nothing will change unless we fundamentally heal the rift that lies within us. The key, I think, is having direct sensory experiences with the so-called Other…be it insect, rock, undammed water, tree, herb (“weed”), bird, meadow, forest, bay…

The question I have—and I agree we need a new story—is what IS the story? My knowledge of North American indigenous stories is scant, but what I’ve heard/read (the Turtle Creation, the way the Iroquois Nation was formed), these have deep resonance for me. So, I wonder if the “new” isn’t really just an update of the ancient that has been part of this land for thousands of years.

What do you think?

Alpha Griz,

Don’t take it personally. Every action is needed. I think about all the folks in my area, 30 to 50 million of us, how we could help to restore the Chesapeake if we’d all use swales and rain barrels and green roofs to slow down the amount of runoff reaching that holy estuary. I don’t know whether we have enough time for accretion of individual actions, but the individuals make up the collective, so pay such dissing no mind. And try forest gardening or whatever form of permaculture will work where you live. You are on one of many right paths.