Discuss: High on Progress

Denis Frith,

I think Derrick focuses so much on what certain human cultures have done because that’s what we can have an effect on. Natural forces will do what they do, and we would do well to pay attention to them, but ultimately we’re responsible primarily for our own behavior and that of the culture we live within.

kulturCritic,

Industrial technology enthralls people because it produces things that seem so wholly separate from the natural world, when really their origins are less visible than, say, the digging sticks and ostrich-egg shells used in the Kalahari Desert. They allow a false sense of separation and superiority, a feeling of “We made this” and not “the world has allowed this to be made”.

This may be a disturbing comparison, but it’s as if (male) scientists manipulated a woman into gestating and bearing robotic children so that the scientists could say, “Look, we have created life!” as the woman lies close to death from the abuse (no doubt administered according to the most modern and rigorous technical protocols). Why would someone do this? Well, for starters, the robotic children can be operated by remote control. Real human babies, not so much, being self-conscious and willful beings.

The double bind you describe at the end of your post is very real. Understanding the game, as you say, is key, allowing you to be in a healthier position.

AlanT,

Thanks for posting the Wade Davis interview. Wade is very forceful but gentle in his defense of other cultures. I hadn’t heard the Australian Aboriginal philosophy described in that way before, as focused on maintaining the world, though that seems consistent with what I’ve read about the Dreaming as the eternal present that’s coexistent with the original process of creation.

I wish he wouldn’t talk about the “barbarism” that’s inherent in all humans, for which culture serves as a control. I mean, that’s part of life too, and I think that can get too easily misinterpreted.

Brother John,

Could you talk more about how Derrick manipulated addiction? I thought it was a pretty good comparison. What do you mean when you say “addiction is a low grade spiritual quest that provides a gateway to a full spiritual life”? That does sound different than Derrick talking about this particular addiction, the addiction to control. Is it that the behaviors or substances or situations that we are addicted to feel enough like something good that we pursue them as if we were pursuing something healthy? That the impulse that drives addictions in the first place is good, but misdirected and fixated on something unhealthy, or in an unhealthy intensity or focus? I could also read it that, through being addicted to something, and then overcoming it, that process leads to a full spiritual life.

Andrew

Every word of it is worth reflecting and acting upon. None could have conveyed the evil effects of our “progress” addiction more beautifully.

Jensen seems to enjoy languishing in the interminable landscape of modernity. It allows him to criticize the purveyors of the addiction, the addicts themselves, and then anyone who attempts to break the addiction in a way that is, by his reckoning, banal or trivial. In a previous polemic, he scoffs at people who think taking shorter showers is going to “save the planet.” In this one, he indicts all of Western civilization for being addicted to them. No wonder readers are left with seemingly no way out other than suicide!

Oh good grief. There are so many positive things going on right now, so many people dedicating themselves heart and soul to stopping the destruction and healing the planet. Why keep berating people for screwing up? Ranting and raving doesn’t change a thing. Here are some ways we can get off our self-destruction and addictions and live like dignified, intelligent beings who know better than to shit in their own nests:

http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Quit y’er bitchin’ and start a revolution!

The term “progress” has positive connations, which aren’t going away any time soon.

So it would make the most sense to say that what generally is considered progress (e.g. more mining) isn’t progress at all.

Instead of saying that you’re anti-progress, why not just say that you’re anti-killing, anti-destruction, ... etc ?
(.. regardless of whether or not you say you that you are pro-“progress”)

Amen to Makla and Rebecca.  I guess this was my point in my initial comment, though much better said by you.  While I do share so many of his views, the bleakness and frank hopelessness of this was exhausting but ultimately unhelpful.  I read another interesting article lately (sorry, not in front of me to reference).  It hinted at how good we liberals are at showing how smart we are and how well we can define problems, but through all of our arrogance somehow offer very few solutions.  Amen to this also.

The point of Derrick Jensen’s writing, as I see it, is to make people feel the hopelessness of persisting in our current holding patterns.  He doesn’t scoff at people who take shorter showers because its the right thing to do, he simply points out that taking shorter showers will not save the planet, and that to pretend that it will is delusional. That seems fair enough to me.

When Rebecca Swan says to ‘start a revolution’, she then links to a video of the Bolivian climate conference.  This project of Morales’ seems praiseworthy, and the notion that the 2 billion (mostly poor, ‘third-world’) people who will be most effected by climate change should have a vote in a referendum is reasonable enough.  However, to expect that the leaders of the United States, Europe, China, India, Russia, Japan, etc. will do what’s right and ratify their decisions and abide by the will of the people (esp. poor people) is to persist in a delusion.  The people in power will never do what’s right for the planet or the people who live on it.  They got to be powerful by exploiting, enslaving and killing the planet and people, and they happen to like being powerful.  They are not going to stop doing what makes them powerful just because we ask nicely, or because we have impeccably reasoned arguments.  They will not even stop if you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the current course means planetary doom, and will of course be their own funeral as well as ours.  They will always have a rationalization, a way of subverting the truth, a way of justifying their continued subjugation of all life.  Everyone knows this.

Our democratic processes (such as they are - by now they are hollow forms, if ever they were otherwise), and the means by which power has been resisted most commonly in the last century, have all proved impotent to stop the insanity of the powerful.  Jensen points this out, over and over in his various columns and books, not to promote hopelessness for its own sake, but to help people realize that what we have been doing is not working, and will not work in the future.  If we are serious about saving life on the planet, we need to get serious about resistance.  We need a a ‘culture of resistance’ - as Arundhati Roy recently called it, a ‘resistance with consequences.’  What that means to people, and what changes they will make in their own lives, is up to them to decide.  Whatever they decide, their decision will hopefully be informed by what Jensen claims as the sixth premise of his book Endgame, and which to me seems like an unassailable fact -

“Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.”

Malka says Jensen’s readers are left ‘with no other way out but suicide’.  But it is suicidal (in fact ecocidal) to persist in our delusions.  Rebecca’s idea about starting a revolution is more to the point - but a referendum is not a revolution.  A revolution, by definition, means removing the powerful from their positions of power, depriving the powerful of their power.  We need to start thinking about that.

‘Progress’ is what a disease does.  Maturation is what healthy living beings do.  We need to grow up and face the reality of our situation.  That is why Derrick Jensen’s work is so important.

Time Ghost

A brilliant post, really!

I think your assessment of both Jensen’s appeal and the meaning of Premise Six is right on.  But, I don’t see revolution or resistance as a solution.  In fact, if you and Derrick are correct that this is a disease, a disease that is progressing (like a cancer), and has no hope of going into remission (is unredeemable), than I do not understand the logic suggesting revolutionary change…

The agenda of this civilization’s curriculum is now deeply entrenched in our bones, and the disease is progressing.  Certainly, we can do things to slow the progress down, limp along a bit longer… but I don’t for the life of me, see a way out of theis condition.

Now, I know Jensen talks about getting serious with resistance, but, is he just not suggesting that we take down the master’s house with his own tools?  How could it be otherwise?

Revolution simply supplants one power structure with another, witness global politics over the past 6,000 years!!! 

I hate to be a pessimist; but I see no hope for the human race, and only a bit more for the planet when we have had our way with her!!!