Discuss: Calling All Fanatics

This seems like an awfully short-sighted perspective, sort of like treating the symptom instead of the problem.

Isn’t the real issue that most of us are paralyzed by a fear that we’ve lost agency and nothing we do will matter?

We’re also not trained as activists, we’re trained as complacent beings. I don’t see would-be activists being half-hearted, I see people not knowing how to be activist at all.

“…..in this time, as countless multitudes of humans and nonhumans suffer for the profits and luxuries of a few, and as species go extinct at rates greater than any in the last scores of millions of years….for anyone not to devote her/his talents and energies to defending the planet is a betrayal of the worst magnitude, a gesture of contempt against life itself.  It is unforgivable.”

For me, the heart of Derrick Jensen’s work is a call to awaken conscience in us.  Not the superficial conscience that is full of alibis, rationalizations, denials, and all sorts of thinly disguised cop-outs, but the true deep conscience still alive in each of us, even though buried for so long under all that superficial garbage.

True things are not always nice, and nice things are not always true.  The awakening of real conscience is usually painful and inconvenient.  It disturbs the relatively smooth flow of our unreflective living.  It asks us first to change our thoughts and feelings, and then to take action, often in difficult and insecure directions.  That awakening may open up a gap between oneself and some of those who have been close to one.  One’s life could be changed in really major ways.  The wish to ignore and rebury these disturbing new insights will become strong.  For those who choose to persist in this awakening, life will never be the same again.

I have never read the Abbey quote the way Derrick Jensen says people read it, as an excuse for inaction.  I read it as a tongue-in-cheek warning not to burn out, to be all-consumed by activism.  Even more that that, I take it as a call to enjoy life, to take the time to enjoy it to recharge so you have even more energy to defend what you love and what is intrinsically worth defending, for its own sake, not just ours.  Personally, I find that activism is fun, resistance is fun.  I get a big charge out of doing it because I know I am participating in the defense of what is most defensible of all.  I wouldn’t raise a finger to defend capitalism, or even the nation-state, but defending life on Earth is something I can feel passion for.  That is the one thing worth defending against the death-dealing ways of our culture and economy.  Therefore, I like the spiritedness of this piece by Jensen—it feels less gloomy, even though he draws attention to a grim reality, and less harsh than some of his earlier pieces and for that reason it speaks to me a lot more than some of those others have.  I am glad he admits we should find enjoyment in the things we are defending.
Now I do not think every book or film needs to begin with the knowledge of a planet-killing culture, that we can tell other stories. However, I believe we need to live with this constant awareness in all that we do even when we write books or tell stories about different things.  Especially since humanity is now going in the opposite direction, caring less about the environment, and being in greater denial, even as things get worse.  For example, the oil spill is destroying the economy, culture and most of all the ecology of an entire region and yet there is little shift in consciousness.  Hardly anyone is saying, enough is enough.  There is talk of continuing to drill deep into the Gulf and into the sea.  The spill has not altered human environmental consciousness in any meaningful direction.  Makes me wonder if humans are even genetically capable of it, which, if we are not, then we are hard-wired not to survive as a species.  In order to survive, humans will need to evolve toward a higher consciousness that makes us capable of feeling the connection to the Earth and all life on it.  I am beginning to wonder if our species gets it, is even capable of getting it.  They may be at an evolutionary dead-end.  As for me, I am going to assume this is not true.  I am going to assume we can all be like Derrick Jensen and start bringing the awareness of environmental destruction to the forefront of our consciousness so we can reshape our cultural practices accordingly and take a great evolutionary leap forward.

On comment #3, “In order to survive, humans will need to evolve toward a higher consciousness that makes us capable of feeling the connection to the Earth and all life on it.  I am beginning to wonder if our species gets it, is even capable of getting it.”

I’d want to caution against conflating a dysfunctional culture with all humans.  There are still cultures out there that teach their members to feel a connection to the earth as an extension of their bodies.  Unfortunately those cultures (and their languages) are becoming extinct as fast as species are.  But because those cultures contain members that are as human as I am, I am inspired to believe that it doesn’t take an evolutionary leap, just an ability to look objectively at what we are doing, an ability to determine the longest lever of change available given the tools and resources at hand, a lot of courage, and a whole lot of hard work.  Not that any of that is easy but at least we don’t have to change humans, just the culture that a lot of us are living in.  And culture is going to change anyway so why not jump in there, give it everything we’ve got and try to make it a positive change while we still have the chance?

I agree with Mike K that ‘the heart of Derrick Jensen’s work is a call to awaken conscience in us.’ The trouble is, this essay is not going to be read by the multitudes. It is here in Orion, where many of us readers are, like Derrick himself, those same exhausted firepeople whose consciences are already so strong that we feel guilty every moment we are not doing something towards putting out fires. I struggle with this on a daily basis. Even giving my all never feels like enough. So as Alpha Griz points out, we must give ourselves permission to stop regularly and re-charge. Burnt-out firepeople don’t do their job well.

I feel about Derrick Jensen the way Jensen appears to feel about Edward Abbey: much to admire, and much to critique. Often when I read Jensen, I think, “He’s writing this for himself; that is, he’s telling *himself* what he needs to hear.”  He has made a career of being a prophetic voice, but even prophets need to rest, laugh, and fall in love. Take a day off, Derrick.

We’re all embroiled in a system not of our creation, and it’ll take some time to dismantle it.  Derrick flies around the country giving lectures (you can’t do it all by bicycle) and sells books that kill lots of trees.  So it feels annoying to have his voice be the one always goading the rest of us fallen souls to wake up and change our ways.

Jensen frustrates and pushes me.  I’ll always eagerly read his columns - and have the sense that he, like most of the rest of us, is working out his own pain.

—R.

I’m not exhausted.

I do what I can when I can.

Sometimes it has effect and makes a difference I can see; sometimes it is more of a gamble or an investment.

There is no reason not to feel joy about the miracle/s of the earth, and even the humans on it, while working hard in various ways and on various levels against the evil (yes evil) that men and women as individuals and in the collective sense do.

It is all right to mourn great losses, and mourn them hard, fight hard and fearlessly and then get up and jam with the best of the rock-n-rollers, have an occasional sensory, non-violent and low energy use bacchanal.

I reject the puritan in much of what passes as acceptable attitudes about activism. It is how we use what we use, and in what form we expect profit to come to us that are at issue, not the seeking of pleasure and living well on a planet that can easily provide us with what we need as long as we stop thinking that we must have more of it than it can give.

It is okay to be hopeful and still understand that we may not be successful, we may lose, it may not be in the cards… but also that there are many forms of winning and that in losing perhaps the best outcome may still occur. Suffering may be epidemic, but so is self actualization. And sometimes, maybe even often, they are part of the same package and neither can exist without the other.

And it is fine to do these things in small ways. Rain drops fill lakes. Small waves make big canyons.

Emma Goldman said much the same thing as Abbey: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

If we do not live life to the fullest, even in the midst of a slow-motion catastrophe (remember that civilization has been with us for thousands of years), then we have already surrendered to death and may be colluding with it.

An activist, above all, must understand the difference between what is urgent and what is truly important. If a house is on fire, it may be urgent to respond in the moment to protect life and property (though sometimes we firefighters allow a building to burn and simply prevent it from spreading), but not all fires must be fought (wildland firefighters know this – some are natural and beneficial). And a firefighter who does not enjoy life has no incentive to protect it.

Thomas Merton, the silent contemplative whose life of not-doing had more impact on the world than a thousand fanatical activists, knew this: “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.  More than that, it is cooperation with violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys her own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

And we know today that when we shift into “fight or flight” mode we are controlled by our reptile brain and our higher brain is cut out of the loop. In other words, we become dumb and reflexive. We also know that one cannot live in a constant state of arousal without destroying one’s health and ability to be responsive and responsible.

Jensen would have us wallow in regrets, guilt and the distracting wishing that we might have averted the loss of a loved one, rather than celebrate the time we had spent together. Death and loss is as essential an element of life as the birth of a new creature or a new love. It is from loss that we mature and develop empathy for others, and learn to appreciate the evanescent, ephemeral nature of life.

If living fully is an “escape or indulgence”, as Jensen would have us believe, then I don’t want to be part of his revolution. And, in any case, while we firefighters are drowning the inferno, other dreamers and visionaries must be also be hard at work designing the new house and creating better tools for that manifestation. What good to undo our culture without at the same time creating another one to supplant it?

We don’t need more full-blooded fanatics who are always so sure that they are doing God’s (or the Universe’s) holy work. We need warriors who know how to maintain their own inner harmony so that they can truly be peaceweavers and not war-mongers. The most powerful warrior, after all, is the one who never unsheathes his sword.