Discuss: Calling All Fanatics

The human world on planet earth is suffering from a profound inner sickness that will very likely destroy most of the life on our world including ourselves.  We are embarked on a path of colossal failure.  Anyone who fails to see this is either hopelessly uninformed, deep in unconscious denial, or deluded by wishful thinking.  To fully awaken to this ongoing crisis is a necessary first step towards discovering a cure for what can only be called our terminal madness.  Anything that helps this awakening is incredibly important and valuable.  Derrick Jensen’s contribution is of this kind.  Rather than nit pick his message, let us use his (sometimes) shocking directness to galvanize our energies and rouse us from our slumbers.

As far as how to deal with our global emergency, I would hope that forums like this one at Orion would be motivated towards coming up with some of those answers.  We clearly do not have those effective plans and methods worked out yet.  We are hungry and waiting for breakthroughs in crucial areas.  Let’s put our forum energies into sharing our best ideas of how to stop this death march of civilization, before it is truly too late.

Mike K: if someone did have solutions to the global emergency, but weren’t scientifically “qualified”,  would anyone listen to them do you think?
The quantitative bias of science is causing the global emergency by applying its bias to the qualitative living reality of life on Earth, yet we look to science for answers. The only place science is leading us to is the extinction of H.sapiens. The 6th extinction is more accurately The First Unnatural Extinction. It’s got nothing to do with natural processes. Not only is science engineering ecological simplification, it is also engineering cultural simplification (which Prof. Harry Recher names as the Mac-culture). Climate change is symptomatic of evolutionary meltdown, not carbon emissions. Evolutionary meltdown is the main issue of our times. It is the unrelenting destruction of the qualitative web of life, over three billion years in the making, and only around four decades in the unravelling (corresponding with the ascendence of Corporate Empire’s absolute power) It is time we acknowledged the visionary right-hemispheric faculty - the feminine principle of mind - and its power to see through the illusion of materialism to the causal spatial dynamics of the at-least ninety percent of reality that is qualitative. Humanity has to survive its own rationality’s anal need for ‘proofs’, and start seeing what IS right before its eyes, and begin to read between the lines. The language of the right-‘brain’ is metaphor. Metaphor enables us to see the Big Picture of Life, and fit all of its parts within their rightful place.No two ways about it; we’ve got to evolve our visionary perception folks, before it’s too late!

“I think often of a line by the psychiatrist R. D. Laing, “Few books today are forgivable.” He wrote this, I believe, because we have become so very alienated from our own experience, from who we are, and this alienation is so destructive to others and to ourselves that if a book does not take this alienation as its starting point and work toward rectifying it, we’d all be better off looking at blank pieces of paper.”

I am surprised that no one has yet addressed what appears to be a foundational insight of Derrick’s project here, and more generally. 

He is strongly suggesting here, perhaps more clearly than he has stated in other forums, that our species has been inflicted with a disease that has attacked our very sense of who we are and from whence we have come. 

There is a self-estrangement that has us believing we are who (what) we are not.  Perhaps it is due to a hundreds of generations of civilized enculturation.  I believe Derrick would not object to this characterization of the situation.  But, what has perhaps occured as a result of this is a forgetfulness of who we are (as a species).  As others have pointed out more clearly, our original home was the Pleistocene.  We are hunter-gathers, egalitarian, kinship grounded, politically anarchic, tribal animals at our base.  But the conditions which supported this life, no longer exist.  The physical conditions have been destroyed as much as the psychic conditions have been covered over and forgotten through the repeated developments and adumbrations of the institutionalized madness which we call civilization.

But, still Derrick and others are able to reach out and touch that genetic memory trace, that “feral core” that remains instinctively within each of us, buried underneath the scaffolding of our civilized ways.

So, the question becomes, how do we awaken that memory trace within the larger segment of humanity?  How do we touch that alientated feral core that is still there but lost deep within our brothers and sisters?  Or don’t we dare?

Perhaps the pyschic fallout from the large scale recognition of this alienation from our feral selves would create even more havoc now.  Perhaps we have gone past the middle point.  Perhaps it is not just the case of peak oil, but peak humanity.  We have gone too far to be capable of turning back.

So, the question then is, how do we move forward?  Is there a forward towards which we should, could, must move?  But that raises another tricky issue.  Part and parcel of the problem of our alienation is our civilized commitment to progress, to the future and to moving forward.  Are we not deliberately deluding ourselves to think this is just another rung in the corporate ladder?  Our evolution to a new plateau?  I don’t know the answer.  But I am suspicious of the presumption of the need to more “progress”.

Certainly there are things we can do as ‘individuals"to recollect that feral core, to change something significant about how we live socially, physically and psychically in the world.  But, the question remains about what can we achieve collectively.  I am cynical.  I do not believe there is any salvation for the human race at this juncture… we have gone too far.  And, again, to look for science or technology to save us is, as Einstein noted, to do the same thing and expect a different outcome… madness.

Anyway, these are some thoughts for us to all consider; they have occupied my own reflections for quite a number of years.

Derrick Jensen. Where does this man find such vast reserves of hope and vision? How does he remain steadfastly optimistic and positive in the face of our current realities? I am not being sarcastic.

I do not live in a dry place. I do hang clothes to dry when I can. I have no idea what joining forces with my neighbors would be or how one would do it.

I could not begin to think of how to organize a neighborhood into a yard sale and the community garden a few of us mustered together down the street is rife with weeds for want of participants.

I do not have television and my friends think me mad for continuing to use the same old cell phone that still works as a phone despite its broken camera and lack of “capabilities” and “apps.”

And so I throw money quite randomly into the demanding envelopes that organized groups send to my mailbox. And I spend even more to put a solar-thermal system over my head and under foot.

None of these things gives me the least bit of assurance that I am having one iota of impact on the capitalist corporate machine of dominant culture.

I have not bred and never will. This gives me the most assurance for the future. I am not worried about “my children and grandchildren.” I harbor no anthropocentric illusions about our species’ role on this planet. The planet will survive. We might leave it a charred barren hunk of rock, but it will still go ‘round as though we’d never been. It saddens me that we feel obliged and entitled to take all other life forms with us when we go, but go we must, and go we will.

If more of us could not only accept the very finite nature of our existence, but Make It So, capitalism and consumerism would crumble. If more of us organized around the idea of carefully and conscientiously checking out for good, all the other species we feel “responsible” for would get on much better than they would with us gnashing our teeth and advocating for them yet refusing to simply leave.

I am too nosy or curious and probably too hedonistic for suicide, and it would make so little difference anyway. By failing to produce the “future generations” who will more likely perpetuate than remediate our wrongs, I am making so much more of a difference than I could by hastening my own paltry inevitable death.

I love this piece by Derrick. As a writer and publisher of a small journal, every time I begin a new piece of writing, or start putting Gaian Voices together, it’s for the Earth. Even when working in my garden, which keeps me sane and reminds me, everyday, of the beauty and resilience of Nature, I cannot escape what our so-called civilization is doing to the Earth. And especially now as oil poisons the Gulf and ultimately so much more, and the death, the images seared in my mind and heart forever.

I’ll never forget an experience I had many years ago. My sister had been in a terrible car accident and lay in a coma, her fate according to the doctors, was to be a “vegetable” (she isn’t). Our mother was dying of cancer, a process that happened very quickly after my sister’s accident. I was pregnant with my youngest son. It was a very painful, stressful time. And yet my (now ex) husband and I had gone out to lunch and were sitting talking while we ate and I found myself laughing at something. And I caught myself in that moment: How can I sit here, enjoying myself if even for a moment, while my sister lays in a coma, while my mother lay dying? It was an important lesson in being alive. And the few moments of levity I had during those months were essential to my health and sanity. So, yes, we need to have fun and laugh and celebrate even while the shit is hitting the fan. So feeling guilty for enjoying myself and my family on occasion isn’t an option for me anymore. Neither is feeling guilty for reminding my family and friends of the dire situation we are in – something I’m apt to do every day.

For me the very hardest part of all of this is knowing that so few people in the westernized, capitalist world really understand, or even seem to care, about what we are doing to the Earth and to the more-than-human species who share it with us. This brings me a great deal of pain and can throw me into despair. Because I know that if enough of us were to wake up and realize what’s going on and the importance of it and that, given enough numbers and commitment and will, we really COULD change it, but that’s not going to happen. People are too caught up in their own dramas, real or imagined. The Earth, nature, is so far removed from so many people’s lives these days. It’s something they see in videos or in photos or maybe, if they’re lucky, on vacation to the shore or the mountains. And even those of us fortunate enough to live in the country, most take it for granted or are too busy trying to deal with the daily grind. The oil disaster is waking some people up. But again, I hear over and over, “There’s nothing I can do about it.” I feel the same way, though I didn’t always. I used to believe I really could make a difference in the larger picture. But the larger picture is now so controlled by elites, by corporations, by big money, and money is all that matters after all. Sure it’s possible enough of us will wake up. But what will we do once awakened? How will we come together when we’re scattered all over the place, each with our own lives, our own situations (me, for example, taking care of my now-disabled sister, I can’t just up and walk away, I can’t just pack a few things and move to a tent city, I can’t even move to a small cabin somewhere and live off the grid because no way could my sister deal with that and I promised my parents, both now deceased, that I would take care of my sister. One doesn’t casually break promises one makes to dead parents. Perhaps you can tell I’ve thought of all these things, often?

I do believe we can turn things around. We, humanity, have the power though I believe lots of that power has to do with spirit and consciousness rather than money and politics. But that belief is tempered by a huge dose of realism. I believe it’s possible, but I don’t necessarily believe it will happen. . .

It is fascinating and heartening that DJ’s short essays draw so many deeply felt and thoughtful responses.  A true teacher functions best as a catalyst to awaken and facilitate the creative capacities latent in others.  In his book “Walking on Water”  Derrick describes his teaching methods with students in prison and school.  It is a stimulating and often hilarious wild ride that reveals what education could be if we removed the stifling straight-jacket it usually operates within.  Having shared/facilitated in several prisons myself, I found his experience really eye opening.  A dead educational system is one of the foundations of the mess we are in. I think that changing this and bringing real educative experience to our societies is one of the key levers to deep awakening of hearts and minds that would help birth a new world.

The process of open dialog in small groups has tremendous potential that many “activists” fail to appreciate.  Changing minds can change the world.  The creative directions we need to discover may be forged in the fiery crucible of mutual sharing. There are essential truths that can only be realized and developed in interaction with others.  This is not all “intellectual” knowledge.

I want to thank all of you who are investing your hearts and heads in this mutual creative search.  Let’s not leave all the think tank energy for the right wing spin machine!

there are plenty of us who are awake enough..so here is my question…why are people splintered into groups of save this and save that, with a variety of publications EMPLOYING writers all speaking the same truth…environment…usually as if it were a separate entity from the rest of life?

There is a plexiglass ceiling dividing the Exonn Walmart Monsanto ETC group from those that want to live in harmony with Gaia

  Look at what you spend and on what. If the product is not from your own garden, or attained through your personal harvest, then investigate it’s source. America must stop purchasing from outsourced industry, from the sick agribusiness and slaughter, stop eating GM food.and many other stops…go find out how your consumerism is tied to them… In order to stop the machine, you must take away their paycheck. See how big box stores have changed the laws that prevent small biz from thriving in your communities. They will not stop until the consumer stops.
    Deal with the addiction. Don’t just talk about it.
      Save the planet? The planet does not need saving. Humans are fodder. if we want to be more than that, we have to start acting like it.

I disagree. There are lots of us who are awake, but obviously not enough. If there were, things would be different. There are those who are beginning to twitch out of their deep sleep. Maybe if enough of them awaken? Who knows.

I like the idea of our feral core. To me this is the essense of what it means to be a human being, as a species. But while most people are aware that we are a species, they don’t really grok what that implies, or don’t want to.

And there are many of us who already pay attention to what we buy (or don’t buy and why), where it comes from, who don’t by GMO food and who avoid patronizing box stores with crap from China, etc., and factory farmed meat and vegetables, etc. It’s not possible to be totally pure but I know lots of folks who put in a commendable effort. We are making those changes that individuals can make. But change needs to happen beyond that and instead I see more and more isolation when the opposite is what is needed.

The big box stores haven’t changed the laws (to my knowledge anyway). But they do have the bucks to push and push and push until they get what they want. And they don’t care if the town wants them or not, they find a location and in they go. Again, it’s money talking and that’s all most folks, especially those who have managed to get elected or appointed, even in small towns, care about. Someone like myself, for example, might have supporters, but not enough to be put in a place of “power”.

Dealing with the addiction is easy if what you’re buying isn’t something you need. But unless we make all our clothes & shoes, grow all our food, and preserve it too, live where there’s no need for a car to get to work, or from point A to point B (or are young enough and strong/healthy enough to cycle everywhere, even in winter in New England), never get seriously sick & have excellent knowledge of herbs/natural remedies for non-serious illnesses, etc. (you get the point), we’re going to have to interact with the consumer system that has so many addicted to overconsumption. This gets me down big time, too. Just saying “get over the addiction” doesn’t do it. Again, there’s only so much one can do as an individual.

I understand, too, the frustration of all the different groups “saving this and saving that”, seemingly dispersing all that energy so it’s meaningless. I don’t have an answer except that people are reached by different means. What rips my heart out may not rip yours out, so whatever it takes, right? Some will contribute or act on behalf of old growth, others on behalf of sea turtles or polar bears or against that heartbreaking plastic world in the ocean. But it all needs doing.

And as a writer, believe me, there’s not a lot of money to be made writing about the environment these days. I used to be able to support myself (kind of) as a freelance writer. No more. Unless it’s a slick publication with fancy ads the writers get paid a pittance, if at all.