Lost Myself
Derrick Jensen reminds us that we are all insane. He says we hate life, hate ourselves, hate women, hate other species. Otherwise how could we be in the process of destroying the world and annihilating other species, just as important as ourselves?
I just had another thought. What if we don't hate all those beings and systems (a lot anyway) but we just want to destroy these human made structures that make life meaningless. My life often feels meaningless. I have to get up in the morning from my warm, soft bed. Food is provided for my breakfast. I get on a bus that carries me to a place where I sit in front of a computer all day in relatively warmth and comfort and have the occasional meaningless conversation. Then I come home via the same bus. More food appears (for most it's all ready to heat in a few minutes) and I watch some television, see a movie, have a few drinks (alone is often better sadly). Then it's off to bed and repeat.
Am I waiting to die? Am I waiting for anything? Am I even alive?
At what point does a comfortable life make an animal (and humans are most certainly animals), for tens of thousands of years used to foraging, hunting, starving, freezing, being scared of predators, go mad from all the comfort and security? It's surely in our cells. Watchfulness, catching scents on the wind, running for our lives, rejoicing in another day. You can't destroy these truths with all the ipods, pepsi, cars in the world.
But have we become like cattle. Slaves inside fences protected from everything even bacteria. No purpose, no fear. The eyes lose their sharpness, their focus. When humans are gone, so go these slaves.
So we act, unconsciously, to destroy this human-constructed prison. Some pick up guns, some spray paint cans, others march, others merely maintain the trajectory of doom, taking more than they should each and every day. The end will be the same: a return to the realities of life for our children and our grandchildren and beyond. Struggle, suffering, joy in the smallest things, wonder at the stars. Despite us the perfect, clean, pristine pre-slave world will return in time, a lot of time.
However the longer we civilized persist, the farther the fall will be. So pick up a gun, spray paint, march or speed up your overconsumption. We all have the same liberating goal. Let's get there.
(These thoughts came to me shortly after waking up this morning. Maybe now it's only in dreams that our minds reach their full capacity).
posted by Mentat Oom at 9:46 AM
6 Comments:
Sorry Thom but as your friend, I gotta say something, at the least to shake up the recent tone of your blog.
Yeah, life does get pretty shitty when you fill it with such contempt for everything around you. Self loathing for participating in the social constructions of a time and place won't bring about the restorative processes you wish to see.
And, to glorify the world in its "natural state" is also to glorify extreme violence, suffering and a complete absense of empathy. Yes, there will always be disharmony, even without humans. Nature is not kind, it does not provide justice for all and to misunderstand that is to misunderstand the fundamental underpinnings of ecological processes. If nothing else, those National Geographic shows should have taught you that nature is beautiful but very cruel, with or without humans.
Instead of being ashamed to be part of planet's most destructive species and advocating human extinction (a ridiculous thing to advocate in my opinion), why not reflect on constructive things that can help to motivate change.
Telling someone they're an asshole and breaking their things does not help them not be an asshole nor does it welcome them to join you and the other "non-assholes". In fact, the negativity and personal attacks kind of make you an asshole yourself.
But, enabling better ways of being and continuing to celebrate successes might encourage the kind of changes you wish to see. Certainly anyone I've ever seen enduringly change their behavior is because they've felt empowered to do something positive.
Either way, you'll be a hell of a lot less depressed (and depressing) if you use your creative gifts to encourage less suffering (both human and non-human created). Advocating human extinction and a reclaimation of some nostalgic misunderstanding of the earth's past will leave you and those who listen to you feeling disempowered and helpless.
Sorry, but as a regular reader and seldom contributor to your blog, I gotta be honest.
11:04 AM
The rage and mobilization and despair that Thom (and the people around him who love him and feel the same way he does) comes out of the same positivity, the same hope (or better, intention) for the future, and the same love of life that motivates anyone who seeks social change. It is not in the least "contempt for everything around you".
For me, anyway, it's deep deep empathy and loss for what's hidden and destroyed by what's around you. It's that bone memory and instinct, the "sharp focus" of people living in and with their environment, not "nostalgia" at all, but acceptance of and willing, responsible contribution to the whole cycle. The system that ultimately dictates and is responsible for all the "systems" we want to destroy, need to destroy, if the world that we love will survive.
Derrick Jensen calls it the predator prey relationship, where anything that consumes takes innate responsibility for the continued existence and dignity of the community of their prey. Those "things" we're talking about breaking don't "belong" to people, people have duties to them.
The idea that life in nature is "nasty brutish and short", or in your words full of "extreme violence, suffering and a complete absence of empathy" is the same fear of completeness that is repeated over and over in the ode to civilization, the assumptions and axioms underpinning the whole machine.
It's okay to feel despair. To be guilty, grief stricken, scared and angry. It's equally okay, and powerful, and important, to feel empowered, positive, mobilized and in love. That's the full spectrum of emotions that a life of mindless consumption and denial of reality mutes.
What few people are yet willing to talk about is the fact that to overcome the empire means to embrace a full range of tactics and choices and responses means to do wonderful, transformative, lifegiving and constructive things, and to do the dirty work of destruction.
Dismantle globally, renew locally.
Those laws of nature we're so scared of will eventually, necessarily overcome our discomfort with action. We can talk about it realistically, or we can not.
3:14 AM
Some good conversation. Excellent.
I read a news story last week that covered an IPCC report claiming that humans have 10 years to change course on climate change or it will run away. Case closed.
We are beyond the phase where we need to be nice to people and help them to change for the betterment of all beings. It doesn't work--at least not enough to lead to a measurable change. I work for an organization that supposedly works for this change but everyone drives private vehicles alone every day and the other day my boss ate McDonald's during our staff meeting. That spoke volumes to me. I'm failing so I need a new strategy.
The problem is that people aren't willing to change and why would they? On the surface we have everything, while the foundation, built on millions of other beings and systems is rotten. We just haven't toppled over yet. But we will.
So I'll offer solutions but they won't be popular like a one-child policy or banning cars from cities. If people don't like them then I have two choices. I can either force them or I can submit and ask them to do something marginal that will make them feel good but achieve nothing like an anti-idling campaign. So that's why I feel I have only one choice. Modern civilized humans don't care.
In terms of "nature", I do think it is beautiful and perfect, so much the mirror of ourselves. It's so perfect a creation that I almost fight back tears that it could be lost to stupidity.
There is no extreme violence in natural systems, plants and animals take only what they need to survive. It might seem violent to watch a lion crush a gazelle's neck but that is a knee-jerk thought. The lion loves and needs the gazelle to live and vice versa, it's a relationship.
I see billions of cars pumping out death as extreme violence; and radiation therapy for cancer; and depleted uranium and mushroom clouds as extreme violence. I would rather humans had to kill for food, and respect and love their prey, risk dying at the hands of other predators, and run wild under green canopies than do any of these terrible things anymore.
Then there's suffering. Sure if there's a drought or a forest fire or a year without a summer then plants and animals suffer while searching for food, shelter and companionship. But these things are actually quite creative. They lead to innovation and new forms and ways of coping. Sure beings suffer and die but the world continues. The world follows cycles unlike modern humans who embrace linear growth, making the maintenance of this beautiful planet impossible.
Disharmony. Ask Zoe about that one. There is utter and total harmony in all the natural systems of the world. There is only one creature that embraces and spreads disharmony on this planet. If there is disharmony today it is our fault. Hence my consideration of human extinction. However I only really mean the current "civilized" human should be sent to the dustbin of history. Humans for millions of years were once part of the systems they inhabited and can come home again.
I think we have been lied to for a long time about the world. I want to tell a story that I was once told. I can't remember who told it but I have never forgotten it and never will and will tell it for the rest of my life.
The wind blows softly through the palm trees on an island near the equator. It's a beautiful sunny day and against one of the tall trees a topless man sits. His shorts seem homemade and weatherbeaten and torn but he doesn't seem to care. Next to him is a fishing rod and three fish tied together hanging from the rod. He is smiling and enjoying the wind in his face. It flows into him and he is happy at it's gift.
Along the beach walks another man in an unnaturally bring t-shirt, khaki shorts and designer sandals. He approaches the reclining man and throws a shadow on his tanned body. The wind no longer reaches him.
"Hello friend," the newcomer declares. "You look well".
"I've had a great day of fishing. Got three big fish and it's not even noon. I'm relaxing before heading home where my wife will cook these up for me and my children". He is too polite to ask the stranger to step to the side and allow the sun and wind to return.
The stranger smiles. "You've done well today. Still you could be doing much more. There are plenty more fish in the sea and still many hours in the day. Why not return to your boat and increase your catch?"
The man looks up at him quizzically. "Why would I want to do that?"
"Well you could return with enough to feed your family and sell a few more to your neighbours. Then with your profits, in time, you could purchase a second boat and hire another fisherman. This would increase the amount you caught and would bring back to sell on shore. Then you could continue to grow your business, secure exclusive access to this patch and dominate the market."
The man was losing his patience with this foolish proposal. "And why would I want to do that?"
"So you can save up enough to retire and sit comfortably on a white sandy beach for the rest of your days."
1:00 PM
George Bush once said,
'I know how hard it is to put food on your family.'
I think it is important to remember such quotes when reading your blogs.
5:41 AM
Thom, you know I love you man and I would never discount a diversity of tactics... I only worry that you'll marginalizing yourself by adopting voilence as a means to counter violence.
Since he was invoked by the previous commentator, the wise philosopher George Bush also once said "You're either with us or against us." All this rhetoric about Empire and destructing the machine starts to resonate on the same militaristic frequency of false dichotomies and contempt towards those who have a different worldview.
The world doesn't need more heros, the noble and priviledged self-nominated few who think they alone can diagnose and solve society's ills. Collaboration, especially with your opposites and especially those small victories is the space where durable solutions and momentum will be found.
When you speak in absolutes as you have started to do you blind yourself to the small and subtle changes happening around you everywhere. I find it very dismissive to suggest that things like the anti-idling campaign aren't important. Maybe it doesn't get you all excited like smashing an SUV might but you don't seem to understand what it means to build capacity for change. Just like run away climate change, cultural change takes time to build to that critical mass.
And, stop judging others for not immediately meeting your constructed ideal and occasionally eating or wearing designer products. Frankly, it reminds me a bit of Jesse the pretentious level 5 vegan who pocket mulches and won't eat anything that casts a shadow (A Simpsons reference I know you will understand). I find the the whole exercise of yearning for pre-civilization to be culturally arrogant intellectual masturbation that only a priviledged few can even contemplate.
Also, you are dangerously anthropmorphizing by suggesting there is some kind of moral relationship between one species that consumes another. This is disneyfication to the worst degree to impose false notions that other species regulate their need satisfaction out of some perceived duty to other species. They stop when they are satiated and aren't any more or less greedy than humans. Quite simply, it's easier for them to feel full because they aren't consuming prossessed food. Humans are more destructive at need satisfaction than animals because we've imposed so many stupid technologies and processes that extend our consumptive desires. Its not simply because individuals care or don't care. Caring often leads to stupid outcomes. Moreso it's that people are given only poor choices. If you want better behavior, create better options.
So, on the urgent need to eliminate and transform harmful technologies and structures we agree. But, where I fundamentally disagree with you is that to be an activist you need to take some hedonistic and aggressive approach to destroy people's existing choices... instead of listening to and working directly with the people whom you wish to change to create better choices.
1:55 PM
Initially my response was to comment on the fact that we've become so much like cattle; it reminds me of a common thought of how much I feel like veal, kept inside this structure so I maintain a weak backbone, malnourished and deprived of sunshine to which I instinctually desire.
Marya's right-on about the necessity of expressing the full spectrum of emotions, as the whole picture wouldn't be complete without them; I know I'm subject to fall into despair far too often myself. And to say that 'cultural change takes time to build to that critical mass.' is just fodder to feed the despair I (and many others) feel - we don't have that kind of time to sit around and wait for people to wake up.
Our lifeblood is being dried up, drained, exploited, polluted, stripped out and paved over so fast it makes my heart turn black just thinking about it. To a soul who wants to live with her eyes wide open in a world that forces you to wear a blindfold everywhere you go, the impact of my fellow human beings makes me fairly insane on most days.
And I'm supposed to be happy and encourage changing lightbulbs? Try living without electricity and maybe I'll start smiling.
10:32 AM
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