Another conversation from this Issue #1 which I found rather thought-provoking is one that took place between Anthony McCann and Derrick Jensen — titled “A Gentle Ferocity.” This is how the former introduces the latter:
[Jensen] has a hardcore reputation. Books such as Endgame (2006) have made him arguably the most prominent contemporary ‘critic of civilisation’, if we can talk about such a category. But Jensen does not only offer critique, he advocates actively bringing down the systems on which we currently depend. He reports conspiratorial conversations with ex-military personnel and hackers who discuss ways of bringing global trade to its knees. He champions direct action against an industrial system which destroys the natural world – perhaps most famously in his calls for people to blow up dams to save salmon rivers. His anger is directed, too, at those who say there is no room for violence in activism: he enjoys ‘deconstructing pacifist arguments that don’t make any sense anyway.’
A core focus of Jensen’s is his attention to what he calls “the culture of civilisation.” As he writes in Endgame:
“I would define a civilisation … as a culture – that is, a complex of stories, institutions, and artefacts – that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities (civilisation: from civis, meaning citizen, from Latin civitatis, meaning city-state), with cities being defined … as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life.”
According to him, civilisation as a way of life is “inherently unsustainable”:
“If your way of life is based on the importation of resources, it can never be sustainable. If you require the importation of resources it means you denuded the landscape of that particular resource. The way to live in place forever is to improve your habitat by your presence. It’s what salmon do. It’s what redwoods do. It’s what indigenous humans do. You don’t survive in the long run by exploiting your surroundings, but by actually improving your surroundings.”
In a way reminiscent of Murray Bookchin’s critique of “lifestyle anarchism,” Jensen has little regard for “lifestylists” — “people who believe that lifestyle change equals social change.” As for him, he drives a car, eats meat, and generally believes that incremental change is not an option; which explains why most of the flak that hits him comes from vegetarians and anti-car activists.
He also very critical of the current state of democracy worldwide:
“Before we can begin to use power on our own terms we must realise we are powerless on theirs. Much of the brilliance of the democratic experiment is to con the powerless into believing they have power. What has finally become clear to even the most obtuse is that we the people are powerless in this great democracy. The next turn of the screw was to con us into believing that our power lies in our power to consume, or in our inner power to be enlightened. But only when we realise that we are powerless in all these ways, will we be moved to use power in ways that do affect change.”
His aim is thus to help form “a culture of resistance” that will move us towards “effectively stopping” the culture embedded in this system. To him, this culture of resistance rests on clarity about what it is we want, and the ability to draw conclusions regarding the next steps we should take. In his case:
“I want to live in a world with wild salmon. I want to live in a world with wild sturgeon. I want to live in a world with migratory songbirds. I want to live in a world with more large fish in the oceans every year than the year before, with less plastic, with less dioxin in a mother’s breast milk…. I want people to think about what they want. And the next question is, what are the steps to getting there? We have to make some conscious choices. This is one of the areas where I have got into it with pacifists, because every moment we are making a choice. There is culpability in inaction as well. Standing in the face of a complex situation and doing nothing or acting in your own personal way does not absolve you.”
The capacity for action being power, Jensen often stresses the individual responsibility in making things change: one should not simply “hope” things will get better, but take action.
“Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency. It means you are essentially powerless. That’s how we talk about hope in everyday language. I don’t hope that I eat something today, I’m just going to do it. But when I go on a plane, I hope it doesn’t crash, because I’ve no agency in that situation. If it is going to crash there’s nothing I can do about it.
…
The thing is to figure out what we do and don’t have agency over, and to expand the areas over which we do have agency but don’t perceive. Because one of the central points of any oppressive system is to attempt to get you to believe that you are powerless.”
One of the more controversial aspects of Jensen’s writing is his advocacy of direct action, in the form of physical sabotage. Inspired by historical actions like those of Emmeline Pankhurst, the IRA, the anti-Nazi resistance in WWII, or more recently the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, he sees “eco-sabotage” as an effective means to disrupt the systems of civilisation and help bring about meaningful change. Naturally, this requires a “relentless” attitude that is not always found in the environmental movement:
“Most environmentalists don’t know what the fuck we want. What do we want? Maybe we want to live in a world that uses a bit less electricity and the electricity is made by wind farms, never mind what that does for bats? Let’s get clear on what we want, and let’s do it.”
Action is needed, and action leaves no time for conflicted states of mind:
“The enemy is the capitalists, and the first thing we need to do, and every indigenous person says this to me, the first thing we need to do is to decolonise our hearts and minds. As soon as we do that, as soon as we switch our allegiance to where we live, it becomes very, very clear. There are enemies, and they are my enemies, and the capitalist system and the capitalists themselves are my enemies, and I’ve got no problem saying that.”
But is it always so easy to justify to oneself the logics of committing violence against violence? Jensen is very conscious of this fundamental issue, and grapples with it at length in his books:
“Robert Jay Lifton talks about how before we can commit any mass atrocity you have to convince yourself that what you’re doing is actually in fact beneficial. So the Nazis had themselves convinced that they were not committing genocide, they were purifying the Aryan race. Likewise, capitalists can convince themselves that they are not destroying the world, instead they’re developing natural resources. And this is true on a personal level. I myself have never once in my life been an asshole. Every time I’ve been an asshole I’ve had it fully rationalised.”
When asked why he doesn’t go and blow up dams himself, Jensen replies:
“What are the most pressing problems you can help to solve, given the gifts that are unique to you in all the universe? I have a gift for writing and I need to use that. … My role is to get little pieces of wood and kindling and paper, to pile them up, and to put some lighter fluid on that, and it’s somebody else’s job to light the match. My job is to get bringing down civilisation to pass the lab test, you know?”
Jensen’s view isn’t so much to advocate an armed insurrection, but rather a generalised form of resistance including both pacifist and less pacifist means:
“My problem is not with someone being pacifist at all. I don’t give a shit what your personal proclivities are. The important thing is, I think, to recognise that we need a range of resistance which includes everything from military resistance to absolutely non-military resistance.
At some point we need to talk about self-defence. I’ve known some transition town people who combine relocalisation with firearms skillshare, and with making self-defence on both a personal and a community level a priority. I think that’s great. What I’m really suggesting is that we need it all.”
This leads him to explore the moral aspects of violence as an ubiquitous phenomenon in the living world:
“What I want to find out is, where do we draw the lines? Is it morally acceptable to raise a carrot in a factory farm situation? Is it morally acceptable to kill a chicken? Is it morally acceptable to raise a chicken in a factory farm situation? Is it morally acceptable to kill Ted Bundy? Is it morally acceptable to kill Sarah Palin? Is it morally acceptable to kill me?
And if somebody says it’s never acceptable to kill a human being under any circumstances, it’s like, okay, let’s start throwing out … what about Hitler? In 1939, Georg Elser’s assassination attempt? I would like to make these questions as conscious as possible, because our discourse surrounding violence is just so squishy and ridiculous, and harmful, frankly.”
In prompting people to think about things in new ways, McCann suggests, Jensen “invites [us] to a more honed ethical awareness.”
I found a few of his books. Will try to post some reviews here, whenever I find the time to read them…