{"id":41,"date":"2017-01-07T03:40:59","date_gmt":"2017-01-07T03:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/?p=41"},"modified":"2023-10-07T00:51:30","modified_gmt":"2023-10-06T15:51:30","slug":"dark-mountain-first-issue-5__trashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/?p=41","title":{"rendered":"Dark Mountain – First Issue (5)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Another conversation from this Issue #1 which I found rather thought-provoking is one that took place between Anthony McCann and Derrick Jensen<\/a> \u2014 titled “A Gentle Ferocity<\/strong>.” This is how the former introduces the latter:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

[Jensen] has a hardcore reputation. Books such as Endgame<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>(2006) have made him arguably the most prominent contemporary \u2018critic of civilisation\u2019, 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 \u2013 perhaps most famously in his calls for people to\u00a0<\/span>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 \u2018deconstructing pacifist arguments that don\u2019t make any sense anyway.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

A core focus of Jensen\u2019s is his attention to what he calls \u201cthe culture of civilisation.”\u00a0<\/span>As he writes in Endgame<\/i>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI would define a civilisation … as a culture \u2013 that is, a complex of stories, institutions, and artefacts \u2013 that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities (civilisation: from civis<\/em>, meaning citizen, from Latin civitatis<\/em>, 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

According to him, civilisation as a way of life is \u201cinherently unsustainable\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

“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\u2019s what salmon do. It\u2019s what redwoods do. It\u2019s what indigenous humans do. You don\u2019t survive in the long run by exploiting your surroundings, but by actually improving your surroundings.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In a way reminiscent of Murray Bookchin\u2019s critique<\/a> of \u201clifestyle anarchism,\u201d Jensen has little regard for \u201clifestylists\u201d \u2014 \u201cpeople who believe that lifestyle change equals social change.\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

He also very critical of the current state of democracy worldwide: <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBefore 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

His aim is thus to help form \u201ca culture of resistance\u201d that will move us towards \u201ceffectively stopping\u201d 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:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

“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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The capacity for action being power, Jensen often stresses the individual responsibility in making things change: one should not simply \u201chope\u201d things will get better, but take action.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency. It means you are essentially powerless. That\u2019s how we talk about hope in everyday language. I don\u2019t hope that I eat something today, I\u2019m just going to do it. But when I go on a plane, I hope it doesn\u2019t crash, because I\u2019ve no agency in that situation. If it is going to crash there\u2019s nothing I can do about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/p>\n

The thing is to figure out what we do and don\u2019t have agency over, and to expand the areas over which we do have agency but don\u2019t perceive. Because one of the central points of any oppressive system is to attempt to get you to believe that you are powerless.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One of the more controversial aspects of Jensen\u2019s writing is his advocacy of direct action, in the form of physical sabotage. Inspired by historical actions like those of Emmeline Pankhurst, the IRA,<\/span> the anti-Nazi resistance in WWII, or more recently the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta<\/a>, he sees \u201ceco-sabotage\u201d as an effective means to disrupt the systems of civilisation and help bring about meaningful change. Naturally, this requires a \u201crelentless\u201d attitude that is not always found in the environmental movement:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cMost environmentalists don\u2019t 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\u2019s get clear on what we want, and let\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Action is needed, and action leaves no time for conflicted states of mind:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

“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\u2019ve got no problem saying that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cRobert Jay Lifton<\/a> talks about how before we can commit any mass atrocity you have to convince yourself that what you\u2019re 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\u2019re 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\u2019ve been an asshole I\u2019ve had it fully rationalised.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When asked why he doesn\u2019t go and blow up dams himself, Jensen replies:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhat 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\u2019s somebody else\u2019s job to light the match. My job is to get bringing down civilisation to pass the lab test, you know?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jensen\u2019s view isn\u2019t so much to advocate an armed insurrection, but rather a generalised form of resistance including both pacifist and less pacifist means:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

“My problem is not with someone being pacifist at all. I don\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

At some point we need to talk about self-defence. I\u2019ve 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\u2019s great. What I\u2019m really suggesting is that we need it all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This leads him to explore the moral aspects of violence as an ubiquitous phenomenon in the living world:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhat 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?<\/span><\/p>\n

And if somebody says it\u2019s never acceptable to kill a human being under any circumstances, it\u2019s like, okay, let\u2019s start throwing out … what about Hitler? In 1939, Georg Elser\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In prompting people to think about things in new ways, McCann suggests, Jensen \u201cinvites [us] to a more honed ethical awareness.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

I found a few of his books. Will try to post some reviews here, whenever I find the time to read them…<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another conversation from this Issue #1 which I found rather thought-provoking is one that took place between Anthony McCann and Derrick Jensen \u2014 titled “A Gentle Ferocity.” This is how the former introduces the latter: [Jensen] has a hardcore reputation. Books such as Endgame\u00a0(2006) have made him arguably the most prominent contemporary \u2018critic of civilisation\u2019, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,9,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}