Every
morning when I awake I ask myself whether I should
write or blow up a dam. I tell myself I should keep
writing, though I'm not sure that's right. I've
written books and done activism, but it is neither a
lack of words nor activism that is killing salmon
here in the Northwest. It's the dams.
Anyone
who knows anything about salmon knows the dams must
go. Anyone who knows anything about politics knows
the dams will stay. Scientists study, politicians and
business people lie and delay, bureaucrats hold sham
public meetings, activists write letters and press
releases, and still the salmon die.
Sadly
enough, I'm not alone in my inability or
unwillingness to take action. Members of the German
resistance to Hitler from 1933 to 1945, for example,
exhibited a striking blindness all too familiar:
Despite knowing that Hitler had to be removed for a
"decent" government to be installed, they
spent more time creating paper versions of this
theoretical government than attempting to remove him
from power. It wasn't a lack of courage that caused
this blindness but rather a misguided sense of
morals. Karl Goerdeler, for instance, though tireless
in attempting to create this new government,
staunchly opposed assassinating Hitler, believing
that if only the two of them could sit face to face,
Hitler might relent.
We,
too, suffer from this blindness and must learn to
differentiate between real and false hopes. We must
eliminate false hopes, which blind us to real
possibilities and unlivable situations. Does anyone
really believe our protests will cause Weyerhaeuser
or other timber transnationals to stop destroying
forests ? Does anyone really believe the same
corporate administrators who say they "wish
salmon would go extinct so we could just get on with
living" (Randy Hardy of BPA) wiill act other
than to fulfill their desires? Does anyone really
believe a pattern of exploitation old as our
civilization can be halted legislatively, judicially
or through any means other than an absolute rejection
of the mindset that engineers the exploitation,
followed by actions based on that rejection? Does
anybody really think those who are destroying the
world will stop because we ask nicely or because we
lock arms peacefully in front of their offices?
Additionally,
there can be few who still believe the purpose of
government is to protect citizens from those who
would destroy them. The opposite is true: Political
economist Adam Smith was correct in noting that the
primary purpose of government is to protect those who
run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens.
To expect institutions created by our culture to do
other than poison waters, denude hillsides, eliminate
alternative ways of living and commit genocide is to
engage in naive thinking.
Many
German conspirators hesitated to remove Hitler from
office because they'd sworn loyalty to him and his
government. Their scruples caused more hesitation
than their fear did. How many of us have yet to root
out misguided remnants of a belief in the legitimacy
of this government to which, as children, we pledged
allegiance? How many of us fail to cross the line
into violent resistance because we still believe
that, somehow, the system can be reformed? And if we
don't believe that, what are we waiting for? As
Shakespeare so accurately put it, "Conscience
doth make cowards of us all."
It
could be argued that by comparing our government to
Hitler's I'm overstating my case. I'm not sure salmon
would agree, nor lynx, nor the people of Peru, Irian
Jaya, Indonesia, or any other place where people pay
with their lives for the activities of our culture.
If
we're to survive, we must recognize that we kill by
inaction as surely as by action. We must recognize
that, as Hermann Hesse wrote, "We kill when we
close our eyes to poverty, affliction or infamy. We
kill when, because it is easier, we countenance, or
pretend to approve of atrophied social, political,
educational, and religious institutions, instead of
resolutely combating them."
The
central - and in many ways only - question of our
time is this: What are sane, appropriate and
effective responses to outrageously destructive
behavior? So often, those working to slow the
destruction can plainly describe the problems. Who
couldn't? The problems are neither subtle nor
cognitively challenging. Yet when faced with the
emotionally daunting task of fashioning a response to
these clearly insoluble problems, we generally suffer
a failure of nerve and imagination. Gandhi wrote a
letter to Hitler asking him to stop committing
atrocities and was mystified that it didn't work. I
continue writing letters to the editor of the local
corporate newspaper pointing out mistruths and am
continually surprised at the next absurdity.
I'm
not suggesting that a well-targeted program of
assassinations would solve all of our problems. If it
were that simple, I wouldn't be writing this essay.
To assassinate Slade Gorton and Larry Craig, for
example, two senators from the Northwest whose work
may be charitably described as unremittingly
ecocidal, would probably slow the destruction not
much more than to write them a letter. Neither unique
nor alone, Gorton and Craig are merely tools for
enacting ecocide, as surely as are dams,
corporations, chainsaws, napalm and nuclear weapons.
If someone were to kill them, others would take their
places. The genocidal and ecocidal programs
originating specifically from the damaged psyches of
Gorton and Craig would die with them, but the shared
nature of the impulses within the culture would
continue full-force, making the replacement as easy
as buying a new hoe.
Hitler,
too, was elected as legally and
"democratically" as Craig and Gorton.
Hitler, too, manifested his culture's death urge
brilliantly enough to capture the hearts of those who
voted him into power and to hold the loyalty of the
millions who actively carried out his plans. Hitler,
like Craig and Gorton, like George Weyerhaeuser and
other CEOs, didn't act alone. Why, then, do I discern
a difference between them?
The
current system has already begun to collapse under
the weight of its ecological excesses, and here's
where we can help. Having transferred our loyalty
away from our culture's illegitimate economic and
governmental entities and given it to the land, our
goal must be to protect, through whatever means
possible, the human and nonhuman residents of our
homelands. Our goal, like that of a demolition crew
on a downtown building, must be to help our culture
collapse in place, so that in its fall it takes out
as little life as possible.
Discussion
presupposes distance, and the fact that we're talking
about whether violence is appropriate tells me we
don't yet care enough. There's a kind of action that
doesn't emerge from discussion, from theory, but
instead from our bodies and from the land. This
action is the honeybee stinging to defend her hive;
it's the mother grizzly charging a train to defend
her cubs; it's Zapatista spokesperson Cecelia
Rodriguez saying, "I have a question of those
men who raped me. Why did you not kill me? It was a
mistake to spare my life. I will not shut up. ...
This has not traumatized me to the point of
paralysis." It's Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa,
murdered by the Nigerian government at the urging of
Shell, whose last words were, "Lord, take my
soul, but the struggle continues!" It's those
who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. It's
Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Geronimo. It's salmon
battering themselves against concrete, using the only
thing they have, their flesh, to try to break down
that which keeps them from their homes.
I
don't believe the question of whether to use violence
is the right one. Instead, the question should be: Do
you sufficiently feel the loss? So long as we discuss
this in the abstract, we still have much to lose. If
we begin to feel in our bodies the immensity and
emptiness of what we lose daily - intact natural
communities, hours sold for wages, childhoods lost to
violence, women's capacity to walk unafraid - we'll
know precisely what to do.
Derrick
Jensen's most recent book is
"A Language Older Than Words"
published by Context Books.
He also is a regular interviewer for
The Sun magazine.
His website is http://www.derrickjensen.org.
