Derrick Jensen’s book, “Endgame – The Problem of Civilization”, is one of the most radical, important and thought provoking
books I’ve ever read. Not that I agree with all his ideas. But even those I don’t agree with are well worth thinking about.
The main premise of his book is that “civilization” is destroying our planet and will soon enough destroy humanity if something very radical isn’t done soon to reverse the process. I would rather phrase the problem as
our current civilization, rather than simply “civilization”, because I believe that civilizations can be much less destructive than our current one. But I think that that is a minor objection to Jensen’s idea, and may represent a mere difference in semantics.
The first section of Jensen’s book is four pages of twenty “premises”, on which he says our civilization is based. For the most part I very much agree that our civilization is based on those premises, and I believe that our world would be in much better shape if most people took them very seriously. Therefore, in this post I will quote some of those premises, followed by my own commentary and historical examples to support them.
It may be worth mentioning that Jensen grew up in an extremely abusive family situation (which he discusses in his book), in which his father repeatedly raped him, among other things. Some would use that fact as a rationalization to dismiss his ideas. But I think that would be a big mistake. Extraordinarily traumatic events can impair a person’s ability to think rationally – or alternatively they can push a person to transcend his/her society’s “conventional wisdom” by intensely focusing on what is most important. Or, they can cause some of both.
Premise 2 – Those who want others’ resources Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.
I’m not sure exactly what Jensen means by “traditional” communities. It probably would have been just as well to use the term
less dominant communities. Or,
any communities would have been just as well. Nobody voluntarily gives up what they have for no reason.
Anyone who has a rudimentary understanding of world history (or U.S. history) will recognize the truth of Jensen’s 2nd premise, as world history is chock full examples of one culture invading or destroying another in order to get what the other has.
Antonia Juhasz, in her book, “
http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dthe%2Bbush%2Bagenda%2Bjuhasz%26btnG%3DSearch&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Bush Agenda – Invading the World One Economy at a Time”, describes an especially egregious example of this – how a corporate state, allied with a ruthless corporation can wreak havoc on a community:
Cochabamba is the 3rd largest city in Bolivia… In late 1999, the World Bank required that Bolivia privatize Cochabamba’s water in return for reduction of its debts. Bechtel – one of the top ten water privatization companies in the world – won the contract.
Immediately after Bechtel took over the Cochabamba water system, and before any of the promised investments in infrastructure were made to improve or expand services, the company raised the price of water… by 100%... Many were simply forced to do without running water… The same law that privatized the water system also privatized any collected water, including rainwater collected in barrels…
The majority of the people voted for the cancellation of the contract with Bechtel. When this demand was met with silence from government officials, the citizens went on a citywide strike… the Bolivian government defended Bechtel’s right to privatize by
sending armed military troops into the streets to disperse the crowds.
Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror…
One of the best examples of this is the current Iraq War and occupation. The
deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are not mentioned (and are therefore
invisible) by our corporate media, while the deaths of American soldiers are frequently discussed. And when American soldiers are killed by Iraqis in their efforts to defend their homeland, they are routinely referred to as “terrorists”.
During Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, starving victims of the disaster who used what means they could to provide food for their families were often referred to as “looters”, and they were often
ordered to be shot. Conversely, private corporations that
raked in immense profits from the disaster failed to be held accountable for their failure to accomplish what they were paid to do.
And speaking of hierarchy, consider how the
bailout of Wall Street was used to line the pockets of the wealthy businessmen who got us into the financial crisis, while comparatively little was done to alleviate the suffering of average homeowners.
James Galbraith characterized Treasury Secretary
Tim Geithner’s plan like this:
The plan is yet another massive, ineffective gift to banks and Wall Street. Taxpayers, of course, will take the hit… The banks don't want to take their share of those losses because doing so will wipe them out. So they, and Geithner, are doing everything they can to pawn the losses off on the taxpayer…. In Geithner's plan, this debt won't disappear. It will just be passed from banks to taxpayers, where it will sit until the government finally admits that a major portion of it will never be paid back.
Premise 5 – Property of the elite vs. the lives of the poorThe property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control – in every day language, to make money – by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.
Of course, when Jensen uses the word
acceptable he means that to apply from the viewpoint of those in power – He does not mean to imply that it is actually acceptable.
The
Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 is a god example of this principle. Another example is the
climate change denial of those corporations whose profits would be at risk if our world leaders were to devote the attention to this looming catastrophe that it warrants. There is the recent
West Virginia mine disaster, in which 29 men were killed because of corporate reluctance to provide for adequate safety of their employees. And then there is the routine pollution of our planet in the quest for corporate profits, of which the recent massive oil spill is just the tip of the iceberg, as explained in an
editorial in
The Nation.
It is catastrophic, spectacular, heartbreaking – but the BP spill is merely an extreme version of the norm, in which accidents and pollution are routine. In January a tanker collided with two barges at Port Arthur, Texas, dumping 450,000 gallons of oil into the gulf. In Ecuador, Texaco leaked 19 billion gallons of toxic wastewater and 17 million gallons of crude oil in pristine forests. Even on its very best day, our global petroleum economy is a series of violent, toxic horrors. Drilling, shipping, refining and burning oil is killing the planet – at the local level through poisoned air and water, and globally by fueling climate change. Politically the competition for oil breeds conflict and corruption, as it has in the Niger Delta.
Premise 6 – Unless we reverse course, our planet will be progressively degraded If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.
Jared Diamond discussed this particular issue in much more scientific detail in his book,
“
Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” (Chosen as “Best Book of the Year” by
The Boston Globe, the
Los Angeles Times,
The Washington Post, the
San Francisco Chronicle and others). Diamond’s book describes the environmental causes of past and present failed societies, such as the
collapse of the ancient Easter Island civilization, and compares them with other societies that have succeeded, in order to identify the causes of failed societies. The theme of his book can be summarized as: Environmental crisis + failure of society to address it ==> societal collapse. Near the end of his book he summarizes the relevance of his many examples to today’s world.
Our world society is presently on a non-sustainable course, and any of our 12 problems of non-sustainability that we have just summarized would suffice to limit our lifestyle within the next several decades. They are like time bombs with fuses of less than 50 years…. Any of the dozen problems if unsolved would do us grave harm… If we solved 11 of the problems, but not the 12th, we would still be in trouble… We have to solve them all.
Thus, because we are rapidly advancing along this non-sustainable course, the world’s environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another within the lifetime of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies. While all of those grim phenomena have been endemic to humanity throughout our history, their frequency increases with environmental degradation, population pressure, and the resulting poverty and political instability.
Premise 8 – The natural world is more important than any economic systemThe needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system… Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence require the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.
This is just plain common sense. When physical catastrophe looms, economic systems are thrown into chaos and become irrelevant. In the face of mass starvation, food and water become infinitely more valuable than gold.
Premise 9 – The need to plan for and make sacrifices for the future of humankindAlthough there will clearly someday be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population may occur. Some will be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear Armageddon, for example… Other ways could be characterized by less violence… We may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs… Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively – if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it, the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.
In Jared Diamond’s “Collapse”, Diamond uses the
Rwandan genocide of 1994 as an example of an environmental crisis that transformed into severe violence and privation. That genocide is usually portrayed as being due to ancient ethnic hatreds, fanned by opportunistic politicians. However, the facts that the Hutu and the Tutsi speak the same language, attended the same schools, lived together, worked together, and frequently inter-married, cast serious doubt on that idea. Rather, one of the major reasons for the genocide was a densely populated country living on land that was barely adequate to support the population. Misery was widespread in Rwanda before the genocide, and chaos and killings were becoming the order of the day. In putting forth this cause of the Rwandan genocide, Diamond explains:
Any “explanation” of why a genocide happened can be misconstrued as “excusing” it. However, regardless of whether we arrive at an over-simplified one-factor explanation or an excessively complex 73-factor explanation for a genocide doesn’t alter the personal responsibility of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide… people recoil at any explanation, because they confuse explanations with excuses. But it is important that we understand the origins of the Rwandan genocide – not so that we can exonerate the killers, but so that we can use that knowledge to decrease the risk of such things happening again in Rwanda or elsewhere… Other factors did contribute… One should not misconstrue a role of population pressure among the Rwandan genocide’s causes to mean that population pressure automatically leads to genocide… Countries can be over-populated without descending into genocide…
Premise 10 – Failure to face realityThe culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge; an urge to destroy life.
I would describe it somewhat differently than that. I believe that the looming planetary catastrophes are being driven not so much by a “death urge” than by the human psychological tendency towards “
denial” of its worst problems.
One of our worst traits as a nation is our unwillingness to recognize or admit to the bad things that our government does – in our name. Of course, in order to facilitate our denial of our government’s bad actions, it helps greatly if the things that our government wants us to deny are virtually unmentionable. And they are. There are numerous things that absolutely cannot be mentioned by American politicians (or those of other nations) because they are “embarrassing to the country. Mere mention of these things brings down the wrath of conservative pundits and moderates as well, and even some who consider themselves to be liberal or progressive. The consequences of our failure to recognize the bad things that our government does are that it is enabled to continue to do those things with impunity. William Blum explains in “
Freeing the World to Death”:
This is the main reason that the U.S. can get away with what it does all over the world – the lack of awareness of the American people about US foreign policy. These Americans are not necessarily stupid, but there are all kinds of intelligence in this world… There’s political intelligence, which might be defined as the ability to see through the bullshit which every society, past, present and future, feeds its citizens from birth on to assure the continuance of the prevailing ruling class and its ideology.
Premise 11 – A culture of occupation… This culture has been a culture of occupation.
This fact should be clear from a detailed examination of our own dominant country. It should be clear from the several hundred
American military bases on foreign soil throughout the world. It should be evident from the numerous
regime changes that our country has instigated in foreign sovereign nations. And it should be evident from our
myriad military interventions.
Premise 13 – Rule by forceThose in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.
It may seem like hyperbole to some to say that, in a democracy, those in power rule by force. But as the role of
money in politics becomes excessive, the ability of average people to make their voices heard becomes more and more difficult. A vicious cycle appears, wherein the rich and powerful use their money to “influence” legislators to legislate in their interest rather than the public interest, thus extending their wealth and power – and political influence.
Our First Amendment was created in order to progress towards the goal of all Americans having a voice in their future. But when a nation’s highest court equates money with speech and
rules that the wealthy may use their money… I mean speech without limits, then the voices of ordinary citizens are drowned out. Freedom of speech is thus perverted by such rulings, combined with the fact that the wealthy have gained
monopoly control over the most important means of mass communication.
Premise 15 – PacifismLove does not imply pacifism.
Though the word pacifism is often used loosely to imply many different things, the strict
definition is “opposition to the use of force {i.e. violence} under
any circumstances”. Though the good majority of DUers, including myself, are peace loving people, I seriously doubt that many of us are pacifists by the strict definition. It is pacifism by that definition that Jensen abhors. He rightly (in my opinion) points out that that kind of pacifism would have allowed Hitler to take over the world. Though most of us believe that diplomacy should almost always be tried before aggression or violence, we also realize that there are some very powerful people who can be swayed only by violence.
Premises 16 and 19 – We are responsible for our own messReal world actions have real world consequences… We cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess… We have to face this mess ourselves… whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die… The Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home…
The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.
These words remind of something that Naomi Klein said in her great book, “
The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. Klein speculates on why so many of our corporate elite are so unconcerned about the impending catastrophes that are likely to follow the continued warming of our planet. The reason is simple – They expect to use a ‘Get out of jail free’ card. Klein writes:
Perhaps part of the reason why so many of our elites, both political and corporate, are so sanguine about climate change is that they are confident they will be able to buy their way out of the worst of it. This may also partially explain why so many Bush supporters are Christian end-timers… The Rapture is a parable for what they are building down here – a system that invites destruction and disaster, then swoops in with private helicopters and airlifts them and their friends to divine safety.
Premise 17 – Saying what needs to be saidIt is a mistake to base our decisions on whether actions arising from them will or won’t frighten fence sitters or the mass of Americans.
I have mixed feelings about this one, though I think there is a lot of merit to it. I do think that there is some need to make tactical political decisions that will gain the support of moderates. But I also think that this tactic has been greatly overdone in recent years. We absolutely
must vigorously challenge the premises of our corporate culture, despite the fact that they have much louder megaphones than us. Way too many of their premises have taken root in our culture and will be exceedingly difficult to uproot. But unless we aggressively challenge those premises it will be next to
impossible to uproot them.
Premise 20 – Our culture is oriented towards serving those in powerWithin this culture, economics – not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself – drives social decisions… Social decisions are founded primarily on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.
Yes, indeed. That is why our corporate media can, with a straight face, talk about “
jobless recoveries” as if they are good thing. Corporate economists have their “economic indicators”, and it is assumed that as long as they point upwards our country is doing fine, regardless of the plight of the majority of its inhabitants.
Such economic indicators are merely a version of the discredited theory of “
trickle down economics”. The economic indicators that are most used to characterize the state of our economy primarily apply to the well-off. And as the
middle class continues to shrink in our country, those indicators apply to less and less Americans. But challenging the validity of those indicators is not considered acceptable discourse by our corporate culture.
Where do we go from here?An article by Chris Hedges, titled “
No One Cares”, takes a very gloomy view of our current situation, and sums up many of Jensen’s premises in different words:
Corporations have effectively taken over our internal security and intelligence apparatus. They run our economy and manage our systems of communication. They own the two major political parties. They have built a private military. They loot the U.S. Treasury at will. And they have become unassailable. Those who decry the corporate coup are locked out of the national debate and become as marginalized as Kucinich…
Even an enlightened liberal class would have been hard-pressed to battle back against the tawdry emotional carnivals and the political theater that have thrust the nation into collective self-delusion. We were all seduced. And we, along with thousands of innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and beyond, will all be consumed.
Pretty gloomy stuff! I guess Hedges was in a depressed mood. Jared Diamond has a somewhat more hopeful message for us in the closing pages of his book, in which he summarizes both the great challenges that we face, and the only way solution to them.
We in the U.S. can no longer get away with advancing our own self-interests, at the expense of the interests of others. We need to realize… that there is no other island/other planet to which we can turn for help, or to which we can export our problems. Instead, we need to learn, as they (historic failed civilizations) did, to live within our means…
We have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of distant peoples and past peoples. That’s an opportunity that no past society enjoyed to such a degree. My hope in writing this book has been that enough people will choose to profit from that opportunity to make a difference.
These are somewhat hopeful words. But where will the political will come from? And how will those in power be persuaded to give up enough of their wealth and power so that humankind may survive without suffering catastrophes of barely imaginable magnitude?
As for Derrick Jensen’s book on the “Problem of Civilization”, it talks mainly about the problem, and not much about the solutions. He addresses the solutions in
Volume II: Resistance, which I haven’t read yet.
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