Why I Love Derrick Jensen

Via Counterpunch:

It should be obvious to everyone that bad things are happening, even if you "don't believe" the facts about global warming. Just common sense tells us that we are going to run out of oil - civilization is going to crash- you look outside and the seasons are not what they were 20 years ago. So why speed it along? I think what people are themselves resembles: okay if it is going to happen anyway, I might just as well sit back and enjoy my Budweisers. So why take it down now?

Jensen: Because it is systematically dismantling the infrastructure of the planet and the sooner it comes down the more that remains for the humans and non- humans that come after. Even from a purely selfish perspective, if someone were to have "brought it down" 200 years ago, then people in the East would still be able to eat pastured chickens - if it happened 50 years ago, people in the West would still be able to eat Salmon. There are going to be people sitting along the banks of British Columbia 40 years from now saying "I'm starving to death because you didn't take out the dams that were used to create electricity that were used to change phosphates into aluminum beer cans," and that's inexcusable. So that's why we have to hurry it along. Because everyday more of the ecological infrastructure is being destroyed. From a more moral perspective of course the reason to do it is because those in power have no right to drive us down to extinction.

There's something else. People say "what do you mean" when you talk about "bringing down civilization." What I really mean is depriving the rich of the ability to steal from the poor and depriving the powerful of the ability to destroy the planet. That's what I really mean.

Engel: Why do you so few people resist, unlike in the 1960s or 1930s?

Jensen: If your experience is that your water comes from the tap and that your food comes from the grocery store, then you are going to defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on them; if your experience is that your water comes from a river and that your food comes from a land base then you will defend those to the death because your life depends on them. So part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it and it's very difficult physically for us to live outside of it. Also, one of the smartest things the Nazis did, according to Sigmund Bauman's "In Modernity and the Holocaust," was to make it seem in the Jews's rational best interests not to resist: "do you want an ID card or do you want to resist and possibly get killed? Do you want to live in the ghetto or do you want to resist and get killed? Do you want to get on this cattle car or do you want to resist and get killed? Do you want to take a shower or do you want to resist and get killed? Every step of the way it was in their so-called "rational best interest." We see the same thing happening today. People will keep suffering all these indignities because if you resist there is the theater of terror to keep you silently, submissively in line. Put you in your place, where you belong.