{T]he 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 everyday 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.
This is certainly true of our intraspecies relations. Police can and routinely do bust up homeless camps, but homeless people are not allowed to dismantle police stations (or the homes of the police). Petrochemical companies are allowed to make people's homes uninhabitable by toxifying the surrounding landscape, but the residents of those homes are not allowed to destroy the refineries (or the homes of the owners). Whites could, should, and would systematically destroy the possessions of the Indians, but Indians were not allowed to return the favor. And it's true of our interspecies relations, as industrial production systematically devours the living planet, any nonhumans who threaten productivity must be destroyed. . . . [If destruction by those above of those below were not a given in our society, we would not tolerate extinction of entire species of animals,] prisons would not be stocked with small-scale criminals[,] and civilization would collapse in a heartbeat.
From Endgame, Vol. I by Derrick Jensen
4 comments:
What a great cartoon!
It is not necessarily a new notion that "shit flows downhill," but it is one that we do well to remember. One of the terrors associated with the rather extreme concentration of wealth that exists in the US today is that hierarchical organization gains ever more traction as an organizing principle and specialization / personal expertise and competency gains ever less. This is how the middle class gets used up and discarded, and the poor lose any support at all.
If we do not soon choose to repudiate most of what the neocons have handed us - free markets untempered by any notion of responsibility for the social outcomes of the actions of the powerful, our civilization is doomed to a spectacular failure within our lifetimes.
I liked the picture of the prarie dog,, would have liked to have seen a picture of their immortal enemy, the ferret. And then there is Man, enemy of all and of herself.
Glad to know you will keep feeding the neighborhood squirrels those tulip bulbs.
from Ruth
Feeling it in my own life as we speak.
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