Derrick Jensen, environmental philosopher extraordinaire, has a MySpace Page.
Jensen: This civilization is killing the planet. They say that one sign of intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns. I’m gonna lay out a pattern here and let’s see if we can recognize it in less than 6,000 years. When you think of the hills and plains of Iraq, do you normally think of cedar forests so thick the sunlight never touches the ground? That’s how it was before. The first written myth of this culture is that of Gilgamesh deforesting that area to make cities. Plato complained that deforestation was drying up springs and destroying the water quality in Greece. The forests of North Africa went down to make the Phoencian and Egyptian navies. We can go north and ask, Where are the lions who were in Greece? Where are the indigenous of Europe? They’ve been massacred, or assimilated—in any case, genocide was perpetrated against them by definition because they’re no longer there.
If you start asking questions, the questions just keep moving back and back and back. This is a pattern that’s been going on for a long, long time. This culture has been unsustainable from the beginning. On a finite planet, you would think that we would think about that. You can’t exploit a planet and live on it too. At this stage, since there are no new frontiers to exploit, the planet’s falling apart.
3 comments:
"If you start asking questions, the questions just keep moving back and back and back. This is a pattern that’s been going on for a long, long time. This culture has been unsustainable from the beginning. On a finite planet, you would think that we would think about that. You can’t exploit a planet and live on it too. At this stage, since there are no new frontiers to exploit, the planet’s falling apart."
Perhaps it's apocryphal, but I have heard that, in order to bring the rest of the world to the 'standard of living' enjoyed by Murkin poor, it would require the resources of two MORE Earth-like planets.
When I heard this, I went out to observe the sky and discovered there were no such planets anywhere in range of, say, a couple of light years.
Jensen is perfectly right, and good on him for extending the historical context. I saw years ago that we weren't engaged in a sustainable enterprise. For some reason, this actually bothered me, and I couldn't just ignore the fact that Americans were taking most of the goodies for themselves. In the long run, this can't possibly stand. Why invest my life in it? A boy needs a good excuse, don't he?
But Jensen points to a much deeper fundamental problem. Our species is either metaphysically ill or fatally flawed. The first is open to remediation, the second threatens to unfold before our very eyes. In either case, it's probably too late and doesn't matter. The earth could shake and turn us into the rarest of primates in less time than it takes to type this silly comment.
I dunno. I'm of two minds on this: "Yes, this is happening" vs. "geez, dream different, don't feed the apocalyptic vison!" or something like that. Maybe being of those two minds is what this is really about anyway.
Sad to say, the planet may appear to be falling apart, but in the long run humans will be extinct long before earth dies. Once we die, earth will begin the long process of healing herself once again.
I have read that humans are a means for earth to be conscious of herself. I hope she can transfer her desire to live to us so that we can find ways to heal ourselves and consequently the earth who is our mother and sustenance.
Post a Comment