derrick jensen
by Eli
ever since i stopped using my computer as much, i have been reading quite a bit more. i’m really enjoying that. currently i’m reading three books, and i’ve got another at the library waiting for me to pick it up. at some point i’m going to have stop and finish the ones i’ve got.
luckily, the author that got me reading again, derrick jensen, has quite a few books. they range in topics from education to schooling to writing to deforestation to interspecies communication to technology to the end of civilization as we know it. you can definitely see a connection in all of his work, but each book has a certain vibe to it that makes them all unique and thoroughly enjoyable to read. at this point i’m halfway through The Culture of Make Believe with only one more after that. when it’s all over and there are no more, i will have read just about 3000 pages that he’s written.
of all the things i’ve learned, or understood better, or rediscovered because of his work, there is one that stands out among all the rest: civilization is a horrible thing. this wasn’t anything new to me, rather, it had just faded. i knew it all along. ever since i was a kid with an environmentalist dad, ever since i understood the destructiveness of factory farms, ever since the Noblesville City Council spit in my eye and built that damn road anyway, ever since i went through 12 years of public school, ever since i started listening to Rage Against the Machine, ever since i knew what really happened to the Native Americans, ever since i read Daniel Quinn, ever since my mom worked with victims of domestic violence, ever since i saw the blind hate that so many people hold on to, ever since i saw civilization for what it really is (pain and suffering for most, luxuries and wealth for a few; competition instead of cooperation), i knew that something was wrong.
humans lived on this earth for millions of years before civilization came along, only a few thousand years ago; things were quite a bit different for all of those people. they didn’t live in a world where suffering, brutal warfare, starvation, mass species extinction, destruction, pain, insanity, cancer, and a general hatred of life was “normal.” these people weren’t killing and destroying more and more each year; there was no such thing as “natural” or “wild” or “sustainable”, those things just were.
whether you think it will happen sooner or later, civilization will come to an end, it has to. when it does, salmon will be better off, bears will be better off, birds will be better off, the oceans and forests will be better off, people will be better off, the entire planet will be better off. i just hope that it happens in my life time.
still wanna build a bomb-shelter together?
totally! i already asked if you’d be into working some land with me, and i’m currently in the process of writing up a “business plan” as far as that goes. nothing crazy official, just a way to get my ideas down and make some initial plans in that direction. like i said before, i’d love to have in on something like that.