Another Disturbing Excerpt from "What We Leave Behind"

This is another lengthy quote from the disturbing book What We Leave Behind by Derrick Jensen & Aric McBay. (Aric lives on a farm near Kingston, Ontario. He was interviewed last spring on CBC TV for a feature on the “doomers”.)

WHAT SHOULD, OR WOULD—or do—any of us do, living in this culture that is alienated from and destroying the earth, if—or when—we realize that this world would be better off had we never been born, if we were to die?

For now, at least, I see several options that many people take.

The first option, taken by nearly everyone within this culture, is to do everything we can in increasingly frantic, desperate attempts to keep this realization at the unconscious and not conscious level. Thus jetskis and off-road vehicles, thus Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Magic Mountain, and Six Flags over Everywhere. Thus scuba diving and whitewater rafting. Thus the existence of hundreds upon hundreds of television channels, with movies and movies and movies and Deal or No Deal and Dancing with the Stars and basketball game after basketball game after football game after football game after baseball game after baseball game. More and more. Faster and faster. Thus the internet, with its ever-increasing ways—spectacular ways—to kill time. Thus Doom 1, 2, and 3. Thus Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2 and Half-Life episodes 1 and 2. Thus Second Life, MySpace, and YouTube. Thus the tidal wave of pornography, sports, and financial news, all with their simulacrum of diversity, all with titillation, all with excitement, all promising to transport us somewhere, somehow. Thus the obsessions with Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt. Anyone but those in front of us. Thus the abuse of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines. Thus so many other addictions, like the stock market, the economy, politics. Thus the frantic-happy, frantic-smiling faces—all of them just alike—on the evening distraction—I mean, spectacle—I mean, news. Thus toys and more toys and more toys. Thus the obsession with playtime by adults who work at jobs they hate. Thus diversions to divert us from the diversions that divert us from the diversions that divert us from the myriad realizations we must never have if we are to maintain this way of living and to maintain our role in the ongoing destruction of all that is real. And beneath these myriad realizations are more diversions, and more. There is phony meaningless optimism and phony meaningless hope and phony meaningless actions like putting plants on truck factories, all keeping us from staring into the abyss of destructiveness that is right now staring straight at us. And all of these phony meaningless diversions divert us from the understanding that our failure to stare at this abyss will not stop it from swallowing us, as well as everyone and everything else. Beneath these diversions there are phony fears of despair, phony fears of hate, phony fears of rage, phony fears of sorrow, phony fears of love and loves: real loves, fierce loves of self and others that cause us to at all costs—and I mean all costs—defend our beloved. And beneath all these fears? A dreadful fear of responsibility, a fear that if we get to this point, if we survive the annihilation of the self that is so meticulously, so violently, so repetitively, so mercilessly, so relentlessly, so abusively, so obviously forced upon each of us in order to allow us to continue to breath, to work, to labor, to produce, then we will need to take responsibility for our actions and for the wonderful and beautiful and stunningly extravagant gift of our life that this planet has given us. Indeed, we will need to act and to act in such a way that the world is better off because of our actions, because of our life, because we were born. And as with sustainability itself, what was at one point as easy as eating, shitting, living, and dying, is now more and more difficult.

We fear death. And not just the death that all experience, but another that scares us far more than the real death that comes at the end of our phony lives. This other death that we fear even more comes before the real death—sometimes long before—if it comes at all. This is the death of our socially constructed self. Once that self dies, then who will we be? We cannot face the possibility of actually living, of actually becoming who we really are and who we would be had we not been so violently deformed by this culture. We cannot face the possibility of being alive, of living so we turn, to return to the beginning of discussion, to jetskis and off-road vehicles, to Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Magic Mountain, and Six Flags over Everywhere. Most of us would prefer our real, physical selves die, and indeed the world die, rather than face the realization that, given our socialization, the world would be better off without all of us who allow our socially created selves to continue to breath, to work, to labor, to produce—and that, of course is the real point.

That is the most popular option for members of this culture.

Derrick Jensen & Aric McBay on "What We Leave Behind"

I am currently reading a very important and disturbing book by Derrick Jensen & Aric McBay titled What We Leave Behind, published in 2009. I have just finished Part I. Its conclusion speaks eloquently (and, for many of us I am sure, harshly) of the reality of the type of lifestyle we humans have been taking for granted. It is not so much that this must not continue, but that it cannot. It is a physical impossibility. If humanity is incapable of taking corrective action, we ultimately need not worry, for the planet will do what is necessary for its survival, whether humanity continues to exist or not. Here is a lengthy excerpt from the last chapter of part I that is currently touching me.

Reciprocity is the key to survival. Reciprocity is the essence of life. It is life. It is what we do. It is what we all do.

We are told, more or less incessantly, that survival is based on being the meanest, strongest, most selfish, best able to exploit.

But those who say that are wrong. They have forgotten—or do not care to remember—that nature loves a community. This is true on every scale, from the largest to the most personal. It's simply true that nature loves a community more than nature loves you or me. Nature loves a community more than nature loves a community-destroying culture. Nature loves a community more than nature loves industrial civilization.

I'm sorry to report that it is not true that all of evolution has taken place so that humans will exist. It is not true that all of evolution has taken place so that for a short time a relatively few (fiscally) rich humans can look at computers, watch televisions, and buy (and throw away) cell phones. It is not true that all of evolution has taken place so that humans can create industrial civilization. It is not true that all of evolution has taken place so that industrial civilization can deform humans to fit the needs of industrial civilization. It is not true that all of evolution has taken place so that humans can destroy life on this planet in the service of industrial civilization.

I'm sorry to have to be the one to deliver that news.

This culture is extraordinary, but not so much for the reasons so many people like to pretend; its vast military capabilities, its art, literature, music science, philosophy, (such as it is). Instead, it is extraordinary in that it does not give back to the land, the water, the air, the nonhumans, the vast majority of humans.

This culture is even more extraordinary in that many of its members seem to think they can continue to not give back, and survive.

Or maybe they can survive, all the while keeping their jetskis and RVs, their gold and brass rings, their interstate highways and disposable diapers, their aircraft carriers and superdomes. They can keep this culture until they die.

Personally.

Only if they are already very old.

The planet is collapsing. Now. This culture is causing this collapse.

I'll say it again, since not enough people seem to be listening: this culture is killing the planet.

This culture is killing the planet.

Don't listen to me. Listen to the planet.

But a refusal to listen is part of the problem. We're taught (some explicitly, all implicitly) to become masterful at refusing to listen, and then to become just as masterful at refusing to acknowledge--to others, but most especially to ourselves--that not only are we not listening but that there is even anything to hear in the first place.

Many members of this culture--evidently an overwhelming majority, given the relatively small number of people actually doing anything to stop the destruction--simply don't care. Many of them were taught (once again, some explicitly, some implicitly) that if they ignore (in fact, foreclose) all possibility of relationship, and if they don't mind harming those around them...and if it doesn't bother them that they're destroying the land and air and water that those who come after them will need to survive, then they can take advantage of the short-term competitive advantage that not giving back gives them, and thus they can more effectively dominate, enslave, exploit, or simply kill all those who do give back (and who therefore must be inferior), and who have the misfortune to come into contact with them. Then when they reach to every part of the earth-meaning that more or less everyone has the misfortune of coming into contact with them-as this narcissistic nonreciprocal culture now does, they will kill the planet that (or rather, who) supports them. But many of these individual narcissists will die before then. And so they can say, and mean, that statement most famously said by King Louis XV's mistress Madame de Pompadour; when the king's ministers complained that her extravagance (and the extraordinarily expensive wars her advice helped cause) was going to lead to their own destruction, she laughed them off with the phrase, “Après nous le deluge,” literally translated as, “after us, the deluge,” more loosely translated as , “When we are dead the deluge may come for aught I care.” And she was right. She died in 1764, some fifteen years before the deluge of the French Revolution and nineteen years before the Reign of Terror, with its deluge of blood-both royal and otherwise-flowing from the guillotine.

Après nous le deluge.

I guarantee this statement will be far more accurate and deadly for those who say it now than for those who said it before. This time, as the entire world collapses, it is not just the French but everyone who pays. Everyone.

For those who are willing to have their view of the world, and their place in it, shook up, read this book.