.
SATURDAY, OCT 19, 2019: NOTE TO FILE
Endgame
The Problem of Civilization
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: HUMANITIES, UNCIVILISATION, FROM THE WIRES, THINKING ABOUT DESCENT
Abstract: I was reading Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto when I was informed I might try contacting Derrick Jensen as someone with similar concerns, so I took a break to consider his offerings. There are similarities with the Dark Mountain offering. Jensen is a deep green environmentalist, a writer of literary merit well beyond the prattle of mere systems science nerds. I differ in that I don't believe in belief, nor in political/tribal 'solutions' as there are none. Also, 'for' and 'against' thinking is a cognitive pathology I try not to traffic in. Bright Green Lies is more of the same. When talking about 'the problem', citing factoids, and offering talking points, they may be singing my song, but when it comes to 'real solutions', the dark green are 'not even wrong' and merely force me to facepalm. Yes, environmentalists are BAU wolves in sheep's clothing and the dark green narrative is alternative, sort of, but offers no better 'real solutions' than Ted Kaczynski, who was at least a deeper, less facepalming thinker. To destroy the SYSTEM, understand it first.
COOS BAY (A-P) — Is Derrick Jensen a 'kindred spirit'? There is common ground as we both have existential concerns for humanity and the biosphere, and are committed to destroying modern techno-industrial civilisation, to uncivilising the planet of empire-builders and empire-building.
His solution to the human problematique, however, is Deep Green Resistance + Decisive Ecological Warfare. Activists will work to end industrial society. 'The goal of DGR is to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet. This is a vast undertaking but it needs to be said: it can be done. Industrial civilization can be stopped.'
The narrative of us versus them (the 1 percent or 0.01% against the 99%), is a popular political meme among the left-leaning. Do you make more than $1,300 per year? Then you are above average. Do you make more than $32,000 per year? Then you are a 1 percenter. Know anyone who makes that much who is not also a member of Reverend Billy's Church of Stop Shopping? Then you know what that means. Depowering the 1 percent to save humanity and the biosphere is a small loss for a big gain, and who doesn't want more?
'DGR is an aboveground organization that uses direct action in the fight to save our planet. We also argue for the necessity of an underground that can target the strategic infrastructure of industrialization. But these actions alone are never a sufficient strategy for achieving a just outcome. Any strategy aiming for a livable future must include a call to build direct democracies based on human rights and sustainable material cultures. Which means that the different branches of a resistance movement must work in tandem: the aboveground and belowground, the militants and the nonviolent, the frontline activists and the cultural workers. We need it all. And we need courage. The word "courage" comes from the same root as coeur, the French word for heart. We need all the courage of which the human heart is capable, forged into both weapon and shield to defend what is left of this planet. And the lifeblood of courage is, of course, love.'
I have proposed that we degrow the economy and population of pets, livestock, crops, and humans by 80 percent in 80 years just because doing so might be thinkable to a few, knowing that the proposed degrowth was not enough and not fast enough. Still, it's a start towards thinking the unthinkable. DGR agrees only that there are too many rich people. XR theorists like Rupert Read agree. But ending fossil fuel use by 2025 would degrow the economy and population by 90+ percent (but don't tell anyone), so what's not to like?
Well, I don't believe in belief, let alone in political solutions (or religious salvation), so if DGR enthusiasts can destroy industrial society, I'll let them, but I could never talk the talk. Jensen is a writer and his most influential book appears to be Endgame, 2006, 'the most important book of the decade' per one review. An earlier work about a pacing bear was of interest, so I read his Wikipedia article and DGR offerings as he is co-founder and still deeply active in the movement.
'For the first time in history a conviction has developed among those who can actually think more than a decade ahead that we are playing a global endgame. Humanity's grasp on the planet is not strong. It is growing weaker. Our population is too large....' — Edward O. Wilson, Half Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life 2016
Endgame, 2006 by Derrick Jensen |
Comments: |
Premises:PREMISE ONE: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization. |
Not all complex societies were empire-builders, e.g. Tairona Phase 3 and Muisca prior to Spanish genocide. |
| PREMISE TWO: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities. | Traditional communities become empire-builders and ‘takers’ when technology enables them to take, e.g. those involved in megafauna extinctions on all continents out of Africa where fauna was naive to human hunting tech. Or Haida empowered by red cedar war canoe technology to raid and enslave coastal others, or Aleutians who by hi-tech baidarka traveled to California to commit genocide. A half dozen empire-builders pulsed in the US Southwest. Indo-European culture favored empire-building and hence spread, but it did not originate with us. |
| PREMISE THREE: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence. | Techno-industrial society is based on exploiting a planetary larder of fossil fuels that enables those who see a planet for the taking to take it and thereby become more numerous. Violence is incidental, and as Pinker points out, has declined with rapid growth that, for a time, has reduced scarcity induced conflict. |
| PREMISE FOUR: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims. | Complex society exceeding Dunbar’s number selects for hierarchy. It is in the short-term self interest of elites to build empire AND of commoners to serve empire, or if necessary, to make empire great again whether via BAU or GND. Growing complexity involves declining marginal returns on the investment in complexity which, along with a growing behavioral sink and increasing scarcity induced conflict, collapses complex societies. |
| PREMISE FIVE: The 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 . | Elites lacking restraint become a prey population (HANDY) over exploiting commoners and environmental resources as short-termism is selected for, for a time, prior to failure of the complex society. This pattern is a pathology of empire and not a universal. In the long run all pathologies, by definition, are selected against. Pathology is to be understood, which precludes moralizing narratives within which concepts reference other concepts in an intellectual house of mirrors that is itself a cognitive pathology. Think 'prescription for Rxevolution' |
| PREMISE SIX: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time. | The belief that no prior complex society managed human demands on environmental resources and managed elite behavior to avoid exploiting commoners, and so were insane and unsustainable is an argument from ignorance. |
| PREMISE SEVEN: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier the crash will be, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after. | The longer industrial society keeps on keeping on, the bigger it will get and the harder it will fall, maximizing the Anthropocene extinction event to perhaps rival the Permian. So how can we destroy techno-industrial society as soon as possible? |
| PREMISE EIGHT: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system. Another way to put Premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) require the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase. | The needs of the planetary life-support system trump the short-term self interests of all members of a growth (e.g. cancer, empire) hegemon and its sociopoitical economic SYSTEM which is a subsystem of environment whose services are not externalities. A case can be made that the importance of maintaining the functionality of a body, as member of an evolving species, exceeds the short-term self interests of a cancer as system pathology. All who know what money is and likely have some are part of and serve the SYSTEM, some with less enthusiasm than others who may deny their service. Those who sell information are servants of the growth hegemon. Should they be allowed to live? I don’t know. |
| PREMISE NINE: Although there will clearly someday be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population may occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some will be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear Armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by a crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default of our culture. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence—required and caused by the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich—and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps long-term shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme. | Overshoot implies descent, managed or not. Humans may go extinct this time as for the first time we are playing a global endgame. A remnant population may survive and, with a 90 to 100 percent loss of information as usual, will have learned nothing and so will repeat the pattern. That we will collapse our complex SYSTEM is a distraction. Extinction is game over, so problem solved. That we will repeat the pattern if we don't go extinct merits concern, so keep your eyes on the ball.
Some humans may have and be able to act on foresight intelligence. Assume a fraction of one percent. Pockets of functional complex society may be able to form, to self-organize to prepare information packages, to BE information packages, and via foresight avoid scarcity induced conflict within their managed commons to avoid the downward death-spiral-as-usual as conflict always increases scarcity. The ‘rules of the game’ select for outcome per game theory and no one gets a vote. So down with democracy, politics, ideology, mere wordsmithery, all belief systems, and up with naturocracy. Why speak (in Wikipedia article) of conferring the status of personhood (or moral and legal rights) to all organisms and ecosystems, including non-human animals and plants? The obvious need is to take personhood away from hu-mans (hubris-mans). And let's revoke hu-man rights and rewrite the constitution too. Want to sign the Sustainer Declaration of Independence? Deep ecologists would confer personhood and rights on nature. nature would take them away from hu-mans. Down with deep ecology. |
| PREMISE TEN: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life. | The current global empire, the Euro-Sino Empire, is unsustainable and its members are part of a behavioral sink. All systems, functional (most species, organisms) or pathological (e.g. cancer, empire), are driven to maximize empower. See fourth law of energetics. |
| PREMISE ELEVEN: From the beginning, this culture—civilization—has been a culture of occupation. | In the past 12K years short-term contingencies of reinforcement select for empire-building, but like cancer it will be and has been selected against, merely not to extinction yet. We are living in the largest to be seen human pulse. |
| PREMISE TWELVE: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These “rich claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world. | Energy is the wealth of nations and all money is counterfeit (see seventh law of energetics). All complex societies (exceeding Dunbar’s number of about 150 for humans or 12 for rats) select for hierarchy, elite control SYSTEMs, and, without counter measures, increasingly dysfunctional behaviors as the generations pass. Elite consumption and material inequality beyond what is found in a hunter-gatherer society is not implied. Kogi elites (it's a complex state-level society, so they have to have them) are not elite consumers. No laws of the universe are violated if elite behavior is managed by 'rules of the game' that work. nature determines what works. No one gets a vote. |
| PREMISE THIRTEEN: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist. | They can rule by 'force' and by some sort of 'force' they must, if only by 'moral' force or by example. Again, not all complex societies do. As long as the ‘rules of the game’ select for empire-building, that is the outcome. |
| PREMISE FOURTEEN: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case—we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned. | The foundational narrative of empire is conquest of nature and/or other humans, which may look like hate, but is short-term self-affirmation of self interest which the purpose-driven life of servants of empire, elite and commoner, selects for as a carcinogenic tumor’s members select for growth secondary to a failure of limiting short-term self interests, i.e. growth without limit. An amoeba blobs about like a orporation engulfing consumables to turn into energy/profit and waste. Neither are evil. If you have amoebic dysentery, then treat or die or get better, but reviling the beast is optional and pointless. Understand the dynamic instead. |
| PREMISE FIFTEEN: Love does not imply pacifism. | Love is not bubblegum on the bedpost overnight. Love is hate; freedom is slavery... |
| PREMISE SIXTEEN: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real. | There is only the not-two, apart from which not a thing is. Narratives are not the what-is and mere eloquence is error, ignorance, and illusion expressed in words, words, words that may feel good. We cannot know the truth, but we can cease to cherish opinions. We can iterate towards knowing by listening to nature who has all the answers. Not listening to the voices in our head (coming from within or without) or those coming from the mouths or typing of others can clarify the mind wonderfully. We can embrace not-knowing, let drop our hubris, and 'dance with the system'. |
| PREMISE SEVENTEEN: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from them will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans. | To understand a system involves constant interaction with it whereby the understanding is shaped, i.e dancing with the system to iterate towards understanding it. |
| PREMISE EIGHTEEN: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology. | Nature determines what works. We can guess then test. Some call it science. |
| PREMISE NINETEEN: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable. | Our narrative of self and others is the starting point of our storytelling, of our error, ignorance, and illusion. We are the system, the not-two. |
| PREMISE TWENTY: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions. | Empire-building culture, though for a time it has been selected for, sees a planet for the taking by animals (humans) that are different in kind from other organisms, 'beings darkly wise' that are separate from and superior to a cabbage. |
| Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve. Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below. Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there is any heart left—you will find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature. |
Within empire-building complex societies energy (first as gathered food that could be stored, then as greatly magnified by agriculture, then by exploiting biomass as wood and fiber, then small scale wind, water, and recently as the wood and whale oil was running out) from a vast trove of energy stored in oxidizable complex carbohydrates in Earth's crust enabled (and for a time enables) growth at the expense of the planet’s life-support system.
To avoid extinction, all expressions of this pattern we are all a part of, that we are captured and being dragged along by, this complex, powerful and remorseless dynamic we don’t understand that automatically thwarts all attempts to stop it, must be destroyed. If we don’t put time and energy into understanding it, we are doomed to go with it, right to the final curtain. To understand something, e.g. the dynamic, is to be delivered from it. Humans don’t get a vote and telling stories of well-being, morals, race, ethics, justice, life, rights, gender, dignity, or social preferences is a distraction. We have yet to wake up from our dogmatic slumbers, but perhaps some (>0.1%) could awake (or sort of are) and come to understand and learn to live properly on this planet. This is the source of my optimism even though a 90+ percent depopulation of humans in the near future (this century) is possible to likely. There are no political solutions. |
|
|
DGR, Deep Green Resistance, 2011 to present. |
Comments: |
| • Industrial civilization is killing all life on our planet, driving to extinction 200 species per day, and it won't stop voluntarily. | The dynamic we are all trapped in and are part of is killing… and we don’t understand it. To destroy techno-industrial society, understand it first. This involves ecolacy. |
| • Global warming is happening now, at an astounding speed. The only honest solution is to stop industrial civilization from burning fossil fuels. | Climate change is a distraction. Destroy industrial society one mind at a time. Start by protesting the telling of children what to think, instead of demanding they 'endeavor to think well, that is the only morality' so all who can may thereby recognize limits and minimize hubris. At best a few may know enough to have an opinion about what nature will select for. |
| • Most consumption is based on violence against people (human and non-human) and on degrading landbases across the planet. | The narrative of violence is another story that distracts us from keeping our eyes on the ball—the fact that we don’t understand the remorseless dynamic we are part of and serve (with varying levels of enthusiasm). |
| • Life on Earth is more important than this insane, temporary culture based on hyper-exploitation of finite resources. This culture needs to be destroyed before it consumes all life on this planet. | We and our social subSYSTEMs are pathological. We are all humans of NIMH. To act out of our error, ignorance, and illusion as enthusiastic activists is not corrective no matter how many dams are blown up. Understand the dynamic to be delivered from it. 'Know then thyself, presume not God to scan'. |
| • Humanity is not the same as civilization. Humans have developed many sane and sustainable cultures, themselves at risk from civilization. | Our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived functional lives or were selected against. Of thousands of complex societies, from chiefdom to state level, those who MAY have been functional can be counted on one hand. |
| • Most people know this culture is insane and needs radical change, but don't see any way to bring the change about. |
This culture (including BAU, GND, XR, DGR, and other Anthropocene enthusiasts) is a system pathology. Love and understand this Earth, including the rich. Our narratives of self and other are delusional, are either part of the problem or are the foundational pathology. |
| • Unlike most environmental and social justice organizations, Deep Green Resistance questions the existence and necessity of civilization itself. DGR asks "What if we do away with civilization altogether?" | XR/DGR... supporters and theorists are part of the problem, the remorseless dynamic. Like all environmental and other movements whose cause our sociopolitical economic SYSTEM does not select for (the success of civil rights, CFC replacements, air containing pollution you can't see, rivers that don't catch on fire... was selected for), members can work to destroy the hegemon provided the pace of planetary destruction (economic growth) is not slowed. |
| • Unlike most environmental and social justice organizations, DGR asks "What must we do to be effective?", not "What will those in power allow us to do?" | We could 'hit them where it hurts' by destroying energy sources. But to be numerate, we 0.001%, at most, can't. Kaczynski didn't know in 1995 how many others were willing to 'show some courage', but now we do. Meanwhile, 'the pace of planetary destruction has not slowed'. Earth First!, XR and DGR enthusiasts make no effective demands ON THEMSELVES to change. |
| • DGR offers organized, reliable ways to promote sane ways of living and surviving the ongoing crisis. | Ask better questions but assume your answers are delusional as without listening to nature, who has all the answers, there is only concept mongering in a house of conceptual mirrors. |
 • DGR has a realistic plan to stop the insanity, Decisive Ecological Warfare. |
After Earth First! was hijacked by Leftist ideologues (then they by anarchists) all listening (other than to prattle) ended and those who remained where the pathetic pretenders. The expected 'massive public support' is feel-good delusional. Click on the plan. It reads like warmed over Earth First! anarchist thinking. What has Earth First! done for us lately, since 1990s when the anarchists took power, to destroy techno-industrial society? If like Earth First! early on, DGR was actually interested in 'real solutions' such that an E.O. Wilson or Edward Abbey would consider informing them, and were rxevolutionary enough to not believe in belief, I would give them a more careful hearing. But I have industrial society to destroy and little time to do so. If I had been in the car with Dave Foreman in 1979, I would also have left Earth First! when the ideologues took over. I would vote with my feet. |
https://deepgreenresistance.org/mp3/why-deep-green-resistance.mp3 |
I listened to 7:32 of audio of why activists joined. I didn’t read the link entirely and I expected to read and consider a realistic plan to destroy techno-industrial society. When the voices started, I let them speak on. The narratives were deeply pathetic. So I’m guessing I’ll not be joining. But then maybe I already have. Do I have an excuse for breathing? Sorry if I’m using up your oxygen. |
[We need prescriptions for our continued evolution.]
'How would this understanding — that this culture will not voluntarily stop destroying the natural world, eliminating indigenous cultures, exploiting the poor, and killing those who resist — shift our strategy and tactics? The answer?...'
We could fight to see who inherits the rubble, or we could vote with our feet. You could be Federation but you can’t join the Federation. The Ecolate Party is the anti-party party. Anyone for an ecolate manifesto?
I am not now nor have I ever been a member of an environmental movement, for the same reason my mentor by proxy (his books) never was, the systems ecologist Howard T. Odum. Understanding and thinking in systems excludes the distraction of politicized for-and-against tribal thinking.
So am I a servant of the growth hegemon? Yes. I was a senior in high school when the Summer of Love went down, but I could have joined. I did not because the ‘counter’ culture was not counter enough, but merely BAU in sheep’s clothing with flowers in its hair. Ted Kaczynski was at Berkley at the time and didn't join. That revolt was needed was obvious. I’m a Calhounian rxevolutionary. I have never in my life used a psychoactive recreational drug, legal or not, and I’ve had carnal knowledge of only one woman. I have often walked alone and stood alone (on Unguja). I do not care what others think (unless they seek to correct me) and have never believed a thing true believers espouse, subjecting all claims to the flames of an all consuming doubt. Or not, as I’m just another pathetic pretender telling stories, another Homo sapiens narrator.
But I will continue to not serve the SYSTEM with enthusiasm and work to destroy it, which includes deflating the enthusiasm of XR and DGR distractors by telling the truth to power and protesting 1,742 hours on the streets of cities. I’ve read both of Ted Kaczynski’s books (and of course his manifesto several times), and found his critical assessment of anarcho-primitivism clarifying (p. 125). I wrote an alternative ending for his story, Ship of Fools, and sent it to him. He replied that I should read his most recent book, so I did. In my version of the story the only one that had to die was the liberal college professor. And no, I’m not a politicized conservative. The far-right ideologues are ‘not even wrong’ and as 52% of scientists self-describe as ‘liberal’ and 14% as ‘very liberal’ (9% ‘conservative’), having to contend against the debilitating effects of political 'thinking' tends to mostly involve the left-leaning forms, so when the revolution comes they will have to be the first academics to be marginalized like the SYSTEM-serving theologians of the 11th-17th centuries in Europe who dominated universities before them.
To tell the truth to power, to oneself, to we who are the potentates of our 'own' lives, the first fork in the path is to ask, 'am I part of the problem or the solution?' Am I part of a 'real solution' that might actually work to address a 'real problem' that is a system pathology that nature will select against? 'Real solutions' are patterns that nature will select for.
And what of other seekers and their traveler's tales? Should I rush in or fear to tread? To those climbing the Dark Mountain, I found no red flags and a spacious view. My systems science nerd narrative is in harmony with their vision of the human predicament. They sweetly sing my worldview, so if I'm wrong, they are an existential threat to my sanity, to my endeavor to know rather than believe what feels good. So I won't be joining any Dark Mountain Festivals to have my bias confirmed. As for XR, DGR, ISIS, and fellow travelers, my true foes are my true friends as they may be inclined to expose my errors, point out my ignorance, and attack my illusions. Such correction is the highest service a friend could offer. I but return the favor in advance.
SUBNOTE TO FILE: 6/4/2021
Bright Green Lies and Dark Green Delusions
I have, since reacting to Derrick Jensen's offerings, also gone off on the more bright green environmentalists, so Environmentalism Without Environmentalists is to consider. Bright or Deep, 'A plague o' both [their] houses!'
So there was the film Planet of the Humans, which I transcribed to be helpful. Now there is the Bright Green Lies film/book from the dark green take on conventional Green New Deal (GND) type environmentalists.
Delusions of instigating a movement, a super-tribal uprising to change the SYSTEM (aka the establishment circa late 1960s), whether in the form of a nationalist uprising to make one's nation-state or city-state great again, or to bring the blessings of a GND or a new world caliphate/order to those oppressed by capitalism and western enlightenment values, can be popularized among radicals. Among those on the margins who could become the majority when the SYSTEM collapses, they could rise up to save the world. Then their proposed solutions would become the cause of the problems new factions of true believers would have to fight and die for (or kill others) to solve as only BAU (with or without sheep's clothing) can solve problems.
Our experiment in complex society isn't working for us. We need an apolitical, non-tribal global governance system to manage human demands on Nature's resources, i.e. to limit human population, consumption, and use of technology to what works, which must include prevention of empire building and unsustainable extraction of (trade in) environmental resources.
We need to degrow our population to something in the 7 to 35 million range globally, live in band-sized communities (20-50 members) in a region of other communities (less than 150 maximum) within a watershed management unit (WMU, 20k-25k globally) with whom genes and memes are exchanged. Per capita consumption would depend on local environmental productivity x population, and trade items, if any, which could include sea salt from coastal WMUs for fiber from inland WMUs, to perhaps up to 50Wh/person/day of electrical services (e.g. LED light, having perhaps a lower emergy yield ratio than candles or oil lighting), if some WMUs with high energy sources (e.g. hydroelectric) can continue to manufacture such technology in exchange for imported items such as food, fiber, and wood. We should plan on it taking 8-12 generations to relearn how to be functional humans, to recover from our behavioral sink condition, if possible. No mass movement can be instigated to bring about such change.
For the first 92 percent of Bright Green Lies we are told about the problems. Then we are told who to blame (industrial capitalism). At the 96 percent mark we are told we must stop the economy that is waging war on the natural world everyday. We need to fight back, to stop the exploitation by force. What we need is a new environmental movement that puts Nature First!
Final words: "We need people who will look honestly at the problems and have the courage to ask the right questions. Most importantly we need to get to work, to stop the destruction and allow life to come back." Written, directed & produced by Julia Barnes.
Yes, turning 70 percent of arable/grazable lands to Nature would be a good start, as would ending the car culture and all uses of fossil fuels. The writer, director, producer seems unaware that a die-off of humans, livestock, and pets is needed and may be unpopular.
A pox on all their houses. Death to the modern techno-industrial fascists who prey upon the minds of the people and the blood of posterity and the biosphere. Stand down, bitches. If you can read this or watch films, that means you, hu-mans.
SUBNOTE TO FILE 11/24/2022
Eight principles to defend the Earth
Arne Næss, together with the American philosopher George Sessions, developed eight essential principles for deep ecology in the mid-1980s [that remain questionable]:
- Inherent value: The well-being of human and nonhuman life on earth has intrinsic values, separate from human uses or purposes. ['Intrinsic value' is not out there, but is entirely as humans assert, hence humancentric.]
- Diversity: Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also intrinsic values. [Has nothing to do with human values or the existence of humans.]
- Vital Needs: Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs. ['Rights' are social constructs that are also not out there.]
- Population: The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease. [As expansionist humans (the 99+%) define flourishing, there persistence is incompatible with the biosphere.]
- Human Interference: The present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening. [The dynamic involves an expansionist form of human who by nature must interfere to pursue short-term self interests.]
- Policy Change: Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present. [You cannot redirect the paradigm that selects for its own failure; the only viable policy is to vote with your feet to maybe form a viable form of civilization that persists post bottleneck's Great Selection.]
- Quality of Life: The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. [No ideological change will be change enough as the cognitive pathology of believing in belief would persist.]
- Obligation of Action: Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes. [Acting out of a position of error, ignorance, and illusion is all that; rather understand that the expansionist form of civilization is non-viable, which is the choiceless deliverance from it, i.e. understand or die, and if you think you can choose, you lose.]
