Endgame Vol.1

by Jensen, Derrick

  I go back and forth on this question—is an abuser’s volatility real?—on the cultural level, too, and for the same reasons. Certainly those in power have always hated the indigenous and have always reacted with rage toward those who threaten their perceived entitlement (as I put it in The Culture of Make Believe, “[I]f the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remain underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred wait in the wings, ready to explode”239).

  In addition to this hatred and rage that undergirds so many of the actions of those in power and the culture in general, I strongly suspect that much of the moral outrage and righteous indignation expressed by those in power before they invade yet another (probably defenseless) country containing resources they want or need, or before they punish those who try to stop their depredations, is so much playacting. I know, you’re shocked—shocked!—at the implication that those in power may be sometimes less than honest about their true motivations and feelings. But it’s pretty clearly true.

  The question remains: are they then volatile, or do they just pretend to be volatile. Or both?

  Not that any of this necessarily makes a difference in the real world. Whether those in power blow you up because they hate you for wanting to defend your landbase or because they want your resources doesn’t much matter. You’re just as dead.

  But there still remains the second part of this question: is this culture’s niceness real?

  Here’s why I’m belaboring this point: people who haven’t thought about these issues at all—especially those who are aware of neither history nor current events, which means a hell of a lot of people—sometimes ask, if industrial civilization (or occasionally more specifically the U.S.) is so awful, why does everyone want to be “like us”? Well, the truth is, they generally don’t, at least not until their landbase, and thus culture, has been destroyed. As J. Hector St. John de Crévecoeur commented in his Letters from an American Farmer, “There must be in the Indians’ social bond something singularly captivating, and far superior to be boasted of among us; for thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those Aborigines having from choice become Europeans! There must be something very bewitching in their manners, something very indelible and marked by the very hands of Nature. For, take a young Indian lad, give him the best education you possibly can, load him with your bounty, with presents, nay with riches, yet he would secretly long for his native woods, which you would imagine he must have long since forgot; and on the first opportunity he can possibly find, you will see him voluntarily leave behind all you have given him and return with inexpressible joy to lie on the mats of his fathers.”240 Here’s how Benjamin Franklin put it: “No European who has tasted Savage life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.”241 He also wrote, “When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return, and that this is not natural [to them] merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.”242 These descriptions are common. Cadwallader Colden wrote in 1747 of whites captured by Indians, “No Arguments, no Intreaties, nor Tears of their Friends and Relations, could persuade many of them to leave their new Indian Friends and Acquaintance[s]; several of them that were by the Caressings of their Relations persuaded to come Home, in a little time grew tired of our Manner of living, and run away again to the Indians, and ended their Days with them. On the other Hand, Indian Children have been carefully educated among the English, cloathed and taught, yet, I think, there is not one Instance that any of these, after they had Liberty to go among their own People, and were come to Age, would remain with the English, but returned to their own Nations, and became as fond of the Indian Manner of Life as those that knew nothing of a civilized Manner of living.”243 At prisoner exchanges, Indians would run joyously back to their families, while white captives had to be bound hand and foot to not run back to their captors.244

  The civilized who chose to stay among the Indians did so because, according to historian James Axtell, summarizing the stories of whites who wrote about their lives among Indians, “they found Indian life to possess a strong sense of community, abundant love, and uncommon integrity—values that the European colonists also honored, if less successfully. But Indian life was attractive for other values—for social equality, mobility, adventure, and, as two adult converts acknowledged, ‘the most perfect freedom, the ease of living, [and] the absence of those cares and corroding solicitudes which so often prevail with us.’”245

  Because Indian life was more enjoyable, pleasant, and non-abusive than life among the civilized, the conquistador Hernando de Soto had to place armed guards around his camps, not so much to keep Indians from attacking, but to keep European men and women from defecting to the Indians.246 Likewise, Pilgrim leaders made running away to join the Indians an offense punishable by death.247 Other colonial rulers did the same. When, to provide one example among many, in 1612 some young Europeans in Virginia “did runne away unto the Indyans,”248 the governor ordered them hunted down, tortured, and killed: “Some he apointed to be hanged Some burned Some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some to be shott to deathe.”249 We can ask ourselves whether the governor was actually outraged and acting out his volatility, or whether he simply preferred that his subjects fear him, even if that meant they hate him. The reasoning was straightforward: “all theis extreme and crewell tortures he used and inflicted upon them to terrify the rests for Attempting the Lyke.”250

  When even this failed to stem the flood of desertions—and who can blame the deserting colonists?—the civilized saw no option but to slaughter the Indians and thus eliminate the possibility of escape. (The aforementioned governor, for example, in another case of runaway white folks, sent his commander and some troops “to take Revendge upon the Paspeheans and Chiconamians [Chickahominies],” Indians unfortunate enough to live closest to the whites. This “Revendge” consisted of going to where the Indians lived, killing about fifteen of them, capturing their “quene” and her children, and making sure to “cutt downe their Corne growing about the Towne.” On the boat ride home, the soldiers of civilization “begin to murmur because the quene and her Children weare spared.” Not wanting to upset his soldiers, the commander threw the children overboard before “shoteinge owtt their Braynes in the water.” The Governor, displeased at the sparing of the “quene,” ordered her burned at the stake. But the commander, “haveinge seen [sic] so mutche Bloodshedd that day,” convinced his boss to let him merely stab her to death instead.251

  The elimination of the possibility of escape has, of course, been from the beginning one of the central motivators for nearly all actions perpetrated by civilization.

  So, given the choice between Christianity or death, capitalism or death, slavery or death, civilization or death, is it any wonder that at least some do not choose to die? I recently watched some old movie about Alcatraz, and Art Carney, playing the Birdman of Alcatraz, says something that goes to the heart of this: “The only thing worse than life in prison is no life at all.”252 We may as well face up—and fess up—to the prevailing logic: if we’re stuck with a system that is based on rigid hierarchies, where those at the top systematically exploit those below—and this is as true on the personal and familial levels (wanna talk about rates of rape and child abuse?) as it is on the grand social level—a system that is killing the planet, that is toxifying our bodies, that is m
aking us stupid and insane, that is eliminating all alternatives, we may as well have a nice car. If I can’t live in a world with wild salmon and egalitarian social relations, and in a body free from civilization-induced diseases (choose your poison: mine is Crohn’s disease), I may as well belly up to the bank and surround myself with as many luxuries as possible. If I’m going to be encased in an 880-by-90-foot steel-walled luxury prison called the Titanic, and that prison will soon become my icy tomb, it’s better, I suppose, in the meantime to be riding first class than to be scrubbing the toilets of “my betters.”

  My point, however, is that these goodies that make up the bulk of the system’s “pleasantness” are entirely conditional on your subservience to those above you on the hierarchy. What happens to you if you act on a disbelief in the property rights of the rich? What happens if you act on a belief that police (and more broadly the state, and more broadly still those at the top of the hierarchy) do not have a monopoly on violence, and that violence perpetrated by those in power may (and sometimes will) be met by violence perpetrated by those considered to have no power at all? What happens if you act on a disbelief that those in power have the right to toxify the planet? What happens when you become convinced that violence from the powerless cannot be disallowed given the magnitude and relentlessness of the violence of the powerful?

  You are, in a word, dead.

  BRINGING DOWN CIVILIZATION, PART I

  It IS possible to get out of a trap. However, in order to break out of a prison, one first must confess to being in a prison. The trap is man’s emotional structure, his character structure. There is little use in devising systems of thought about the nature of the trap if the only thing to do in order to get out of the trap is to know the trap and to find the exit. Everything else is utterly useless: Singing hymns about the suffering in the trap, as the enslaved Negro does; or making poems about the beauty of freedom outside of the trap, dreamed of within the trap; or promising a life outside the trap after death, as Catholicism promises its congregations; or confessing a semper ignorabimus as do the resigned philosophers; or building a philosophic system around the despair of life within the trap, as did Schopenhauer; or dreaming up a superman who would be so much different from the man in the trap, as Nietzsche did, until, trapped in a lunatic asylum, he wrote, finally, the full truth about himself—too late. . . .

  The first thing to do is to find the exit out of the trap.

  The nature of the trap has no interest whatsoever beyond this one crucial point: WHERE IS THE EXIT OUT OF THE TRAP?

  One can decorate a trap to make life more comfortable in it. This is done by the Michelangelos and the Shakespeares and the Goethes. One can invent makeshift contraptions to secure longer life in the trap. This is done by the great scientists and physicians, the Meyers and the Pasteurs and the Flemings. One can devise great art in healing broken bones when one falls into the trap.

  The crucial point still is and remains: to find the exit out of the trap. WHERE IS THE EXIT INTO THE ENDLESS OPEN SPACE?

  The exit remains hidden. It is the greatest riddle of all. The most ridiculous as well as tragic thing is this:

  THE EXIT IS CLEARLY VISIBLE TO ALL TRAPPED IN THE HOLE. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO SEE IT. EVERYBODY KNOWS WHERE THE EXIT IS. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO MAKE A MOVE TOWARD IT. MORE: WHOEVER MOVES TOWARD THE EXIT, OR WHOEVER POINTS TOWARD IT IS DECLARED CRAZY OR A CRIMINAL OR A SINNER TO BURN IN HELL.

  It turns out that the trouble is not with the trap or even with finding the exit. The trouble is WITHIN THE TRAPPED ONES.

  All this is, seen from outside the trap, incomprehensible to a simple mind. It is even somehow insane. Why don’t they see and move toward the clearly visible exit? As soon as they get close to the exit they start screaming and run away from it. As soon as anyone among them tries to get out, they kill him. Only a very few slip out of the trap in the dark night when everybody is asleep.

  Wilhelm Reich253

  OFTEN WHEN I MENTION AT TALKS THAT I’M WRITING A BOOK ABOUT bringing down civilization, people interrupt me with cheers. They shout, “Hurry up and finish,” or “Sign me up” (the exception to this, for reasons that escape me, is New England, where people are more likely to stroke their chins, furrow their brows, and murmur, “What a strange and interesting idea”). Indeed, at one talk in Kansas someone introduced me by saying, “We brought Derrick here because he’s got the balls to say we need to take down civilization.” Presumably were I a woman he would have said ovaries. Hundreds of people show up, and we talk into the wee hours about the whys and hows of bringing it down.

  Yet not everyone is happy. Recently, for example, an attorney volunteered to be on my legal team when I get arrested under the Patriot Act.

  “That’s nice,” my mom said when I told her, “But the Feds have bigger things to worry about.”

  “Like what?” I responded, somewhat hurt.

  “Like making up excuses to lock up poor brown people.”

  “Good point.”

  I got compared to Hitler once simply because I suggested that someday the population will be smaller than it is now. I told the woman—who also said, “You seemed like such a nice man until you opened your mouth”—that I failed to see how bringing together a very simple ecological understanding with an intense opposition to genocide and the centralization of power could put me in the same camp as one of civilization’s sterling examples.

  Then a few days ago I hit the trifecta. Someone—a dogmatic pacifist, not that you asked—compared me in one breath to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. She was a bit fuzzy on the first two—especially considering each killed tens of millions of people to industrialize their economies—but her reasoning on Pol Pot was that he wanted to deindustrialize, and so do I, ipso facto, I must be for genocide, mass murder, and the killing of anyone who wears eyeglasses. I didn’t say much in response, in great measure because she had the bit between her teeth, and nothing I could have said would have made the slightest difference. Had she stopped to take a breath, however, here is what I would have said to her, “All morality is particular. Everything is particular. Taking down civilization is not a monolithic act, as if I could snap my fingers and suddenly the lazy-boy recliners and ergonomic computer chairs would disappear, leaving so many millions of people hanging surprised in the air for one long instant before they fall to the soil that still lives beneath their recycled carpet, floorboards, and the concrete of their suddenly disappeared foundations.”

  Bringing down civilization first and foremost consists of liberating ourselves by driving the colonizers out of our own hearts and minds: seeing civilization for what it is, seeing those in power for who and what they are, and seeing power for what it is. Bringing down civilization then consists of actions arising from that liberation, not allowing those in power to predetermine the ways we oppose them, instead living with and by—and using—the tools and rules of those in power only when we choose, and not using them only when we choose not to. It means fighting them on our terms when we choose, and on their terms when we choose, when it is convenient and effective to do so. Think of that the next time you vote, get a permit for a demonstration, enter a courtroom, file a timber sale appeal, and so on. That’s not to say we shouldn’t use these tactics, but we should always remember who makes the rules, and we should strive to determine what “rules of engagement” will shift the advantage to our side.

  Bringing down civilization is not about being morally pure—morality defined, of course, according to those in power—but instead it is about defending our own lives and the health and lives of our landbases.

  Bringing down civilization is millions of different actions performed by millions of different people in millions of different places in millions of different circumstances. It is everything from bearing witness to beauty to bearing witness to suffering to bearing witness to joy. It is everything from comforting battered women to confronting politicians and CEOs. It is everything from filing lawsuits to blowing up dams. It is everything f
rom growing one’s own food to liberating animals in factory farms to destroying genetically engineered crops and physically stopping those who perpetrate genetic engineering. It is everything from setting aside land so it can recover to physically driving deforesters out of forests and off-road-vehicle drivers (and manufacturers and especially those who run the corporations) off the planet. It is destroying the capacity of those in power to exploit those around them. In some circumstances this involves education. In some circumstances this involves undercutting their physical power, for example by destroying physical infrastructures through which they maintain their power. In some circumstances it involves assassination: At a talk someone asked me what, given the opportunity, I would have said to Hitler, and I immediately responded, “Bang, you’re dead.” She then asked what, given the opportunity, I would say to George W. Bush . . .

  All morality is particular, which means that what may be moral in one circumstance may be immoral in another. And the morality of any action must be put into the context of a system—civilization—that is killing or immiserating literally billions of human beings, killing our collective future, killing our particular landbases, killing the planet. In other words, our perception of the morality of every particular act must be informed by the certainty that to fail to effectively act to stop the grotesque and ultimately absolute violence of civilization is by far the most immoral path any of us can choose. We are, after all, talking about the killing of the planet.

  Just last night I shared a stage with Ward Churchill, a Creek/Cherokee/Métis Indian, and author of more than twenty books (I asked how many, and he laughed and then said it’s a bad sign when he no longer remembers the precise number). Ward is known for his militancy, as you can probably guess from some of his titles—Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide, and Expropriation in Contemporary North America, and Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America come to mind—and he’s known as well for his clarity of thought and expression on issues of resistance. So it came as no surprise when he said onstage, “What I want is for civilization to stop killing my people’s children. If that can be accomplished peacefully, I will be glad. If signing a petition will get those in power to stop killing Indian children, I will put my name at the top of the list. If marching in a protest will do it, I’ll walk as far as you want. If holding a candle will do it, I’ll hold two. If singing protest songs will do it, I’ll sing whatever songs you want me to sing. If living simply will do it, I will live extremely simply. If voting will do it, I’ll vote. But all of those things are allowed by those in power, and none of those things will ever stop those in power from killing Indian children. They never have, and they never will. Given that my people’s children are being killed, you have no grounds to complain about whatever means I use to protect the lives of my people’s children. And I will do whatever it takes.”