Posts tagged “what we leave behind”
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“To Live or Not To Live”: Derrick Jensen’s recent column in Orion Magazine
May 12, 2011
“I’m far more interested in stopping the tragedy before it’s too late than I am in feeling sorrow or empathy for those who cannot or will not change their destructive behavior. What’s worse is that in this human-culture-as-tragic-hero narrative, the flaw is nothing so ignoble as greed, lust, jealousy, or even indecision. Rather, the tragic flaw this culture ascribes to itself is intelligence. We’re simply too smart to allow life on the planet to continue. And of course we are unable to change, so there is nothing to be done. Cue the tears, drop the curtain.”
Tags: derrick jensen, dreams, environment, orion magazine, what we leave behind
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Derrick Jensen: High On Progress
May 5, 2010
Progress. In vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean, there is forty-eight times as much plastic as phytoplankton.
Progress. One million migratory songbirds die every day because of skyscrapers, cell-phone towers, domesticated cats, and other trappings of modern civilized life.
Progress. A half million human children die every year as a direct result of so-called debt repayment from so-called third-world countries (the colonies) to so-called first-world countries (the nations that have undergone progress).
Progress is polar bears swimming hundreds of miles to ice floes that have melted away, till finally they can swim no more. Progress is nuclear weapons, depleted uranium, and “drones” piloted from an office in Florida to kill people in Pakistan. Progress is the ability of fewer and fewer people to control more and more people, and to destroy more and more of the world. Progress is a god. Progress is God. Progress is killing the world.
The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said that science’s claim to truth is based on its “spectacular ability to make matter and energy jump through hoops on command.” Anthropologist Leslie White stated that “the primary function of culture” is to “harness and control energy.” Quite simply, this culture is about enslaving everyone and everything its members can get their hands (or machines) on. What is another word for making someone jump through hoops? Enslavement. In this culture, progress is measured by the ability to enslave, to control, and to do so with ever-increasing efficiency. The ultimate goal is to control everyone and everything. — >Derrick Jensen, Orion Magazine
Tags: articles, deep green resistance, derrick jensen, environment, orion magazine, what we leave behind
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Derrick Jensen: “It’s time to lead, follow, or get out of the way”
March 3, 2010
Another 120 species went extinct today; they were my kin. I am not going to sit back and wait for every last piece of this living world to be dismembered. I’m going to fight like hell for those kin who remain—and I want everyone who cares to join me. Many are. But many are not. Some of those who are not are those who, for whatever reason, really don’t care. I worry about them. But I worry more about those who do care but have chosen not to fight. A fairly large subset of those who care but have chosen not to fight assert that lifestyle choice is the only possible response to the murder of the planet. They all carry the same essential message—and often use precisely the same words: Resistance isn’t possible. Resistance never works.
Meanwhile, another 120 species went extinct today. They were my kin.
—Derrick Jensen, in Orion Magazine
Tags: articles, derrick jensen, environment, orion magazine, what we leave behind
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Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan raising money online for new children’s book
November 24, 2009
Fans of Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan: help support the production of their upcoming children’s book, Mischief in the Forest, by donating at Kickstarter.com. More details within.
Tags: as the world burns, Authors, derrick jensen, endgame, stephanie mcmillan, what we leave behind, ya
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Aric McBay at What We Leave Behind book party in Ontario
November 22, 2009
November 22, 3-5pm, AKA, 75 Queen Street, Kingston, Ontario. For more information, see AKA’s website.
Tags: aka, aric mcbay, derrick jensen, environment, ontario, what we leave behind
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Joel Magnuson and Derrick Jensen at Parkland Fall Conference
November 21, 2009
November 20-21, University of Alberta. For more information, please visit the Crisis and Opportunity: Parkland Fall Conference 2009 website.
Tags: alberta, derrick jensen, economics, endgame, environment, joel magnusson, mindful economics, parkland fall conference, politics/government, university of alberta, what we leave behind
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Against Prometheus: Derrick Jensen interviewed at Counterpunch
November 3, 2009
From the interview between Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame and What We Leave Behind (with Aric McBay), and Frank Joseph Smecker at Counterpunch:
FJS: You often write that the dominant culture has robbed the world of its subjectivity; how does this influence our behavior? And if the stories we are told inculcate an objective perception of the world and those around us, then how do we shatter those lenses in order to begin perceiving the world for what it is – a matrix of subjective relations to be in communion with?
DJ: If you do not perceive the fundamental beingness of others (i.e. nonhuman animals, trees, mountains, rivers, rocks, etc), or in some senses do not even perceive their existence, then nothing I say or write can convince you. Nor will evidence be likely to convince you, since, as already mentioned, you won’t perceive it, or more accurately, won’t allow yourself to perceive it. No matter how well I write, if you have never made love, I cannot adequately describe to you what it feels like to do so. Even moreso, if you insist that no such thing as making love even exists, then I will certainly never be able to adequately explain to you what it feels like. For that matter, I cannot describe the color green to someone who is blind, and who even moreso insists that green does not exist, could never exist; as well as to someone who knows that philosophers from Aristotle to Descartes to Dawkins have conclusively shown that green does not exist, could not exist, has never existed, and will never exist … who cannot acknowledge that this culture would collapse if its members individually and/or collectively perceived this green that cannot be allowed to exist. If I could describe the color green to you, I would do it. I would drive you, as R.D. Laing put it, out of your wretched mind.Tags: aric mcbay, counterpunch, derrick jensen, endgame, environment, interviews, what we leave behind
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Derrick Jensen on B.U.R.N.
August 25, 2009
Derrick Jensen talks to B.U.R.N. (Bottom Up Radio Network) about magical thinking, shorter showers, and how to navigate our society’s endgame.
Tags: b.u.r.n., derrick jensen, endgame, environment, radio, what we leave behind
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Derrick Jensen interviewed at Your Call
August 12, 2009
Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame and What We Leave Behind (with Aric McBay), talks to Your Call about magical thinking and the issue of personal change versus social change in the environmental movement.
Tags: aric mcbay, derrick jensen, endgame, environment, interviews, radio, what we leave behind
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Derrick Jensen with Richard Metzger of Dangerous Minds
July 28, 2009
On July 20, Derrick Jensen sat down for a Skype conversation with Richard Metzger from Dangerous Minds to talk about the environment and the ideas in Endgame and What We Leave Behind. According to Metzger’s site: “Dangerous Minds is a compendium of the new and strange—new ideas, new art forms, new approaches to social issues and new finds from the outer reaches of pop culture.”
Tags: Authors, blogs, derrick jensen, endgame, environment, interviews, what we leave behind