I really admire Derrick Jensen's passion for justice and the environment.
I also think he's an excellent writer and scholar. To read his books
is always to learn a great deal. He is very close to "getting it" all, but
in my opinion, he is not quite all the way there. Are any of us? I've
included this video not because I believe we can't be proactive, I do, but
because it does illustrate in such a poignant way how serious the problem is,
and how little we are talking about it, or about what we should be doing about
it.
He realizes, I believe, the error of exploitative capitalism, and
catches, (if only a glimpse) the
inherent sense of communal ownership of housing and property. But fails to grasp, I think,
the full implications of this regarding our own inherent responsibility, and
the need for us to be proactive and reach a common consensus about some
basic ethics and goals.
In this video, at the end, there is reference to the ghetto Jews fighting
back against their Nazi oppressors. In my opinion this can be taken in
two ways: a nonviolent resistance and a violent resistance. I've included this video because I
believe we can and must change nonviolently; that the very action of coming together
in large communities to work together to take care our basic needs is the
supreme proactive stance to the pathological "everyone for themselves" culture and socioeconomic structure
that exists presently.
This proposed community
would be a "pacifist" community; which is
not to say a passive community. Derrick Jensen is adamantly opposed to
pacifism and in this area I strongly disagree with him. Derrick
Jensen fails to understand that what pacifism means is preventative action, a
preventative socio-economic culture. War can only be prevented many
many years before it actually breaks out, and to me that is what pacifism is.
Pacifism is the act of preventing war before it happens, it is not the
passive waiting to be slaughtered by some insane individual or enemy.
This preventative kind of pacifism is one of the foundations this
community would be based upon.
This notion by anti-pacifists regarding "passively" allowing oneself to
be slaughtered is sort of comical in a way because: it's just not realistic,
it's intellectually based, it represents a sort of false bravado and it
represents to me a "put down" that is without compassion and
understanding. People do
sometimes allow themselves to be slaughtered, but mostly not because they
are "pacifists". The vast majority of human beings have a
great repugnancy towards killing another human being, even when
threatened by death themselves. This is well documented in the
book titled
"On Killing"
by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. If someone allows themselves or
even others to be killed because of this natural repugnancy, or even because
one is frozen by fear, are we to judge them cowards and or pacifists?
How easy to stand in judgment of another, and how without compassion or
understanding.
I think Derrick Jensen lacks a broader understanding of the "whole
picture". This broader understanding allows for a compassion that goes
beyond having only sentimental feelings for the victim, and actually has
compassion for the perpetrator. Compassion of this sort comes from the
realization of the totality of the situation, the causes. In a sense,
he does not
fully understand the plight of the poor, women and minorities...... because
it is exploitative capitalism, overpopulation, lack of cooperation and a
sharing of resources (natural as well as human) which are also
the
culprits, not simply out of control patriarchy or outside oppression. Patriarchy, or societies dominated
by the males are certainly a reality; but so are societies dominated by
female values, as in the values of materialism, comfort and security. Women
become slaves of men in one type of society, and men become slaves of women
in another. The fact is, both men and women all over the planet need
liberation. Women resist men's liberation every bit as much as men resist
women's liberation; on a worldwide scale that is. Why? Because a society
where all are liberated will, must, be very different from what exists now.
No one will be liberated, truly, unless all are liberated.
I am studying now a book
(Pacifism As Pathology by Ward Churchill) which he has written a long preference for
regarding an intellectual explanation about why pacifism is so bad.
When I have completed the book, taken my notes and written commentary I will
post it on this website.
