Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization

Derrick Jensen is one of those authors that people love or hate. As for myself, I have mixed feelings about the guy and his message. Despite these mixed feelings, though, I never fail to read his books when they come out - and Endgame was by far an away the most anticipated and climactic one yet due to its highly controversial subject: taking down civilization. That's right, taking down civilization. But why would anyone want to take down civilization, you might ask? At this point, I should say that if you have not already had the pleasure of receiving a formal introduction to the man and his work, you might want to start with one of his earlier publications, such as Listening to the Land, A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Strangely Like War and Welcome or the Machine. In fact, I would recommend reading them all. They lay the groundwork from which Endgame both springs and builds upon: specifically, that civilization is F-U-B-A-R and doomed to collapse in the near but not too distant future, if not from climate change, then from resource depletion, soil erosion, toxic buildup or any other of the common environmental factors outlined in Jared Diamond's Collapse or the Worldwatch Institute's annual State of the World reports. Or you might want to just dive right in, since in Volume I of Endgame Jensen outlines many of the fundamental flaws of our cherished civilization. And although each page reads with the power and relevance of an anarcho-primitiveist manifesto, Endgame, the two-volume summation of Jensen's writing career, amounts to nearly 1,000 pages in total - a lot of lumber for a strident call to arms. In fact, under the right circumstances, the book itself is large enough to be used as a blunt instrument to aid the deconstruction of civilization. All jokes aside, though, the net result is a rather awkward flow: a seemingly never-ending concatenation of ideas that, although related by theme, often contradict each other - by the author's own admission: "Why do you think I laid out the premises explicitly for you, put you in a position of actively choosing to agree or disagree with them? Whey do you think I've approached this form so many directions? Why do you think I've expressed my own fears, expressed my own confusion? Why do you think I've made points, undercut or contradicted them, and then made them again? ... The point is the process I am trying to model. The point is that you puzzle your own way through, and figure out for yourself what, if anything, you need to do." (p 886) Although I enjoyed the book thoroughly, and often recommend it to friends, Jensen does not come off as being genuine here. By this, I don't mean that he is purposefully deceiving the readers so much as himself. Along with all the interesting environmental science, psychology and poetry the book contains, the underlying current of rage and despair that makes his writing so profound reaches an all time high in Endgame - to the point whe

Civilization is killing the planet. I can see you rolling your eyeballs, but wait: what does "civilization" mean? Derrick Jensen defines civilization as (abbreviated): "...a complex of stories, institutions, and artifacts - that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities,...with cities being defined...as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life." (Endgame Vol 1, p. 17) This civilization goes way beyond even food and other necessities. Look around you: just about everything in sight is a human artifact. Where did those artifacts come from? If you start to investigate and realize how many species are wiped out (hundreds of species per day, as opposed to a natural extinction rate of one species every 5 years), how many indigenous people are ousted from their own land (where they were subsisting by growing or gathering food on that land) in order to support our lifestyles (for instance, raising cattle on land that traditionally belonged to the indigenous people of Mexico and sending nearly all of that beef to the US and the UK), you will find out just how bloody our hands are. There's something terribly wrong with this picture and no matter how loud environmentalists yell, no matter how many people start recycling and replacing their lightbulbs with more "environmentally-friendly" ones, it's not looking any rosier. And think about this: if the previous paragraph took you 2 minutes and 33 seconds to read (you probably read faster than that), one more Rainforest species went extinct - to support our lifestyles. In Endgame Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization, Derrick Jensen gives case after case showing how the dominant culture is killing the planet. Endgame picks up where the last chapter of his previous work, The Culture of Make Believe, leaves off. In that chapter he dared to speak what few are willing to hear: "...the next step is to get rid of our whole inhumane system, to quit valuing production over life, and to physically stop those who do. The next step is to bring down that which originated in conquest abroad and repression at home. The next step is a planet liberated from the destruction; the next step is the end of civilization." (Culture, p. 602) In Endgame Volume 1 he honestly examines, without flinching, the morality and feasibility of doing just that. He challenges us to get past the belief that what we're doing currently is enough. It's not enough, and we're running out of time. He challenges us to get off our butts and do whatever it takes, and that's not one thing, that's many things. He states over and over that, "We need it all." People, human and non-human, will defend and fight for who and what they love. If you love this planet, you will read this book and answer the challenge. Civilization is killing the planet. What are you going to do about it? In Endgame Volume 2: Resistance he explores just what that

Do you lie awake at night wondering how it's possible that the people who control this society are knowingly destroying the planet, our home? More importantly, do you ever wonder how to stop them? Endgame offers a clear, well-researched analysis of industrial civilization's inherently unsustainable, destructive drive and a compelling argument for the urgent need to dismantle it before the entire planet is reduced to ashes. It's a passionate call to action that presents one stunning insight after another. Both volumes are essential for anyone who wants to understand the underlying mechanisms of the system's destructiveness and control, and to fight back.

It's a great book. Read it and think and then "do" something if you feel the urge. But just one thing I really would like to understand better (even if attempts to understand things, as opposed to blowing them up, are just so much mental masturbation) is how phrases like "crash of civilization" and "civilization has to go" and such are thrown about with abandon. I want to know what would constitute truly uncivilized (and therefore presumably preferable) conditions. Not by genuflection to the idyllic American Indian past, but with reference to our own future when, by hypothesis, civilization will either have crashed on its own or will have been elbowed off the pavement by readers of this book. I would like specifics about what level or rate or manner of technology, mobility, consumption, and reproduction would qualify as "uncivilized" and pass muster with Derrick? I am not trying to be trollish here, I really want to know. Because if we don't know, we'll just start the whole thing up again unconsciously. Is it that all food I eat should originate less than N miles from where I eat it or what? What is that number of miles? What kinds of tools, if any, are sufficiently uncivilized? Is any division of labor acceptable? And so on. I know, I know, the answer would be something like "Why ask me? Those answers will be organically emergent from the community, will define themselves aright, once civilization is gone for good! Single-source-point answers are just playing the civlizers' own game!" Yet still I wonder... In these books, Derrick includes conversations with software and hardware hackers who talk about hacking down agricultural and industrial civilization, but meanwhile with such a boyish gleam in their eye about high-tech and such a hard-on for it in their tone of voice that their words somehow aren't really convincing. They love the stuff! Presumably high-tech is civilization and must go? Yet they really seem to love their toys, if only such could be used aright - to "liberate" people and such. Still, those toys are products of the entire industrial infrastructure. What about weapons? Who would defend the revolution and how? Remember that "one sinner destroyeth much good" (cf. also 'The Parable of the Tribes') Maybe I am just nit-picking, but I feel there is a slippery slope that needs to be addressed, and possibly, ugh, enforced. Or maybe somehow, with "civilization" gone, everybody would be nice enough from then on not to make trouble, or maybe the nasty ones can all be killed in the revolution. Derrick's main thing is to be hard-headed and real, not a starry-eyed pacifist New-Ager building castles in the air. Therefore, in that spirit, I think these questions should be addressed. If civilization were to "crash" tomorrow (whatever that means) then wouldn't the first order of business, as Derrick himself states, be to secure food, water, shelter, etc. as quickly and effectively as possible? But isn't that process likely to eventually

Endgame is a book for our time. It is an important contribution to radial environmentalism, direct action and understanding the underlying subterranean currents that transpire to make up western culture as we know it today. Endgame asks the question and then attempts to solve it: Do you believe that our culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living? If the answer is no what then is to be done about it? Willing or not, ready or not the human species is involved in an all-out, no holds barred war against the dominant culture, western culture. Most people are not competitors, they are the stakes. The spoils, no less, is every living, beating heart and every soul of sentient life upon the planet. The effects of the dominant culture are obvious in every polluted river, the devastation of wildlife, destruction of habitat, the loss of the Coho salmon, dioxin in every mother's breast milk and the habitat of great grizzly bear to name but a few examples from the book. Derrick Jensen wants that turned around. No one can be exempted from the dominant cultures effects. No sector of our lives remains untouched. No sector of any non-humans life remains untouched. Endgame invites us to fight back. From the standpoint of the traditional left, the vices of contemporary culture - the Machine - what Derrick Jensen uncovers might be all too easily explained away to that old devil capitalism. Another mundane interpretation might centre around the evils stemming from the unrestricted pursuit of profit and the manipulative deceptions of the few profiteers as a major corrupting influence. Endgame isn't like that thankfully. Sure, Jensen recognises that to ensure the bone and marrow of the dominant cultures value system, the central mechanism must exclusively fixate on human worth and human values exclusively and to achieve this end, indoctrination or "education" from womb to tomb is mandatory. On one hand there must be a constant reinforcement of the dominant cultures ideals with an emphasis on each individuals total dependence on a system that has a death urge and is killing us, the land, the non-human animal kingdom and sentient life all at once. Endgame's piece de resistance is in exploring this death urge and then finding ways to resist it. The author has gone there before us and saw that mid-wifed by the entrepreneur, the banker, the technocrat, the scientists and ultimately the lawyer of the dominant culture, this sane and sustainable way of living can not, will not, be born from between the printed sheets of pacts and agreements; joint ventures and mergers; contracts and covenants and international treatises signed and countersigned by the political bureaucrat. Endgame neither lacks cultural resonance or political closure. It engulfs both. In the Abolitionist's interview with the author, Derrick Jensen notes that even when our best efforts are applied, both eco and animal activists always seem to lose. Altho