[jdumars]

CannedSalmon, I patently disagree with virtually everything you wrote.

Laws have more to do with economics, greed and control than morality. How do you feel about countries that have laws based in Islam? Should women not be allowed to wear bathing suits because it's the law? What about law in corrupt African countries... the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda was legal. Was that alright?

The law is intended to serve a certain purpose. And, I hate to break it to you, but "Christian law" is not a higher law. Sometimes greed is important... like for example, say your family is starving and you have enough food for them and no one else. Do you give the food to a stranger any way? Or do you bee greedy and keep it for your family?

Legislating any kind of morality is a VERY slippery slope.

Many of our laws, especially as they pertain to things like forests, rivers, and such are heavily slanted to corporate interests and have nothing to do with actual protection of them. "Managed forests" are an abomination and a joke. But if your viewpoint were maintained, it's just fine because it's the law.

Acting for a higher morality is something that takes a lot of courage. That's why it doesn't happen very often, even in the gravest, darkest of situations. Did you know that the survival rate of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was on a percentage basis higher than those who went along with Nazis to camps? If they had followed the law, they would most certainly have died. They chose to fight back instead.

The things and places that are being murdered now have no voice, except among a handful of activists and radicals. If people were really aware of the devastation and fully informed, and STILL chose to allow it to continue, then at least we'd have some visibility. Right now most of these atrocities are hidden from view, therefore they don't exist in most people's conception. How can such laws have any morality? In the eyes of the law, resources are not a moral, but economic issue. In the minds of those with empathy, and respect for future generations, those are living beings that must be protected.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Then get out there and blow up some dams or something. damn!

[jdumars]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'T')hen get out there and blow up some dams or something. damn!

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdumars', 'L')ast time I handled a firecracker, it went off in my hand.

[jdumars]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdumars', 'L')ast time I handled a firecracker, it went off in my hand.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdumars', '
')Are we some genetic mistake? Some sort of evolutionary abomination? I don't think so... pre-civ humans were capable of living for tens of thousands of years without destroying their environment. It seems it's civilization that is the problem.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', ' ')Plus they cleverly managed to domesticate certain animals and plants to make themselves safer.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', ' ')Plus they cleverly managed to domesticate certain animals and plants to make themselves safer.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', ' ')Don't make me go Medieval on your ass, ludi.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', ' ')Don't make me go Medieval on your ass, ludi.

[oowolf]

http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic15388.html

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The Culture of Make Believe is the one book I wish everyone would read, if I could chose only one book. But obviously it doesn't reach everyone.

I thought this assessment of Derrick Jensen was fair and balanced:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')uthor Derrick Jensen is as rare a person as you will ever meet. He is so keenly attuned to the natural world that he feels every knife cut civilization inflicts on it. With every word he speaks he seems to be saying, "If you could feel the Earth's pain as I do, you would spend every moment of your existence trying to stop it."

Before he came to town last week, I had read only some scattered essays by Jensen and had never before seen him speak. At first I tried to take notes. But then I gave up and simply let the wave of pathos emanating from this man wash over me. He was at turns erudite, crude, poetic, caustic, and misty-eyed--as gifted a performer as I have ever seen. But what was his performance about?

He spoke at length about patriarchy, conquest, empire, slavery, wage slavery, cruelty to women, cruelty to minorities, cruelty to indigenous people. He plumbed the depths of the modern psyche, our attachment to machines and their effect on our brains. He talked about the effect of language on perception. Is that a forest full of trees--an oak here, a walnut there, with a black squirrel scurrying around the trunk and a sparrow alighting on a limb--or is it simply lumber waiting to be cut? Sometimes the forest is euphemistically referred to as a "natural resource" by environmentalist and forestry company executive alike.

Do you understand how exploited and damaged you really are? As long as you think about how you might get a bigger piece of the pie, you are trapped. As long as you think social justice is about getting a bigger piece of the pie for others who are deprived, you are trapped. All of your normal, civilization-derived concepts are likely traps. Can you see your way through them? Let Derrick Jensen help you.

And, he does. But not directly. As an audience member you are simply following him around as he destroys one notion after another about what constitutes justice, what constitutes truth and what constitutes peace. Jensen is an environmentalist so he must be for peace, right? No, not really, not if you take into account the tremendous violence that modern societies inflict on nature, even while they are at nominal peace with one another. You'll never overcome that violence by working for peace. You must resist the foundations of civilization, sometimes with violence.

How about justice? Surely, we must share the fruits of civilization more widely with the poor. No, those fruits aren't worth sharing because they are poisonous. OK, but surely we would be better off by choosing to keep some of the machines brought to us by modern civilization while discarding others that are known to be bad? Those machines are the product of a civilization built on violence and oppression. The violence and oppression are built right into the machines. How will you filter that out?

Jensen's own childhood seems to have been the point of departure for his analysis. An abusive home life seems to have led him not to the provinces of psychology, but to those of sociology. He does not ask what type of monster his father was. He asks what kind of society produces fathers who are monsters. His answer has led him to the conclusion that fathers can't be fixed until civilization is fixed.

He ostensibly came to talk about his latest book, Endgame. Can industrial civilization survive? Answer: No. Is there anything we can do to make a gradual transition from industrial civilization to a peaceful, sustainable world? Answer: There is, but we won't do it.

Are you saying that industrial civilization is so harmful to humans and nonhumans alike that we ought to hasten its inevitable demise? Answer: It is and we should. Won't a lot of people die if we bring down industrial civilization today? Yes, but a lot more will die if it continues to expand before meeting its inevitable demise; and, the damage won't be inflicted just on human beings, but on all the creatures of the biosphere, injuring and wiping out vast numbers of them even while changing the climate and basic habitability of the planet.

Aren't you, Derrick Jensen, inflicting damage yourself on the biosphere by doing what you do, traveling, publishing books, using electronic communications? Answer: It is inevitable. No one can escape this contradiction. But that doesn't mean we have to accept it and do nothing. Aren't you really just using the tools of the master to try to dismantle the master's house? Answer: Yes, and I'll borrow my neighbor's tools and your tools and steal some tools from Wal-Mart if I have to.

I wondered whether Derrick Jensen believes that there was a pre-agricultural golden age of hunter-gatherers who were neither exploitive of one another nor damaging to the environment. I'm not quite sure based on this one encounter. But I think he would like to find out if such an arrangement would at least be healthier for the humans and other beings on planet Earth.

There is one thing I am sure Jensen believes: Nature is not the remorseless, amoral force that modern civilization assumes it to be. And, despite all our colossal abuse of it, the actors of nature continue to try to do their appointed work of keeping it running. "Nature is waiting to welcome us back," he assures us. But, do we really want to go back?

[Devin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fair and balanced', 'H')e is so keenly attuned to the natural world that he feels every knife cut civilization inflicts on it.

[paimei01]

Derrick Jensen has no intention of making a free pdf version of the book available.
Crazy me tried to convince them about it on their forum and I got banned

He would lose nothing, maybe even gain more readers I tried to explain.

So for now Derrick Jensen is not a person I trust. He writes one thing and does another.
I agree he is right about what he writes, but this is about the death of the entire planet, including us, and our humanity, and yet he wants people to buy or get lost. So you can write books like that without being a Zen master

Not to mention that a pdf book is not made out of paper which is made from trees...
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]
Author Derrick Jensen is as rare a person as you will ever meet. He is so keenly attuned to the natural world that he feels every knife cut civilization inflicts on it

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('paimei01', 'D')errick Jensen has no intention of making a free pdf version of the book available.
Crazy me tried to convince them about it on their forum and I got banned