Friday, June 28, 2019

Kingsnorth, Thunberg, Berry, Jensen, and Evehema vs "the Machine"

Thanks to Oregon naturalist and writer Tim Fox for emailing me this great Kingsnorth essay "Life versus the Machine" from Orion (winter 2018). Orion noted on their Facebook page it "has become one of our most-read articles this year."  I read each word slowly with interest. The details and themes are powerful as usual for him. I especially like his end about how words are not working, and I respect his commitment to nonviolence. His YouTube The battle against climate change (65,385 views as of today) was voted by my spring term English 205 Critical Thinking students as one of their favorite presentations.

However, I also like the May 4, 2019 comment below "Life versus the Machine" by John Gabriel Otvos, and his reposting of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg "who said this at the Davos gathering in Switzerland": Thunberg:“We are facing [an] existential crisis, the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced [. . .] If everyone is guilty, then no one is to blame, and someone is to blame… Some people, some companies, some decision makers in particular know exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money, and I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”
https://qz.com/1533904/greta-thunberg-blames-davos-delegates-for-climate-change/ 

I respect Kingsnorth's clarity and vision, and I respect Thunberg's brutal honesty and request for accountability. Kingsnorth's main points do not conflict with Thunberg's main point.  Kingsnorth is wise enough to acknowledge the dominant culture was born into this death machine, most of us have some responsibility for continuing to support it, and on one level power in the human realm is based on money and political influence (oil companies), and at a higher level Nature, which either has trumped, or will soon trump, human money and political influence depending on where one lives on the globe, and access to resources.

Thomas Berry wrote in The Dream of the Earth "The art of communion with the earth we can relearn from the Indian. Thus a reverse dependence is established. Survival in the future will likely depend more on our learning from the Indian than the Indian’s learning from us. In some ultimate sense we need their mythic capacity for relating to this continent more than they need our capacity for mechanistic exploitation of the continent.”

Derrick Jensen wrote in "Playing for Keeps" also published in Orion like the Kingsnorth essay, "Only the most arrogant and ignorant among us would say something that implies that all humans are destructive, and that the dominant (white) culture is the most destructive simply because somehow indigenous peoples around the world were too stupid to invent backhoes and chainsaws, too backward to dominate their human and nonhuman neighbors with the efficiency and viciousness of the dominant culture. They might even try to argue that the Tolowa [of the ancient Redwood Forest of Northern California] weren’t actually living sustainably, even though they lived here for at least 12,500 years. But when 12,500 years of living in place won’t convince them, it becomes pretty clear that evidence is secondary, and that there are, rather, ideological reasons the person cannot accept that humans have ever lived sustainably. One of these ideological reasons is very clear: if you can convince yourself that humans are inherently destructive, then you allow yourself the most convenient of all excuses not to work to stop this culture from destroying the planet: it’s simply in our nature to destroy, and you can’t fight biology, so let’s not fuss about all these little extinctions, and could someone please pass the TV remote? It’s an odious position, but a lot of people take it."

In my book Industrial Oz, I received permission to quote Hopi elder Dan Evehema from a man who sat with him: "The degree of violence will be determined by the degree of inequity caused among the peoples of the world and in the balance of nature. In this crisis rich and poor will be forced to struggle as equals in order to survive."

In other words, as Kingsnorth, Berry, Jensen, and Evehema note, lack of human respect for Nature means Nature at some point takes over, and humans are humbled beyond what most can imagine.

Below are gems from the Kingsnorth essay.

"It is estimated that the internet will consume a fifth of the world’s electricity by 2025."

"Microsoft computer scientist and author Jarod Lanier has estimated that if everyone in the world deleted all their social media accounts, it would make a major contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Internet data storage facilities currently emit roughly the same amount as the entire global aviation industry."

"The effects of regular smartphone use on the human brain include the regular triggering of physiological stress and fear responses originally designed to help us evade predators; dopamine addiction; depression; a reduction in analytical thinking capacity; and the malfunctioning of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which can lead to unpredictable and sometimes dangerous behavior."

"A thing is right, runs Leopold’s Land Ethic, when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

"For a number of years, I believed that this second category was made up of people who, if they knew the truth about the human massacre of nonhuman life, would demand significant changes to society, and be prepared to make sacrifices accordingly. [par break] I was an idiot. [par break] Now I think that humans like ease, material comfort, entertainment, and conformity, and they do not like anyone who threatens to take these things away. I think that even the people who say these things should be taken away in order to prevent the collapse of life on Earth do not really mean it."

"All of our promises of change have come to nothing. We have only stopped our rampage when things have gone wrong."

"And we are not the gods we thought we would be. We are Loki, killing the beautiful for fun. We are Saturn, devouring our children. We are Moloch: come, feed your newborn into our fires."

"Pay attention. Give love. Give shelter."

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