The violence of the particular relationship to the land that Mr. White discusses here is part of the violence that is necessary for all possible food in the world to be converted to human food and for all possible resources in the world sequestered for human use.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 27 April 2007 @ 12:17 PM
might be nice if you mentioned that this is Derrick Jensen and that more of the interview is available online at YouTube… but I guess I just did that
Well, yes, this is part 4 of a 6-part interview on YouTube (1, 2, 3, 5 & 6). Same fellow’s posted interviews with Kevin McCabe, Alfie Howard, Daniel Quinn, Tim Ream, David Room and quite a few others.
The other five videos had their high points, but usually had Derrick going off into his usual talk about “taking down the system.” As we’ve discussed elsewhere, it’s not that I don’t agree about the urgency, but blowing up a dam doesn’t take down the system, it strengthens it. We’ve got a fine example right in front of us in Iraq of how you can fight your way right into defeat. It’s not about fighting more violently; it’s about fighting smarter. And sometimes, that doesn’t feel like fighting at all.
The violence of the particular relationship to the land that Mr. Jensen> discusses here is part of the violence that is necessary for all possible food in the world to be converted to human food and for all possible resources in the world sequestered for human use.
[quote]We’ve got a fine example right in front of us in Iraq of how you can fight your way right into defeat.[/quote]
That is not a fair comparison. It’s one thing to destroy a piece of infrastructure (such as a dam) and with it (at the very least temporarily) the possibility of a way of life based on that infrastructure, and it is quite another to try to actually establish control over a certain territory (which is what the US government is trying to achieve in Iraq).
Actually, it’s a very sound comparison. The U.S. took the simplistic view that Iraq was simply a “nation-state” in the European model, being oppressed by a despot. They ignored the history of Iraq, the way Britain had rigged its borders to make the whole thing implode without a strong man in Baghdad like a pin in a grenade. So, they simply removed the despot—and the whole thing ended disastrously because they failed to take into consideration the full complexity of Iraq.
Likewise, civilization is more than just a physical infrastructure. Blow up a dam, and you’ve created further room to grow (by building a new dam). You’ve also alienated a much larger population that might otherwise begin opposing civilization in much more direct ways.
Want to fight terrorism? A real “War on Terrorism” would mean cutting off aid to Arab dictatorships and enormous humanitarian efforts. It wouldn’t feel like fighting at all, but it would actually be effective. What we’re doing now feels like fighting, but every day that goes on, the terrorist networks we’re supposedly fighting grow stronger.
Want to fight civilization? If you’re doing it effectively, it won’t feel like fighting at all.
Native cultures understand this. Take a look through their stories; direct confrontation always ends in failure. It’s the Trickster who prevails. Or, as Tim Boucher put it:
Only attack that which you want to strengthen. For the natural reaction of all things that are attacked is to defend. To defend is to concentrate strength in a particular configuraration in order to resist the painful change of one’s current state. …
So the natural thing to do to engage an enemy is to attack him in such a way as to provoke his defenses intentionally. Attack him so that he becomes hardened where you want him to become hardened, ossified around the points where his flexibility is most important. Make his hands fly up to protect his face so that he cannot see you tripping him.
[quote] Blow up a dam, and you’ve created further room to grow (by building a new dam)[/quote]
Really? Even in the face of peak oil, peak natural gas, peak metal, peak etc.? Sure, you can build a dam to replace the old one; that means not building something else that you might badly need. Give a smallpox vaccine to a healthy person, and that person will develop immunity to smallpox. Give a smallpox vaccine to someone with pneumonia, and that person will die. Same with civilization and dams.
What appears to be true is that, civilization is still too strong, still capable of shrugging off with relative ease any attempts made by fringe groups to bring it to its knees by destroying the infrastructure on which it depends. But this won’t be true forever. How much longer until civ catches its pneumonia? I don’t know.
But anyway. I still don’t see how your analogy holds. The US went to Iraq and created chaos. Blowing up a dam might create some kind of chaos, too; but if your main goal is to ensure the survival of the salmon, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
Really? Even in the face of peak oil, peak natural gas, peak metal, peak etc.?
Absolutely. One of the biggest “peaks” is the simple fact that there’s not much room left to grow into. Like the story of Alexander the Great weeping because there was nothing left for him to conquer.
Give a smallpox vaccine to a healthy person, and that person will develop immunity to smallpox. Give a smallpox vaccine to someone with pneumonia, and that person will die. Same with civilization and dams.
Sure, the difference is if you can apply enough force to overwhelm the system.
Al-Qa’ida killed 3,000 people and, more importantly to the globalized civilization as a system, shut down Wall Street for four days. That fell far, far short of overwhelming the system.
Civilization is vast. It’s fragile compared to the earth’s systems, but blowing up a dam is nowhere near enough to overwhelm it. You could blow up a whole city, and you still would do nothing more than strengthen it.
But this won’t be true forever. How much longer until civ catches its pneumonia?
In decades to come, it might well come to be that you’ll have latter-day bacaudae who will have to fight off civilized attempts to re-assert control. Tribes will have to defend themselves as the map opens up again. But that’s not the situation we’re in now. I’m no pacifist, but this is too important a fight to blow it on dumb tactics just because they feel good. We have to fight smarter than that.
Right now, if you want to fight civilization, the best methods available lie in showing as many people as possible what lies beyond civilization. Like Derrick says in the video, you can’t enslave people when the land provides what they need. Learn primitive skills, build tribes, encourage permaculture, these things free us from the system of civilization. They take away the violence the whole thing depends upon. It doesn’t feel like fighting, but whatever I might think of the whole “Grandfather” story, Tom Brown’s done far more to stop civilization than Tom Kazcinski ever did.
But anyway. I still don’t see how your analogy holds. The US went to Iraq and created chaos. Blowing up a dam might create some kind of chaos, too; but if your main goal is to ensure the survival of the salmon, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
Both are strategies you pursue because they feel like you’re fighting something you hate. Both actually strengthen that thing you hate so much, and in both cases, it’s because you’re being naive about the system you’re trying to fight. In both cases, the straight-forward attack is self-defeating. In both cases, an effective fight doesn’t feel like fighting at all. It’s very emotionally unsatisfying, but if you’re really trying to stop this thing you hate, then that’s just something you need to get over.
[quote]One of the biggest “peaks” is the simple fact that there’s not much room left to grow into.[/quote]
That’s just silly. Civilization needs to grow into places that it can steal resources from; a new space into which to through resources that it’s already got isn’t going to do a thing for it. If what civilization really needed was something into which to throw the resources already secured, then one would have to wonder why the civilized haven’t yet colonized Mars.
[quote] Civilization is vast. It’s fragile compared to the earth’s systems, but blowing up a dam is nowhere near enough to overwhelm it. You could blow up a whole city, and you still would do nothing more than strengthen it. [/quote]
I don’t buy that blowing up a city would strengthen civilization. But of course, blowing up a dam (or a city) wouldn’t kill it. No, look, I was getting ahead of myself a little bit. I don’t actually believe in anyone’s ability to take down Civilization-capital C. (Though Derrick was speculating in Endgame about the potential of hacking. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about information systems.) I do however believe that, as the global economy starts to collapse, as things get increasingly decentralized (simply for lack of fuel), blowing up dams (for example) could speed up the process of civilization’s demise in a given area. Or at the very least, it could speed up the demise of the industrial civilization, and could help save the salmon (again, for example).
I don’t buy that blowing up a city would strengthen civilization.
I dunno… even today, civilizations greatest resource is the people who live within. Blow up a city and like Americans right after 9/11, the citizens of that civilization will be willing to give up just about anything to respond…. even on the far down slope, this will still be the case……
I think I’m beginning to see what exactly it is you think does fight civilization, but it still seems to me self contradictory.
There’s an example you’ve talked a lot about, which I can’t go look up for details right now because my computer is running too slowly, but it involves a civilized group newly inhabiting (I think) Iceland and dying out because they refused to eat fish, when all around them were traditional societies who did eat fish and flourished.
Analagously, if we teach primitive skills, then we will draw a certain number of individuals away from the lifepath of civilization (by lifepath I mean the mental construct which says that civilization is the only way to live) much like there were some european colonists who saw that the ways of native American living were inherently superior. However, those breakaways didn’t stop the growth of civilization in America, those who saw the natives eating fish didn’t save their colonial culture.
Both results came about because the majority of civilized individuals stuck to their civilized cultures, and the end result came about by way of material factors. Indeed, you often self-identify as a cultural materialist, so why wouldn’t the best attack against the culture of civilization be against civilization’s material base rather than its idealogical base? Granted, those who adapt to a primitive culture will be the ones who survive, but has such an idealogical shift ever actually brought down the civilized culture from which it came?
That’s just silly. Civilization needs to grow into places that it can steal resources from; a new space into which to through resources that it’s already got isn’t going to do a thing for it.
Resources are just one part of civilization’s need. Room to grow into is often a much needed resource itself, and often the constraining one. Look at the TVA, for instance. Rebuilding a dam brings in new jobs, contracts, and a whole mini-economy blooms for a brief season to provide supplemental goods and services for the construction crews. Why do you think rust belt cities jostle for new arenas and convention centers when they already have them? Just having room to grow into releases some of the pressure on the system. Blowing up a dam is like blowing the whistle on a train, helps keep the whole system going by relieving some of the pressure.
If what civilization really needed was something into which to throw the resources already secured, then one would have to wonder why the civilized haven’t yet colonized Mars.
Getting to Mars costs a lot. May not even be possible at all. We don’t go there because as much as we need the room, we don’t have enough to pay for it.
I don’t buy that blowing up a city would strengthen civilization.
Actually, that seems to be the plotline Heroes is falling, but even a city like New York only contributes a small fraction to civilization. China has something like 25 cities that are bigger. Wipe it off the map, and you’ve done very little to hurt civilization, but you have opened up a whole lot of room to grow into. You’ve let off a lot of the pressure, maybe as much as a century with something as big as that.
I do however believe that, as the global economy starts to collapse, as things get increasingly decentralized (simply for lack of fuel), blowing up dams (for example) could speed up the process of civilization’s demise in a given area. Or at the very least, it could speed up the demise of the industrial civilization, and could help save the salmon (again, for example).
It could, but that’s still a ways down the road. In the present, civilization is still growing, so blowing up a dam just gives it more room to grow.
However, those breakaways didn’t stop the growth of civilization in America, those who saw the natives eating fish didn’t save their colonial culture.
Collapse begins when people begin to realize that they can enjoy a better way of life, at less cost, at a lower level of complexity. Once enough people believe that (and it’s far less than half, it just needs to be enough to tip the balance), collapse begins to snowball. Teach people primitive skills, or tribal life, and that’s precisely what you’re helping along. It also helps make for more people who might survive—and if, somehow, there’s actually a chance for a gradual power-down like Heinberg hopes, then surely this is it, with primtiive skills, permaculture, and all the rest.
In the end, I don’t think it will change much on civilization’s destructive course, but it does start tipping civilization towards collapse, and it helps make collapse less disastrous, all at the same time.
ndeed, you often self-identify as a cultural materialist, so why wouldn’t the best attack against the culture of civilization be against civilization’s material base rather than its idealogical base?
We’re not talking about its material base, though. Oil fields and farmlands will still be there. We’re talking about basic infrastructure, which is fairly easy to replace. We’re not talking about anything that would change the energy flow through the system or anything really significant to the culture’s material base.
Granted, those who adapt to a primitive culture will be the ones who survive, but has such an idealogical shift ever actually brought down the civilized culture from which it came?
Ultimately, collapse is almost always an ideological shift. Of course, ideological shifts generally happen because of changes in the material reality. Not a road out or a damn blown up, those actually work to undo any such shift by radicalizing people in a conservative fashion, but rising fuel costs, changing climate, these things change the way people think. Primitive skills and tribal living would never be able to make this shift alone, but in a context where that shift is already starting, they can pull it along a little faster. Blowing up a dam pushes it back in the opposite direction, so it really only takes one ELF action to undo a year of my efforts, and give civilization back a year, a few months, however long it may be.
This reminds me of Jeff Vail’s post here: http://www.jeffvail.net/2005/04/logic-of-collapse.html
If I’m understanding it correctly, he’s suggesting that we explore precisely what Derrick is suggesting, that we bring civilization past the point of diminishing returns. That we begin injuring the infrastructure so that resources that would be diverted to expanding control are instead diverted to rebuilding and maintaining control. So for example, let’s say I have a house, and I’d like to build a new garage, or even just fortify my existing garage, but a vandal breaks my roof. Now if I want to continue living here, that garage work is going to get put on the back burner while I divert that money to repairing the roof. I can’t expand. If I want to continue living in this home, there are suddenly all these other investments I have to make, and my funds are running low. At a certain point, it becomes more viable to scrap the idea of continuing to live in this house, and to find another place to live.
Likewise, if vital infrastructure of civilization is damaged, infrastructure that civilization must have in working order just to exist, such as transportation infrastructure, perhaps, or mining infrastructure, then those resources must be diverted to maintaining them, lest civilization stop functioning.
That’s the whole idea of diminishing marginal returns. As complexity increases, the returns are smaller and smaller, and at a certain point, the cost exceeds the returns, and collapse ensues. I think what Jeff is considering in that article, and Derrick is suggesting in this video, is that it may be possible to make the cost of maintaining civilization greater than the return on its continuation. If we can damage vital portions of civilization, then its archons must invest more to maintain or rebuild, and those resources cannot go to expanding civilization’s grasp of control. And if civilization can’t expand, can’t grow, it dies, as you argue, Jason.
Jason wrote:
“Civilization is vast. It’s fragile compared to the earth’s systems, but blowing up a dam is nowhere near enough to overwhelm it. You could blow up a whole city, and you still would do nothing more than strengthen it.”
This seems to contradict something that you’ve mentioned earlier, Jason, in regard to New Orleans. In the podcast with John Michael Greer, he mentions, and as I recall, you did not object to the notion, that part of why New Orleans is not being rebuilt so aggressively is that the resources just aren’t there. You mention in the Slow Collapse that civilization may have already peaked about a century ago, and we’re slowing heading downhill. Would an event like the destruction of a city not place a further strain on dwindling resources, thus forcing a hard choice of ‘rebuild (and divert expansion resources) or allow to remain destroyed (and lessen one’s grip of control)?’
Perhaps, and I don’t mean this as a personal attack, Jason, you’re unwillingness to consider this possibility has to do with a sentiment you mentioned in that Jeff Vail post than an honest assessment of what tactics may work:
Normally, I follow wherever the facts lead me. They led me into heresy with the Roman Catholic Church, and I followed. They led me out of “the fold” of Quinn’s followers, and I followed. But this step, I find myself incapable of taking. I can’t refute the logic, and yet I can’t take part in actually making it happen. Preparing for it as an inevitable outcome, yes. Refraining from an attempt to stop it, yes. But actually making it happen … here is where “the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.”
I dunno- these are some thoughts. There may be things I’m missing that would encourage me to reconsider this line of thought.
After reflecting for some time on what I wrote in “The Logic of Collapse,” I would later wrote another post along similar lines, but with different conclusions:
After more time to think, the combination of the (in my opinion) inevitability of collapse with the need to provide an alternative to hierarcy, not just to destroy it, leads me to think that our efforts are better spent (both from a personal and societal perspective) trying to collapse intelligently, to create lifeboat communities, to create reservoirs of knowledge that will be needed post-collapse, etc.
In addition to the points made in Jeff’s later article, I’d also like to point out that the same point remains as before: you’re underestimating the complexity of the system. If vandals destroy your roof, your monthly income doesn’t increase: you need to choose whether you’re going to fix the garage, or finish the driveway. Blow up a dam, and you have civilization rallying against the “terrorists,” so they actually get more energy—usually enough to not only rebuild the dam, but to pursue other projects besides.
New Orleans will probably never be rebuilt, but that’s because its geography makes the cost exorbitant. It’s fairly unusual in that regard.
Yes, civilization has peaked, and it will soon be contracting more seriously, but even now, when some major point of infrastructure is removed, the response strengthens civilization, rather than weakening it. If your logic held, 9/11 should have been the beginning of America’s end. It wasn’t, because you’re neglecting the rallying factor still in play, because people still believe in this insanity.
True, it may be my personal bias, but I rarely see any point in playing that game, since any of us could speculate on the hidden biases we each hold endlessly, and we could turn them literally any way we want. I could as easily suggest that the only reason you support such an idea is because it’s emotionally satisfying and fulfills our fantasies of “fighting evil.” Would that be true? Would it be any more or less true to suggest that this is simply my “cowardice”? It’s just not a fruitful line of inquiry. This is an important question, so I think the focus should always be on what’s most effective, rather than the people making the arguments.
To sum up, the key element that makes your case fail, I think, is that the energy available to civilization is not simply linear. A good amount of it is the will of the people caught up in it. For the most part, that’s static, but traumatic events can galvanize it. Look at U.S. industrial production in WW2, for example. Because of that, you have to look not just at the cost civilization incurs from such an attack, but the gains it makes in public galvanization. If you want to see it up close and personal, come visit my homeland in the Allegheny Forest, and you’ll see how dedicated a community can become to its own destruction once one misguided attack helps strengthen civilization. ELF’s arson put the cause of helping make the Allegheny Forest a viable ecology again back by decades, just in one night, because they failed to consider how the system defends itself.
Jason, your point seems to be that blowing up a dam (for instance) would give civilization a ‘psychic energy’ boost in the sense that people who were getting disillusioned with civilized life (though they wouldn’t necessarily put it that way themselves) would all of the sudden rally behind the ‘rebuilding’ initiative. Well, that depends on the circumstances, I suppose. But the main thing to consider is the following: does civilization (in a given area, at a given time - as I said, I don’t have much hope for a systematic taking down of Civilization-capital C) have a more acute need for ‘psychic energy’ or for fossil fuel etc. energy? The former is no replacement for the latter. If you are facing a serious shortage of oil, metal, concrete etc., no amount of ‘psychic energy’ will make a new dam go up. (Or, if a new dam does go up, then something else won’t go up that would have gone up otherwise.)
Second thing. Reading Jeff’s article (Derrick Jensen vs. the Dalai Lama) served as a reminder to me that there are really two related but separate issues here. The first has to do with taking down civilization in the sense of a complex hierarchical society. The second one has to do with taking down the industrial infrastructure that is ravaging the planet and that has been an indispensable tool for initiated the greatest mass extinction in the last 65 million years. If the salmon (for instance) are to be saved, the dams need to go down and stay down. That is far more urgent than getting rid of the hierarchical society. As soon as we hit the point where rebuilding a blown up dam becomes impossible (or alternatively: where rebuilding a dam means not building something else that would’ve been equally destructive), those dams need to go down. That point is at most a couple of decades away, I think.
Well, that depends on the circumstances, I suppose. But the main thing to consider is the following: does civilization (in a given area, at a given time - as I said, I don’t have much hope for a systematic taking down of Civilization-capital C) have a more acute need for ‘psychic energy’ or for fossil fuel etc. energy?
Energy is energy. A hundred people willing to work twice as hard with saws and axes can more than make up for the losses stemming from shorter mill hours because the price of oil jumps up $0.10 a gallon.
The former is no replacement for the latter.
Sure it is, once you work out the conversion rate.
If you are facing a serious shortage of oil, metal, concrete etc., no amount of ‘psychic energy’ will make a new dam go up.
At the moment, though, there’s no real shortage of any of those things. They’re getting more expensive, and real shortages will come in the future, but right now, that’s just not the case.
If the salmon (for instance) are to be saved, the dams need to go down and stay down.
And there’s the problem. Take down one dam, and you’ve given them the energy to build two in its place.
That is far more urgent than getting rid of the hierarchical society.
But the hierarchical society is also what makes it impossible to take down the industrial infrastructure the way you’re suggesting, and why pursuing that strategy leads to strengthening the infrastructure rather than weakening it. So they’re not really two seperate things at all.
As soon as we hit the point where rebuilding a blown up dam becomes impossible (or alternatively: where rebuilding a dam means not building something else that would’ve been equally destructive), those dams need to go down.
But that point is largely a question of commitment. You can keep pumping peaked fields for years after, if you’re willing to pay the higher prices. When that point is reached, the dams will go down because people will want them to come down, because they’ll see how those dams are destroying their lives and the life of the landbase they depend upon. Rip it away before they understand that, and they’ll build two new ones just to spite you. Material reality sets a lot of the parameters for social beliefs, but it’s amazing how large a group of people can ignore their material poverty, even for decades at a time. That’s generally irrelevant to discussions about cultures over millennia, but we’re talking about the next few decades, and on that scale, it is relevant.
Just thought I’d drop a quick comment that there is no one right way to deal with this situation. While we can debate at the macro level, at the local level, the Trickster’s going to have to do a lot of work & deal with things in unique ways.
Want a solution? Look around where you live and do something. Don’t worry about its larger ramifications. Act.
Bottom Line: The Trickster would like to invite you to a Global Party. It starts now and ends when the check comes due. It’s theme is “How Do We Stiff the Big Guys?” and you’re expected to pull off at least a couple of serious tricks to get in
Serious members need not apply. :)P
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 28 April 2007 @ 10:31 PM
I’ve lived temporarily in the United States for the past few years, but I am actually from Eastern Europe (one of the non-EU countries). Earlier today, when I was taking a shower ;-), I started thinking what would be likely to happen if someone blew up a dam in my corner of the world. Let’s see… I imagine the President and/or the Prime Minister would hurry to the site, strongly condemn the act of terrorism, promise to apprehend and severely punish the perpetrators, and to rebuild the dam. As for apprehending and severely punishing the perpetrators, I don’t know, it might or might not happen. What we’re really interested in here, though, is in whether or not a new dam would go up. If it were a small dam: maybe. Though I personally think that, given our political elite, it’s more likely that the whole thing would be forgotten after a week or two. But suppose it were a medium-to-large sized dam. I can’t even begin to imagine the thing getting rebuilt from local funds - the country’s just too poor for any such large scale project. What would happen is that people would start looking for foreign investors. But what would this look like from a foreign investor’s perspective? A politically unstable country with highly unimpressive recent history, and a brand new (dam blowing) terrorism problem. An expensive project that would take a few years to bring to completion and that would take a couple of decades or so to compensate for the cost of construction. In, as I said, a politically volatile country. A very attractive prospect indeed. No, I claim that the dam would never get rebuilt (except, possibly, if it were a pretty small one, and even then, probably not).
The point of this exercise? First of all, to remind us all that civilization is by no means a monolithic structure. Blowing up infrastructure might be quite effective (from an ecological point of view) in one part of the world, and completely counter-productive in another part of the world. And second of all, in the United States context: the US is virtually bankrupt, the dollar is about to crash. Though I obviously can’t know for sure, I find it quite possible, even likely, that the US will soon find itself in a situation where rebuilding a medium-to-large sized dam becomes impossible. And if you fast forward a couple of decades or so from today: I imagine there will be virtually no large-scale building projects going on anywhere in the world. The existing infrastructure will be maintained to the extent possible, but building a large dam (or a large anything) will be virtually impossible. If something goes down, it’ll stay down.
What we’re really interested in here, though, is in whether or not a new dam would go up. If it were a small dam: maybe.
The plans for the “Freedom Tower” are even bigger than the WTC. You could blow up Hoover Dam and they’d build something bigger.
Though I personally think that, given our political elite, it’s more likely that the whole thing would be forgotten after a week or two
I rather think it would be beaten like a drum to remind everyone who might question them how the world has changed and anything they want or need is now justified. That’s the track record, anyway.
I can’t even begin to imagine the thing getting rebuilt from local funds - the country’s just too poor for any such large scale project. What would happen is that people would start looking for foreign investors. But what would this look like from a foreign investor’s perspective? A politically unstable country with highly unimpressive recent history, and a brand new (dam blowing) terrorism problem.
And a third of a million people with the most voracious appetites on the planet. Our government and economy is largely foreign-financed now anyway. With so many customers here, of course they’d be willing to make some more money by owning a new dam here.
Jason, were you trying to dispute what I was trying to say about my own country, or were you saying that the same thing wouldn’t apply to the US? It seems to be the latter but I’m not entirely sure…
Oh, I misread. I thought you said how it would unfold in the U.S.
In eastern Europe, from what I know of it, I think you might be correct. Much of eastern Europe is already in full collapse right now, has been for some time.
Thanks so much for this conversation. I’ve really enjoyed reading it.
I’d like to add a few pennies. The first is that, while Derrick has used blowing up a dam as one example of dismantling infrastructure, the whole point of Endgame was to spur conversations just like this. To ask these questions; what forms of violence could take down civilization? What/where are the fulcrums we can use, and what can we use to leverage such an act?
What I got from Endgame was not “violence will work in any form against civilization,” but, “let’s start a conversation about how we may use violence effectively.”
Taking out dams would not take down civilization, but would help the salmon, if not temporarily. I think another question to ask ourselves is about protecting our own bioregions. I live in the Pacific Northwest. Right now we are having a salmon crisis. They may go extinct in the next 5 years. They have practically outlawed fishing here. While an act like taking out a dam will not stop civilization, and perhaps strengthen it, the Salmon don’t really have time. If taking out a dam (or 10) could save them long enough to live beyond civilizations collapse… is it not worth asking ourselves?
I agree with Hasha, that Dams would not get rebuilt. Especially here in the Northwest, where people have been trying to get them removed (through legal means) for quite some time.
I also want to say that the ELF does not do things in a way to bring down civilization. I agree that their actions strengthen the civil resolve to take down terrorists. But what if these people made it look like an accident? What if they stopped sending communiques to the press and started planning better, invisible actions? You could do things like this, without causing an ideological back-lash like the Green Scare.
What if a Dam just fell apart? Or was percieved to? Who would they blame? The Army Corp of Engineers right? Look at New Orleans. What if we found out the terrorists blew up the levies? More people would probably send aid to New Orleans, right? But nature fucked new orleans over. And the Army Corp fucked them over. Americans sent millions more in aid to tsunami relief than to New Orleans.
Derrick points out in Endgame that most dams don’t even generate electricity anymore. What if one of those just fell apart. Oops. “Well, it wasn’t even generating electricity anyway. So, why rebuild it?”
Also, you make a good point in suggesting that attacking civilization will build its defenses. Again, might that be a strategy to bring it down? Attack it in the face, so you can trip it? Of course, where would the face of civilization be, and how would could trip it are questions I will probably never know the answer to. But there are freaks out there who get off on this shit and know where the weak/strong points are.
Again, I think the main point of Endgame was not to convince people to blow up dams or attack any of the infrastructure of civilization, but to spark these kinds of conversations. How could it work?
While I personally I agree ideologically with the “we must take down civilization now” mind set, I do not feel inspired to search for these fulcrums and/or levers. Rather I find inspiration from writing blogs, rewilding, having discussions like these, etc. So that’s my choice of resistance. I believe we need it all.
In the end I think as Civilization collapses, those in power will try to control who lives and dies as our artificial population declines. I think this will cause the most friction, and I believe that in the long-run, violent resistance is inevitable, unless you want to end up at one of their death camps (oops, I mean “immigration camps”) or unless you are in their military.
What I got from Endgame was not “violence will work in any form against civilization,” but, “let’s start a conversation about how we may use violence effectively.”
I agree, I don’t have much of an issue with what Derrick’s said. I am kind of disappointed at what he doesn’t say, though. He doesn’t take a very long look at the situation to see if this kind of violence would work, while his words are being used by people who are approaching the situation with a lot less nuance than he did and ignoring his caveats. This is a pretty dumb strategy, at least in this time and place, and by not addressing it directly, Derrick’s words end up becoming slogans for people who aren’t thinking things through nearly as much. I’d like to see something like that from him—no, not some pacifist crap about never fighting back, just a look at whether blowing up a dam, right now, would really be a good idea, if that would actually help bring civilization down, or if it would just make it last longer.
Taking out dams would not take down civilization, but would help the salmon, if not temporarily.
Until they come back and build a new dam, and round up everyone who cared about them and would otherwise be working towards things like dam decomissioning which might take the dam down and keep it down. That’s a lot worse for the salmon.
While an act like taking out a dam will not stop civilization, and perhaps strengthen it, the Salmon don’t really have time. If taking out a dam (or 10) could save them long enough to live beyond civilizations collapse… is it not worth asking ourselves?
Perhaps, but again, there’s more at stake than just the salmon. How many species are you thus sacrificing for salmon’s sake, by making civilization live longer in order to save them? Assuming they don’t just rebuild the dams, in which case you’ve done nothing for the salmon, and sacrificed so many other species for naught.
There’s 200 gut-wrenching tragedies every day—200 species wiped out, never to be seen again, every single day. More than saving the salmon, the question has to be, how do we stop that from happening?
The answer has to be local, like you said. But it’s also important to remember to think of your whole local ecology, not just one species in it, as vital and crucial as each and every one of them are.
I agree with Hasha, that Dams would not get rebuilt. Especially here in the Northwest, where people have been trying to get them removed (through legal means) for quite some time.
That’s why I mention dam decommissioning, because that would keep them down. When you force that choice on a group of people by just blowing it up, even the people who used to agree with you recoil, and the first reaction is to rebuild it, maybe even bigger, just to spite you. Terrorism has a wildly disproportionate reaction to the actual damage it does.
I also want to say that the ELF does not do things in a way to bring down civilization. I agree that their actions strengthen the civil resolve to take down terrorists. But what if these people made it look like an accident? What if they stopped sending communiques to the press and started planning better, invisible actions? You could do things like this, without causing an ideological back-lash like the Green Scare.
That’s kind of the “best case scenario” I talked about in “On Violence,” or that John Robb outlined in “Green Guerrillas.” Even in those cases, the balance is very tricky, and I think even under the very best circumstances, you’re still going to end up doing more harm than good.
Making it look like an accident could change some things, but how much can you really succeed in that? They’re very good at figuring these things out these days. It could work, but it would have to be perfect. Any slip-up, and we’re back to the beginning again, where it’s doing more harm than good.
We’ve got other options on the table, and with a little ingenuity, you can wage a war of ideas with all the ferocity and effectiveness of a physical conflict. A Trickster war. The possibilities for success down that road are far greater, I think, with much less chance of catastrophic backfire.
This is actually something Derrick himself suggests—keep it all on the table, and use whatever it takes. I’m not disagreeing with that. I’m saying that blowing things up doesn’t get us closer to that goal, it moves us farther away, and things as desperate as they are, that’s not something we can really afford right now. So, let’s use what really works, what’s so rarely been deployed inside civilization, but is idealized in tribal mythologies the world over: the Trickster war.
An example: Jesus waged a pretty good Trickster war. Made Ghandi and MLK look like hacks by comparison. We need to make them look like hacks, too, because nothing less than that will do.
Another example, though much less impressive: the plans I’ve begun to work out for a Trickster war to save my own homeland, the forests of the Allegheny. There, you’d call it a Hare war; out in your parts, I imagine it’d be a Raven war. Anyway, there’s some allies we can help, like the Friends of Allegheny Wilderness. But the reason these people keep destroying these forests is that they have no other way to live. This isn’t a wealthy area, and they make their living from logging and drilling and otherwise raping the forest. More than anything, they need an alternative. Permaculture can help put food on their tables in the short term, and provide for them in the long term. It means that ecological wealth is the same as human wealth, and that suddenly makes the loggers and the oil companies despoilers come to steal the source of their livelihood and destroy everything they hold dear. Right now, it sure does feel like their covenant is with their employer and the supermarket. That’s the part that needs to change. They need to see that their covenant is with their landbase. That’s when they’ll start protecting it. When that happens, just try to log that forest. See what happens.
It’s like social judo, a memetic martial art that makes friends out of your enemies, exploits the systemic weaknesses of the machine, and draws people out. The longer you do it, the stronger you become, and the weaker the machine gets. Eventually, that may lead to a conventional war, but if we’re lucky, maybe we can slow it down in the short term, tear it down in the long term, and save as much as possible—humans no less (and no more) than any other species—in the end.
This is why I spend the time writing and thinking about things like roleplaying games and the Wii and what not. I’m trying to develop the arsenal of a Trickster war. It’s nowhere near there, but my hope is that this can lead somewhere. It has to start somewhere, doesn’t it?
Also, you make a good point in suggesting that attacking civilization will build its defenses. Again, might that be a strategy to bring it down? Attack it in the face, so you can trip it? Of course, where would the face of civilization be, and how would could trip it are questions I will probably never know the answer to. But there are freaks out there who get off on this shit and know where the weak/strong points are.
If the opportunity opens up, absolutely. But I would suggest that this is very much part of a Trickster war. Terrorist attacks and even guerrilla warfare are places where civilization is strong. Trying to match them there is not a good idea. Their weaknesses lie in the poverty of its society: alienated, isolated people. That’s the biggest Achilles heel I know of in the system. Hitting civilization where they’re strong sets that back; a Trickster war exploits that.
So that’s my choice of resistance. I believe we need it all.
Well, do we need it all? Do we need more dams, and more carbon in the air, and maybe a new coal-mining initiative? We need all the things that weaken civilization. Does blowing up a dam weaken civilization? I think, at least in the near future, it makes it stronger, so I think we don’t need it. We don’t need it just like we don’t need some grand nuclear power initiative.
I believe that in the long-run, violent resistance is inevitable, unless you want to end up at one of their death camps (oops, I mean “immigration camps”) or unless you are in their military.
I’m not sure. If you look at Rome, they were generally too busy trying to keep their own capital cities together to worry much about eradicating the bacaudae. Of course, at an earlier point, when they were still in a position to try to claim those territories, there were plenty of battles. Fighting to defend your family and land against an invasion is a very different question than blowing up a dam. When it comes to that point, it’s time to melt into the forest and rain down arrows. Never let them see you coming, but you might want to let one run home screaming, just to start a rumor that those woods are haunted, and anyone who violates them will suffer terribly. In defense of family and land, nothing’s too extreme.
P.S. - Scout, your interview with Derrick was the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen/done/eaten! Unfortunately, I saw it about two hours after posting this one, and I try ot to have two videos on the frontpage at the same time, so I’m really looking forward to posting yours after two more posts!
Since my previous post here, I’ve actually been thinking along similar lines as Scout. Take down a small dam that was originally built illegally and that is no longer being used to generate electricity. Don’t send a statement to the press to tell them why you’re doing it. You can try to make it look like an accident, but even if it merely looks like vandalism, it should be good enough. If nobody’s money’s been lost, nobody will care if some kid decided to play with explosives a little bit. (If you demolished an old, abandoned house that nobody was living in, that was already largely falling apart, that was worth squat to its owner - it’s unlikely that the police would look very hard for the perpetrator. Same thing with these dams.) Everything changes of course once anyone suspects that this is an organized campaign fought by people with strong ideological interests inimical to the status quo. But as long as you can keep the cops from suspecting that, you’re home free. And if by some chance the person who blew up the dam got caught, s/he ought to be prepared to say ‘I was just fooling around, I like playing with explosives, I know it’s bad, but I can’t help it… I chose that old abandoned dam in order to make sure I didn’t do any real harm, blah, blah, blah’. Would get the person a far more lenient sentence than the ‘I wanted to protect the salmon’ approach.
I agree that attacking civilization, in general, would cause it to build up a defense. But I don’t think this is true across the board. I do believe there are weak points that could be exploited that could cause a crash. I think that Derrick did a good job of eluding to some of these points in Endgame, but even so a whole chapter was devoted to “thinking things through” before you run out to blow something up, and even then, you may not have to blow anything up. Like your trickster metaphor.
I think no one can say, “violence against civilization will only strengthen it.” Most of the time I think so, but when does it not?
Earlier you mentioned that the base would be farming. Do you think that an attack on farming could somehow weaken or send the civilized into a fury?
I don’t buy into the idea that somehow ELF actions set back an environmental movement any more than say, “An Inconvenient Truth” did. Could you explain why you think this, or point me to one of your posts where you explain this position?
I know that most of their actions are largely symbolic, and in a sense cause a memetic backlash against the “green movement.” Is it the memetic backlash you see hurting your actions, if so, how?
What do you think of the old addage, “no press is bad press?”
I agree that we need to look at our whole landbase. While salmon may seem to appear as just one species, they are a keystone to the whole community. If you want to get technical or “meatspacey,” the bring in the minerals from the ocean that make a forest rich. They carry nitrogen and then die and create nitrogen rich soil. Not to mention food for all predators, scavengers, and bugs. Aside from the fungi, I can’t think of a greater loss to the ecological structure, aside from the old growth, which are also already mostly gone. In that sense, it would behoove us to risk anything to keep those salmon alive.
Again, I agree with you, in a general sense. But to a particular landbase, the destruction of something may not weaken civilization on a large scale, but could prove to save a keystone species long enough for them to survive through the crash.
Most people don’t know about this, but here in the NW there was a little windstorm a few months back that blew apart miles of phone poles. Thousands of people went without power for weeks. Why? Because they didn’t have enough phone poles to put up. Yeah, a phone poll shortage. WTF? If this was an act of terrorism, you bet they’d log yellowstone to get these people their power back. Yet, when nature does it they’re like, “Hey man, shit happens. Fend for yourselves.” Haha. People are fucking crazy.
Everyday I ask myself, do we need it all? Do we have time to fuck around blogging and discussing tactics? Or will the salmon be extinct tomorrow, and who’s next after them? What will bring down civilization quicker? I don’t know. But I don’t judge other peoples tactics, and I support them, even if think it may worsen the state of things… because I don’t really know if what I’m doing is really effecting anything at all. My blogging and “cultural creating” could amount to nothing but apathetic cowardice in the end. Maybe blowing up a dam or a more planned out act of violence against civilization would have much greater effectiveness that I think it can. I just don’t know. You know? No way of knowing what exactly is happening in such a complex system with particular tactics in particular places of the world, with particular outcomes. Like Hasha was saying about blowing up a dam in Europe or wherever.
I think the point is to look at your particular place in the world, and what tactics you think will work. But you don’t know what will work in other places, in other groups of people, with other networks and particular knowledge, etc.
I’m rambling again. Oh yeah, one thing… you said,
“Right now, it sure does feel like their covenant is with their employer and the supermarket. That’s the part that needs to change. They need to see that their covenant is with their landbase. That’s when they’ll start protecting it. When that happens, just try to log that forest. See what happens.”
But isn’t that what’s happening? Isn’t Jensen someone who has decided to make that stand? I feel that what you suggest is exactly whats happening. There are people who do identify with the land, and they are the first ones putting their feet down. That’s what I got from Endgame. Do you think that a majority of people will at some point defend their landbase? What happens if theres no landbase left to protect?
Hasha—I think that’s true, there’s a lot of essentially abandoned infrastructure that wouldn’t raise much attention at all, yet its removal could still really help things.
Earlier you mentioned that the base would be farming. Do you think that an attack on farming could somehow weaken or send the civilized into a fury?
Depends on the kind of attack. They’re already working themselves into a tizzy about “agroterrorism.” But an alternative—showing small-scale farmers how they can get better yields with permaculture, and starting a grassroots rural backlash against the Green Revolution—that’s something that sweeps in without seeming like an attack, and does its damage before you can really defend yourself.
I don’t buy into the idea that somehow ELF actions set back an environmental movement any more than say, “An Inconvenient Truth” did. Could you explain why you think this, or point me to one of your posts where you explain this position?
I’m unique here in that I have first-hand experience with this. The situation in the Allegheny National Forest is awful, and their many other faults aside, the Allegheny Defense Project (ADP) had met with some significant success in holding back logging through a series of litigation. They were eroding local support in the process, but they were buying time. Friends of Allegheny Wilderness probably have a much better long-term prospect, but the ADP were slowing them down in the present. Then, on 11 August 2002, ELF burned down the U.S. Forest Service’s forestry sciences lab near Buckaloons. No one was hurt, but ELF sent an email in September to the Warren Times-Observer claiming responsibility and saying, “While innocent life will never be harmed in any action we undertake, where it is necessary, we will no longer hesitate to pick up the gun to implement justice.”
Western PA went nuts. Since then, the ADP’s lost almost every case. All support there used to be evaporated overnight. The lab was rebuilt in short order, and people trying to save the forest are now considered the very worst type of scum. They don’t even want to hear what we have to say anymore. Logging is back with a vengeance, there are 8,000 oil wells in the ANF (more than in all other national forests combined), and the new forest plan looks to double that, and no one is in a position to stop them now, because even five years later, ELF’s action is still suppressing any kind of action.
We’ve discussed this episode before, in my review of Samuel MacDonald’s Agony of an American Wilderness, and “The Battle for Our Home.” I said basically the same thing there. This is no idle theoretical discourse; my own homeland has seen the destruction acutely accelerated by a very mild act of “terrorism.”
While salmon may seem to appear as just one species, they are a keystone to the whole community.
I know what you mean, but really, most species are something of a keystone—depending on how you look at the system. The loss of any of them is tragic, but we’re losing 200 a day. As a rallying cry, “What about the salmon?” is great. So long as we remember it’s not just the salmon, it’s the whole other-than-human world.
If this was an act of terrorism, you bet they’d log yellowstone to get these people their power back. Yet, when nature does it they’re like, “Hey man, shit happens. Fend for yourselves.”
This is true. Of course, they’re very good at determining such things, so if you’re going to make it look like an accident, you’re going to have to be very careful in how you go about it.
Do we have time to fuck around blogging and discussing tactics? Or will the salmon be extinct tomorrow, and who’s next after them? What will bring down civilization quicker? I don’t know.
Maybe it says more about my personality, but I have little tolerance for half-baked plans. Not considering the full ramifications of our actions is how we ended up here in the first place, after all. I think if we’re going to get out, it’s going to take a lot more careful attention to those kinds of details and systems than we showed getting in. Going about things the way we have been will just get us in deeper.
But isn’t that what’s happening? Isn’t Jensen someone who has decided to make that stand? I feel that what you suggest is exactly whats happening.
I agree, it’s starting to happen. It’s not nearly far enough. We need a lot more of it, but we can take some comfort knowing that it’s starting.
Do you think that a majority of people will at some point defend their landbase?
Yes; even if it only comes about because everyone else is dead.
What happens if theres no landbase left to protect?
I don’t see how that’s possible. Humans live off their landbase, and humans are the ones causing this damage. Before the landbase dies, it will be too weak to support humans, and the humans die, at which point the land immediately begins to heal itself. Worst case scenario is that it really comes down to the wire, but I don’t see much opportunity for humans to ever “win” such a fight. It’s like fighting your own jugular.
Interesting link about “agroterrorism.” Haha. How many forms of “terrorism” will they make up?
That’s really too bad about the situation in Allehgeny.
“So long as we remember it’s not just the salmon, it’s the whole other-than-human world.”
Totally.
“Maybe it says more about my personality, but I have little tolerance for half-baked plans.”
I understand. However, I do think that some people have a deeper sense of urgency and feel the need to “act fast.” I don’t necessarily think that… but I don’t know. Again, if the salmon have five years… and right now no one cares except old fishermen. I agree though, about half-baked plans.
“Yes; even if it only comes about because everyone else is dead.”
Haha. That’s a great line.
“Before the landbase dies, it will be too weak to support humans, and the humans die, at which point the land immediately begins to heal itself.”
I totally agree.
My concern would be if all the greater fauna has died off… what will people eat? If civilization kills all the big protein sources, hunting and gathering will become much more difficult. What if the major fauna doesn’t bounce back, because it has become extinct?
While I have obviously taken the same choice in trickster tatics as you, I’m not convinced that violence will always strengthen civilization. I think you agree with me there? I like what Bill Posted above:
“While we can debate at the macro level, at the local level, the Trickster’s going to have to do a lot of work & deal with things in unique ways.”
Interesting link about “agroterrorism.” Haha. How many forms of “terrorism” will they make up?
Considering that there hasn’t even been an incident of “agroterrorism” yet…
That’s really too bad about the situation in Allehgeny.
“Too bad” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Only now are we beginning to get past that, and get back to doing something about the situation. Things are finally starting to turn around, but in the meantime, we’ve suffered five more years of damage. So, my hesitation comes from experience.
However, I do think that some people have a deeper sense of urgency and feel the need to “act fast.”
I definitely feel the urgency, but that doesn’t change the effect. If an action makes an urgent situation even worse, then what good has been accomplished? It’s precisely because the situation is so urgent that I caution against acting too impulsively. Blowing something up feels like it’s accomplishing something. It fits in with our mythology of what it means to “fight the battle.” But we’ve got plenty of good examples right in front of us that what’s emotionally fulfilling and what’s effective are very often at odds, and this is a situation that’s far too urgent to just go with what feels good.
My concern would be if all the greater fauna has died off… what will people eat? If civilization kills all the big protein sources, hunting and gathering will become much more difficult. What if the major fauna doesn’t bounce back, because it has become extinct?
Things could get bad, but hunter-gatherers can live off of grubs, too. Not the nicest way of life, but it’s possible. But even that scenario seems unlikely. In some places, yes, but everywhere? Some large mammals are very adaptive. If nothing else, we breed lot
The violence of the particular relationship to the land that Mr. White discusses here is part of the violence that is necessary for all possible food in the world to be converted to human food and for all possible resources in the world sequestered for human use.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 27 April 2007 @ 12:17 PM
might be nice if you mentioned that this is Derrick Jensen and that more of the interview is available online at YouTube… but I guess I just did that
Comment by neighbor — 27 April 2007 @ 3:43 PM
There are people who don’t recognize Derrick?
Oh, yeah, I guess there are….
Well, yes, this is part 4 of a 6-part interview on YouTube (1, 2, 3, 5 & 6). Same fellow’s posted interviews with Kevin McCabe, Alfie Howard, Daniel Quinn, Tim Ream, David Room and quite a few others.
The other five videos had their high points, but usually had Derrick going off into his usual talk about “taking down the system.” As we’ve discussed elsewhere, it’s not that I don’t agree about the urgency, but blowing up a dam doesn’t take down the system, it strengthens it. We’ve got a fine example right in front of us in Iraq of how you can fight your way right into defeat. It’s not about fighting more violently; it’s about fighting smarter. And sometimes, that doesn’t feel like fighting at all.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 27 April 2007 @ 3:58 PM
Okay, one more time, from the top:
The violence of the particular relationship to the land that Mr. Jensen> discusses here is part of the violence that is necessary for all possible food in the world to be converted to human food and for all possible resources in the world sequestered for human use.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 27 April 2007 @ 7:25 PM
[quote]We’ve got a fine example right in front of us in Iraq of how you can fight your way right into defeat.[/quote]
That is not a fair comparison. It’s one thing to destroy a piece of infrastructure (such as a dam) and with it (at the very least temporarily) the possibility of a way of life based on that infrastructure, and it is quite another to try to actually establish control over a certain territory (which is what the US government is trying to achieve in Iraq).
Comment by Hasha — 27 April 2007 @ 8:20 PM
Actually, it’s a very sound comparison. The U.S. took the simplistic view that Iraq was simply a “nation-state” in the European model, being oppressed by a despot. They ignored the history of Iraq, the way Britain had rigged its borders to make the whole thing implode without a strong man in Baghdad like a pin in a grenade. So, they simply removed the despot—and the whole thing ended disastrously because they failed to take into consideration the full complexity of Iraq.
Likewise, civilization is more than just a physical infrastructure. Blow up a dam, and you’ve created further room to grow (by building a new dam). You’ve also alienated a much larger population that might otherwise begin opposing civilization in much more direct ways.
Want to fight terrorism? A real “War on Terrorism” would mean cutting off aid to Arab dictatorships and enormous humanitarian efforts. It wouldn’t feel like fighting at all, but it would actually be effective. What we’re doing now feels like fighting, but every day that goes on, the terrorist networks we’re supposedly fighting grow stronger.
Want to fight civilization? If you’re doing it effectively, it won’t feel like fighting at all.
Native cultures understand this. Take a look through their stories; direct confrontation always ends in failure. It’s the Trickster who prevails. Or, as Tim Boucher put it:
Comment by Jason Godesky — 27 April 2007 @ 11:15 PM
[quote] Blow up a dam, and you’ve created further room to grow (by building a new dam)[/quote]
Really? Even in the face of peak oil, peak natural gas, peak metal, peak etc.? Sure, you can build a dam to replace the old one; that means not building something else that you might badly need. Give a smallpox vaccine to a healthy person, and that person will develop immunity to smallpox. Give a smallpox vaccine to someone with pneumonia, and that person will die. Same with civilization and dams.
What appears to be true is that, civilization is still too strong, still capable of shrugging off with relative ease any attempts made by fringe groups to bring it to its knees by destroying the infrastructure on which it depends. But this won’t be true forever. How much longer until civ catches its pneumonia? I don’t know.
But anyway. I still don’t see how your analogy holds. The US went to Iraq and created chaos. Blowing up a dam might create some kind of chaos, too; but if your main goal is to ensure the survival of the salmon, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
Comment by Hasha — 28 April 2007 @ 12:01 AM
Absolutely. One of the biggest “peaks” is the simple fact that there’s not much room left to grow into. Like the story of Alexander the Great weeping because there was nothing left for him to conquer.
Sure, the difference is if you can apply enough force to overwhelm the system.
Al-Qa’ida killed 3,000 people and, more importantly to the globalized civilization as a system, shut down Wall Street for four days. That fell far, far short of overwhelming the system.
Civilization is vast. It’s fragile compared to the earth’s systems, but blowing up a dam is nowhere near enough to overwhelm it. You could blow up a whole city, and you still would do nothing more than strengthen it.
In decades to come, it might well come to be that you’ll have latter-day bacaudae who will have to fight off civilized attempts to re-assert control. Tribes will have to defend themselves as the map opens up again. But that’s not the situation we’re in now. I’m no pacifist, but this is too important a fight to blow it on dumb tactics just because they feel good. We have to fight smarter than that.
Right now, if you want to fight civilization, the best methods available lie in showing as many people as possible what lies beyond civilization. Like Derrick says in the video, you can’t enslave people when the land provides what they need. Learn primitive skills, build tribes, encourage permaculture, these things free us from the system of civilization. They take away the violence the whole thing depends upon. It doesn’t feel like fighting, but whatever I might think of the whole “Grandfather” story, Tom Brown’s done far more to stop civilization than Tom Kazcinski ever did.
Both are strategies you pursue because they feel like you’re fighting something you hate. Both actually strengthen that thing you hate so much, and in both cases, it’s because you’re being naive about the system you’re trying to fight. In both cases, the straight-forward attack is self-defeating. In both cases, an effective fight doesn’t feel like fighting at all. It’s very emotionally unsatisfying, but if you’re really trying to stop this thing you hate, then that’s just something you need to get over.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 28 April 2007 @ 12:56 AM
[quote]One of the biggest “peaks” is the simple fact that there’s not much room left to grow into.[/quote]
That’s just silly. Civilization needs to grow into places that it can steal resources from; a new space into which to through resources that it’s already got isn’t going to do a thing for it. If what civilization really needed was something into which to throw the resources already secured, then one would have to wonder why the civilized haven’t yet colonized Mars.
[quote] Civilization is vast. It’s fragile compared to the earth’s systems, but blowing up a dam is nowhere near enough to overwhelm it. You could blow up a whole city, and you still would do nothing more than strengthen it. [/quote]
I don’t buy that blowing up a city would strengthen civilization. But of course, blowing up a dam (or a city) wouldn’t kill it. No, look, I was getting ahead of myself a little bit. I don’t actually believe in anyone’s ability to take down Civilization-capital C. (Though Derrick was speculating in Endgame about the potential of hacking. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about information systems.) I do however believe that, as the global economy starts to collapse, as things get increasingly decentralized (simply for lack of fuel), blowing up dams (for example) could speed up the process of civilization’s demise in a given area. Or at the very least, it could speed up the demise of the industrial civilization, and could help save the salmon (again, for example).
Comment by Hasha — 28 April 2007 @ 1:26 AM
Hey –
I dunno… even today, civilizations greatest resource is the people who live within. Blow up a city and like Americans right after 9/11, the citizens of that civilization will be willing to give up just about anything to respond…. even on the far down slope, this will still be the case……
Janene
Comment by janene — 28 April 2007 @ 9:13 AM
I think I’m beginning to see what exactly it is you think does fight civilization, but it still seems to me self contradictory.
There’s an example you’ve talked a lot about, which I can’t go look up for details right now because my computer is running too slowly, but it involves a civilized group newly inhabiting (I think) Iceland and dying out because they refused to eat fish, when all around them were traditional societies who did eat fish and flourished.
Analagously, if we teach primitive skills, then we will draw a certain number of individuals away from the lifepath of civilization (by lifepath I mean the mental construct which says that civilization is the only way to live) much like there were some european colonists who saw that the ways of native American living were inherently superior. However, those breakaways didn’t stop the growth of civilization in America, those who saw the natives eating fish didn’t save their colonial culture.
Both results came about because the majority of civilized individuals stuck to their civilized cultures, and the end result came about by way of material factors. Indeed, you often self-identify as a cultural materialist, so why wouldn’t the best attack against the culture of civilization be against civilization’s material base rather than its idealogical base? Granted, those who adapt to a primitive culture will be the ones who survive, but has such an idealogical shift ever actually brought down the civilized culture from which it came?
Comment by scruff — 28 April 2007 @ 12:26 PM
Resources are just one part of civilization’s need. Room to grow into is often a much needed resource itself, and often the constraining one. Look at the TVA, for instance. Rebuilding a dam brings in new jobs, contracts, and a whole mini-economy blooms for a brief season to provide supplemental goods and services for the construction crews. Why do you think rust belt cities jostle for new arenas and convention centers when they already have them? Just having room to grow into releases some of the pressure on the system. Blowing up a dam is like blowing the whistle on a train, helps keep the whole system going by relieving some of the pressure.
Getting to Mars costs a lot. May not even be possible at all. We don’t go there because as much as we need the room, we don’t have enough to pay for it.
Actually, that seems to be the plotline Heroes is falling, but even a city like New York only contributes a small fraction to civilization. China has something like 25 cities that are bigger. Wipe it off the map, and you’ve done very little to hurt civilization, but you have opened up a whole lot of room to grow into. You’ve let off a lot of the pressure, maybe as much as a century with something as big as that.
It could, but that’s still a ways down the road. In the present, civilization is still growing, so blowing up a dam just gives it more room to grow.
Collapse begins when people begin to realize that they can enjoy a better way of life, at less cost, at a lower level of complexity. Once enough people believe that (and it’s far less than half, it just needs to be enough to tip the balance), collapse begins to snowball. Teach people primitive skills, or tribal life, and that’s precisely what you’re helping along. It also helps make for more people who might survive—and if, somehow, there’s actually a chance for a gradual power-down like Heinberg hopes, then surely this is it, with primtiive skills, permaculture, and all the rest.
In the end, I don’t think it will change much on civilization’s destructive course, but it does start tipping civilization towards collapse, and it helps make collapse less disastrous, all at the same time.
We’re not talking about its material base, though. Oil fields and farmlands will still be there. We’re talking about basic infrastructure, which is fairly easy to replace. We’re not talking about anything that would change the energy flow through the system or anything really significant to the culture’s material base.
Ultimately, collapse is almost always an ideological shift. Of course, ideological shifts generally happen because of changes in the material reality. Not a road out or a damn blown up, those actually work to undo any such shift by radicalizing people in a conservative fashion, but rising fuel costs, changing climate, these things change the way people think. Primitive skills and tribal living would never be able to make this shift alone, but in a context where that shift is already starting, they can pull it along a little faster. Blowing up a dam pushes it back in the opposite direction, so it really only takes one ELF action to undo a year of my efforts, and give civilization back a year, a few months, however long it may be.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 28 April 2007 @ 2:39 PM
This reminds me of Jeff Vail’s post here: http://www.jeffvail.net/2005/04/logic-of-collapse.html
If I’m understanding it correctly, he’s suggesting that we explore precisely what Derrick is suggesting, that we bring civilization past the point of diminishing returns. That we begin injuring the infrastructure so that resources that would be diverted to expanding control are instead diverted to rebuilding and maintaining control. So for example, let’s say I have a house, and I’d like to build a new garage, or even just fortify my existing garage, but a vandal breaks my roof. Now if I want to continue living here, that garage work is going to get put on the back burner while I divert that money to repairing the roof. I can’t expand. If I want to continue living in this home, there are suddenly all these other investments I have to make, and my funds are running low. At a certain point, it becomes more viable to scrap the idea of continuing to live in this house, and to find another place to live.
Likewise, if vital infrastructure of civilization is damaged, infrastructure that civilization must have in working order just to exist, such as transportation infrastructure, perhaps, or mining infrastructure, then those resources must be diverted to maintaining them, lest civilization stop functioning.
That’s the whole idea of diminishing marginal returns. As complexity increases, the returns are smaller and smaller, and at a certain point, the cost exceeds the returns, and collapse ensues. I think what Jeff is considering in that article, and Derrick is suggesting in this video, is that it may be possible to make the cost of maintaining civilization greater than the return on its continuation. If we can damage vital portions of civilization, then its archons must invest more to maintain or rebuild, and those resources cannot go to expanding civilization’s grasp of control. And if civilization can’t expand, can’t grow, it dies, as you argue, Jason.
Jason wrote:
“Civilization is vast. It’s fragile compared to the earth’s systems, but blowing up a dam is nowhere near enough to overwhelm it. You could blow up a whole city, and you still would do nothing more than strengthen it.”
This seems to contradict something that you’ve mentioned earlier, Jason, in regard to New Orleans. In the podcast with John Michael Greer, he mentions, and as I recall, you did not object to the notion, that part of why New Orleans is not being rebuilt so aggressively is that the resources just aren’t there. You mention in the Slow Collapse that civilization may have already peaked about a century ago, and we’re slowing heading downhill. Would an event like the destruction of a city not place a further strain on dwindling resources, thus forcing a hard choice of ‘rebuild (and divert expansion resources) or allow to remain destroyed (and lessen one’s grip of control)?’
Perhaps, and I don’t mean this as a personal attack, Jason, you’re unwillingness to consider this possibility has to do with a sentiment you mentioned in that Jeff Vail post than an honest assessment of what tactics may work:
Normally, I follow wherever the facts lead me. They led me into heresy with the Roman Catholic Church, and I followed. They led me out of “the fold” of Quinn’s followers, and I followed. But this step, I find myself incapable of taking. I can’t refute the logic, and yet I can’t take part in actually making it happen. Preparing for it as an inevitable outcome, yes. Refraining from an attempt to stop it, yes. But actually making it happen … here is where “the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.”
I dunno- these are some thoughts. There may be things I’m missing that would encourage me to reconsider this line of thought.
Comment by Archangel — 28 April 2007 @ 3:19 PM
After reflecting for some time on what I wrote in “The Logic of Collapse,” I would later wrote another post along similar lines, but with different conclusions:
Derrick Jensen vs. the Dalai Lama
After more time to think, the combination of the (in my opinion) inevitability of collapse with the need to provide an alternative to hierarcy, not just to destroy it, leads me to think that our efforts are better spent (both from a personal and societal perspective) trying to collapse intelligently, to create lifeboat communities, to create reservoirs of knowledge that will be needed post-collapse, etc.
Comment by Jeff Vail — 28 April 2007 @ 5:58 PM
In addition to the points made in Jeff’s later article, I’d also like to point out that the same point remains as before: you’re underestimating the complexity of the system. If vandals destroy your roof, your monthly income doesn’t increase: you need to choose whether you’re going to fix the garage, or finish the driveway. Blow up a dam, and you have civilization rallying against the “terrorists,” so they actually get more energy—usually enough to not only rebuild the dam, but to pursue other projects besides.
New Orleans will probably never be rebuilt, but that’s because its geography makes the cost exorbitant. It’s fairly unusual in that regard.
Yes, civilization has peaked, and it will soon be contracting more seriously, but even now, when some major point of infrastructure is removed, the response strengthens civilization, rather than weakening it. If your logic held, 9/11 should have been the beginning of America’s end. It wasn’t, because you’re neglecting the rallying factor still in play, because people still believe in this insanity.
True, it may be my personal bias, but I rarely see any point in playing that game, since any of us could speculate on the hidden biases we each hold endlessly, and we could turn them literally any way we want. I could as easily suggest that the only reason you support such an idea is because it’s emotionally satisfying and fulfills our fantasies of “fighting evil.” Would that be true? Would it be any more or less true to suggest that this is simply my “cowardice”? It’s just not a fruitful line of inquiry. This is an important question, so I think the focus should always be on what’s most effective, rather than the people making the arguments.
To sum up, the key element that makes your case fail, I think, is that the energy available to civilization is not simply linear. A good amount of it is the will of the people caught up in it. For the most part, that’s static, but traumatic events can galvanize it. Look at U.S. industrial production in WW2, for example. Because of that, you have to look not just at the cost civilization incurs from such an attack, but the gains it makes in public galvanization. If you want to see it up close and personal, come visit my homeland in the Allegheny Forest, and you’ll see how dedicated a community can become to its own destruction once one misguided attack helps strengthen civilization. ELF’s arson put the cause of helping make the Allegheny Forest a viable ecology again back by decades, just in one night, because they failed to consider how the system defends itself.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 28 April 2007 @ 7:34 PM
Jason, your point seems to be that blowing up a dam (for instance) would give civilization a ‘psychic energy’ boost in the sense that people who were getting disillusioned with civilized life (though they wouldn’t necessarily put it that way themselves) would all of the sudden rally behind the ‘rebuilding’ initiative. Well, that depends on the circumstances, I suppose. But the main thing to consider is the following: does civilization (in a given area, at a given time - as I said, I don’t have much hope for a systematic taking down of Civilization-capital C) have a more acute need for ‘psychic energy’ or for fossil fuel etc. energy? The former is no replacement for the latter. If you are facing a serious shortage of oil, metal, concrete etc., no amount of ‘psychic energy’ will make a new dam go up. (Or, if a new dam does go up, then something else won’t go up that would have gone up otherwise.)
Second thing. Reading Jeff’s article (Derrick Jensen vs. the Dalai Lama) served as a reminder to me that there are really two related but separate issues here. The first has to do with taking down civilization in the sense of a complex hierarchical society. The second one has to do with taking down the industrial infrastructure that is ravaging the planet and that has been an indispensable tool for initiated the greatest mass extinction in the last 65 million years. If the salmon (for instance) are to be saved, the dams need to go down and stay down. That is far more urgent than getting rid of the hierarchical society. As soon as we hit the point where rebuilding a blown up dam becomes impossible (or alternatively: where rebuilding a dam means not building something else that would’ve been equally destructive), those dams need to go down. That point is at most a couple of decades away, I think.
Comment by Hasha — 28 April 2007 @ 9:05 PM
Energy is energy. A hundred people willing to work twice as hard with saws and axes can more than make up for the losses stemming from shorter mill hours because the price of oil jumps up $0.10 a gallon.
Sure it is, once you work out the conversion rate.
At the moment, though, there’s no real shortage of any of those things. They’re getting more expensive, and real shortages will come in the future, but right now, that’s just not the case.
And there’s the problem. Take down one dam, and you’ve given them the energy to build two in its place.
But the hierarchical society is also what makes it impossible to take down the industrial infrastructure the way you’re suggesting, and why pursuing that strategy leads to strengthening the infrastructure rather than weakening it. So they’re not really two seperate things at all.
But that point is largely a question of commitment. You can keep pumping peaked fields for years after, if you’re willing to pay the higher prices. When that point is reached, the dams will go down because people will want them to come down, because they’ll see how those dams are destroying their lives and the life of the landbase they depend upon. Rip it away before they understand that, and they’ll build two new ones just to spite you. Material reality sets a lot of the parameters for social beliefs, but it’s amazing how large a group of people can ignore their material poverty, even for decades at a time. That’s generally irrelevant to discussions about cultures over millennia, but we’re talking about the next few decades, and on that scale, it is relevant.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 28 April 2007 @ 10:04 PM
Just thought I’d drop a quick comment that there is no one right way to deal with this situation. While we can debate at the macro level, at the local level, the Trickster’s going to have to do a lot of work & deal with things in unique ways.
Want a solution? Look around where you live and do something. Don’t worry about its larger ramifications. Act.
Bottom Line: The Trickster would like to invite you to a Global Party. It starts now and ends when the check comes due. It’s theme is “How Do We Stiff the Big Guys?” and you’re expected to pull off at least a couple of serious tricks to get in
Serious members need not apply. :)P
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 28 April 2007 @ 10:31 PM
I’ve lived temporarily in the United States for the past few years, but I am actually from Eastern Europe (one of the non-EU countries). Earlier today, when I was taking a shower ;-), I started thinking what would be likely to happen if someone blew up a dam in my corner of the world. Let’s see… I imagine the President and/or the Prime Minister would hurry to the site, strongly condemn the act of terrorism, promise to apprehend and severely punish the perpetrators, and to rebuild the dam. As for apprehending and severely punishing the perpetrators, I don’t know, it might or might not happen. What we’re really interested in here, though, is in whether or not a new dam would go up. If it were a small dam: maybe. Though I personally think that, given our political elite, it’s more likely that the whole thing would be forgotten after a week or two. But suppose it were a medium-to-large sized dam. I can’t even begin to imagine the thing getting rebuilt from local funds - the country’s just too poor for any such large scale project. What would happen is that people would start looking for foreign investors. But what would this look like from a foreign investor’s perspective? A politically unstable country with highly unimpressive recent history, and a brand new (dam blowing) terrorism problem. An expensive project that would take a few years to bring to completion and that would take a couple of decades or so to compensate for the cost of construction. In, as I said, a politically volatile country. A very attractive prospect indeed. No, I claim that the dam would never get rebuilt (except, possibly, if it were a pretty small one, and even then, probably not).
The point of this exercise? First of all, to remind us all that civilization is by no means a monolithic structure. Blowing up infrastructure might be quite effective (from an ecological point of view) in one part of the world, and completely counter-productive in another part of the world. And second of all, in the United States context: the US is virtually bankrupt, the dollar is about to crash. Though I obviously can’t know for sure, I find it quite possible, even likely, that the US will soon find itself in a situation where rebuilding a medium-to-large sized dam becomes impossible. And if you fast forward a couple of decades or so from today: I imagine there will be virtually no large-scale building projects going on anywhere in the world. The existing infrastructure will be maintained to the extent possible, but building a large dam (or a large anything) will be virtually impossible. If something goes down, it’ll stay down.
Comment by Hasha — 29 April 2007 @ 6:14 PM
The plans for the “Freedom Tower” are even bigger than the WTC. You could blow up Hoover Dam and they’d build something bigger.
I rather think it would be beaten like a drum to remind everyone who might question them how the world has changed and anything they want or need is now justified. That’s the track record, anyway.
And a third of a million people with the most voracious appetites on the planet. Our government and economy is largely foreign-financed now anyway. With so many customers here, of course they’d be willing to make some more money by owning a new dam here.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 April 2007 @ 9:21 PM
Jason, were you trying to dispute what I was trying to say about my own country, or were you saying that the same thing wouldn’t apply to the US? It seems to be the latter but I’m not entirely sure…
Comment by Hasha — 29 April 2007 @ 10:19 PM
[quote]And a third of a million people with the most voracious appetites on the planet.[/quote]
Presuming you were talking about the US, that should be a third of a billion people.
Comment by Hasha — 29 April 2007 @ 10:24 PM
Oh, I misread. I thought you said how it would unfold in the U.S.
In eastern Europe, from what I know of it, I think you might be correct. Much of eastern Europe is already in full collapse right now, has been for some time.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 April 2007 @ 10:24 PM
That’s the second time in as many days I made that mistake….
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 April 2007 @ 10:24 PM
Thanks so much for this conversation. I’ve really enjoyed reading it.
I’d like to add a few pennies. The first is that, while Derrick has used blowing up a dam as one example of dismantling infrastructure, the whole point of Endgame was to spur conversations just like this. To ask these questions; what forms of violence could take down civilization? What/where are the fulcrums we can use, and what can we use to leverage such an act?
What I got from Endgame was not “violence will work in any form against civilization,” but, “let’s start a conversation about how we may use violence effectively.”
Taking out dams would not take down civilization, but would help the salmon, if not temporarily. I think another question to ask ourselves is about protecting our own bioregions. I live in the Pacific Northwest. Right now we are having a salmon crisis. They may go extinct in the next 5 years. They have practically outlawed fishing here. While an act like taking out a dam will not stop civilization, and perhaps strengthen it, the Salmon don’t really have time. If taking out a dam (or 10) could save them long enough to live beyond civilizations collapse… is it not worth asking ourselves?
I agree with Hasha, that Dams would not get rebuilt. Especially here in the Northwest, where people have been trying to get them removed (through legal means) for quite some time.
I also want to say that the ELF does not do things in a way to bring down civilization. I agree that their actions strengthen the civil resolve to take down terrorists. But what if these people made it look like an accident? What if they stopped sending communiques to the press and started planning better, invisible actions? You could do things like this, without causing an ideological back-lash like the Green Scare.
What if a Dam just fell apart? Or was percieved to? Who would they blame? The Army Corp of Engineers right? Look at New Orleans. What if we found out the terrorists blew up the levies? More people would probably send aid to New Orleans, right? But nature fucked new orleans over. And the Army Corp fucked them over. Americans sent millions more in aid to tsunami relief than to New Orleans.
Derrick points out in Endgame that most dams don’t even generate electricity anymore. What if one of those just fell apart. Oops. “Well, it wasn’t even generating electricity anyway. So, why rebuild it?”
Also, you make a good point in suggesting that attacking civilization will build its defenses. Again, might that be a strategy to bring it down? Attack it in the face, so you can trip it? Of course, where would the face of civilization be, and how would could trip it are questions I will probably never know the answer to. But there are freaks out there who get off on this shit and know where the weak/strong points are.
Again, I think the main point of Endgame was not to convince people to blow up dams or attack any of the infrastructure of civilization, but to spark these kinds of conversations. How could it work?
While I personally I agree ideologically with the “we must take down civilization now” mind set, I do not feel inspired to search for these fulcrums and/or levers. Rather I find inspiration from writing blogs, rewilding, having discussions like these, etc. So that’s my choice of resistance. I believe we need it all.
In the end I think as Civilization collapses, those in power will try to control who lives and dies as our artificial population declines. I think this will cause the most friction, and I believe that in the long-run, violent resistance is inevitable, unless you want to end up at one of their death camps (oops, I mean “immigration camps”) or unless you are in their military.
blah blah blah.
Comment by Urban Scout — 1 May 2007 @ 4:34 PM
I agree, I don’t have much of an issue with what Derrick’s said. I am kind of disappointed at what he doesn’t say, though. He doesn’t take a very long look at the situation to see if this kind of violence would work, while his words are being used by people who are approaching the situation with a lot less nuance than he did and ignoring his caveats. This is a pretty dumb strategy, at least in this time and place, and by not addressing it directly, Derrick’s words end up becoming slogans for people who aren’t thinking things through nearly as much. I’d like to see something like that from him—no, not some pacifist crap about never fighting back, just a look at whether blowing up a dam, right now, would really be a good idea, if that would actually help bring civilization down, or if it would just make it last longer.
Until they come back and build a new dam, and round up everyone who cared about them and would otherwise be working towards things like dam decomissioning which might take the dam down and keep it down. That’s a lot worse for the salmon.
Perhaps, but again, there’s more at stake than just the salmon. How many species are you thus sacrificing for salmon’s sake, by making civilization live longer in order to save them? Assuming they don’t just rebuild the dams, in which case you’ve done nothing for the salmon, and sacrificed so many other species for naught.
There’s 200 gut-wrenching tragedies every day—200 species wiped out, never to be seen again, every single day. More than saving the salmon, the question has to be, how do we stop that from happening?
The answer has to be local, like you said. But it’s also important to remember to think of your whole local ecology, not just one species in it, as vital and crucial as each and every one of them are.
That’s why I mention dam decommissioning, because that would keep them down. When you force that choice on a group of people by just blowing it up, even the people who used to agree with you recoil, and the first reaction is to rebuild it, maybe even bigger, just to spite you. Terrorism has a wildly disproportionate reaction to the actual damage it does.
That’s kind of the “best case scenario” I talked about in “On Violence,” or that John Robb outlined in “Green Guerrillas.” Even in those cases, the balance is very tricky, and I think even under the very best circumstances, you’re still going to end up doing more harm than good.
Making it look like an accident could change some things, but how much can you really succeed in that? They’re very good at figuring these things out these days. It could work, but it would have to be perfect. Any slip-up, and we’re back to the beginning again, where it’s doing more harm than good.
We’ve got other options on the table, and with a little ingenuity, you can wage a war of ideas with all the ferocity and effectiveness of a physical conflict. A Trickster war. The possibilities for success down that road are far greater, I think, with much less chance of catastrophic backfire.
This is actually something Derrick himself suggests—keep it all on the table, and use whatever it takes. I’m not disagreeing with that. I’m saying that blowing things up doesn’t get us closer to that goal, it moves us farther away, and things as desperate as they are, that’s not something we can really afford right now. So, let’s use what really works, what’s so rarely been deployed inside civilization, but is idealized in tribal mythologies the world over: the Trickster war.
An example: Jesus waged a pretty good Trickster war. Made Ghandi and MLK look like hacks by comparison. We need to make them look like hacks, too, because nothing less than that will do.
Another example, though much less impressive: the plans I’ve begun to work out for a Trickster war to save my own homeland, the forests of the Allegheny. There, you’d call it a Hare war; out in your parts, I imagine it’d be a Raven war. Anyway, there’s some allies we can help, like the Friends of Allegheny Wilderness. But the reason these people keep destroying these forests is that they have no other way to live. This isn’t a wealthy area, and they make their living from logging and drilling and otherwise raping the forest. More than anything, they need an alternative. Permaculture can help put food on their tables in the short term, and provide for them in the long term. It means that ecological wealth is the same as human wealth, and that suddenly makes the loggers and the oil companies despoilers come to steal the source of their livelihood and destroy everything they hold dear. Right now, it sure does feel like their covenant is with their employer and the supermarket. That’s the part that needs to change. They need to see that their covenant is with their landbase. That’s when they’ll start protecting it. When that happens, just try to log that forest. See what happens.
It’s like social judo, a memetic martial art that makes friends out of your enemies, exploits the systemic weaknesses of the machine, and draws people out. The longer you do it, the stronger you become, and the weaker the machine gets. Eventually, that may lead to a conventional war, but if we’re lucky, maybe we can slow it down in the short term, tear it down in the long term, and save as much as possible—humans no less (and no more) than any other species—in the end.
This is why I spend the time writing and thinking about things like roleplaying games and the Wii and what not. I’m trying to develop the arsenal of a Trickster war. It’s nowhere near there, but my hope is that this can lead somewhere. It has to start somewhere, doesn’t it?
If the opportunity opens up, absolutely. But I would suggest that this is very much part of a Trickster war. Terrorist attacks and even guerrilla warfare are places where civilization is strong. Trying to match them there is not a good idea. Their weaknesses lie in the poverty of its society: alienated, isolated people. That’s the biggest Achilles heel I know of in the system. Hitting civilization where they’re strong sets that back; a Trickster war exploits that.
Well, do we need it all? Do we need more dams, and more carbon in the air, and maybe a new coal-mining initiative? We need all the things that weaken civilization. Does blowing up a dam weaken civilization? I think, at least in the near future, it makes it stronger, so I think we don’t need it. We don’t need it just like we don’t need some grand nuclear power initiative.
I’m not sure. If you look at Rome, they were generally too busy trying to keep their own capital cities together to worry much about eradicating the bacaudae. Of course, at an earlier point, when they were still in a position to try to claim those territories, there were plenty of battles. Fighting to defend your family and land against an invasion is a very different question than blowing up a dam. When it comes to that point, it’s time to melt into the forest and rain down arrows. Never let them see you coming, but you might want to let one run home screaming, just to start a rumor that those woods are haunted, and anyone who violates them will suffer terribly. In defense of family and land, nothing’s too extreme.
P.S. - Scout, your interview with Derrick was the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen/done/eaten! Unfortunately, I saw it about two hours after posting this one, and I try ot to have two videos on the frontpage at the same time, so I’m really looking forward to posting yours after two more posts!
Comment by Jason Godesky — 1 May 2007 @ 5:03 PM
Since my previous post here, I’ve actually been thinking along similar lines as Scout. Take down a small dam that was originally built illegally and that is no longer being used to generate electricity. Don’t send a statement to the press to tell them why you’re doing it. You can try to make it look like an accident, but even if it merely looks like vandalism, it should be good enough. If nobody’s money’s been lost, nobody will care if some kid decided to play with explosives a little bit. (If you demolished an old, abandoned house that nobody was living in, that was already largely falling apart, that was worth squat to its owner - it’s unlikely that the police would look very hard for the perpetrator. Same thing with these dams.) Everything changes of course once anyone suspects that this is an organized campaign fought by people with strong ideological interests inimical to the status quo. But as long as you can keep the cops from suspecting that, you’re home free. And if by some chance the person who blew up the dam got caught, s/he ought to be prepared to say ‘I was just fooling around, I like playing with explosives, I know it’s bad, but I can’t help it… I chose that old abandoned dam in order to make sure I didn’t do any real harm, blah, blah, blah’. Would get the person a far more lenient sentence than the ‘I wanted to protect the salmon’ approach.
Comment by Hasha — 1 May 2007 @ 8:53 PM
Jason,
Thanks for the props on the video!
I agree that attacking civilization, in general, would cause it to build up a defense. But I don’t think this is true across the board. I do believe there are weak points that could be exploited that could cause a crash. I think that Derrick did a good job of eluding to some of these points in Endgame, but even so a whole chapter was devoted to “thinking things through” before you run out to blow something up, and even then, you may not have to blow anything up. Like your trickster metaphor.
I think no one can say, “violence against civilization will only strengthen it.” Most of the time I think so, but when does it not?
Earlier you mentioned that the base would be farming. Do you think that an attack on farming could somehow weaken or send the civilized into a fury?
I don’t buy into the idea that somehow ELF actions set back an environmental movement any more than say, “An Inconvenient Truth” did. Could you explain why you think this, or point me to one of your posts where you explain this position?
I know that most of their actions are largely symbolic, and in a sense cause a memetic backlash against the “green movement.” Is it the memetic backlash you see hurting your actions, if so, how?
What do you think of the old addage, “no press is bad press?”
I agree that we need to look at our whole landbase. While salmon may seem to appear as just one species, they are a keystone to the whole community. If you want to get technical or “meatspacey,” the bring in the minerals from the ocean that make a forest rich. They carry nitrogen and then die and create nitrogen rich soil. Not to mention food for all predators, scavengers, and bugs. Aside from the fungi, I can’t think of a greater loss to the ecological structure, aside from the old growth, which are also already mostly gone. In that sense, it would behoove us to risk anything to keep those salmon alive.
Again, I agree with you, in a general sense. But to a particular landbase, the destruction of something may not weaken civilization on a large scale, but could prove to save a keystone species long enough for them to survive through the crash.
Most people don’t know about this, but here in the NW there was a little windstorm a few months back that blew apart miles of phone poles. Thousands of people went without power for weeks. Why? Because they didn’t have enough phone poles to put up. Yeah, a phone poll shortage. WTF? If this was an act of terrorism, you bet they’d log yellowstone to get these people their power back. Yet, when nature does it they’re like, “Hey man, shit happens. Fend for yourselves.” Haha. People are fucking crazy.
Everyday I ask myself, do we need it all? Do we have time to fuck around blogging and discussing tactics? Or will the salmon be extinct tomorrow, and who’s next after them? What will bring down civilization quicker? I don’t know. But I don’t judge other peoples tactics, and I support them, even if think it may worsen the state of things… because I don’t really know if what I’m doing is really effecting anything at all. My blogging and “cultural creating” could amount to nothing but apathetic cowardice in the end. Maybe blowing up a dam or a more planned out act of violence against civilization would have much greater effectiveness that I think it can. I just don’t know. You know? No way of knowing what exactly is happening in such a complex system with particular tactics in particular places of the world, with particular outcomes. Like Hasha was saying about blowing up a dam in Europe or wherever.
I think the point is to look at your particular place in the world, and what tactics you think will work. But you don’t know what will work in other places, in other groups of people, with other networks and particular knowledge, etc.
I’m rambling again. Oh yeah, one thing… you said,
“Right now, it sure does feel like their covenant is with their employer and the supermarket. That’s the part that needs to change. They need to see that their covenant is with their landbase. That’s when they’ll start protecting it. When that happens, just try to log that forest. See what happens.”
But isn’t that what’s happening? Isn’t Jensen someone who has decided to make that stand? I feel that what you suggest is exactly whats happening. There are people who do identify with the land, and they are the first ones putting their feet down. That’s what I got from Endgame. Do you think that a majority of people will at some point defend their landbase? What happens if theres no landbase left to protect?
Okay. Enough questions.
Comment by Urban Scout — 1 May 2007 @ 9:44 PM
Hasha—I think that’s true, there’s a lot of essentially abandoned infrastructure that wouldn’t raise much attention at all, yet its removal could still really help things.
Depends on the kind of attack. They’re already working themselves into a tizzy about “agroterrorism.” But an alternative—showing small-scale farmers how they can get better yields with permaculture, and starting a grassroots rural backlash against the Green Revolution—that’s something that sweeps in without seeming like an attack, and does its damage before you can really defend yourself.
I’m unique here in that I have first-hand experience with this. The situation in the Allegheny National Forest is awful, and their many other faults aside, the Allegheny Defense Project (ADP) had met with some significant success in holding back logging through a series of litigation. They were eroding local support in the process, but they were buying time. Friends of Allegheny Wilderness probably have a much better long-term prospect, but the ADP were slowing them down in the present. Then, on 11 August 2002, ELF burned down the U.S. Forest Service’s forestry sciences lab near Buckaloons. No one was hurt, but ELF sent an email in September to the Warren Times-Observer claiming responsibility and saying, “While innocent life will never be harmed in any action we undertake, where it is necessary, we will no longer hesitate to pick up the gun to implement justice.”
Western PA went nuts. Since then, the ADP’s lost almost every case. All support there used to be evaporated overnight. The lab was rebuilt in short order, and people trying to save the forest are now considered the very worst type of scum. They don’t even want to hear what we have to say anymore. Logging is back with a vengeance, there are 8,000 oil wells in the ANF (more than in all other national forests combined), and the new forest plan looks to double that, and no one is in a position to stop them now, because even five years later, ELF’s action is still suppressing any kind of action.
We’ve discussed this episode before, in my review of Samuel MacDonald’s Agony of an American Wilderness, and “The Battle for Our Home.” I said basically the same thing there. This is no idle theoretical discourse; my own homeland has seen the destruction acutely accelerated by a very mild act of “terrorism.”
I know what you mean, but really, most species are something of a keystone—depending on how you look at the system. The loss of any of them is tragic, but we’re losing 200 a day. As a rallying cry, “What about the salmon?” is great. So long as we remember it’s not just the salmon, it’s the whole other-than-human world.
This is true. Of course, they’re very good at determining such things, so if you’re going to make it look like an accident, you’re going to have to be very careful in how you go about it.
Maybe it says more about my personality, but I have little tolerance for half-baked plans. Not considering the full ramifications of our actions is how we ended up here in the first place, after all. I think if we’re going to get out, it’s going to take a lot more careful attention to those kinds of details and systems than we showed getting in. Going about things the way we have been will just get us in deeper.
I agree, it’s starting to happen. It’s not nearly far enough. We need a lot more of it, but we can take some comfort knowing that it’s starting.
Yes; even if it only comes about because everyone else is dead.
I don’t see how that’s possible. Humans live off their landbase, and humans are the ones causing this damage. Before the landbase dies, it will be too weak to support humans, and the humans die, at which point the land immediately begins to heal itself. Worst case scenario is that it really comes down to the wire, but I don’t see much opportunity for humans to ever “win” such a fight. It’s like fighting your own jugular.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 May 2007 @ 11:07 AM
Interesting link about “agroterrorism.” Haha. How many forms of “terrorism” will they make up?
That’s really too bad about the situation in Allehgeny.
“So long as we remember it’s not just the salmon, it’s the whole other-than-human world.”
Totally.
“Maybe it says more about my personality, but I have little tolerance for half-baked plans.”
I understand. However, I do think that some people have a deeper sense of urgency and feel the need to “act fast.” I don’t necessarily think that… but I don’t know. Again, if the salmon have five years… and right now no one cares except old fishermen. I agree though, about half-baked plans.
“Yes; even if it only comes about because everyone else is dead.”
Haha. That’s a great line.
“Before the landbase dies, it will be too weak to support humans, and the humans die, at which point the land immediately begins to heal itself.”
I totally agree.
My concern would be if all the greater fauna has died off… what will people eat? If civilization kills all the big protein sources, hunting and gathering will become much more difficult. What if the major fauna doesn’t bounce back, because it has become extinct?
While I have obviously taken the same choice in trickster tatics as you, I’m not convinced that violence will always strengthen civilization. I think you agree with me there? I like what Bill Posted above:
“While we can debate at the macro level, at the local level, the Trickster’s going to have to do a lot of work & deal with things in unique ways.”
Comment by Urban Scout — 2 May 2007 @ 1:01 PM
Considering that there hasn’t even been an incident of “agroterrorism” yet…
“Too bad” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Only now are we beginning to get past that, and get back to doing something about the situation. Things are finally starting to turn around, but in the meantime, we’ve suffered five more years of damage. So, my hesitation comes from experience.
I definitely feel the urgency, but that doesn’t change the effect. If an action makes an urgent situation even worse, then what good has been accomplished? It’s precisely because the situation is so urgent that I caution against acting too impulsively. Blowing something up feels like it’s accomplishing something. It fits in with our mythology of what it means to “fight the battle.” But we’ve got plenty of good examples right in front of us that what’s emotionally fulfilling and what’s effective are very often at odds, and this is a situation that’s far too urgent to just go with what feels good.
Things could get bad, but hunter-gatherers can live off of grubs, too. Not the nicest way of life, but it’s possible. But even that scenario seems unlikely. In some places, yes, but everywhere? Some large mammals are very adaptive. If nothing else, we breed lot