Derrick Jensen (1 Viewer)

[nooleen]

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/75955

wait a minute, that's where ecotopia was! i knew something about it set off morning circle alarm bells in my head.

 

[love jones]

Cool, but do you really need an anti-civilisation proponent to tell you it's a bit shit that we don't have more nice green public spaces?

no, but i need to get more ideas on how to achieve what i want. And what i want is more green!

 

[brianoak]

And what i want is more green!

I will sell you a 5 spot William.

 

[love jones]

word up firehawk.
Your band is called Oak. Ha ha.

 

[brianoak]

word up firehawk.
Your band is called Oak. Ha ha.

Its a band made of three gay cowboys.










I will stop ruining your thread

 

[Carlow Punks!]

I will sell you a 5 spot William.

A 5 spot in 2006?
Better go back to 1995 not back to a pre-agricultural age!

 

[Cormcolash]

Its a band made of three gay cowboys.










I will stop ruining your thread

Please don't, continue.

 

[Shorty]

no, but i need to get more ideas on how to achieve what i want. And what i want is more green!

Check out Lewis Mumford

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford

and his book The City in History

 

[mazzyianne]

More recently Derrick Jensen in an interview from Issue #6 of The 'A' Word Magazine[ ] said civilization “needs to be actively fought against, but I don’t think that we can bring it down. What we can do is assist the natural world to bring it down…. I want civilization brought down and I want it brought down now.”
Post from WSM member's article on libcom.org/forums .

If that is a taster of what Jensen's about then it seriously is daft. If he wants to bring down civilisation then fuck him off to some hippy reserve while the rest of us chill with our dvds and hoverboards

Kinda depends what he means by civilisation doesn't it?

 

[seaners]

As the local Luddite I may as well wade in with my two cents here...


It's all a matter of words really. Green Anarchists use the word civilization to describe everythingthat's wrong with the world, industrialists use it to define everything that's good about humanity, and it all gets very silly very quickly. You quote Jensen as saying he wants to destroy civilization. He did say this, but in fairness he wrote a 700-page book basicall defining how he understood the concept and why it may not have been such a good idea.


Folks, can we please try to understand that anti-civilization theory can be comprised of thousands of unique viewpoints. There is no rules or ideology, just a general view that indigenous earth-based peoples are the only ones that ever had sustainable societies, and that this is a state that we have lived in for 99% of our earthly existence. Lumping it all together into one ideology, then picking out the parts that you disagree with (which of course is everyone's right) and using that to disregard everything that is even vaguely connected with it means that you might be missing out on some pretty interesting writing.


To draw a comparison, imagine someone who is not particularly politically informed picking up a communist article that mentions that anarchists don't want police and that this is preposterous and unworkable, and then that person using that to form an opinion from which he sets out to discredit and dismiss the entire anarchist milieu. Again that is his right and privilege, but I think that person might be missing out on someinteresting ideas.


You talk about your right to have DVDs. How about you go work in a carcinogenic plastics factory in Taiwan? What if one of the women who does work there comes and says she's not going to work there anymore producing unnecessary crap for the likes of you and mebecause she's ssick and she works too much and never sees her children? Are you going to force her to do it anyway? Or are you going to ignore her until some hired goons show up and force her back to work. Everything in the rooms we are sitting in comes from exploitative industries that are rapidly killing our planete and enslaving us all inito uncountable hours of human misery in the world of work. Substitute the pronouns I or we if you like, it's not a personal attack, we are all the elite of the world here. After the revolution I still wouldn't work these hit jobs,and I wouldn't expect anyone else to do it either. I see industrialism as being completely incompatible with anrchy. I find industrial anarchism abhorrent and am interested in exploring other options that might let us live in a state of anarchy, if not in the real world, at least in my daydreams. Green Anarchy has many flaws, principally the one that our world has been decimated so much and our population become so huge that it is totally unworkable for everyone to become hunter-gatherers ovenight. That's pretty obvious, but it doesn't mean that everything that anyone who prefers trees to concrete should be dismissed as irrelevant to modern life, which is what it means to me when you say you have no interest in anti-civ ideas.


Like it or not, industrial society will collapse some day. Maybe it will take hudreds of years yet, but it will happen, a

nd we're going to be in a world of shit when it does. We're a society addicted to technology. The addiction will either kil us all or we will be forced to go cold turkey, and neither option is pretty.


Again, Derrick Jensen is a very gifted writer who I can't recommend highly enough. If you ignore him because of a couple of quotes in an article by some guy who goes on to say if landed on a paradisical island with a bunch of anarchists would set about inventing concret and gunpowder, you may be missing out on some amazing reading.


His books are available from the good people at re-pressed.org.uk
A Culture of Make Believe is in Terenure library, Walking On Water is in te ILAC library

 

[spuded]

will it involve morning circles and non-threatening hand signals as a means of communication?

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER AGAIN!!!!

if i ever have to sit through a lad talking shite abou how 'amazing water is' for half an hour i'll fuckin top myself

 

[xConorx]

You talk about your right to have DVDs. How about you go work in a carcinogenic plastics factory in Taiwan? What if one of the women who does work there comes and says she's not going to work there anymore producing unnecessary crap for the likes of you and mebecause she's ssick and she works too much and never sees her children? Are you going to force her to do it anyway? Or are you going to ignore her until some hired goons show up and force her back to work.

What a load of moralistic shite. Are you seriously implying that it's my fault that those working conditions are shite because I have DVDs? Is your computer make of organically farmed hemp or something?

Seriously, your post is more a critique of social relations and profit motives that drive companies to cut corners, reduce wages etc, than it is of the technology itself. The problem yer on about is capitalism, not technology. Remove profit motive and quest for accumulation of capital, and it's likely that we'd move toward more sustainable technologies; also there'd be no forcing people to work under the inhuman and abhorrent conditions you mentioned. But why move from technology per se? Production based on need not profit and all that.

Drop western guilt complex and realise that we're part of the international working class and have common interests. That self-indulgent morlaising really doesn't help address the problems of the exploitative labour relations you're on about. We're all being fuckin shafted, it's a matter of degree how much, and you're pointing the finger in the wrong place if you point it at people who own DVDs!

 

[xConorx]

Let's flip your argument my direction. I'm sure you'd agree that we all have a right to education, yeah? Well how about you try being in my shoes and working close to 60/70 hr weeks teaching and planning lessons much of which is essentially unpaid overtime under hella stressful conditions and taking work home every night.

Am I going to blame the kids or their parents for wanting an education? Fuck no

the bosses and the cunts that make the decisions to cut back on funding for education, cut back on working conditions, planning & assessment time, class sizes - most of all blame the set of existing social relations that makes those conditions, but never will I blame the people who want an education - it is NOT their fault my working conditions are shit.

Does that make sense? I'm saying you don't blame the people who want DVDs/whatever technology, but the social system that makes the conditions under which said technology is produced destructive and exploitative.

 

[nooleen]

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER AGAIN!!!!

if i ever have to sit through a lad talking shite abou how 'amazing water is' for half an hour i'll fuckin top myself

i don't remember that, must've been monged. although presumably you were too. it was waiting half an hour for hippies in rainbow jumpers to pass a joint back that pissed me off.

 

[mazzyianne]

What a load of moralistic shite. Are you seriously implying that it's my fault that those working conditions are shite because I have DVDs? Is your computer make of organically farmed hemp or something?

I don't think he was blaming you for the work conditions.

It looked to me like his argument went, I wouldn't want to work in a shitty factory, why would anyone if they really had the choice?

teaching can be a fun and rewarding job although it sounds like your situation is crap. With some adjustment it could be good though, like a deadly experience rather than a shit job. I'm just not convinced that making dvds has the same potential.

 

[wageslave]

I used to have a bit of sympathy for the primitivist stuff till I went and made an effort to read more of it. What I liked was the uncompromising spirit, the critique of work and I guess I was attracted to the ecological stuff. I read Jenson in 'the dark before the dawn' and came out of it thinking he was fucking nuts.

Good eco-anarchist stuff that I like includes anything that I've read by Graham Purchase- one of his articles is here: http://www.dis.org/daver/anarchism/aste.html But fuck all of his stuff seems to be online. The WSM bookservice sells some of his books though.

I was involved in Ecotopia and thought it was deadly ... lots of hippies but then they're the ones who knew how to build everything!

Mazzianne said: "I wouldn't want to work in a shitty factory, why would anyone if they really had the choice?"

I dunno about that. I like clothes, cd's, dvds and medicine. I wouldn't like to work in a shitty factory but I'd happily put in a 4 hour shift once or twice a week in a place I had a say in to help produce those. Much better than wearing raw animal hides or dying cos your tooth got infected.

 

[mazzyianne]

Mazzianne said: "I wouldn't want to work in a shitty factory, why would anyone if they really had the choice?"

I dunno about that. I like clothes, cd's, dvds and medicine. I wouldn't like to work in a shitty factory but I'd happily put in a 4 hour shift once or twice a week in a place I had a say in to help produce those. Much better than wearing raw animal hides or dying cos your tooth got infected.

I guess if we're talking utopias we could move some of the factories here and make em lovely to work in.

I'll have to read some of this stuff, haven't read enough to know much yet. Finally be free of college soon and can read anything I like. yay!
Still like to hear what this guy has to say.

I'd totally love to learn all that shit from the weekend in the woods thing though, imagine, all the hippies would be making gaffs and building communities. All the punks would be looking for skips to get food from and all the anarchos would be arguing. I'm turning hippy. again.

ahhhhhhh

now I just need some earplugs

 

[bohs punks]

i think the idea after college is that you get a job rather than reading more books taxpayers gettign paid back and all

 

[nooleen]

you're living in a dream world, conor. the idea of college is that you spend the years where you should be learning how to look after yourself having other people tell you what to do, and never become a proper adult.

 

[ravishinrikrude]

i'd go out of interest