Beyond Politics

(The History of the World, Part 2)

A review of Derrick Jensen live

Victoria, BC - 20 Oct 2007

Derrick Jensen speaks much as he writes: eloquently, haltingly, off-the-cuff; his insights and remarks are brilliant, provocative, profound, disturbing, irreverent, politically incorrect -- no matter what your politics are.  While politics in the conventional sense is the game of power and its subsidiary ethics, here we have a more radical approach to living in the world than accepting the myopia of the urban lifestyle; now nature is reintroduced to the equation. 

Nature (including plant and animal species, ecosystems of land, water and air, and traditional subsistence peoples) is no stranger to the inequation of power, suffering these 60 or 100 centuries of abuse, rape, plunder and blunder, burning, rending, killing, enslaving, forgetting.  Now up for discussion, for once, is the Endgame, as Derrick calls his latest two-volume study of what is involved in the necessary dominance and even more necessary demise of civilization. 

Civilization is characterized by cities, which require (DJ’s emphasis) for its people the importation of food and related resources . . . and therefore it requires the coerced or forcible removal of those necessities from the hinterland, the colonies, the rural poor, the wilderness, the stolen land.  The end of the game comes with the end of denial. 

The hardest step in the recovery program is the first step, which is to awake from denial.  So important and so immense, in fact, is this first step, that the entire two volumes of Endgame (I: The Problem of Civilization; II: Resistance) are devoted to it, as was the entire address tonight.  A single questioner after the talk inquired about the kind of society that might replace the one that has brought itself and everything else along with it to the brink of universal ruination; but Derrek begged off that question, as he had the earlier one, “What can we do?” 

“Your actions will come with the gifts you have to bring,” was his answer (and here we find a refreshingly Emersonian version of democracy, to oppose to the current Orwellian distortions of that noble principle).  In the meantime the more pressing matter -- “the axe held over the head” -- must be addressed, immediately, and it will take every ounce of our attention.   The only way we can give it our proper attention is to recognize the extent of the emergency. 

That we actually have an emergency situation on our hands is a logical if not always visible fact of a lifestyle based on nonrenewable or overzealously harvested resources.  But we can only continue to be lulled for so long by belief in the romantic dream and hope of civilization-forever-after, as most of the dying is still hidden (except when 80% of those in the audience raise their hands at the question “How many of you have lost a loved one to cancer?”), and everything keeps whistling away (though at a higher and higher pitch of anxiety and tension), toward the edge of the cliff, with noses lifted high in the air (as if to hide with pride the stench of extinction and genocide) .

Or we do know better, but we pleasantly forget (tonight, after all, was game 6 of the baseball playoffs . . . “Maybe the Indians will win this time,” quipped Derrick).  Or we should know better, but we take action believing our citizen-ship enterprise can be salvaged, and so we continue to vote, and to buy, steal or pray for our clean water and nutritious food from elsewhere without ever giving anything back, not in humble sacrifice of sacred respect or stewardship, nor truly fair price and trade to those in a distant land.  Come to think of it, what would a truly fair price be, in the whole ecological scheme of things?  The answer could well be, as Derrick Jensen suggests, no price at all -- but rather our sacrifice of such power, in favor of the power of our willingness to listen to our local landbase and its native peoples for instructions on how to survive.

In this reflective summary I risk putting words in Derrick Jensen’s mouth: and yet his message was clear and central: we need each to find our own path through these woods, toward new springs. 

As I drove away from the campus auditorium down the highway skirting the city, the reality of civilization struck me with new clarity and naked truth.  I was driving a machine of death on roadbeds of death through a misty night in a world of human creation: the music and heater on, the windows rolled mostly up, those in other cars invisible or oblivious behind separate barriers and windows . . . and then I wondered, in this state of naked awareness, what next?  What do I do about it?  How do I respond to what’s around me and what it represents on a planetary scale?

The short answer is, keep driving.  Relax, breathe, you can do this, you know the rules of the road, it is possible to operate this machine safely.  Once home I turn on the lightswitch, the computer, use the toilet, eat some yogurt and blueberries, make a cup of mocha for this session of writing.  When I was in the car I was inspired with a wave of good music: especially the wailing Middle Eastern fusion that somehow proved a theme song for this world of the automobile, the Oil Age. 

So my answer, like Derrick’s personal reponse, is “I’m a writer.”  I am also a musician, a teacher, an editor, a reviewer . . . With these callings I feel integrity, even though in their present context they are products of civilization.  I can use them despite their compromises also to reach beneath and above and beyond the layers of civilization attached to them, to their core as cultural expressions and as means of reconnection to nature, to human nature, to spirit. 

As Derrick so succintly put it, he can still use toilet paper while he works to dismantle Weyerhauser.  Or, he can feel despair over the suffering civilization inflicts, while also retaining the capacity for determined resistance and healthy happiness to be alive. 

His brand of humor is black, nearly rude and almost crude throughout the live performance, yet he has a deft touch not to overdo it, and the result was a palpable rapport with a sympathetic and attentive audience.  The same quality of irony comes across in a drier form in the written text. 

Undoubtedly the most poignant moment of the evening came an hour into the question period after the talk.  One man complaining of nearsightedness came onto the stage and kneeled in front of Derrick to get a close look at his face, and then said how sad it made him feel that Derrick had said “Fuck ‘em” in regard to the supposed threat of a “security” clampdown on his freedom of speech.

Derrick’s voice softened as he spoke, without irony and with great patience, explaining how his epithet was really just a kind of shorthand for not being willing to be coerced into inaction and silence.

Perhaps the most profound moment for me was Derrick’s story repeated from his book, about a conversation with someone presenting the argument of dualism: “Derrick, you’re so dualistic -- so, us and them, bad and good, civilized and natural . . . ”  His response: “Okay, what about dualism and nondualism; dualism -- bad; nondualism -- good . . . ?”  The same question might be posed about “Resistance,” the subtitle of Endgame, Volume II.  The spiritualist might respectfully advise against (if not outright protesting) such a compromise from unitary, all-embracing higher consciousness.  Yet again there is an inherent and ironic complicity in such a judgment: resisting resistance.  The pacifist heroes Gandhi and King were nothing if not fierce and unwavering resistors.  Derrick’s expansive acceptance comes into play more in respect to forms of resistance than to condoning a culture of slaughter and degradation.  His battle cry facing a consumeristic culture whose motto is “Everything must go” would be “Anything goes.”  He draws the moral line at actions like bombing a children’s hospital -- actions committed instead under the banner of freedom and democracy.

When do we begin to resist?  When do we use the word apocalypse?  When do we wake from the hypnosis that everything is fair and fine, or flawed or fucked, but as it must be?  Maybe the last words in this review should be the refrain that Derrick repeated several times in a row, midway through his talk.  The rate of survival in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was better than that of the Jews who went peacefully to the death camps.

Derrick likened his predicament (and ours, now that he has helped us see it), to “living in Germany in 1938.”  Until our awakening to action in our own way, we are the “good Germans” and we are the Jews, riding together at last on the same train to deva-station.  Yet the action we decide and are gifted to take does not come in a written manual or a speech to the masses, nor in any one set of strategies or tactics.  It comes through individual and collective inspiration: through the message of the river that spoke so poetically and precisely to and through Derrick in the closing prose of his speech, and through the implicit community and shared witness of the people assembled to hear him. 

The actions of  resistance are everything that conscious people are already doing.  Resistance continues from each moment to the next, in undefined actions to come, as we awake further and connect more to our fellow humans and fellow species and the resilient land we walk on (if we still walk at all).  Our actions of resistance and survival and renewal will persist and multiply, given the awakened will for facing “the Stone Age” to come, and for navigating the rocky ice-bridge to it with eyes and ears open and hearts full.

Postscript:

A decade ago I wrote a review of some similarly end-of-history overviews, with one notable programme (The Millennium Project) recognizing on the one hand the same impossibility of continuing on the present path of overconsumption, while refusing to “go backward” to an uncivilized state of nature.  The solution instead was foreseen in deep space, where humans could continue their divine mission to “go forth and multiply” indeed forever, through the infinity of space with its endless “resources” for the taking.  This fantasy is moot by now as the window has already passed for such a project to be launched from an overabused earth (as the author warned at the time of its writing a decade ago).  Without that vain hope to sustain us; and likewise without the Maoist vision of a populist agrarian utopia; and likewise without the neo-liberal dream of universal democracy (now blown to tatters by its neo-conservative evil twin embarked on an openly fascist imperial agenda); and likewise without the green delusions of happy hippy ecotopias recycling bicycle tires to the end of time; we are left with the one course that is both natural and humane.  That final remedy is the bitterest pill to swallow; but unlike the “final solution” of the holocaust, it is the path of finding a hard yet possible future by making the hardest choices now. 

It is a hard and bitter path because we have been so utterly convinced that it is the wrong one, the one to leave behind, the one to eradicate and transform and evolve from; and we have grown so utterly dependent on our short-lived alternative, so beguiling with its comfort and ease and excess, so intoxicating with its riches transferred to us from the other side: the invisible earth, the silent victims, the dispossessed.  Of course we don’t want to slide back to the Stone Age.  We will go kicking and screaming backwards, or kicking and screaming forwards -- sacrificing our comfort, or others’ lives and livelihoods, in the process -- but go we will, to the unpromised land, the land finally free of unsustainable promises.  Today or tomorrow, one way or another, by our action or inaction, we will go out of our false and manufactured Eden, into the wilderness; we will find our way home.

Home Cooking

The Journey continues. 

Back to the home hotel, the cold stony beach, my own scene.  At Gonzales (Goa-nzales) there were wall-to-wall bodies. In Beacon Hill Park, I got chilled to the bone after jamming past sunset (9 p.m.) ... but a hot bath was on tap to make amends.  The baseball footage comes live - but my team plays hot and cold. My travel computer is jealous now of my home unit, back in operation with its larger screen. The dentist wants to see me again.  I survived taxes, a month late. And oh right, chemtrails again, diffusing into haze.

When I go out to a favorite wild place along the coast, by foot, it’s still close to the city and naval base and I’m buzzed by helicopters, training flights, and a fleet of kayakers.  It strikes me that this privileged land exists under serious armed guard, and that the taxes I pay are part of the protection racket.

I’m cheating on summer here - not only getting it back to back, but with a bonus of five hours a day of extra daylight.  Still, I sense that the summer will pass quickly here, as it always does.  Six months of travel seemed to pass quite slowly, full as it was of varied and new experiences and destinations.  Six months at home in the same place goes more quickly, the days going by in chunks of sameness, routine, preoccupation ... even when there’s not as much going on as I feared.  One thing I have learned in traveling is to simplify, minimize, be happy with an uncluttered lifestyle.

Now I’ve connected with friends again, secured a music studio for the summer, done a week of sailing and another week of beaching, seen my email needs drop to minutes a day ... what’s left, with summer still to come?  More of the same, of course; and I suppose I’ll need to add some income along the way ... but still, it leaves room for dreaming, and daily practice, and relationship with all that is ... which after all, as a lifestyle for a chronic “achiever,” is a breath of fresh air.

 

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more photos from Victoria, BC, Canada ...

An Inconvenient Gore

1 MayBibi’s Hideaway, Matei, Taveuni, Fiji

This could be heaven or this could be hell.--The Eagles, “Hotel California”

It’s ironic that even while working daily on a writing project concerned with the central theme of living “in the flow” ... and even as I had worked my way through a wrinkle in traveler’s flow-time to emerge, I thought, squeaky clean on the other side ... I was merrily striding down the road, like a Tarot Fool with his daypack on a stick, when I caught a stick on the road that jammed itself straight into my foot between my big and next toe. It was stuck deep in the flesh, and when I tugged it out, I was afraid to see just how deep it was. I imagined blood soaking my sandal, the way it had two weeks before when I’d stubbed my other big toe on a chunk of Aitutaki coral while walking down the beach in the dark. But I kept on to my destination, Bibi’s Hideaway, which I knew was only five more minutes down the road.

I’d just landed on Taveuni ten minutes before, and in the tiny airport arrival area I’d declined the offer of a $2 taxi ride to my destination – not so much for the money, as for the short walk in my new environment. I was riding high on the wisdom of my abrupt change in plans for the day, thinking myself a master of improvisation, when mother nature’s humble spear of justice was driven home.

I only made it halfway down the driveway when the shock of the injury finally caught up with me, and I dropped to the ground to keep from fainting. From a position half sitting, half lying down, I spread the toes, and found a gaping hole half an inch deep by a quarter-inch wide. Amazingly, there was not a drop of blood; but the depth of it was sobering. I immediately thought, “Oh shit, I won’t be able to go swimming for days now.” Then I thought, “I wonder if I’ll need to get flown out of here. I don’t even know if there’s a hospital on this island.” Finally I realized the irony of my coming here on Matt’s recommendation, though he had warned me to carry good disinfectant after he’d been laid up for days here, unable even to come to this north end of the island because of a badly infected cut on his ankle from a bushwalk. “Oh, no problem,” I had thought when reading his message. “I’ll just be careful walking, and anyway I have tea tree oil and Polysporin with me.”

I had to put those ingredients to quick use now, dousing the hole first with clean drinking water, then tea tree oil, then a generous squeeze of the antibiotic gel. I proceeded to rent a cabin, then dressed the wound more properly with the help of an alcohol swab and three bandaids taping the two toes together. Now, my next-to-last 500 mg. of Tylenol later, I’m hoping the dull throbbing pain won’t return too badly in the night, and that I didn’t leave any fragments of stick in my flesh.

The sleep part is an issue since last night in Nadi I was up for hours with the maddening itch of innumerable sand fly bites which covered my arms and elbows. Those same bites are still tormenting me tonight as well. But at least there’s a mosquito net around me in Bibi’s cabin to keep fresh bugs away. So I sit writing to the familiar sound of rain, with half an hour of electricity left to type by, and wonder, will I actually make it through this scheduled month on Fiji before turning tail for the comforts of home?

The time-wrinkle bit, I have to reflect, might have been rather a pushing of the river on my part, instead of a clever revision of plans. The day started well enough, with just enough time for a quick complimentary hostel breakfast before catching a taxi to the bus stop. My destination, the cross-island city of Suva, had been described by Matt as much like Victoria. More unsettling were reports I was getting locally and in the Lonely Planet guide about street muggings and rainy climate. The other unknown was the matter of connections by ferry or air from Suva onward to Taveuni; it seemed I would have to stay there two or three nights - or to pursue another option I wasn’t sure about either, detouring to some of the small islands off the coast. But I was committed now, and I waited stoically with the other scattered tourists at the bus stop awaiting the 7:30 arrival. The long white bus arrived on time and everyone piled in, filling every seat. Fifteen minutes later came the first stop, at the main ferry port, along with an announcement about transferring to the ferries for various island destinations. I was the last one off the bus, and by the time I got to the driver, I realized I should have confirmed the destination upon boarding it. “Are you going to Suva?”

Sadly, no. And the bus I was supposed to be on had already departed for Suva. So the driver called around on the radio and sorted out that I could catch the next bus from Nadi town at 1:30. He dropped me off there at 8:30. It was a city I’d wanted to, tried hard to avoid, having heard it described as “horrible” for its pestering touts. In truth it was rather mild compared to places I’d been to in Bali and India. In any case, I thought I could spend some painless time along the dingy main street catching up with email and sipping coffee, so I proceeded to do just that. After email I stopped into a travel agent’s to inquire about ferries and planes from Suva. He didn’t know about ferries but gave me dates and prices for flights; the first seats available were in three days. I left looking for a good coffee over which to mull that possibility. A tout had followed me in and sat in the travel agent’s waiting for me, and showed me where to go for coffee. It wasn’t the place I was looking for, but a curry house – run, no doubt, by a friend or relative of his. I walked on and found another travel agent to ask about Suva ferries, but the information still wasn’t promising.

As I turned around and headed back down the street, I was struck by the sudden impulse to ask again at the air travel agent’s about flights from Nadi to Taveuni. If any were available I could just forget the whole Suva business and head straight to where I knew I wanted to go, Taveuni. Once there I would have plenty of time to figure out a return trip via Suva, if I still wanted to go there. I thought this whole swing in my plan rather a coup, even though the bus driver had gone out of his way to be helpful, and even though, with some hours of delay, the Suva plan would still have worked out rather providentially in its own right. But no, now I was taking charge; I was honoring those misgivings I had about Suva and the priority I was feeling about Taveuni, and taking the disruption in the day’s plans as an opportunity to act boldly in a new direction. Canceling my reservations with the bus company and the hotel in Suva were the last moral hurdles, and both were easily cleared by phone from the travel agent’s office. When the choice was presented to me of today’s flight at two o’clock, I was filled with certainty in the impulse of the moment and said, “I’ll take it.”

Finally I retired to a proper breakfast of scrambled eggs and latte at the upscale Bulaccino, overlooking the pastoral river at the edge of the city. I spent a pleasant hour there after the meal editing, and becoming reinspired by, my ten-year-old manuscript about living “in the flow.”

As it happened, later in the cabin on Taveuni, the book I was reading (Shantaram, by Gregory Roberts) consoled me a little regarding my small wounds and discomforts, by its contrast of the vivid suffering of its narrator in a Bombay prison, who was beaten all day by guards with sharp bamboo canes, and set upon at night by thousands of body lice, “with their wriggling, itching, crawling loathsomeness ... a frenzy on the surface of my skin.”

Hardly the kind of consolation one should need, the far side of paradise.

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4 May

Turning for Home

I’ve now spent three full days here at Bibi’s Hideaway, while the hole between my toes slowly heals. With regular doses of tea tree oil and Polysporin, and bandages covering it the first two days, the wound has remained clean and free of infection while gradually closing. Meanwhile I have taken care to minimize my walking and to keep the foot away from water, dirt and sand.

Staying put, however, has its drawbacks in a place called “The Garden Isle.” Usually “Paradise” is reserved for those hot and dry enclaves of sun hoarded by the traveling rich; the rest of us in search of vacation havens make do with the rainy sides of tropical islands, the edges of jungle, rocky shorelines, bush bungalows. All of the above generally mean one thing, where warm weather is concerned: mosquitoes.

I’m not sure what’s been biting me here, adding to the itchy braille lining my arms, legs and shoulders, because whatever it is, it’s usually silent and invisible. I’ve seen and heard some mosquitoes, for sure; along with smaller bugs like no-see-ums; and near Nadi they told me the culprits were sand flies. Whatever they are, they leave bites that are sometimes welts and sometimes pustules like a case of poison ivy, which itch for days and nights on end. The bugs are a little more scarce in full sun, but then I can’t swim here yet, so a half-hour broil is about the limit of that remedy. The shade is worse. Then I have to cover my skin in tea tree oil every half an hour, and still I manage to get bitten; the alternative is to use toxic DEET or mosquito coils, but these are also only partially effective, besides having odious side-effects.

So after a morning’s consideration of alternative plans, punctuated by the usual stings and bouts of scratching, I finally became inspired by a single mission: escape. I walked to the airport, was told to come back later, and continued up the road to the top of the island of Taveuni. It was a sunny day after much rain, and my foot was feeling well enough to walk, so it felt good to be out on the open road again, with the breeze cutting through the midday heat and keeping the bugs away. The shoreline was beautiful as advertised, though again I could not take advantage of the opportunity to swim. Finally I came to the point where I knew there was no point in walking further. I’d come to the top of the island in the middle of the world, or the far side of paradise, or mosquito heaven - and it was time to turn around. It was time to go home.

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Postscript

The seasons change, and so do I ...--The Guess Who, “No Time”

It hasn’t been all bad here. The privacy has been lovely - except when the lawn crew advanced on my cabin area with their weedeaters buzzing like mechanical mosquitoes. I’ve actually been able to parlay the combination of private space and ambient noise of grass cutters and power generator into a rare opportunity to practice flute again. It’s been a refreshing break from the hostel scene. The time for healing has been a fruitful time also for reflection of my overall needs for happiness, whether on the road or at home. As always there are tradeoffs, but now the various factors stand more clearly outlined: misery from mosquitoes vs. cold weather; social boredom vs. long-term friendship; solitude vs. musical opportunity; sunny heat vs. quality food and water. On balance I realize that the place I call home, Victoria, is actually at the top of the list, all things considered. Even in winter it ranks with the best of the tropical travel locations I’ve experienced on this trip.

I embarked on this trip six months ago on the premise that warmth and sunshine were of first priority, and therefore I had to get out of Victoria. That was true for me then ... when I barely got out of town in the midst of an ice storm. Of course, now after I’ve had my fill of sun and heat, my priorities appear on the other side of the scale, with friends and music and having my own space again - mosquito free.

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10 MayCaqelai, Fiji

Fiji Redeemed

Rather than leave a false and one-sided impression of Fiji based on my limited misadventures here, I should report that there is one small corner of this nation of islands, tiny Caqelai (“Thangalai”), that has lived up to my hopes for what it might be like. The whole island is small enough to walk around in fifteen minutes. There is nary a mosquito to be found; the water is warm and pleasant for swimming and the snorkeling opportunity right off the beach is vast and marvelous; the tourist impact is minimal, with just a handful of us here, in a few tents and basic beach huts, forming a congenial social group; the local staff is friendly and laid-back and treats us to nightly bowls of kava. I couldn’t be more satisfied to have found this final resting place for my wandering soul before heading home.

At the same time I have no regrets about a change of flights to return to Canada two weeks earlier than planned. Four days is ample time to soak up everything Caqelai has to offer. In my first three hours here I managed to have a good swim, sunbathed, played flute before the vast panorama of the South Pacific, explored the exposed reef stretching out to even tinier Snake Island, and walked around Caqelai twice.

It took some doing to get here, which is one reason Caqelai has so few visitors despite its pristine beauty. (Another likely reason is the absence of a bar, as the resort is owned by the Methodist Church.) I stayed in Suva three days in order to figure out all my travel details, but finally, after a local bus ride and an outboard boat ride down a river and out to the island, I made it here with three other travelers. Every day has brought a slight turnover in the dozen or so guests here, while the group continues with a loosely stable identity of people with, at least, similar tastes in travel. Conversations trail on long after meals and then, gradually, we make our way back to the beach, and out into the tranquil waters to explore some more of the living reef at our doorsteps.

Today as I sit on the shore by the lapping waves, the picture is overlaid by the waves of the northern Pacific that I imagine sitting beside in five days’ time, back in Victoria. And when that time comes, I imagine these present ripples will still be echoing forward in time, overlapping my new experience with the memory of this one. So there is compensation in the large transition from country to country, equator to temperate zone, as the soul adjusts and balances the journey that will occur in a day at unnatural speeds of flight. The real journey, on the inner plane, happens more at the speed of a sailing vessel, and so as I write it has already begun.