De Clarke, writer, poet, software engineer, permaculture advocate, sailor, and co-moderator at Feral Scholar, has turned me on to more new reading material in the last year than any other ten people combined. That’s not an outgrowth of her persistence — though she has plenty of that — so much as it is the deep admiration I bear for her intellect and how much I trust her as a human being. One of those writers she put me onto was Derrick Jensen. I don’t know how we missed each other over the past few years — probably just our respective busy-ness. So many of the topics I was struggling to understand, he had already apprehended and clarified in his writing. I have adopted Endgame, Volumes One and Two, as my latest Auto-didact’s Lesson Plan.
Derrick’s subject matter (and subject energy) as well as his lyrical literalism take his writing — as one might say of Andrea Dworkin, Mark Jones, Ivan Illich, or Patricia Williams — into the flesh and very near the bone. If that sounds painful, that’s because it is… but emergency interventions usually are. That’s what Derrick Jensen is: he is an emergency diagnostician for our age.
That’s why we take great pride in linking to his books and his writing at Insurgent American.
Beyond Hope
The most common words I hear spoken by any environmentalists anywhere are, We’re fucked. Most of these environmentalists are fighting desperately, using whatever tools they have—or rather whatever legal tools they have, which means whatever tools those in power grant them the right to use, which means whatever tools will be ultimately ineffective—to try to protect some piece of ground, to try to stop the manufacture or release of poisons, to try to stop civilized humans from tormenting some group of plants or animals. Sometimes they’re reduced to trying to protect just one tree.
Derrick Jensen talks with Dave Foreman
“For more than twenty years, Dave Foreman has been at the forefront of the conservation movement, working where political activism intersects with ecological philosophy. In the 1970s, believing that the best way to preserve wilderness was to work within the system, he became the Southwest regional representative of The Wilderness Society. In 1980, disillusioned by the inability of mainstream conservation organizations to halt the destructive forces within our culture, he cofounded Earth First! The goal of Earth First! was to help develop a biocentric worldview and to translate that philosophy into action by fighting with uncompromising passion for the Earth.
More recently Dave Foreman helped to found The Wildlands Project, an effort bringing together grassroots activists and conservation biologists to design and establish linked areas of wilderness extensive enough to support large mammals. In addition to being chair of The Wildlands Project, he is executive editor of Wild Earth magazine and author of Confessions of an Eco-Warrior and The Big Outside (with Howie Wolke).” — Derrick Jensen
Visit Derrick’s website.
Posted by stan as Feature at 10:30 AM PST