myth of human supremacy
The Myth of Human Supremacy (2016) by derrick jensen [https://derrickjensen.org/myth-of-human-supremacy/]:
In this impassioned polemic, radical environmental philosopher Derrick Jensen debunks the near-universal belief in a hierarchy of nature and the superiority of humans. Vast and underappreciated complexities of nonhuman life are explored in detail—from the cultures of pigs and prairie dogs, to the creative use of tools by elephants and fish, to the acumen of caterpillars and fungi. The paralysis of the scientific establishment on moral and ethical issues is confronted and a radical new framework for assessing the intelligence and sentience of nonhuman life is put forth.
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature so we can org around legit needs
Jensen attacks mainstream environmental journalism, which too often limits discussions to how ecological changes affect humans or the economy—with little or no regard for nonhuman life. With his signature compassionate logic, he argues that when we separate ourselves from the rest of nature, we in fact orient ourselves against nature, taking an unjust and, in the long run, impossible position.
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity– Luma Mufleh
thurman interconnectedness law: when you understand interconnectedness it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying – Robert Thurman (@BobThurman)
Jensen expresses profound disdain for the human industrial complex and its ecological excesses, contending that it is based on the systematic exploitation of the earth. Page by page, Jensen, who has been called the philosopher-poet of the environmental movement, demonstrates his deep appreciation of the natural world in all its intimacy, and sounds an urgent call for its liberation from human domination.
“Derrick Jensen’s ferocious love of this earth and all her living beings has ignited and crafted a genius work that has the potential to shift human consciousness. The Myth of Human Supremacy must be read and reread and read again. It will shatter and rearrange your beliefs, call up your sorrow and rage. It will humble you and inspire you to fight with every bit of your being for the end of hierarchy, dominance and destruction.”
—Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues and In the Body of the World
need global detox/re\set .. ie: art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)
“In the hottest year we’ve ever recorded, perhaps people of all persuasions should take a moment to grapple with Derrick Jensen’s anger and love. This is a necessary provocation—it’s clearly time to think *anew about who and what we are.”
—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
*deepest issue.. haven’t yet thought anew.. (legit alt.. etal)
we need a problem deep enough to resonate w/8bn today.. a mechanism simple enough to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough to set/keep 8bn legit free
ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8bn today.. via a mechanism simple enough (aka: tech as it could be) to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough (aka: sans any form of m\a\p) to set/keep 8bn legit free
1\ undisturbed ecosystem (common\ing) can happen
2\ if we create a way to ground the chaos of 8b legit free people
“This book dissects and demolishes one of our culture’s most pernicious assumptions, that humans are the pinnacle of evolution and the supreme species on the planet. Derrick Jensen is a master at digging into our beliefs, turning over rocks and unflinchingly looking at what lies beneath. The Myth of Human Supremacy brilliantly exposes our dangerous, nature-devouring belief that humans are superior and reveals to what absurd lengths we will go to preserve that belief. This is an important book full of critical lessons. It shows the value—and urgency—of humbly taking our true, unexceptional but valuable place among all of life’s marvelous creatures.”
—Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia’s Garden and The Permaculture City
myth of normal et al
“Derrick Jensen’s Myth of Human Supremacy brilliantly challenges our fatal belief in ‘progress,’ our inability to absorb the looming ecocide around us, and the *deadly consequences of our hubris. **Jensen has never fled from hard truths. This book is no exception. Jensen’s work is vital to our understanding of the suicidal impulses that exist within human society.”
—Chris Hedges
*the death of us ness.. suicide ness
**to me.. one we’re missing.. about black science of people/whales law and hari rat park law.. we haven’t yet let go enough to see (what legit free people are like)
“[The Myth of Human Supremacy] offers a new way of thinking about the role of humans in relation to all other life on Earth, and a call to reevaluate our most basic assumptions about human domination of the planet.”
—George Wuerthner, author, ecologist, and wildlands advocate“Jensen’s arguments are ferocious, heartbroken, hilarious, and lethally logical. The truths he tells are the most important in this reeling world, bar none.”
—Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Moral Ground and Great Tide Rising“This book made me weep. It’s an angry ballad, an anguished love song to life itself. I sit here, tears in my eyes as I type these words, as if yet another human needed to be heard from. I sit here wishing, dreaming we could instead hear what the Amani flatwing damselflies, ploughshare tortoises, Asiatic black bears, and the pea plants have to say about The Myth of Human Supremacy. I imagine they’d bellow in unison: ‘It’s about fuckin’ time you caught on!’”
—Mickey Z., author of Occupy These Photos“Brilliant, lucid and gorgeously written, The Myth of Human Supremacy attacks the core of the planet-scale problem, the idea that only humans matter. The book is elegant and poised; the argument unassailable; the narrative engaging, witty, and full of surprises; the research meticulous. This is perhaps my favorite of his books.”
—Suprabha Seshan, environmental educator, activist and restoration ecologist, winner of 2006 Whitley Fund for Nature award, Ashoka Fellow, Executive Director of Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary“In this important book, Jensen upends longstanding ‘truths’ about human domination of the planet, demanding that we not only rethink our ideas about politics and economics, but about ourselves. He focuses our attention on the multiple, cascading crises that can be traced to human supremacy—the deeply destructive illusion that the world was made for humans because we are so very special. Jensen considers, and rejects, every reason we want to believe ourselves the anointed species, and challenges all of us to take seriously the moral principles we claim to hold.”
—Robert Jensen, University of Texas at Austin, author of Plain Radical“The Myth of Human Supremacy is poetic and deeply moving. Jensen is unafraid to interrogate unquestionable assumptions and ask ‘crazy’ questions..t Here he dismantles the core of our crises, the mythologies that guide authoritarian, unsustainable, human supremacist cultures. Read this and weep, but then with new awareness shake off emotional and ideological blinders you have been taught, and take action with those who understand that humans are one among many.”
—Darcia Narvaez, Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, blogger at Psychology Today (“Moral Landscapes”), and author of Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom
darcia narvaez @DarciaNarvaez
“Derrick Jensen elegantly shows that everything in our world is interconnected, and animals, plants, and even bacteria are sentient, conscious, and much like us. We humans refuse to believe that, preferring to believe a vast gulf exists between us and the rest of the natural world. That leads to the end of us and all of nature as we kill our planet. I hope this book will help people change their belief in human supremacy and help save our world.”
—Con Slobodchikoff, PhD, author of Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals
thurman interconnectedness law et al.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness et al
“In his most important work since A Language Older Than Words, Jensen lays bare the sociopathy of the ideology of human supremacy: the fact that western ‘civilization’ is based on domination, thievery, and murder, while the natural world innately gravitates towards harmony and balance. This supremacy is destroying the planet, an infinitely complex living entity we’ve only barely begun to understand. This book is mandatory reading.”
—Dahr Jamail, author/journalist“It is said that a revolution begins in the mind—an alternative to our present circumstances must first be imagined before we can be moved to fight for it. So we should all be grateful to Derrick Jensen, who with this book breaks the ideological chains of human supremacy and reveals the world as the interconnected web of being that it truly is. With our illusions ripped away, we may yet be able to save ourselves and our beautiful planet from the system that is killing us all.”
—Stephanie McMillan, author of Capitalism Must Die
if we legit understand interconnectedness et al.. then no need to ‘fight’ for it.. if it’s legit for all.. all already crave it.. just need a means to listen for that craving..
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs
imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)
jensen one question law.. jensen import law.. jensen civilization law.. jensen fittingness law.. jensen living beings law.. myth of human supremacy.. bright green lies.. derrick on bright green lies..
author of over twenty books, including Endgame, A Language Older Than Words, and Dreams
while reading derrick jensen letters emailed him and he suggested i read this book and bright green lies (while waiting for bgl – taking in derrick on bright green lies)
_________
notes/quotes via hoopla 169 pages [https://www.hoopladigital.com/play/13313837]:
or maybe just via pdf (299 pages) [https://eddierockerz.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/the-myth-of-human-supremacy-pdfdrive-.pdf].. used to format from all anarchist library readings.. will put hoopla page #’s in () for now
praised in book not listed above:
“When I read Endgame (2006), I believed I had found the clearest description of patriarchal civilization and how it is killing every aspect of the living planet. I was mistaken. Derrick Jensen has outdone himself. In heartfelt, compelling prose, he asks the reader to question the obvious lies embedded within the dominant paradigm.” —Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of conservation biology at the University of Arizona
7 (6 from hoopla)
Usually, the English language reserves the pronoun who for humans and uses that for nonhumans. To align grammar and syntax with the ideas put forward in this book, many entities normally considered things will be referred to with the pronoun who. – dj
10
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe – —KURT VONNEGUT
rather.. means we’ve already co opted ourselves.. lit & num as colonialism et al
11
prelude
How we behave in the world is profoundly influenced by how we experience the world, which is profoundly influenced by how we perceive the world, which is profoundly influenced by what we believe about the world. Our collective behavior is killing the planet. It’s not altogether irrelevant, then, to ask *what sorts of beliefs (perceptions, experiences) might be leading to these destructive behaviors, and to ask **how we can change these beliefs such that we will stop, not further, the murder of the planet.
We **have been taught, in ways large and small, religious and secular, that life is based on hierarchies, and that those higher on these hierarchies dominate those lower, either by right or by might..t We have been taught that there are myriad literal and metaphorical food chains where the one at the top is the king of the jungle. But what if the point is not to rule, but to participate? What if life less resembles
the board games Risk or Monopoly, and more resembles a symphony? What if the point is not for the violin players to drown out the oboe players (or worse, literally drown them or at least drive them from the orchestra, and take their seats for more violin players to use), but to make music with them? ***What if the point is for us to attempt to learn our proper role in this symphony, and then play that role.. dj – 2016
**hari rat park law.. need to get out of any form of m\a\p
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature so we can org around legit needs ie: tech as it could be; ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling
***to me.. no proper role.. no learning.. no train.. no prep.. just need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature ie: tech as it could be
12
intro – Human Supremacism
The modern conservative [and, I would say, the human supremacist] is engaged in one of man’s oldest
exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITHMovement catches my eye, and I see a twig of redwood needles fall gently to the ground. It helped the tree. Now it will help the soil.
millman never nothing law et al
Someday I am going to die. Someday so are you. Someday both you and I will feed—even more than we do now, through our sloughed skin, through our excretions, through other means—those communities who now feed us. And right now, amidst all this beauty, all this life, all these others—sedge, willow, dragonfly, redwood, spider, soil, water, sky, wind, clouds—it seems not only ungenerous, but ungrateful to begrudge the present and future gift of my own life to these others without whom neither I nor this place would be who we are, without whom neither I nor this place would even be
Likewise, in this most beautiful place on Earth—and you do know, don’t you, that each wild and living place on Earth is the most beautiful place on Earth—I can never understand how members of the dominant culture could destroy life on this planet
13
Last year someone from Nature [sic] online journal interviewed me by phone. I include the sic because the journal has far more to do with promoting human supremacism—the belief that humans are separate from and superior to everyone else on the planet—than it has to do with the real world. Here is one of the
interviewer’s “questions”: “Surely nature can only be appreciated by humans. If nature were to cease to exist, nature itself would not notice, as it is not conscious..’I asked him if he knew any bears personally.
He thought the question absurd.
This is why the world is being murdered.Unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of any culture..t A central unquestioned belief of this culture is that humans are superior to and separate from everyone else. Human supremacism is part of the foundation of much of this culture’s religion, science, economics, philosophy, art, epistemology, and so on.
Human supremacism is killing the planet. Human supremacists—at this point, almost everyone in this culture—have shown time and again that the maintenance of their belief in their own superiority, and the entitlement that springs from this belief, are more important to them than the well-being or existences of everyone else. Indeed, they’ve shown that the maintenance of this self-perception and entitlement are more important than the continuation of life on the planet.
Until this supremacism is questioned and dismantled, the self-perceived entitlement that flows from this supremacism guarantees that every attempt to stop this culture from killing the planet will fail, in great measure because these attempts will be informed and limited by this supremacism, and thus will at best be ways to slightly mitigate harm, with the primary point being to make certain to never in any way question or otherwise endanger the supremacism or entitlement..t
jensen entitlement law et al.. entitlement
14
In short, people protect what’s important to them, and human supremacists have shown time and again that their sense of superiority and the tangible benefits they receive because of their refusal to perceive others as anything other than inferiors or resources to be exploited is more important to them than not destroying the capacity of this planet to support life, including, ironically, their own.. t
need global detox/re\set
derrick on imagine a turtle
while sharing all this.. got this [https://twitter.com/krustelkram/status/1670417542555357185?s=20] and this [https://twitter.com/krustelkram/status/1670417640014114817?s=20] from @krustelkram warning that dj and lk and org are cult ness
so.. maybe i’ve seen enough for my desired insight.. and will not tweet anymore
If you said to them that trees told you they don’t want to be cut down and made into 2x4s, what would happen to your credibility? Contrast that with the credibility given to those who state publicly that you can have infinite economic (or human population) growth on a finite planet, or who argue that the world consists of resources to be exploited. If you said to people in this culture that oceans don’t want to be murdered, would these humans listen?
to crazywise (doc) ness and this is ridiculous ness and this is not ridiculous ness
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I just got a note from a friend who was visiting her son. She writes, “Yesterday morning when I emptied the compost bucket, the guy next door called out to ask if that was ‘garbage’ I was putting on the pile. I told him it was ‘compost.’ We went back and forth a couple of times. Then he said, ‘We don’t want no [sic] animals around here. I saw a raccoon out there. There were never any animals around here before.’ What better statement of human supremacism?”
•••
Recently, scientists discovered that some species of mice love to sing. They “fill the air with trills so high-pitched that most humans can’t even hear them.” If “the melody is sweet enough, at least to the ears of a female mouse, the vocalist soon finds himself with a companion.” Mice, like songbirds, have to be taught how to sing. This is culture, passed from generation to generation. If they aren’t taught, they can’t sing.
So, what is the response by scientists to these mice, who love to sing, who teach each other how to sing, who sing for their lovers, who have been compared to “opera singers”? Given what the ideology of human supremacism does to people who otherwise seem sane, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the scientists wanted to find out what would happen if they surgically deafened these mice. And we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the mice could no longer sing their operas, their love songs.
The deafened mice could no longer sing at all. Instead, they screamed. And who could blame them?
This is human supremacy
that.. and/or just that we are all in sea world.. and need a way out 1st.. hari rat park law et al
Or there’s this. Just yesterday I spoke with Con Slobodchikoff, who has been studying prairie dog language for more than thirty years. Through observing prairie dogs non-intrusively in the field, he has learned of the complexity of their language and social lives. But he has done so, he said, without the aid of grants. Time and again he was told that if he wanted to receive money for his research—and if he
wanted to do “real science” instead of “just” observing nature—he would have to capture some prairie dogs, deafen them, and then see how these social creatures with their complex auditory language and communal relationships responded to their loss of hearing
oi to research ness and graeber grant law ness.. and graeber min\max law et al
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And then today I got an email from a botanist friend who has worked for various federal agencies. His work has included identifying previously unknown species of plants. He said this work has not been supported by the agencies, because the existence of rare plants would interfere with their management plans, including the mass spraying of herbicides. His discoveries have been made on his own time and on his own dime. It’s a good thing science is value free, isn’t it? I told him Slobodchikoff had said to me that the scientific establishment makes it very difficult for people to manifest their love of the world. Slobodchikoff said this as someone who loves the earth very much. My botanist friend agreed. “Science makes it very hard to love the world. Most scientists want the world to fit nice, clear, linear equations, and anything that doesn’t fit is ignored, unless you can get a publication out of it. Love isn’t a concept that would even come to mind concerning the natural world.
might start skimming.. all great stories.. but in essence all saying same thing.. science scientifically ness et al
19I hate this fucking culture.
23
1 – the great chain of being
One of the most harmful notions of Western Civilization—and one of the most foundational—is that of the Great Chain of Being, or Latin scala naturae (which literally means ‘ladder or stairway of nature’), closely related to the divine right of kings. It is a hierarchy of perfection, with God at the top, then angels, then kings, then priests, then men, then women, then mammals, then birds, and so on, through plants, then precious gems, then other rocks, then sand.
24
The Great Chain of Being has long been used to rationalize whatever hierarchies those in power wish to rationalize. It has been and is central to the notion of the Divine Right of Kings, to racism, to patriarchy, to empire. It is a very versatile tool. The Great Chain of Being also underlies the modern belief that the world consists of resources to be exploited by humans. Traditional Indigenous peoples across the earth do not believe in this hierarchy; instead, they believe the world consists of other beings with whom we should enter into respectful relationship, not inferior others to be exploited. This is one reason these other cultures have often been sustainable. Our perception of evolution is infected with this belief in the Great Chain of Being, as so often people, including scientists, think and write and act as though all of evolution was about creating more and more perfect creatures, leading eventually to that most perfect creature yet: us.
31
Really? The human brain is more complex than oceans? Than forests? Than the sun?
36
2 – language
46
So what is or is not the creature’s perceived “nature” will change according to what is required for the human supremacist to retain the self-perception of supremacy.
jensen entitlement law et al
48
3 – moving the goalposts
68
I’m so glad we have science to tell us not to believe the writhing that is happening before our eyes.
Don’t bother trying to figure out the logic. It doesn’t really hang together. It doesn’t have to. Neither logic nor evidence were ever going to be allowed to lead where they may, but rather were going to be tortured into shape to serve her supremacism. .
This, succinctly stated, is the central point and most important function of any supremacist philosophy.
69
4 – complexity and its opposite
I believe nature is intelligent. The fact that we lack the language skills to communicate with nature does not impugn the concept that nature is intelligent. It speaks to our inadequacy for communication.
PAUL STAMETS
lanier beyond words law ness et al.. rumi words law et al
Science deals with but a partial aspect of reality, and . . . there is no faintest reason for supposing that everything science ignores is less real than what it accepts. . . . Why is it that science forms a closed system?
science scientifically et al
Why is it that the elements of reality it ignores never come in to disturb it? The reason is that all the terms
of physics are defined in terms of one another. The abstractions with which physics begins are all it ever
has to do with.
J.W.N. SULLIVANPhysical science will not stop short of a reduction of the universe and all it contains to the basis of mechanics; in more concrete terms, to the working of a machine.
CARL SNYDER
rowson mechanical law et al
77Michael Pollan asked plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso “why he thinks people have an easier time granting intelligence to computers than to plants. ([Prominent botanist] Fred Sack told me [Pollan] that he can abide the term ‘artificial intelligence,’ because the intelligence in this case is modified by the word
‘artificial,’ but not ‘plant intelligence.’ He offered no argument, except to say, ‘I’m in the majority in saying it’s a little weird.’) Mancuso thinks we’re willing to accept artificial intelligence because computers are our creations, and so reflect our own intelligence back at us. They are also our dependents, unlike plants: ‘If we were to vanish tomorrow, the plants would be fine, but if the plants vanished . . .’ Our dependence on plants breeds a contempt for them, Mancuso believes. In his somewhat topsy-turvy [sic] view, plants ‘remind us of our weakness.’”
michael pollan et al – how to change
80
5 – value free science
Capitalism as we know it couldn’t exist without science. And science as we know it has been formed and
deformed by capitalism at every step of the way. STANLEY ARONOWITZ103
How is it that when it comes to the enslavement of nature—which includes as much of the universe as we can manipulate—we suddenly get really stupid?
This time we’ll misquote Upton Sinclair: “It’s hard to make a man understand something when his entitlement depends on him not understanding it.”
sinclair perpetuation law.. jensen entitlement law..
an inevitable consequence of a naturalistic [sic] philosophy that holds only human functionality to be true functionality, and only human (and in fact scientific) intelligence to be true intelligence.105
6 – wonder
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can
outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
E.B. WHITESlime molds..
125
This is what happens every time we forget that the natural world is full of intelligence, and knows far better than we do what it is doing
128
7 – narcissism
Narcissism falls along the axis of what psychologists call personality disorders, one of a group that includes antisocial, dependent, histrionic, avoidant and borderline personalities. But by most measures, narcissism is one of the worst, if only because the narcissists themselves are so clueless. JEFFREY KLUGER
144
Abusers often attempt to make their potential victims dependent upon them, so as to make these potential victims easier to exploit; a potential victim who is not dependent upon the abuser has more readily accessible choices, chances to get away. Even when the potential victim does have choices, it is crucial to the abuser to make it seem as though there are none. First among those whom the abuser must convince of the rightness of his abuse and exploitation is the abuser. How can he sustain his abusive behavior over the long term if he does not believe his power is deserved and righteous and necessary and used for the common good? How can he feel all of these things if he does not perceive himself as superior to those he exploits? And how better to make himself feel superior to someone than to perceive this other as (and better, make this other) dependent upon him? And how better to convince himself that those he exploits are dependent upon him than by convincing himself that he is the bearer of true meaning and true function; that the lives, actions, and achievements of those he exploits have no
inherent meaning or function?
Which is how you end up with discourse as absurd as this culture’s, with its talk of managing (read: killing) forests, managing (read: killing) oceans, managing (read: killing) wildlife, managing (read: killing) the entire planet.
It’s a very bad cycle. And it’s killing the real world
khan filling the gaps law.. jihad (doc) et al.. white right (doc) et al.. any form of m\a\p .. killing us
146
8 – regret
151
The scientists defined regret as “the recognition that you made a mistake and if you had done something differently, things would have gone better.” So, based on the clearly articulated and lived values of human supremacists, there’s no reason for human supremacists to regret anything that has happened so far,
because there’s no reason to presume that they believe they’ve made any major mistakes, or that they think they should have done anything differently, or that they think that things could have gone better
1539 – the seamlessness of supremacism
164
I don’t believe Indigenous peoples are less intelligent than the civilized, which means that the invention of refrigerators can’t by itself be a sign of intelligence. I believe the Tolowa, for example, never invented chainsaws, backhoes, or refrigerators at least in part because they had such a different social reward system and such a different way of perceiving and of living in the world, that many of the problems that led to these solutions may not even have been perceived as problems. If you’ve not exceeded your local carrying capacity, and you rely on salmon for food, and you ceremonially smoke them, and if you recognize that your life is tied up in theirs, and if the salmon stay as common (and delicious) as they have been forever (as they should if you don’t exceed local carrying capacity, either through overconsumption or overproduction or overpopulation), there’s really no reason to invent refrigeration. The meat stays freshest in the river. And if you’re not planning on conquering your neighbor, there’s really no reason for you to invent chariots or steel breastplates or machine guns, is there?
testart storage law.. garden-enough ness.. graeber stop at enough law.. et al
need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature so we can org around legit needs
165
10 – authoritarian technics
Mumford called the technologies and their associated social forms “technics.” Technics, he said, *can be democratic or they can be authoritarian. Democratic technics are those that emerge from and reinforce democratic or egalitarian social structures, whereas authoritarian technics are those that emerge from and reinforce authoritarian social structures. The distinction he made is both brilliant and simple: does the technology require a large-scale hierarchical structure? Does it reinforce this structure? Does it lend itself to the monopolization of the technology, and therefore to control of those who fabricate the technology over those who use it? To put it in its simplest terms, is this technology something that anyone can make? Or is it a technology that requires massive hierarchical (and distant)
organizations? **We can ask all of these same questions not just about technologies, but about all
“problems” and “solutions.”
*not either/or.. same song.. any form of m\a\p
**need to let go of our obsession w problems/solution ness and try curiosity over decision making et al.. every thing to date has been cancerous distraction.. since in sea world.. and so habituated to whalespeak
178
11 – beauty
182
This is one reason this culture is so destructive. It is one reason it hates nature so much. The real world keeps reminding us that life is not all about us.
183
12 – conquest
200
Lewis Mumford wrote, “My thesis, to put it bluntly, is that from late Neolithic times in the Near East, right down to our own day, two technologies have recurrently existed side by side: one authoritarian, the other democratic, the first system-centered, immensely powerful, but inherently unstable, the other [hu]mancentered, relatively weak, but resourceful and durable. If I am right, we are now rapidly approaching a point at which, unless we radically alter our present course, *our surviving democratic technics will be completely suppressed or supplanted, so that every residual autonomy will be wiped out, or will be permitted only as a playful device of government, like national balloting for already chosen leaders in totalitarian countries.”
oi.. any form of democratic admin part of the cancerous distraction
204
it’s a lot more flattering to say that humans are superior because we learned to “cooperate,” rather than to say we’re superior because we learned the power of top-down, military-style bureaucratic organization, isn’t it? Although this organizational form does bring a lot of benefits (that is, for the few at the expense of the many, including nonhumans); and it’s also completely fantastic at getting large
numbers of perhaps otherwise moral people to act in profoundly immoral ways. For the sake of our own vanity and sense of superiority, let’s keep calling it “cooperation,” okay?
even if it was legit cooperation.. not what legit free people crave.. oi
For all its redoubtable constructive achievements, authoritarian technics expressed a deep hostility to life
any form of m\a\p
206
14 – the divine right of machines
The State of monarchy is the supreme thing on Earth. . . . As to dispute what God may do is blasphemy,
so is it treason in subjects to dispute what a king may do.
KING JAMES IYears ago my friend Frances Moore Lappé told me she derives a certain amount of optimism from the question, “Why did people stop believing in the Divine Right of Kings?” Her answer? “They just did. At one point they believed that kings were put on the throne by God, and then at some point they didn’t. My optimism comes from the fact that they just stopped believing in this destructive notion. We can do
that with other destructive notions as well
graeber make it diff law et al
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Ah, but what if they have a point? What if “intelligence,” as defined by human supremacists, is lethal? I’m not saying that civilized humans are smarter than Indigenous humans (or, for that matter, anyone else on the planet). I’m saying, what if the primary form of intelligence we recognize, we reward, we encourage, we worship; what if that form of intelligence is lethal?
intellect ness et al.. as red flag.. as cancerous distraction
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And that’s really the point here. By calling the murder of the planet an act of intelligence, one is encouraging that destructiveness. Smart is good, right? We’d rather be smart than not smart, right?
How would our society as a whole act differently if, instead of portraying the acts of destroying forests or killing oceans as signs and validations of our intelligence, we were to speak honestly about them, and say that they are acts of mind-boggling stupidity? How would we act differently if public intellectuals argued that this culture is killing the planet because we’re so fucking stupid? Wouldn’t that change our behavior? Of course if someone were to argue that humans are killing the planet because humans are lethally stupid, I would still point out that plenty of Indigenous cultures did not destroy their landbases. So I would argue that it is not that humans are stupid, but that this culture makes people stupid, in fact so stupid that they would rather kill the planet that is the source of our lives and the lives of all these other beautiful beings with whom we share this planet, than to acknowledge that they are
making stupid social choice after stupid social choice
decision making is unmooring us law et al
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15 – agriculture
The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a
catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual
inequality, the disease and despotism [and the ecological destruction, and militarism], that curse our
existence. JARED DIAMOND
Noam Chomsky, who is, again, one of the most important public intellectuals of the late twentieth century, also says, about agriculture and energy, “If agriculture is inherently destructive, we might as well say goodbye to each other, because whatever we eat, it’s coming from agriculture, whether it’s meat or anything else, milk, whatever it is. There is no particular reason to believe that it’s inherently destructive. We do happen to have destructive forms of agriculture: high-energy inputs, high fertilizer inputs. . . . So are there other ways of developing agricultural systems which will be basically sustainable? It’s kind of like energy. There’s no known inherent reason why that’s impossible.”
Once again, he’s not alone. He has an entire culture for company. At this point, nearly all writers and historians and scientists share this worldview, even those who are revolutionary and/or radical in other ways. It’s depressing as hell. I guess my question would be, if the entire history of agriculture—six thousand years of destroying every biome it has touched—doesn’t constitute “reason to believe” that agriculture is inherently destructive, what, precisely, would constitute evidence? What will be our threshold to finally acknowledge this? Seven thousand years? Eight thousand? The complete destruction of the biosphere? I doubt if even those will suffice.
Here’s a particular reason to believe in agriculture’s destructiveness: black-skinned, pink-tusked elephants in China. You’ve never heard of these? That might be because they were exterminated by
agriculture. Not modern agriculture. Agriculture. Here’s another reason: Mesopotamian elephants.214
Agriculture destroys more nonhuman habitat than any other human activity. This has been true from the beginnings of agriculture. This destruction of habitat is not a by-product of agriculture. It is the point of agriculture: to convert land specifically to human use, and then to impede succession, that is, to stop the land’s attempts to heal itself. And the fact that the central acts of agriculture—destroying habitat and
disallowing it from healing—are harmful to the natural world is not a reason to believe that agriculture is necessarily destructive?
Agriculture destroys soil, the basis of terrestrial life.
Agriculture destroys water quality.
agri surplus et al.. bush mono crop law et al
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This is one of the ways an authoritarian technics is authoritarian: like any other despot, it cannot be questioned, even when it is killing all we hold dear, all we truly need to survive.
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No. If agriculture is inherently destructive, we should address this honestly. And if our way of life is based on agriculture, and if agriculture is inherently destructive, that provides all the more urgency to making an honest analysis. It’s like my doctor friend says about the first step toward cure being proper diagnosis. Well, if we’re going to short-circuit diagnosis before it even starts, then there can never be a cure. We are guaranteeing the continued murder of the planet. I’m not interested in rationalizing the further murder of the planet. We need to face reality, no matter how painful.
deeper than agri.. ie: missing pieces.. warning ness et al
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16 – facing reality
I’m known for saying that civilization is killing the planet, and that it needs to be stopped before it kills what or who is left. I don’t say this because I hate hot showers or Beethoven’s Ninth. I say this because I’ve long been capable of doing simple math.
oi.. also a cancerous distraction ie: using math to debate.. .. we need to calculate differently and stop measuring things
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17 – supremacism
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18 – the sociopocence
The point of science—and this may or may not be true of individual scientists—is to make the world
subject to human domination. If they can abstract, and then they can predict on the basis of that
abstraction, then they can try, at both the human and natural levels, to use that prediction in order to
exert control. STANLEY ARONOWITZ
Members of this culture are so narcissistic that they’re now calling this era the Anthropocene: the Age of Man. The term was devised by someone who meant it pejoratively, that humans have become so destructive of the planet that they couldbe considered a geologic force. But it didn’t take long for human supremacists to turn the term into the sort of self-congratulatory rationalization for further destruction to which we have become so accustomed, as in Emma Marris proclaiming we run the earth, as in Charles Mann declaring that “Anything goes.”
I find the term really harmful, for a number of reasons, primarily that the term Anthropocene not only doesn’t help us stop this culture from killing the planet, it contributes directly to the problems it purports to address. It’s also grossly misleading. Humans aren’t the ones “transforming”—read: killing —the planet. Civilized humans are. There’s a difference.
but to me.. any form of m\a\p civ’s us.. so we’ve all been civ’d to some degree.. ie: all in sea world.. none of us are free ness
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19 – earth hating madness
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20 – self awareness
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Our failure at the mirror test of self-awareness reminds me of nothing so much as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the central conceit of which is that as the main character becomes increasingly vile, his countenance remains clear, but a portrait of him changes to reflect who he has become. When we look in the mirror, we continue to see a bright and beautiful and intelligent and wonderful being, but
who we actually are has become dull and ugly and stupid and as vile as it is possible to be.
And we can’t see a fucking thing. We can say, with a clean (because completely eradicated) conscience, “I see no evidence of any inherent destructiveness in what we do or who we have become.”
wilde not-us law et al.. need to get out of sea world
humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..
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21 – ‘rebooting the world’ or the destruction of all that is
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What I want from this book is for readers to begin to remember what it is to be human, to begin to remember what it is to be a member of a larger biotic community. What I want is for you—and me, and all of us—to fall back into the world into which you—and me, and all of us—were born, before you, too, like all of us were taught to become a bigot, before you, too, like all of us were taught to become a human supremacist, before you, too, like all of us were turned into a servant of this machine culture like your and my parents and their parents before them. I want for you—and me, and all of us—to fall into a world where you—like all of us—are one among many, a world of speaking subjects, a world of infinite complexity, a world where we each depend on the others, all of us understanding that the health of the real world is primary.
need global detox (in sync) for this.. derrick on imagine a turtle et al
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So where do we begin? We begin by questioning the unquestioned beliefs that are the real authorities of this culture, and then we move out from there. And once you’ve begun that questioning, my job is done, because once those questions start they never stop. From that point on, what you do is up to you.
but those are the wrong questions (aka: cancerous distractions).. because they’re focused on sea world and whalespeak and some finite set of choices.. we need a legit globa detox/re\set.. otherwise.. same song
we need a problem deep enough to resonate w/8bn today.. a mechanism simple enough to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough to set/keep 8bn legit free
ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8bn today.. via a mechanism simple enough (aka: tech as it could be) to be accessible/usable to 8bn today.. and an ecosystem open enough (aka: sans any form of m\a\p) to set/keep 8bn legit free
thinking restate/update 7.18.. and 2\ short findings restate in 2019
1\ undisturbed ecosystem (common\ing) can happen
2\ if we create a way to ground the chaos of 8b legit free people
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myth of normal.. myth of tragedy and lord.. et al
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be you. 