The same is true, of course, for the rest of this culture’s destructive activities, from vivisection to factory farming to vacuuming the oceans to paving the grasslands to irradiating the planet: every one of this economy’s destructive activities requires immense amounts of energy and worldwide economic, infrastructural, military, and police support to accomplish. If any one of these supports fail—I want to emphasize, if any one of these supports fail—the destructive activities will be curtailed. Where do we place our levers?
Or maybe the fulcrums are all of the above. Maybe changing people’s hearts has a place. Maybe so do all the others, and maybe we should pursue them all, according to our gifts, proclivities, and opportunities.
The bottom line so far as fulcrums and bottlenecks: What will it take to stop this culture of death before it kills the planet?385
VIOLENCE
I believe there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone, and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe there will be that kind of a clash, but I don’t think it will be based on the color of the skin.
Malcolm X386
I’M SURE BY NOW WE’VE ALL HEARD THE CLICHÉ ABOUT HOW ESKIMOS have something like ninety-seven words for snow. It ends up that’s kind of bullshit. First, they’re not Eskimos, but Inuits. Second, the translations for their words for snow aren’t all that exciting, kind of like “fluffy snow,” “hard snow,” “cold snow,” and so on. The reason they have so many words for snow is that they don’t have adjectival forms the way that English has.
Along these lines, though, I do think we need more words in English for violence. It’s absurd that the same word is used to describe someone raping, torturing, mutilating, and killing a child; and someone stopping that perpetrator by shooting him in the head. The same word used to describe a mountain lion killing a deer by one quick bite to the spinal column is used to describe a civilized human playing smackyface with a suspect’s child, or vaporizing a family with a daisy cutter. The same word often used to describe breaking a window is used to describe killing a CEO and used to describe that CEO producing toxins that give people cancer the world over. Check that: the latter isn’t called violence, it’s called production.
Sometimes people say to me they’re against all forms of violence. A few weeks ago, I got a call from a pacifist activist who said, “Violence never accomplishes anything, and besides, it’s really stupid.”
I asked, “What types of violence are you against?”
“All types.”
“How do you eat? And do you defecate? From the perspective of carrots and intestinal flora, respectively, those actions are very violent.”
“Don’t be absurd,” he said. “You know what I mean.”
Actually I didn’t. The definitions of violence we normally use are impossibly squishy, especially for such an emotionally laden, morally charged, existentially vital, and politically important word. This squishiness makes our discourse surrounding violence even more meaningless than it would otherwise be, which is saying a lot.
The conversation with the pacifist really got me thinking, first about definitions of violence, and second about categories. So far as the former, there are those who point out, rightly, the relationship between the words violence and violate, and say that because a mountain lion isn’t violating a deer but simply killing the deer to eat, that this would not actually be violence. Similarly a human who killed a deer would not be committing an act of violence, so long as the predator, in this case the human, did not violate the fundamental predator /prey relationship: in other words, so long as the predator then assumed responsibility for the continuation of the other’s community. The violation, and thus violence, would come only with the breaking of that bond. I like that definition a lot.387
Here’s another definition I like, for different reasons: “An act of violence would be any act that inflicts physical or psychological harm on another.”388 I like this one because its inclusiveness reminds us of the ubiquity of violence, and thus I think demystifies violence a bit. So, you say you oppose violence? Well, in that case you oppose life. You oppose all change. The important question becomes: What types of violence do you oppose?
Which of course leads to the other thing I’ve been thinking about: categories of violence. If we don’t mind being a bit ad hoc, we can pretty easily break violence into different types. There is, for example, the distinction between unintentional and intentional violence: the difference between accidentally stepping on a snail and doing so on purpose. Then there would be the category of unintentional but fully expected violence: whenever I drive a car I can fully expect to smash insects on the windshield (to kill this or that particular moth is an accident, but the deaths of some moths are inevitable considering what I’m doing). There would be the distinction between direct violence, that I do myself, and violence that I order done. Presumably, George W. Bush hasn’t personally throttled any Iraqi children, but he has ordered their deaths by ordering an invasion of their country (the death of this or that Iraqi child may be an accident, but the deaths of some children are inevitable considering what he is ordering to be done). Another kind of violence would be systematic, and therefore often hidden: I’ve long known that the manufacture of the hard drive on my computer is an extremely toxic process, and gives cancer to women in Thailand and elsewhere who assemble them, but until today I didn’t know that the manufacture of the average computer takes about two tons of raw materials (520 pounds of fossil fuels, 48 pounds of chemicals, and 3,600 pounds of water; 4 pounds of fossil fuels and chemicals and 70 pounds of water are used to make just a single two gram memory chip).389 My purchase of the computer carries with it those hidden forms of violence.
There is also violence by omission: By not following the example of Georg Elser and attempting to remove Hitler, good Germans were culpable for the effects Hitler had on the world. By not removing dams I am culpable for their effects on my landbase.
There is violence by silence. I will tell you something I did, or rather didn’t do, that causes me more shame than almost anything I have ever done or not done in my life. I was walking one night several years ago out of a grocery store. A man who was clearly homeless and just as clearly alcoholic (and inebriated) approached me and asked for money. I told him, honestly, that I had no change. He respectfully thanked me anyway, and wished me a good evening. I walked on. I heard the man say something to whomever was behind me. Then I heard another man’s voice say, “Get the fuck away from me!” followed by the thud of fist striking flesh. Turning back, I saw a youngish man with slick-backed black hair and wearing a business suit pummeling the homeless man’s face. I took a step toward them. And then? I did nothing. I watched the businessman strike twice more, wipe the back of his hand on his pants, then walk away, shoulders squared, to his car. I took another step toward the homeless man. He turned to face me. His eyes showed he felt nothing. I didn’t say a word. I went home.
If I had to do it again, I would not have committed this violence by inaction and by silence. I would have stepped between, and I would have said to the man perpetrating the direct violence, “If you want to hit someone, at least hit someone who will hit you back.”
There is violence by lying. A few pages ago I mentioned that journalist Julius Streicher was hanged at Nuremberg for his role in fomenting the Nazi Holocaust. Here is what one of the prosecutors said about him: “It may be that this defendant is less directly involved in the physical commission of crimes against Jews. The submission of the prosecution is that his crime is no less the worse for that reason. No government in the world . . . could have embarked upon and put into effect a policy of mass extermination without having a people who would back them and support them. It was to the task of educating people, producing murderers, educating and poisoning them with hate, that Streicher set himself. In the early days he was preachin
g persecution. As persecution took place he preached extermination and annihilation. . . . [T]hese crimes . . . could never have happened had it not been for him and for those like him. Without him, the Kaltenbrunners, the Himmlers . . . would have had nobody to carry out their orders.”390 The same is true of course today for the role of the corporate press in atrocities committed by governments and corporations, insofar as there is a meaningful difference.
For years I’ve been asking myself (and my readers) whether these propagandists—commonly called corporate or capitalist journalists—are evil or stupid. I vacillate day by day. Most often I think both. But today I’m thinking evil. Here’s why. You may have heard of John Stossel. He’s a long-term analyst, now anchor, on a television program called 20/20, and is most famous for his segment called “Give Me A Break,” in which, to use his language, he debunks commonly held myths. Most of the rest of us would call what he does “lying to serve corporations.” For example, in one of his segments, he claimed that “buying organic [vegetables] could kill you.” He stated that specially commissioned studies had found no pesticide residues on either organically grown or pesticide-grown fruits and vegetables, and had found further that organic foods are covered with dangerous strains of E. coli. But the researchers Stossel cited later stated he misrepresented their research. The reason they didn’t find any pesticides is because they never tested for them (they were never asked to). Further, they said Stossel misrepresented the tests on E. coli. Stossel refused to issue a retraction. Worse, the network aired the piece two more times. And still worse, it came out later that 20/20’s executive director Victor Neufeld knew about the test results and knew that Stossel was lying a full three months before the original broadcast.391 This is not unusual for Stossel and company.392 I recently spoke with one environmentalist/teacher who was interviewed by him who said, “It was nothing but a hit piece. He sliced and diced the interviews with me and the grade schools students to make it seem as though we’d said things we hadn’t, and as though we hadn’t been able to answer questions that we had. He edited the piece to make the children look stupid.” Another called him “the worst motherfucker on the planet,” which is saying quite a lot. And now I’ve got another Stossel story to add to the evidence when he joins the ghost of Streicher in the docket. I got a call a while ago from one of 20/20’s reporters, who wanted to talk to me about deforestation. The next “myth” Stossel is going to debunk, she said, is that this continent is being deforested. After all, as the timber industry says, there are more trees on this continent today than there were seventy years ago. She wanted a response from an environmentalist. I told her that 95 percent of this continent’s native forests are gone, and that the creatures who live in these forests are gone or going. She reiterated the timber industry claim, and said that Stossel was going to use that as the basis for saying, “Give me a break! Deforestation isn’t happening!” I said the timber industry’s statement has two unstated premises, and reminded her of the first rule of propaganda: if you can slide your premises by people, you’ve got them. The first premise is the insane presumption that a ten-inch seedling is the same as a two-thousand-year-old tree. Sure, there may be more seedlings today, but there are a hell of a lot fewer ancient trees. And many big timber corporations cut trees on a fifty-year rotation, meaning that the trees will never even enter adolescence so long as civilization stands. The second is the equally insane presumption that a monocrop of Douglas firs (on a fifty-year rotation!)393 is the same as a healthy forest, that a forest is just a bunch of the same kind of trees growing on a hillside instead of what it really is, a web of relationships shimmering amongst, for example, salmon, voles, fungi, salamanders, murrelets, trees, ferns, and so on all working and living together. Pretty basic stuff. But, she asked, aren’t there more of some types of wildlife today than ever before? I responded by telling her that one of the classic lies told by the Forest Service and the timber industry is that because there are more white-tailed deer now than before, that means forests must be in better shape. The problem is that white-tailed deer like the edges between forest and non-forest, so more white-tailed deer doesn’t mean more forests: it means more edges, which really means more clearcuts. To say, I continued, that more white-tailed deer means more forests is simply another lie. I talked to her for more than an hour, and by the end she seemed to really understand these points. I made clear that the only way you can make Stossel’s leap—from saying that there are more trees today than there were seventy years ago, to saying that deforestation isn’t happening—is if you’re either ignorant of these premises or you’re lying. As George Draffan and I wrote in Strangely Like War, “To even imply that a tree farm on a fifty-year rotation remotely resembles a living forest is either extraordinarily and willfully ignorant, or intentionally deceitful. Either way, those who make such statements are unfit to make forestry decisions.”394 She understood that. We sent her a copy of the book. She said they might have me on the program. They didn’t, which is fine. But here’s the point. Stossel went ahead with the program anyway. Further, he explicitly said that an indicator that deforestation isn’t happening is that white-tailed deer are increasing. He had been made fully aware that his statements are untrue. He was made fully aware of the facts. These facts—that seedlings are different than ancient trees, that monocrops of trees are different than forests, and that increasing numbers of white-tailed deer are not an indicator that forests are increasing—are neither controversial nor cognitively challenging. They are not opinions. They are facts as clear as water is wet and fire is hot and ancient trees are ancient. This means he no longer had the first excuse, ignorance.395 Like Streicher, he is committing violence by lying: violating the truth, violating what is sacred in words and discourse, violating our psyches, and paving the way for further violation of the forests.
All writers are propagandists. That doesn’t mean we’re all liars. Some are liars. Some are not.
I probably shouldn’t pick on Stossel. He’s not the only liar. The entire culture is based on lies, from the most intimate and personal to the most global. The smartest lines I ever wrote were in A Language Older Than Words: “In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It’s not necessary that the lies be particularly believable, but merely that they be erected as barriers to truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities. Truth must at all costs be avoided.”396 Members of abusive families lie to each other and to themselves in order to protect the violent perpetrators (they convince themselves—and are convinced by the perpetrators and by the entire family structure—that they are protecting themselves), and to keep their violent social structures intact. Members of this abusive culture lie to each other and to themselves in order to protect this culture’s violent perpetrators, and to keep this culture’s violent social structures intact. We tell ourselves we can destroy the planet—or rather, for those of us who care, allow it to be destroyed—and live on it. We tell ourselves we can perpetually use more energy than comes in from the sun every year. We tell ourselves that a 90 percent decline in large fish in the oceans may not be unreasonable. We tell ourselves that if we are peaceful enough that those in power will stop the killing. We tell ourselves that civilization is the most desirable form of social order, or really the only one. We tell ourselves things are going to be okay.
Stossel is not the only liar.
SPENDING OUR WAY TO SUSTAINABILITY
The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them. Take our crazy energy consumption. For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption—residential, by private car, and so on—is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government.397 So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would hav
e a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution. I mean, sure, go ahead and live a responsible environmental life; recycle, compost, ride a push-bike; but do it because it is the right, moral thing to do—not because it’s going to save the planet.
If we really want to understand why this happened we have to ask ourselves another question: “Why is it that we seem willing to live with the threat of apocalypse rather than trying to seriously alter a world where consumption, of anything, is seen as unrelieved virtue, production, of anything, is regarded as a social and economic necessity, and more, of anything (like children or cars or chemicals or PhDs or golf courses or recycling centres), is unquestioningly accepted?”
Kirkpatrick Sale398
IT IS ABSURD FOR SOMEONE TO SAY HE OR SHE DOESN’T BELIEVE in violence. That’s like saying you don’t believe in death. Certainly one can say that one doesn’t want to participate in certain forms of violence, just like one can say that one doesn’t want to cause certain forms of death. But violence, like death, is simply a part of life, no larger nor smaller, no more nor less important than any other. In fact it’s inseparable from the others. We all participate in violence daily. The only questions are our degree of awareness, and what we do with that awareness.399
Endgame Vol.1 Page 45