So, when others see us they see those who have enslaved themselves to their own creations, who are unable or unwilling to question these creations even when these creations are killing the entire planet. They see those who at one time had the ability to choose, but long ago surrendered that ability in exchange for the ability to leverage power and outsource killing.
Choices? Choices? We don’t need no stinking choices.
We just follow wherever the technics lead.
When we look in the mirror we see the only source of meaning in the entire universe.
When others look at us they see destroyers of meaning, converters of forests to parking lots, prairies to monocultures, rivers to the industrial electricity without which we can’t imagine life. They see us as the destroyers of all complexity, the great simplifiers, making things simple so our simple minds can (still fail to) understand them.
When we look in the mirror we see ourselves as the creators of great art.
When others look at us they see the destroyers of art, the destroyers of beauty, the destroyers of bison and blue whales and monarch butterflies and old growth forests and prairies at dawn and oceans full of fish. What is more beautiful, the sound of a meadowlark or the sound of a highway? The sight of a river or a dam? The smell of a forest or a city? If you are in a city, look around: once, this place, too, was wild and beautiful.
It was written of passenger pigeons: “I have seen them move in one unbroken column for hours across the sky, like some great river, ever varying in hue; and as the mighty stream sweeping on at sixty miles an hour, reached some deep valley, it would pour its living mass headlong down hundreds of feet, sounding as though a whirlwind was abroad in the land. I have stood by the grandest waterfall of America and regarded the descending torrents in wonder and astonishment, yet never have my astonishment, wonder, and admiration been so stirred as when I have witnessed these birds drop from their course like meteors from heaven.”157
Gone, all gone. Killed by this culture that is Death, destroyer of worlds.
Or this again, also about passenger pigeons: “Every afternoon [the pigeons] came sweeping across the lawn, positively in clouds, and with a swiftness and softness of winged motion, more beautiful than anything of the kind I ever knew. Had I been a musician, such as Mendelssohn, I felt that I could have improvised a music quite peculiar, from the sound they made, which should have indicated all the beauty over which their wings bore them.”158
And, once again, all gone. By this culture that devours beauty just as it devours land.
I recently watched a documentary on the US invasions of Iraq. There were lots of photos of tanks and trucks and troops moving through the countryside. What impressed me most were the desert backdrops. You could look from horizon to horizon and not see a single plant.
Before this culture, that was cedar forest so thick that sunlight never touched the ground.
We have become Death, destroyer of worlds. We are driven by our insane—and insatiable, because impossible—quest for validation of our self-perceived superiority. We are driven to destroy all that is alive and free and beautiful and wondrous and meaningful and is not made by or dependent upon us, not under our control.
I’ve never forgotten the line I read so many years ago: If animals could conceive of the devil, his image would be man’s.
They can, and I’m sure they do.
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.”
* * *
154 “Giant Palouse Earthworm Press Release,” University of Idaho, April 27 (unstated year), http://www.uidaho.edu/cals/news/feature/gpe/pressrelease (accessed October 19, 2014).
The scientists now say the worms only grow to one foot, and don’t smell like lilies. But the worms may grow larger and smell different in the real world than they do in a lab.
155 “Black Bear Eats Body of Californian Man,” The Sun Daily, October 18, 2014, http://www.thesundaily.my/news/1202499 (accessed December 7, 2014).
And I just got a note from a friend of mine whose good friend was close to the man who died. She said, “He would have thought being eaten by a bear after he died was perfect and wonderful.” We should all be so fortunate as to be able to give back like that after we die. That was the gift that everyone gave and received, until recently, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.
156 R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (New York: Ballantine Books, 1967), 78.
157 “Me-Me-Og, The Wild Pigeon of North America,” Hunter-Trader-Trapper XVI, no. 3 (June 1908): 48, http://books.google.com/books?id=biTOAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=%22I+have+seen+them+move+in+one+unbroken+column+for+hours+across+the+sky,+like+some+great+river,+ever+varying+in+hue%22&source=bl&ots=H03PuvDXnT&sig=lxCmuWJPQ_f8Llx8xHdHWKSxLxQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6M2EVKP3BMvmoASR94HgCQ&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22I%20have%20seen%20them%20move%20in%20one%20unbroken%20column%20for%20hours%20across%20the%20sky%2C%20like%20some%20great%20river%2C%20ever%20varying%20in%20hue%22&f=false (accessed December 7, 2014).
The entire account is breathtaking and heartbreaking. The author states, for example, that the flocks sounded like “the strange commingling sounds of sleigh bells, mixed with the rumbling of an approaching storm.” The author’s reverential perspective contrasts sharply with that of overt human supremacists like Charles Mann, whom we met earlier, who approvingly cites someone as saying the birds were “incredibly dumb.” As I say in Endgame, the ones who were incredibly stupid were those who eradicated them.
158 Margaret Sarah Fuller, Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 39, http://books.google.com/books?id=mxA7wvjpt5UC&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=%22came+sweeping+across+the+lawn,+positively+in+clouds,+and+with+a+swiftness+and+softness+of+winged+motion,+more+beautiful+than+anything+of+the+kind+I+ever+knew.%22&source=bl&ots=Moz5Wjtkgr&sig=4M_6mCeJ0mGkk2Nt1ug6ZZe9WGY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QdGEVJz8OMW0oQSdl4GYDg&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22came%20sweeping%20across%20the%20lawn%2C%20positively%20in%20clouds%2C%20and%20with%20a%20swiftness%20and%20softness%20of%20winged%20motion%2C%20more%20beautiful%20than%20anything%20of%20the%20kind%20I%20ever%20knew.%22&f=false (accessed December 7, 2014).
Chapter Twenty-One
“Rebooting the World,” or The Destruction of All That Is
I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the Earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.
GENESIS 6:7
I propose that the core of sadism, common to all its manifestations, is the passion to have absolute control over a living being, whether an animal, a child, a man, or a woman.
ERICH FROMM
The world of life has become a world of ‘no-life’; persons have become ‘nonpersons,’ a world of death. Death is no longer symbolically expressed by unpleasant-smelling feces or corpses. Its symbols are now clean, shining machines; men are not attracted to smelly toilets, but to structures of aluminum and glass. But the reality behind this antiseptic façade becomes increasingly visible. Man, in the name of progress, is transforming the world into a stinking and poisonous place (and this is not symbolic). He pollutes the air, the water, the soil, the animals—and himself. He is doing this to a degree that has made it doubtful whether the earth will still be livable w
ithin a hundred years from now. He knows the facts, but in spite of many protesters, those in charge go on in the pursuit of technical ‘progress’ and are willing to sacrifice all life in the worship of their idol. In earlier times men also sacrificed their children or war prisoners, but never before in history has man been willing to sacrifice all life to the Moloch—his own and that of all his descendants. It makes little difference whether he does it intentionally or not. If he had no knowledge of the possible danger, he might be acquitted from responsibility. But it is the necrophilious element in his character that prevents him from making use of the knowledge he has.
ERICH FROMM
You feel the last bit of breath leaving their body. You’re looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God!
SERIAL SEX KILLER TED BUNDY
Before we start to wind down, I want to tell you three more stories about our addiction to authoritarian technics. I’ve written elsewhere how the word addiction comes from a root that means “to enslave,” in that a judge would issue an edict enslaving someone. To be an addict is to be a slave, in this case to the authoritarian technics.
The first story is that I recently saw a TV advertisement for an automobile in which an actor states, “Our species is defined by the tools we use. That’s how we got to the top of the food chain.” As the actor is saying this, we see a big Dodge Penis—I mean, Caravan—drive by. The point seems to be that you can get to the “top of the food chain,” which, I suppose in this case, means at the top of this culture’s hierarchy, simply by having a big penis—I mean, tool, I mean, automobile. The thing I find interesting is that the ad tells a lie and tells a truth. The lie is that the hierarchy he describes—whether you call it the Great Chain of Being or the “food chain”—exists at all. There is no top of any food chain. It’s all cycles within cycles. You eat the fish who ate the worm, and in time the worm eats you. It doesn’t matter whether you are a gnat or an elephant, you eat and you will be eaten. That’s life. Get over it.
But there is a germ of truth in the statement that our tools define us. I’m thinking especially of the second definition of the word define, which is “to fix or mark the limits of: demarcate, as in ‘rigidly defined property lines.’” It comes from the root de-finire, to limit, end, from finis, boundary, end. In this sense, our tool usage does define us. It limits us—as in, to provide one example among far too many, destroying our imagination such that we can no longer imagine living without industrial electricity, even as its generation kills the planet we need to survive—and also, as should be clear by now, our tool usage in this culture threatens to end us, as well as almost everyone else. So sure, our culture—not our species—is defined—that is, limited and ended by—the tools we use.
The next story also involves television. I was flipping through the channels at my mom’s, and came across a program—and isn’t that a wonderful use of that word?—on the History Channel entitled 101 Gadgets That Changed the World. It was for the most part the same sort of narcissistic pablum as in The Atlantic article I deconstructed earlier, only this one focused on self-congratulatory buffoonery instead of the more overt worship of authoritarian technics. In other words, instead of extolling instruments to facilitate slavery and outsource death, this show focused on gadgets like duct tape, sunglasses, derringers (!), floppy discs, and MP3 players. I mention it not only because while I think duct tape is pretty handy and floppy discs were kind of cool, it is a measure of our enslavement to machines—and our allowing ourselves to be defined by the tools we use—to call these “world-changing.” The world is much bigger than my unsuccessful attempts to use duct tape to repair my garden hose that got chewed on by a bear, or my rather more successful attempts to install Wolfenstein 3D on my computer circa 1990. I mention it more because of gadget number ten, which was the lightbulb. Sure, lightbulbs have changed the world, in that now they can collectively be seen from outer space, and because they have allowed us to stay up reading all night without having to go the Abraham Lincoln route of reading by the dying embers, but lightbulbs, just like pesticides, just like automobiles, just like every other tool that defines us, reveals as always our blind spot when it comes to the downsides of technologies.
What? There’s a downside to lightbulbs? There is “no evidence” of a downside to lightbulbs, just as there is “no cost” to lightbulbs. Never mind the ecological harm caused by their manufacture, transportation, use, and disposal. Never mind the hundred million migratory songbirds killed by them each year by flying into lit skyscrapers, and never mind the uncountable insects killed by them.
Let’s leave those aside. They don’t count to most people. But here’s my point: within twenty years of the invention of lightbulbs, night shifts at factories had become commonplace, and consumerism had tripled. From the perspective of capitalists, this is a good thing. From the perspective of the Magnificent Bribe, this is a good thing. From the perspective of the world, and from the perspective of our humanity, not such a good thing.
Even a gadget has consequences.
I had a friend who thought the lightbulb was the single worst human invention, because of what it did to our sleep. I think our pineal glands would agree with him. I think sleeping pill manufacturers would disagree.
All of my life I have suffered from extreme and intractable insomnia, I think in part because of the abuse I suffered as a child, which led to nightmares, night terrors, and almost as many sleepless nights as not. A decade of therapy and a year writing A Language Older Than Words, which helped me make meaning of the suffering and helped me find what many trauma experts would call a “survivor’s mission,” got rid of most of the nightmares and night terrors, but the insomnia remains.
That said, I don’t think lightbulbs have done me any favors. I think this because years ago, when I lived in Spokane, Washington, an ice storm took out electricity to my part of town for a couple of weeks. I had a woodstove and plenty of guilt-free wood (that I got for cheap from a pallet factory that had so many mill-ends they trucked most of them directly to the incinerator, which means the wood I burned was going to be burned anyway; time for short pants even though the windows are iced over!), so heat wasn’t a concern. My mom lived not far away and was on city water, so likewise, water wasn’t a concern. Spokane is far to the north, so sundown was around four, and sunrise around eight. Consequently I went to bed around six, and fell asleep each night around seven or eight. I’d wake up at four in the morning, look at the iridescent hands on my travel alarm clock (the alarm clock was number nine of the world-changing gadgets, because the nightstand version of it “helped drag the Industrial Revolution out of bed”), and delight in the fact that I had four more hours to sleep before dawn. After maybe ten days of this, I was, for the only time in my adult life, completely refreshed.
Then the electricity came back on, and my addiction to electric light bulbs (and reading till midnight) kicked right back in, and with it, my light-induced insomnia.
I’ve noticed that when I go camping, my insomnia disappears after a night or two. I’ve read that I’m not alone in this.
When I talk about this culture’s addictions to these technologies, I include myself.
And please don’t use my own addiction—as I know a lot of lifestylists will—as an excuse to dismiss my larger analysis. First, the honest reflections of a heroin addict might have more credibility when speaking of that addiction than might that of a non-user. Second, the first step toward recovery from addiction is to admit there is a problem, and this entire book (in fact my entire life’s work) is aimed toward getting us as a culture to admit we are addicted to this terribly destructive way of life, because if we don’t acknowledge that these addictions even exist, we have no hope of breaking them. And third, the point here is not and has never been purity, and while removing the lightbulbs from my own home would help me sleep, it wouldn’t do a fucking thing to help the migratory songbirds or the insects, and it wouldn
’t do a thing to stop consumer culture or any of the other costs of this particular technics. There are no personal solutions to social problems.
Indeed, I think the story of my temporary escape from that addiction through the removal of its source points to one of the few realistic ways to get past these addictions to authoritarian technics, get past them to a better way of life. You know what that way is.
The third story has to do with a recent cover article in Newsweek about geoengineering, titled, “Science to the Rescue: Rebooting the Planet.” Yes, one should never anthropomorphize, except when one is projecting machine/computer language onto the natural world. And by this point in the book, do I really have to point out that “rebooting” the planet has been precisely what this culture has been aiming for since the beginnings of human supremacism? The point from the beginning has been to “shut down” the natural world, in other words kill it, and then use our own technics to “restart” some facsimile of it. It’s the story of Noah’s Ark. It’s the story of the Second Coming of Jesus, with the destruction of the earth and its replacement by heaven (or in the new version, technotopia). It’s the story of cities (wiping out all native life and then converting the land solely to human use). It’s the story of agriculture (wiping out all native life and then converting the land solely to human use). It’s the story of pesticides. It’s the story of genetic modification. It’s the story of scientific experiments (wiping out all variables but one in a laboratory, and then manipulating that last variable in order to, as Dawkins put it, make matter and energy jump through hoops on command; or, as Descartes put it, to torture nature into revealing her secrets). It’s the management story. It’s the neo-environmentalist fantasy of a world controlled by us where “anything goes.” It’s the standard abuse story, where the perpetrator breaks down and remakes the victim. It’s the endpoint of this whole machine culture.
The Myth of Human Supremacy Page 36