these books are wicked good, volume one is about the problems with western civilization and why it is destroying the world. volume two is about about why we must resist those forces which are destroying the world. the writing is blunt and exciting. i highly recommend them.
Brilliant - like all his books. Here's a quote - an example of "blunt and exciting". Question: "If our world is really looking down the barrel of environmental catastrophe, how do I live my life right now?" Jensen's response: We need to stop this culture that is killing the planet. Nothing else matters. NOTHING else matters. The only measure by which we will be judged by the people who come after is the health of the land base, because that is what is going to support them. They're not going to care about how hard we tried. They're not going to care about whether we were nice people. They're not going to care about whether we were nonviolent or violent. They're not going to care about whether we grieved the murder of the planet. They're not going to care about whether we were enlightened or not enlightened. They're not going to care about what sort of excuses we have to not act (e.g., "I'm too stressed to think about it," or, "It's too big and scary," or "I'm too busy," or "But those in power will kill us if we effectively act against them," or "If we fight back we run the risk of becoming like they are," or any of a thousand other excuses we've all heard too many times). They're not going to care how simply we lived. They're not going to care about how pure we were in thought or action. They're not going to care if we became the change we wished to see. They're not going to care about whether we voted Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, or not at all. They're not going to care if we wrote really great books about it. They're not going to care about whether we had "compassion" for the CEOs and politicians who are running this deathly economy. They are going to care about whether they can breathe the air and drink the water. They are going to care about whether the land can support them. We can fantasize all we want about some groovy eco-socialist utopia, and if the people can't breathe the air, it doesn't fucking matter. Nothing fucking matters but that we stop this culture from killing the planet. It's embarrassing even to have to say this. The land is the source of everything. If you have no planet, you have no economic system. If you have no planet, you have no spirituality. If you have no planet, you can't ask this question. If you have no planet, nobody can ask any questions. We need to deprive the rich of their capacity to steal from the poor, and we need to deprive the powerful of their capacity to murder the planet. We need to do this using any means necessary. I want people to get over their precious little narcissistic selves, and actually work to protect the land where they live. And one of the good things about everything being so fucked up is that no matter where you look there is good work to be done. We need it all. We need people to take out dams, and we need people to knock out electrical infrastructures. We need people to protest and to chain themselves to trees. We also need people working to ensure that as many people as possible are equipped to deal with the fall-out when the collapse comes. We need people working to teach others what wild plants to eat, what plants are natural antibiotics. We need people teaching others how to purify water, how to build shelters. All of this can look like supporting traditional, local knowledge, it can look like starting neighborhood gardens, it can look like planting local varieties of medicinal herbs, and it can look like teaching people how to sing. I want people to work to stop the destruction. No! I don't want people to _work_ to stop the destruction. I want them to stop it. There's all the difference in the world between those statements. Failure is not an option. I think about a line by Soren Kierkegaard: "Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action. . . . The secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to do and how one is always being prevented*-and then do nothing." Well, the time is long since past for that. What I really want is for people to think for themselves and feel for themselves and to listen to their own land base and to ask that land base, “What must we do?” I want people to start a relationship with the land where they live. Ask that land what it needs from them. Because, once again, the land is the basis for everything. The dominant culture is psychopathological. It kills every indigenous culture it encounters. It kills all that is wild. It is killing the planet. There is nowhere we can run. It is time to fight back. What I want is for people to find what they love, and defend their beloved. People aren't going to care _how_ we live, individually or collectively. They will care about whether we stop this culture from killing the planet, so that they may live. They will care about how far destroyed is the world that we leave to them.
