Endgame Vol.1 (26 page)

Yet we have been systematically taught to ignore these trade-offs, to pretend that we don’t see them (even when they’re right in front of our faces) they do not exist.

Yesterday, I received this email: “We all face the future unsure if our own grand-children will know what a tree is or ever taste salmon or even know what a clean glass of water tastes like. It is crucial, especially for those of us who see the world as a living being, to remember. I’ve realized that outside of radical activist circles and certain indigenous peoples, the majority has completely forgotten about the passenger pigeon, completely forgotten about salmon so abundant you could fish with baskets. I’ve met many people who think if we could just stop destroying the planet right now, that we’ll be left with a beautiful world. It makes me wonder if the same type of people would say the same thing in the future even if they had to put on a protective suit in order to go outside and see the one tree left standing in their town. Would they also have forgotten? Would it still be a part of mainstream consciousness that there used to be whole forests teeming with life? I think you and I agree that as long as this culture continues with its preferred methods of perception, then it would not be widely known to the majority. I used to think environmental activists would at least get to say, ‘I told you so’ to everyone else once civilization finally succeeded in creating a wasteland, but now I’m not convinced that anyone will even remember. Perhaps the worst nightmare visions of activists a few hundred years ago match exactly the world we have outside our windows today, yet nobody is saying, ‘I told you so.’”
¹⁵⁵

I think he’s right. I’ve long had a nightmare/fantasy of standing on a desolate plain with a CEO or politician or capitalist journalist, shaking him by the shoulders and shouting, “Don’t you see? Don’t you see it was all a waste?” But after ruminating on this fellow’s email, the nightmare has gotten even worse. Now I no longer have even the extraordinarily hollow satisfaction of seeing recognition of a massive mistake on this other’s face. Now he merely looks at me, his
eyes flashing a combination of arrogance, hatred, and willful incomprehension, and says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

And he isn’t even entirely lying.

Except of course to himself.

Sometimes lying awake at night in bed, I fantasize. I imagine how fun it would be to wrestle with the problems we face if only we weren’t insane, if only the problems really were just technical, if only we could cling even to any remotely feasible, remotely forgivable hope of a soft landing rather than a hard crash, if only our culture were not driven to destroy all life on the planet, if only there were even the slightest chance our culture would undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living.

By now there can be few who do not understand that without massive public subsidies (far larger than total profits) the entire corporate economy would collapse overnight. People pay to deforest the planet, decapitate mountains, decimate oceans, destroy rivers.

Were we to suddenly find ourselves sane in this insane situation, we could easily and immediately shift subsidies. So long as we care neither about justice nor accountability, but merely want to stop the damage, we could subsidize the same corporations to repair damage they’ve already caused. Instead, for example, of the public paying Weyerhaeuser to deforest, as is currently the case, we could pay it to reforest. Not to make tree farms—virtual forests of genetically identical Douglas firs—but to use the inventiveness we talk so much about but rarely seem to use to life-serving ends in order to make life better for the forests and its other members with whom we share our home.

Of course this is a fantasy, as absurd as Fuller’s notion of converting weaponry to livingry. Indeed, it’s essentially the same fantasy. And not only is it an impossible fantasy for the reasons already discussed—a) weaponry (as well as massive public subsidies) being absolutely necessary to the unceasing flow of resources toward the center of empire, and b) Fuller’s notion ignores violence to the natural world—but we face an even greater challenge to the possibility of ever living sanely, peacefully, or, saying much the same thing, sustainably. This impediment forms the tenth premise of this book, which I’ve described in previous books and which I’ll explore more later on:
The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.

Here is how governments and people in this culture spend money. These make clear their priorities. In 1998, governments and people spent US $6 billion on basic education across the world; $8 billion on cosmetics in the United States; $9 billion on water and sanitation for everyone in the world; $11 billion on ice cream in Europe; $12 billion on reproductive health for all women in the world; $12 billion on perfumes in Europe and the United States; $13 billion on basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world; $17 billion on pet foods in Europe and the United States; $35 billion on business entertainment in Japan; $50 billion on cigarettes in Europe; $105 billion on alcoholic drinks in Europe; $400 billion on narcotic drugs in the world; $780 billion on military spending in the world. As the compiler of the list notes: “It would seem ironic that the world spends more on things to destroy each other (military) and to destroy ourselves (drugs, alcohol and cigarettes) than on anything else.”
¹⁵⁶

Most of my students at the prison are there at least partly because of drugs. Since the prison is a supermax, almost none of them are there for simple possession, or even dealing. Many are in for armed robbery committed to support their habits, or for murders committed under the influence or during drug deals gone bad.

Nearly all of them, as I mentioned before, hate prison with a passion I’ve rarely seen matched. They hate it partly because of characteristics that make prison really the quintessence of civilization: its routine dehumanization, its destruction of community, its isolation. My students are deprived of their families, with many knowing their children only through occasional letters and infrequent photos: they’ve shown me high school graduation pictures of children they’ve not seen since they were six and not held since they were infants. They’ve shown me pictures of wives and parents they’ll never see again. Prisons also mirror and magnify the bureaucratic power structures and strict rules that characterize civilization. This is when you eat. This is what you eat. This is how many books you may have (which must have been sent directly from a bookstore or publisher). This is the sort of writing implement you may use. This is the sort you may not.

Those prisoners who do not hate prison generally fall into a very few categories. There are lifers and a few others—usually those who’ve already served
decades—who’ve come to an enlightened sort of acceptance—the serenity to accept things they cannot change. There are people whose horrific childhoods make prison a comparative cakewalk. And there are J-cats, or crazy people (
J-cat
stands for category J, a prison classification meaning the insane).

Yet as I said before, when I ask my students whether they’ll use again when they get out, even at the risk of coming back to prison, most say
yes
.

“It’s very difficult,” one said to me. “The first problem is the physical addiction. That can be hard to beat. And if you beat that, there’s still the memory of how good it feels. Even though I’ve been clean now all these years in prison if you put drugs in front of me right now I’d want to take them, just so I could feel that good again. But these problems are nothing compared to the emotional addiction. So much of my identity has been wrapped up in drugs. Drugs became who I am. Without them I was nothing. But even kicking the emotional addiction still isn’t the hardest part. It’s all of my relationships. My wife and I used together—that was all bound up in our courtship, in our sex-life, in our daily activities. And she still uses. What am I supposed to do when I get out? Not only do I have to give up this thing that makes me feel so very good—or at least I think it makes me feel good—and not only do I have to step away from this thing that’s been my identity for most of my life, but I’ll have to change my whole web of friendships, and maybe even my family. I’m facing a third strike if I get caught again, which means I’d be in forever, but even facing that I just don’t know if I can give up so much.”

One can be addicted to many things besides drugs, alcohol, tobacco. One can be addicted to television, sugar, coffee, low self-esteem, sex, authority, shopping, a specific (or specific type of) relationship. One can be addicted to a lifestyle. A whole culture, as we shall see (or perhaps as we already do), can be addicted to civilization.

My compact
Oxford English Dictionary
defines the verb
addict
(in excruciatingly tiny print that seems to get tinier with each passing year) as “to bind, devote, or attach oneself as a servant, disciple, or adherent.” In Roman law, an
addiction
was “A formal giving over or delivery by sentence of court. Hence, A surrender, or dedication, of any one to a master.”
¹⁵⁷
It comes from the same root as
diction
:
dicere
, meaning
to pronounce
, as in a judge pronouncing a sentence upon someone. To be addicted is to be a slave. To be a slave is to be addicted. The heroin ceases to serve the addict, and the addict begins to serve
the heroin. We can say the same for civilization: it does not serve us, but rather we serve it.

There’s something desperately wrong with that.