Frequently Asked Questions of Deep Green Resistance

Kdo mluví jménem Deep Green Resistance?

Deep Green Resistance není monolitický. Osoby spojené s touto organizací mají názory, které se mohou lišit od názorů ostatních v rámci DGR. Proto by nic, co řekl člen DGR, nemělo být vykládáno jako oficiální politika DGR, ledaže by tito lidé konkrétně hovořili jménem DGR. DGR respektuje rozmanitost názorů vyjádřených s úctou.

Je DGR feministická organizace?

Bezpodmínečně ano. (Viz také: Nejčastější dotazy týkající se radikálního feminismu)

Podle slov Andrea Dworkin, „feminismus je politická praxe boje nad mužskou nadvládou jménem žen jako třídy.“¹

Začněme frází „ženy jako třída“. Z radikálního hlediska je společnost tvořena skupinami lidí; některé skupiny mají moc nad jinými skupinami. Mocná třída používá ideologii k naturalizaci své dominance a podřízenosti podřízené skupiny: pokud je společnost ve skutečnosti uspořádána přírodou, bohem nebo vesmírem, pak nemá smysl proti ní bojovat. Ideologie může být velmi účinná při potlačování odporu.

Model rasismu, který jsme zdědili v USA, byl původně vytvořen Angličany v jejich pokusech o kolonizaci Irska. Předtím byly rozdíly mezi národy vnímány jako kulturní. Ale kolem 17. století Angličané upevnili ideologii, která učinila biologická tvrzení o údajné podřízenosti Irů. Irové nebyli kulturně nedostateční - byli ze své podstaty „divoši“. Anglický obraz Irů byl postaven na konceptu, že se jednalo o oddělenou „rasu“ od anglických lidí, rasu, která byla bezbožná, nemorální, líná, „bezbožná, barbarská a necivilní“. Podepření tohoto obrazu bylo „tvrzené přesvědčení, že mnoho Irů nebylo schopno civilizace, že„ divokí “irští lidé, ti, kteří se nejsilněji bránili anglické hegemonii, zůstanou nezkrotní: a že jediný způsob, jak je dostat pod nějakou formu civilizační kontroly, byl je zotročit. “ ² S touto rasovou ideologií mohli být lidé na celém světě zotročeni nebo jednoduše zabiti bez etických nebo morálních výhrad ze strany kolonizátorů. Toto je shrnutí posledních čtyř set let v jedné větě.

Jde o to, že rasa není biologicky skutečná. Politicky, sociálně, ekonomicky, rasa je, samozřejmě, brutální realitou po celém světě. Koncept rasy je však stvořením mocných. Pokud chceme spravedlivý svět, musí být rozebrány materiální instituce, které podřizují nebílé lidi. A koncepty „bílých“ a „černochů“ budou nakonec opuštěny, protože nemají smysl mimo realitu bílé nadvlády.

Mnoho lidí je zmateno, když jsou požádáni, aby aplikovali stejnou radikální analýzu na pohlaví. Ale z feministického hlediska jsou paralely zřejmé. Existují rozdíly v tónu pleti mezi lidskými druhy? Ano. Proč tyto rozdíly něco znamenají? Protože zkorumpované a brutální uspořádání moci vyžaduje ideologii zvanou rasismus. Existují rozdíly ve tvaru genitálií lidí? Ano. Proč na těchto rozdílech záleží? Protože zkorumpované a brutální uspořádání moci - patriarchát - potřebuje ideologii zvanou gender.

Patriarchát je politický systém, který bere biologické muže a ženy a proměňuje je v sociální kategorie zvané muži a ženy, takže třída mužů může ovládat „lidi nazývané ženy“. ³ Gender znamená pro ženy, co rasa znamená pro nebílé lidi: ideologický konstrukt, který je základem podřízenosti.

Socializace mužů je proces, ve kterém se dítě stává chlapcem a poté mužem. Být mužem vyžaduje psychologii založenou na nároku, emoční necitlivosti a dichotomii sebe a jiného. Mužskost je nezbytná pro jakoukoliv militarizovanou kulturu, protože to jsou psychologické rysy, které vojáci potřebují. Muž může zabít na příkaz pouze tehdy, když byl lidský impuls k péči o ostatní utlumený nebo vymýcený. Stálá potřeba přeměnit ostatní v "Ostatní" se stává výsledkem: odmítnuté „měkké“ části vlastního já jsou promítnuty směrem ven, aby mohly být zničeny. ⁴ Toto je projekt, který pravděpodobně nikdy neskončí, protože lidé mají srdce a duše a ty nemohou být nikdy vyříznuty, bez ohledu na to, jak silně se to požaduje. Vietnamští veteráni, kteří utrpěli nejhorší posttraumatický stres, nebyli ti, kteří zvěrstva přežili , ale ti, kteří zvěrstva spáchali. ⁵

Mužskost vyžaduje to, co psychologové nazývají negativní referenční skupinou, což je skupina lidí „které jednotlivec… používá jako standard představující názory, postoje nebo vzorce chování, kterým se má vyhnout“. Chlapci v patriarchálních kulturách vytvářejí samozřejmě negativní referenční skupiny. Chlapeckou první opovrhovanou skupinou ostatních jsou samozřejmě dívky. Žádná urážka není horší než některá verze „dívky“, obvykle součástí ženské anatomie, která se používá v nenávistných projevech. Jakmile je však psychologický proces zaveden, může kategorii „žena“ snadno zaujmout jakákoliv skupina, kterou musí hierarchická společnost ovládat nebo vymýtit.
Osobnost s nekonečnou snahou prokázat se proti ostatním, všem ostatním, v kombinaci s právy, která moc přináší, vytváří imperativní porušení. Muži se stávají „skutečnými muži“ porušením hranic, ať už jde o sexuální hranice žen, kulturní hranice jiných národů, politické hranice jiných národů, genetické hranice druhů, biologické hranice živých komunit nebo fyzické hranice atom.

Pro oprávněnou psychiku je jediným důvodem, proč existuje „Ne“, protože použití síly je sexuální vzrušení. Skutečná jasnost patriarchátu je právě tady: nejde jen o naturalizaci útlaku, ale o sexuální projevy útlaku. To erotizuje dominanci a podrobení. Prostřednictvím konceptů - a žité reality - maskulinity a femininity - patriarchát institucionalizuje nadvládu a podřízení napříč kulturou a hluboko do našich psychologií.

A tak se muži samozřejmě dopouštějí brutálních a násilných činů. Psychologické profily násilníků zjistily, že „jsou to„ obyčejní “a„ normální “muži, kteří sexuálně útočí na ženy, aby si je mohli osvojit a ovládat.“ ⁶ Bití žen je nejčastějším násilným zločinem v USA, spáchané jednou za patnáct sekund. To je muž, který bije ženu. Je to jedna z hlavních příčin zranění a úmrtí žen v USA. ⁷ Kanadský průzkum zjistil, že čtyři z pěti vysokoškolaček se staly oběťmi násilí ve vztahu k muži. ⁸ Světová zdravotnická organizace odhaduje, že „jedna ze čtyř žen bude během svého života znásilňována, bita, nucena k sexu nebo jinak zneužívána, někdy se smrtelnými následky.“ ⁹ To je zjevně normální, součást každodenního života, chování, v němž globální kultura samozřejmě socializuje dominanci mužů.

Právě teď je patriarchát vládnoucím náboženstvím planety. Ženy jsou jen dalším zdrojem pro muže, který mohou použít ve svém nekonečném úsilí prokázat svou toxickou maskulinitu a chovat vojáky pro neustálý válečný stav civilizace. Mužskost a válka - proti lidem, proti planetě - společně vytvořily věčný pohybový stroj nadvlády a ničení země a lidských práv. Z tohoto důvodu je militarismus feministickou záležitostí, proto je znásilnění environmentální otázkou, proto je ničení životního prostředí mírovou otázkou. Nikdy nebudeme schopni odstranit misogynistické chování, dokud bude dominance erotizována. Nikdy také nezastavíme rasismus. Nebudeme také zvyšovat účinný odpor vůči fašismu, protože, jak zdůrazňuje Sheila Jeffereysová, kořenem fašismu je v konečném důsledku erotizace nadvlády a podřízenosti - fašismus je v podstatě kult maskulinity. ¹⁰ Výsledkem je mučení, znásilnění, genocida a biocida.

A hlubokým srdcem tohoto pekla je autoritářská osobnost strukturovaná kolem maskulinity. Lundy Bancroft, který píše o mentalitě mužů, kteří zneužívají, zdůrazňuje: „Kořeny [zneužívání] jsou vlastnictví, kmen je nárok a větve symbolizují kontrolu.“ ¹¹ Člověk by nemohl najít jasnější popis civilizace nebo patriarchálního vládnutí teroru.

Co o ženskosti? Ženskost je chování, které je v podstatě rituální podrobení. Socializace žen je proces psychologického omezování a zlomení vůle dívek - také známý jako „péče o vzhled" - za účelem vytvoření třídy poslušných obětí. V celé historii toto mučení zahrnuje takzvané „kosmetické praktiky“, jako je mrzačení ženských pohlavních orgánů a vázání nohou a všudypřítomné sexuální zneužívání dětí. Ženskost je opravdu jen traumatizovaná psychika projevující souhlas.

V některých aktivistických kruzích se stává přijímání trendů z postmoderny elegantním. To zahrnuje myšlenku, že pohlaví je „binární“. Gender však není binární: je to hierarchie, ve svém dosahu globální, ve své praxi sadistický, ve svém výsledku vražedný, stejně jako rasa, stejně jako třída. Gender je ideologie, která je základem materiálních podmínek ženského života: znásilnění, trápení, chudoba, prostituce a gynocida. Tyto podmínky by nemohly existovat bez vytvoření sociálních kategorií „muži“ a „ženy“ - a ty násilné, porušující praktiky jsou zase tím, co vytváří lidi nazývané ženy. Musíme se těmito podmínkám, které se souhrnně nazývají patriarchátem, bránit a je demontovat, až do doby, kdy koncept genderu už nebude mít žádný význam.

Noel Ignatiev, autor knihy Jak se Irové stali bílými, se zasazoval o zrušení bílé rasy, definované jako „bílé privilegium a identita rasy“. ¹² DGR vyzývá bílé lidi, aby uskutečnili tento velmi potřebný projekt, a to jak osobně, tak politicky. DGR chce také rozebrat sexuální třídu mužů, což je prostě mužská nadřazenost a genderová identita. Muži mohou být zrádci ve své třídě. Ženy mohou odmítnout podrobit se omezením pohlaví, fyzicky i psychicky. Všichni můžeme bojovat.

Planeta je v kouscích; domorodci byli vysídleni a zmizeli; otrocký způsob života jen dočasně zahalený vzdáleností a fosilním palivem; mužská nadvláda je nasycena sexuálním sadismem, ženy a dívky jsou neznělé a porušené. Říkáme: dost. Svoboda a živá planeta budou získány až poté, co se postavíme a porazíme maskulinitu - náboženství, ekonomii, psychologii, sex maskulinity - DGR stojí v této válce se ženami. Připoj se k nám!

¹Dworkin, "Woman-Hating Right and Left", strana 30
²Smedly, strana 63
³Dworkin, Letters, strana 270
⁴Griffin.
⁵Grossman.
⁶Lenskyj.
⁷Langford and Thompson, strana 7
⁸DeKeseredy and Kelly.
⁹"UN calls for strong action to eliminate violence against women."
¹⁰Jeffreys, strana 65
¹¹Bancroft, strana 75
¹²Ignatiev.

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Seznam použité literatury a pramenů

Bancroft, Lundy. Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2002.

DeKeseredy, W. and K. Kelly. "The Incidence and Prevalence of Woman Abuse in Canadian University and College Dating Relationships: Results From a National Survey." Ottawa: Health Canada, 1993.

Dworkin, Andrea. Letters from a War Zone. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1988.

Dworkin, Andrea."Woman-Hating Right and Left," in Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice G. Raymond, eds. The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism. New York: Pergamon Press, 1990.

Griffin, Susan. Pornography and Silence: Culture’s Revenge Against Nature. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1981.

Grossman, Lt. Col. Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995.

Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Langford, Rae and June D. Thompson. Mosby’s Handbook of Diseases, 3rd Edition. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Health Sciences, 2005.

Lenskyj, Helen. "An Analysis of Violence Against Women: A Manual for Educators and Administrators." Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1992.

Jeffreys, Sheila. "Sado-Masochism: The Erotic Cult of Fascism." Lesbian Ethics 2, No. 1, Spring 1986.

Smedley, Audrey. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2007.

"UN calls for strong action to eliminate violence against women." UN News Centre. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=16674&Cr=&Cr1=.

SUGGESTED READING

Andrea Dworkin. Life and Death. New York: The Free Press, 1997.

Cordelia Fine. Delusions of Gender. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.

Sheila Jeffreys. Beauty and Misogyny. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Robert Jensen. Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Boston: South End Press, 2007.

Rebecca M. Jordan-Young. Brainstorm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Jak definuješ „civilizaci“?

Deep Green Resistance uses Derrick Jensen's definition of civilization that he laid out in Endgame vol. 1, p. 17, as follows:

Civilization is a culture—that is, a complex of stories, institutions, and artifacts—that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities (civilization, see civil: from civis, meaning citizen, from Latin civitatis, meaning city-state), with cities being defined—so as to distinguish them from camps, villages, and so on—as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life.

See also Aric McBay's description of civilization.

What's wrong with civilization? Why would anyone want it to end?

Derrick Jensen's two volume Endgame fully explores this issue. He wrote 20 Premises as a distilled analysis:

Předpoklad první: Civilizace není a nikdy nemůže být udržitelná. To platí zejména pro průmyslovou civilizaci.

Předpoklad druhý: Tradiční komunity se ne často dobrovolně vzdávají zdrojů, na nichž jsou závislé, nebo zdroje ne dobrovolně prodávají; až do té doby, než jsou jejich komunity zničeny. Také ne dobrovolně dovolí, aby krajina, jíž obývají, byla ničena těžbou – zlata, ropy, atd. Z toho vyplývá, že ti, kteří chtějí dobývat zdroje, budou to dělat tak, aby mohli zničit tradiční komunity.

Předpoklad třetí: Náš způsob života – průmyslová civilizace – je založen na, a vyžaduje trvalé a rozšířené násilí. Bez neustálého násilí zkolabuje velmi rychle.

Předpoklad čtvrtý:Civilizace je založena na jasně definované a všeobecně přijímané, ale často neviditelné hierarchii. Násilí ze strany těch vyšších v hierarchii vůči těm nižším je téměř vždy neviditelné, to znamená, že prochází bez povšimnutí. Pokud je povšimnuto, je plně racionalizováno. Násilí prováděné těmi níže z hierarchie na těch výše je nemyslitelné, a když k němu dojde, je považováno za šokující, horor a má za následek fetišování obětí.

Předpoklad pátý: Majetek těch výše v hierarchii je cennější než životy těch níže. Je přijatelné, aby ti nahoře navýšili množství majetku – lidově, aby vydělali peníze – tím, že zničí životy těch níže nebo je dokonce zabíjí. To je nazýváno produkcí. Pokud se ti níže pokouší poškodit majetek těch výše, mohou je ti nahoře za to zabít nebo jim nějakým způsobem zničit život. To je nazývané spravedlnost.

Předpoklad šestý: Tato kultura nepodstoupí nějaký druh dobrovolné transformace ke zdravému a udržitelnému způsobu života. Pokud to nezastavíme, účinky civilizace způsobí, že životy velké většiny lidí budou nadále nesnesitelné, a že planeta bude dále degradována, dokud se (civilizace a pravděpodobně s ní celá planeta) nezhroutí. Vliv této degenerace bude utrpením pro lidi a nelidské bytosti po velmi dlouhou dobu.

Předpoklad sedmý: Čím déle budeme čekat, než se civilizace zhroutí – nebo čím déle budeme čekat, než ji k tomu sami přivedeme – tím bude její zhroucení horší pro lidi a nelidské bytosti, kteří zde jsou nyní a pro ty, kteří budou následovat.

Předpoklad osmý: Potřeby přirozeného světa jsou mnohem důležitější než potřeby ekonomického světa.

Další způsob jak chápat osmý předpoklad: Každý ekonomický a sociální systém, z něhož nemá prospěch přírodní společenství, na němž je závislý, je neudržitelný, nemorální a hloupý. Udržitelnost, morálka a inteligence (stejně jako spravedlnost) vyžaduje demontáž takového ekonomického a sociálního systému, přinejmenším však musíme zabránit tomu, aby ničil krajinu.

Předpoklad devátý: Ačkoliv je jasné, že přijde den, kdy bude méně lidí, než je dnes, existuje mnoho způsobů, jak by k tomuto snížení populace mohlo dojít (nebo má být dosaženo, v závislosti na tom, jak aktivně nebo pasivně se rozhodneme k této transformaci přistoupit). Některá z těchto možností bude velmi násilná a strádající: jadernou katastrofou, například, by se snížila jak populace, tak spotřeba, ale je to děsivé; totéž platí o tom, když budeme nadále pokračovat v drancování zdrojů a přijde následné zhroucení. Jiné způsoby by mohly být méně násilné. S ohledem na současnou úroveň násilí této kultury proti lidem a přírodě, snížení lidské populace a spotřeby se neobejde bez násilí a strádání, ne proto, že by snížení populace muselo nutně znamenat násilí, ale proto, že násilí a strádání se stalo normou naší kultury. Existují také některé další způsoby snížení populace a spotřeby. Zatímco by se stále jednalo o násilí, měly by být méně násilné než současná úroveň násilí – nutnost rovnoměrného přerozdělování zdrojů od bohatých, bohatších (často nuceně) k chudým – a samozřejmě snížení současného násilí proti přírodě. Individuálně a kolektivně se snad může podařit snížit rozsah násilí, které by se odehrávalo v průběhu potenciálně dlouhodobé změny. Nebo nemusí. Ale jedno je jisté: pokud k tomuto problému nebudeme přistupovat aktivně – pokud nebudeme mluvit o naší nesnázi, a nebudeme se ptát, co by jsme mohli udělat – pak násilí a utrpení bude nepochybně mnohem a mnohem závažnější a strádání extrémnější.

Předpoklad desátý: Tato kultura jako celek a většina jejích členů jsou šílené. Kultura je poháněna touhou po smrti, touhou zničit život.

Předpoklad jedenáctý: Od začátku tato kultura – civilizace – byla kulturou okupace.

Předpoklad dvanáctý: Neexistují bohatí a chudí lidé na světě. Existují pouze lidé. Bohatý mohou mít spoustu barevných papírků, které předstírají, že mají nějakou hodnotu – někdy bohatství těchto lidí je ještě více abstraktní: čísla na pevných discích v bance – zatímco chudí je nemají. Tito „bohatí“ si nárokují vlastnění půdy, ale „chudým“ je často toto právo upíráno. Hlavním úkolem policie je prosazovat iluze těch, kteří mají spoustu barevných papírků. Ti s barevnými papírky spolknou obecně tyto bludy stejně rychle, jako ti bez barevných papírků. Tyto bludy s sebou přináší extrémní utrpení v reálném světě.

Předpoklad třináctý: Ti u moci vládnou silou a čím dříve se vzdáme iluzí opaku, tím dříve můžeme alespoň začít rozumně rozhodovat o tom, zda, kdy a jak se budeme bránit.

Předpoklad čtrnáctý: Od narození – a pravděpodobně od početí, nejsem si jist, jak to určit – jsme individuálně, tak kolektivně socializováni na to nenávidět život, nenávidět divočinu, volně žijící zvířata, nenávidět ženy, nenávidět děti, nenávidět svá těla, nenávidět a bát se našich emocí a nenávidět se navzájem. Pokud bychom nebyli učeni nenávidět svět, nemohli bychom dopustit, aby byl zničen před našima očima. Pokud bychom nebyli učeni nenávidět sami sebe, nepřipustili bychom, aby naše domovy – a naše těla – byly otráveny.

Předpoklad patnáctý: Láska neznamená pacifismus.

Předpoklad šestnáctý: Hmotný svět je primární. To neznamená, že duch neexistuje, ani to neznamená, že není nic jiného než hmotný svět. To znamená, že mysl a tělo jsou spojeny, což také znamená, že skutečné akce mají skutečné důsledky. To znamená, že se nemůže spoléhat na Ježíše, Santa Clause, Velkou matku nebo dokonce na velikonočního zajíčka, abychom se dostali z této situace. To znamená, že tato situace je skutečná, ne jen zamračení boží. To znamená, že musíme této situaci čelit sami. To znamená, že v době kdy jsme zde na Zemi – bez ohledu na to, kde bychom mohli skončit po smrti, a zda jsme odsouzeni nebo jak jsme se rozhodli žít – musíme čelit této situaci. Země je hlavní. Je náš domov. Je vším. Je hloupé si myslet nebo jednat či žít tak, jako by tento svět nebyl skutečný a primární. Je hloupé a ubohé, když nebudeme žít naše životy, jako by naše životy nebyly reálné.

Předpoklad sedmnáctý: Je chybou, nebo spíš popíráním, dělat naše rozhodnutí závislými na tom, zda z nich vyplývající činy vystraší masy Američanů (Evropanů aj.) nebo lidí, kteří se chtějí držet od všeho dále.

Předpoklad osmnáctý: Naše současné sebevědomí není udržitelnější než naše současné využívání energie nebo technologie.

Předpoklad devatenáctý: Problémem této kultury je především v přesvědčení, že ovládání a zneužívání přírody a jiných druhů je opodstatněno.

Předpoklad dvacátý: V rámci této kultury, není to blaho komunit, nejsou to morální zásady, není to etika, není to spravedlnost, není to samotný život, ale ekonomika sama řídí sociální rozhodnutí.

Modifikace dvacátého předpokladu: Sociální rozhodnutí se určují primárně (a často výlučně) na základě toho, zda tato rozhodnutí zvýší peněžní bohatství rozhodujících osob a těch, kterým slouží.

Re-modifikace dvacátého předpokladu: Sociální rozhodnutí se určují primárně (a často výlučně) na základě toho, zda tato rozhodnutí zvýší moc osob s rozhodovací pravomocí a těch, kterým slouží.

Re-modifikace dvacátého předpokladu: Sociální rozhodnutí jsou založena primárně (a často výlučně) na základě téměř zcela neprozkoumaného přesvědčení, že ti, kdo rozhodují, a ti, kterým slouží, mají právo zvýšit svou moc a / nebo finanční bohatství na úkor těch níže.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.

Why does civilization need to be dismantled? Aren't we approaching a tipping point in public opinion?

Derrick Jensen: In 2004, George Bush received more than 62 million votes in the United States. Admittedly, the Democrats are just the good cop in a good cop/bad cop scenario, but that doesn't alter the fact that 62 million people voted for George Bush. Now people are camping out overnight to get Sarah Palin's signature. In the small county where I live there are a few issues that will get enough people excited to storm the board of supervisor's office. One is that they want to maintain their ability to grow small amounts of marijuana. Another is that they want the right to drive ORVs anywhere they goddamn please.

People are not rioting over the unwillingness of this government to provide healthcare. People aren't rioting over the toxification of the total environment and their loved ones dying of cancer. They're not rioting over the United States spending billions of dollars-billions and billions of dollars-to kill people all over the world. And, in fact, one of the smartest political moves that any politician can make is to increase the military budget. That is tremendously popular.

This culture must be undone completely. That's an absolute necessity. Humanity lived without industrialism for most of its existence. And industrialism is killing the planet. Humans cannot exist without the planet. The planet (and sustainable human existence) is more important than industrialism.

Of course, we would all rather have a voluntary transformation, a tipping point. But if this tipping point does not occur, we need a back-up plan.

And, no, civilization will not transform itself into something sustainable. That's not physically possible. Civilization is functionally unsustainable. And the fact that ideas like the hundredth monkey are spoken of quite often in public discourse, lets us know the extreme distance that we have to go to make the sort of changes that are necessary. The fact that people are still talking about this level of detachment from real physical reality is evidence itself that there will not be a voluntary transformation.

No, the momentum is too fierce. What we need to do is stop this culture before it kills the planet. And I can't speak for you, but I'm not going to rely on a fictional hundredth monkey to do the work for me when I can do the work myself.

You can't force people to change. Won't a paradigm shift eventually occur that brings about a sustainable system?

Aric McBay: Proponents of a chiefly educational strategy often assert that persistent work at building public awareness will eventually result in a global "paradigm shift," which will dramatically change the actions and opinions of the majority. The term paradigm shift comes from Thomas Kuhn's 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but it's inapplicable to our situation for a number of reasons. Although the phrase gained usage in the 1990s as a marketing buzzword, Kuhn wrote explicitly that the idea only applied to those fields usually called the hard sciences (physics, biology, chemistry, and the like). A paradigm, he said, was a dominant system of explanation in one of these sciences, whereas "a student in the humanities has constantly before him [sic] a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." Scientists trying to use equations to explain, say, orbital mechanics, can come to agreement on which theory is best because they are trying to develop the most accurate predictive equations. Social sciences and other fields do not have this luxury, because there is no agreement on which problems are most important, how to evaluate their answers, what kind of answer is the most important and how precise it should be, and what to do when answers are arrived at.

Because of these differences, Kuhn argued that the true scientific paradigm shifts always lead to better paradigms-paradigms that do a better job of explaining part of the world. But in society at large this is not true at all-dominant worldviews can be displaced by worldviews which are considerably worse at explaining the world or which are damaging to humans and the living world, a phenomenon which is distressingly common in history.

Furthermore, Kuhn argued that even when a much better paradigm is supported by strong evidence, the scientific community doesn't necessarily switch quickly. Scientists who have been practicing the obsolete paradigm for their entire careers may not change their minds even in the presence of overwhelming evidence. Kuhn quotes Nobel laureate Max Planck, who said that "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Even worse for us, Kuhn and Planck are assuming the people in question are genuinely and deliberately trying to find the best possible paradigm. Doing this is literally a full-time job. Do we really believe that the majority of people are spending their free waking hours trying to gain a deeper understanding of the world, trying to sift through the huge amounts of available information, trying to grasp history and ecology and economics? The very idea of a paradigm shift assumes that the majority of people are actively trying to find large scale solutions to our current predicament, instead of being willfully ignorant and deeply invested in a convenient economic and social system that rewards people for destroying the planet.

Indeed, part of the problem with "education" is that it's not only leftists who do it, and it's rarely unbiased. Studies have shown that on the right wing, more educated people are less likely to admit the existence of global warming. This is probably because they have more sophisticated rationales for their delusions.

But let's pause for a moment and take the most optimistic (if somewhat mangled) interpretation of Kuhn's concept and assume that a beneficial paradigm shift is going to happen, rather than a worsening shift in dominant politics and worldviews. That shift would require abundant evidence that the dominant culture-civilization-is inherently destructive and doomed to destroy itself along with the living world. Since we can't do multiple experimental runthroughs of a global industrial civilization, for many people the only inescapable empirical demonstration of the dominant system's fundamental unsustainability would be the collapse of that system. Only at that point would the majority of people be seriously and personally invested in learning how to live without destroying the planet. And even then, those people would likely continue to insist on their outdated worldview, until, as Max Planck observed, they die, resulting in a further decades-long delay beyond collapse before a beneficial paradigm was dominant. This means that even in the most optimistic and reasonable assessment, a "global paradigm shift" would be decades too late.

I'm a fan of Daniel Quinn. He says we should just walk away. What is wrong with this strategy?

Derrick Jensen: There are two problems with this. With civilization having metastasized across the globe and bombing the moon, where are you supposed to walk to? Are you supposed to walk to the melting arctic? Are you supposed to walk to the middle of the ocean, where there's forty-eight times as much plastic as there is phytoplankton? Where are you supposed to go? There is dioxin in every mother's breast milk, so you can't even drink breast milk without getting dioxin. There are carcinogens in every stream in the United States and, presumably, in the world.

Where are you supposed to go?

Some respond to this by saying, "Oh, no, it's supposed to be a mental state. We're supposed to walk away emotionally and withdraw." But the real physical world is the basis for all life and you cannot withdraw from that.

Withdrawal in the face of moral complexity is no answer. Withdrawal in the face of atrocity is no answer. Two hundred species went extinct today. When faced with those committing atrocities, it is incumbent upon you to stop those atrocities using any means necessary. If you were being tortured to death in some basement, and I knew this, would you want me to walk away? Would you accept it if I said, "Oh, here's an answer, I will walk away." What would you call me if I did that? I'm guessing that "coward" would be the kindest word you would use.

How do I know that civilization is irredeemable?

Derrick Jensen: Look around. Ninety percent of the large fish in the oceans are gone. Salmon are collapsing. Passenger pigeons are gone. Eskimo curlews are gone. Ninety-eight percent of native forests are gone, 99 percent of wetlands, 99 percent of native grasslands. What standards do you need?

What is the threshold at which you will finally acknowledge that it's not redeemable? In A Language Older Than Words I explained how we all are suffering from what Judith Herman would call "Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." Judith Herman asks, "What happens if you are raised in captivity? What happens if you're long-term held in captivity, as in a political prisoner, as in a survivor of domestic violence?" You come to believe that all relationships are based on power, that might makes right, that there is no such thing as fully mutual relationships. That, of course, describes this culture's entire epistemology and this culture's entire way of relating. Indigenous peoples have said that the fundamental difference between western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners view listening to the natural world as a metaphor as opposed to the way the world really works. So the world consists of resources to be exploited, as opposed to other beings to enter into relationship with. We have been so traumatized that we are incapable of perceiving that real relationships are possible. That is one reason that the culture is not redeemable.

Here is another answer. In Culture of Make Believe, I wrote about how this culture is irredeemable because the social reward systems of this culture lead inevitably to atrocity. This culture is based on competition as opposed to cooperation and, as such, will inevitably lead to wars over resources.

Ruth Benedict, the anthropologist, tried to figure out why some cultures are good (to use her word) and some cultures are not good. In a good culture, men treat women well, adults treat children well, people are generally happy, and there's not a lot of competition. She found that the good cultures all have one thing in common. They figured out something very simple: they recognize that humans are both social creatures and selfish, and they merge selfishness and altruism by praising behaviors that benefit the group as a whole and disallowing behaviors that benefit the individual at the expense of the group. The bad cultures socially reward behavior that benefits the individual at the expense of the group. If you reward behavior that benefits the group, that's the sort of behavior you will get. If you reward behavior that is selfish, acquisitive, that's the behavior you will get. This is Behavior Mod. 101.

This culture rewards highly acquisitive, psychopathological behavior, and that is the behavior we see. It's inevitable.

Need another answer? In Endgame I explained that a culture that imports resources cannot be sustainable. In order to be sustainable a culture must help the landbase, but importing resources means denuding the land of that particular resource. As the city grows, an ever larger area is denuded. That culture's way of living can never be sustainable.

This way of life is always based on violence. If the culture requires the importation of resources, trade will never be sufficiently reliable. If the people next watershed over have a resource that culture needs, it will be taken. We could all become junior bodhisattvas and the US military would still have to be huge. Civilization is irredeemable on a functional level.

We can talk all we want about new technologies, but so long as they require copper wiring, they are going to require an industrial infrastructure, and they are going to require a mining infrastructure, and that is inherently unsustainable.

Right now the United States is spending 100 billion dollars a year to invade and occupy Afghanistan. That is $3,500.00 for every Afghan man, woman, and child, per year. At the same time, everybody from right wing pundits to the zombies on NPR ask the question, "Is it too expensive to stop global warming?" There is always money to kill people. There is never enough money for life-affirming ends.

I look around in every direction and I see no sign of redeemability in this culture. The real physical world is being murdered. The pattern is there. We need to recognize that pattern, and then we need to stop those who are killing the planet.

How can I be sure my actions won't hasten or cause the extinction of the very species I'm trying to save? How can I be sure my actions won't result in hungry people killing every last wild animal in the area for food or cutting down every last tree for fuel?

Derrick Jensen: We can't be absolutely certain of anything. The only thing we can be certain of is that if civilization continues, it will kill every last being on earth. But let's take a reasonable worst case scenario for a cataclysmic event. Chernobyl was a horrible disaster. Yet it has had a spectacularly positive ecological outcome: humans have been kept out of the area and wildlife is returning. Do you know what that means? The day-to-day workings of civilization are worse than a nuclear catastrophe. It would be hard to do worse than Chernobyl.

Yes, be smart and attend to those questions. But if we fail to act there will be nothing left. What the world needs is to be left alone. What the world needs is to have this culture-that is continuously cutting it, torturing it, murdering it-stopped.

If the strategy of Decisive Ecological Warfare were carried out and the electrical grid brought down, wouldn’t it lead to nuclear meltdown?

The main problem in nuclear disasters is radioactive waste rather than the nuclear material in the reactor itself. Stored radioactive waste was the major issue with the Fukushima meltdown in 2011. Stored radioactive waste was the largest concern during the fires near the Los Alamos nuclear waste storage area in both 2000 and 2011, and after the near-flooding of a nuclear reactor in Mississippi in 2011. The reactor contains only a small amount of active fuel compared to the spent fuel held within storage facilities.

More nuclear disasters will almost inevitably occur in the coming decades, whether or not the electrical grid is dismantled. Hazardous radioactive waste will accumulate as long as industrial civilization continues, and there are almost no safe long-term storage facilities anywhere in the world. So nuclear reactors will become more and more dangerous as larger and larger stockpiles of spent fuel are kept on site.

Nuclear reactors are most dangerous when ― as at Fukushima ― direct physical damage to the plant disables back-up generators and other safety equipment. Reactors are designed to cope with simple black-outs, so failure of the electrical grid is one of the least dangerous of possible disruptions to a nuclear plant. It is unlikely that a single dramatic blackout will collapse the industrial economy and cause widespread nuclear catastrophe. More likely, an increasing number of medium-scale power disruptions will encourage the decommission of nuclear power plants, or at least force closer attention to safety precautions. For example, several countries have started to shut down or put on hold their nuclear programs since the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

The current "exclusion" zone around Fukushima encompasses about 600 square kilometres of land. This temporary boundary will probably — like Chernobyl — ironically end up ecologically richer over the coming decades. (See previous FAQ.)

Most of the other large-scale energy sources are far more dangerous if they continue to operate. Mountain-top removal for coal in Appalachia will obliterate 5,700 square kilometres of land this year, and will do it again next year if not stopped. That land will need thousands of years to recover, assuming the burning of that coal doesn't trigger a runaway greenhouse effect. 85,000 square kilometres of land in Alberta has so far been leased for tar sands development.

Future nuclear disasters from shoddily-maintained plants will be very bad, but business as usual is far more destructive. And while nuclear radiation diminishes over time, unless something decisive is done, greenhouse gases levels will increase faster and faster as they pass tipping points.

If we dismantle civilization, won't that kill millions of people in cities? What about them?

Derrick Jensen: No matter what you do, your hands will be blood red. If you participate in the global economy, your hands are blood red because the global economy is murdering humans and non-humans the planet over. A half million children die every year as a direct result of so-called "debt repayment" from non-industrialized nations to industrialized nations. Sixty thousand people die every day from pollution. And what about all the people who are being forced off their land? There are a lot of people dying already. Failing to act in the face of atrocity is no answer.

The grim reality is that both energy descent and biotic collapse will be ever more severe the more the dominant culture continues to destroy the basis for life on this planet. And yet some people will say that those who propose dismantling civilization are, in fact, suggesting genocide on a mass scale.

Polar bears and coho salmon would disagree. Traditional indigenous peoples would disagree. The humans who inherit what is left of this world when the dominant culture finally comes down would disagree.

I disagree.

My definition of dismantling civilization is depriving the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and depriving the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet. Nobody but a capitalist or a sociopath (insofar as there is a difference) could disagree with that.

Years ago I asked Anuradha Mittal, former director of Food First, "Would the people of India be better off if the global economy disappeared tomorrow?" And she said, "Of course." She said the poor the world over would be better off if the global economy collapsed. There are former granaries of India that now export dog food and tulips to Europe. The rural poor the world over are being exploited by this system. Would they be better off? What about the farmers in India who are being forced off their land so that Coca Cola can have their water? What about those who are committing suicide because of Monsanto? A significant portion of people in the world do not have access to electricity. Would they be worse off with grid crash? No, they'd be better off immediately. What about the indigenous peoples of Peru who are fighting to stop oil exploration by Hunt Oil on their land, allowed because of United States-Peruvian trade agreements?

When someone says, "A lot of people are going to die," we've got to talk about which people. People all over the world are already enduring famines, but for the most part they are not dying of starvation; they're dying of colonialism, because their land and their economies have been stolen. We hear all the time that the world is running out of water. There is still as much water as there ever was, but 90 percent of the water used by humans is being used for agriculture and industry. People are dying of thirst because the water is being stolen.

When I asked a member of the Peruvian rebel group MRTA, the Tupacameristas, "What do you want for the people of Peru?" his response was, "What we want is to be able to grow and distribute our own food. We already know how to do that. We merely need to be allowed to do so." That's the entire struggle right there.

I used to think it's true that the urban poor would be worse off at first, because the dominant culture, like any good abusive system, has made its victims dependent upon it for their lives. That's what abusers do, whether they are domestic violence abusers, or whether they are larger scale perpetrators. That's how slavers work: they make enslaved people dependent upon them for their lives. One of the brilliant things this culture has done has been to insert itself between us and our self-sufficiency, us and the source of all life. So we come to believe that the system provides our sustenance, not that the real world does.

But I recently asked Vandana Shiva if the people of Mumbai, for example, would be better off quickly if the global economy collapsed. She said yes, for the same reasons Mittal did: most of the poor in major cities in India are there because they've been driven off their land, with their land stolen by transnational corporations. With the global economy gone, they would return to the country and reclaim the land. Given the option between getting their land back and staying in the city, nearly all would want to move back to the country.

This is a huge number of people we are talking about. Most of the urban poor are people who live in third-world slums. That's more than a billion people, and, if trends continue, that will double in two decades. Many of these are people who have been forced off their traditional land. The poor will be able to take back this land if the governments of the world are no longer capable of propping up colonial arrangements of exploitation.

I have another answer, too. As this culture collapses, much of the misery will be caused by the wealthy attempting to maintain their lifestyles. As this culture continues to collapse, those who are doing the exploiting will continue to do the exploiting. Don't blame those who want to stop that exploitation. Instead, help to stop the exploitation that is killing people in the first place.

The authors of this book are not blithely asking who will die. In at least one of our cases, the answer is "I will." I have Crohn's disease, and I am reliant for my life on high tech medicines. Without these medicines, I will die. But my individual life is not what matters. The survival of the planet is more important than the life of any single human being, including my own.

Since industrial civilization is systematically dismantling the ecological infrastructure of the planet, the sooner civilization comes down, the more life will remain afterwards to support both humans and nonhumans. We can provide for the well-being of those humans who will be alive during and immediately after energy and ecological descent by preparing people for a localized future. We can rip up asphalt in vacant parking lots to convert them to neighborhood gardens, go teach people how to identify local edible plants, so that people won't starve when they can no longer head off to the store for groceries. We can start setting up neighborhood councils to make decisions, settle conflicts, and provide mutual aid.

How can I do something to help bring down civilization and not just throw away my life in a useless act?

Derrick Jensen: There are three answers. The philosophical answer is that we can't know the future. We can never know whether some action will be useful. We should pick what we think are the most effective actions, but that still doesn't guarantee any given act will succeed. What we can know is that if this culture continues in the direction it's headed, it will get where it's headed, which is the murder of the planet. There are already casualties, and they're called the salmon. They're called the sharks. They're called the black terns. They're called migratory songbirds. They're called oceans, rivers. They're called indigenous people. They're called the poor. They're called subsistence farmers. They're called women.

The second, historical answer is about the way resistance movements work. You lose and you lose and you lose until you win. You get your head cracked, get your head cracked, get your head cracked, and then you win. You can't know when you start how many times you have to get your head cracked before you win. But the struggle builds on struggle. It has to start somewhere and it has to gain momentum. That happens through organizing, it happens through actions. And it happens through victories. One of the best recruiting tools is some sort of victory. And you can't have a victory unless you try.

And now the pragmatic: we are horribly outnumbered and we do not have the luxury to throw away our lives. How we can be most effective? We have to be smart. Choose targets carefully, both for strategic value and safety. And we have to organize. A lone person's chance of sparking a larger movement is much lower than that of a group of organized people.

Whatever actions a person takes (and this is true in all areas of life) need to count. Many of the actions being taken right now are essentially acts of vandalism, as opposed to acts of active sabotage that will slow the movement of the machine. So choose. How can you make your actions (and your life) have the most significance in terms of stopping the perpetration of atrocity?

All those who begin to act against the powers of any repressive state need to recognize that their lives will change. They need to take that decision very seriously. Some of the people captured under the Green Scare knew what they were getting into, and some of them made the decision more lightly. The latter were the people who turned very quickly when they were arrested. One person turned within five seconds of getting into the police car. That person probably didn't seriously consider the ramifications of his actions before he began. The Black Panthers knew when they started the struggle that they would either end up dead or in prison.

Finally, we have to always keep what we're fighting for in sight. We are fighting for life on the planet. And the truth is, the planet's life is worth more than you. It's worth more than me. It is the source of all life. That doesn't alter the fact that we should be smart. We need to be very strategic. We need to be tactical. And we need to act.

Did John Brown throw away his life? On one hand, you could say yes. His project ultimately failed. But, on the other hand, you could say that it set up much greater things. Did Nat Turner throw away his life? Did members of the revolt at Sobibor throw away their lives? On one hand, you could say yes. On the other hand, you could say that they did what was absolutely right and necessary. And something we must always remember is that those who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising had a higher rate of survival than those who went along. When the whole planet is being destroyed, your inaction will not save you. We must choose the larger life. We must choose to do what is right to protect the planet. It is our only home.

What is meant by "aboveground" and "underground" or "belowground"?

In DGR we use these terms to distinguish between different parts of a movement. "Aboveground" refers to those parts of a resistance movement which work in the open and operate more-or-less within the boundaries of the laws of the state. This means that aboveground activism and resistance is usually limited to nonviolence. DGR is an aboveground organization; we are public and don't try to hide who we are or what we desire, because openness and broad membership is what makes aboveground organizations effective.

"Underground" or "belowground" refers to those parts of a resistance movement which operate in secret. Generally, these groups use more militant or violent tactics like property destruction and sabotage to achieve their goals. The use of these tactics makes them an open enemy of the state, which makes security and secrecy very important for underground groups. Historically, these groups have a stringent membership process to make sure new recruits are prepared for the psychological and/or physical demands of underground work and are trained in combat and other necessary operations as well as in proper security culture.

Aboveground security culture is also important in maintaining the effectiveness of aboveground groups.

DGR is strictly an aboveground organization. We will not answer questions regarding anyone’s personal desire to be in or form an underground. We do not want to be involved in or aware of any underground organizing. We do this for the security of everyone involved with Deep Green Resistance.

What is a "Culture of Resistance"?

A culture of resistance exists to encourage and promote organized political resistance, nurturing the will to fight. It helps people break their psychological identification with the oppressive system and create a new identity based on self-respect and solidarity. It offers the emotional support of a functioning community that believes in resistance as well as an intellectually vibrant atmosphere that encourages analysis, discussion, and the development of political consciousness. It produces cultural products like poems, songs, and art organized around the theme of resistance. It builds the new institutions that will take over as the corrupt ones come down. And it provides loyalty and material support to the aboveground frontline resisters and political prisoners.

Why should I take large-scale direct action against the system when almost nobody else, especially in the first world, is?

Derrick Jensen: Because the world is being murdered. And because members of the so-called "first world" are the primary beneficiaries. It is not up to the poor to be on the frontlines yet again. It is not up to the indigenous to be on the frontlines. It is not up to the non-humans to be on the frontlines. It is our responsibility as beneficiaries of this system to bring a halt to the system.

MEND (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) have been able to reduce oil industry output by up to 30 percent in Nigeria. They have done so because they love the land they live in and that land is being destroyed. We have much greater resources at our disposal. It's our responsibility to use those resources and to use the privilege that we have to stop this culture from killing the planet.

What might distinguish an anti-civilization resistance from other popular movements that those in power have successfully overpowered COINTELPRO-style? Do people have new strategies and tactics that can stand up to these new systems and technologies?

Derrick Jensen: Frankly, no. People now have a tremendous disadvantage over people in the past in that people now live inside a panopticon. The ability to surveil and to kill at a distance has greatly increased over what it was in times past. Contrast the powers of the state at present with those, say, in Nazi Germany. For the Nazis, fingerprint technology was still very new. They had nothing like the capacity to surveil that modern states have. They had only rudimentary computers. They didn't have the ability to do voice-recognition software. They didn't have any software. So those in power have a tremendous advantage over historical popular movements.

Indigenous and traditional resistance movements had villages where they could be safe. They had wild places where they could be safe. They had their own territory. People now don't have that. They do, however, have a significant advantage over the indigenous resistance movements of the last 500 years in that they mix in. Tecumseh could not have walked into Philadelphia and not been recognized. People today have that advantage.

But the biggest advantage that people today have over people in times previous is that the age of exuberance is over. The age of cheap oil is over. The empires of today are on their way to collapse. It used to seem that as civilization dissolved, anyone who even remotely opposed it would be put up against a wall. But now it looks as though as civilization falls apart, its emperors may not even be able to deliver the mail, much less maintain the level of oppression that they have historically perpetrated on those who oppose empire. Think of the collapse of the Soviet Union; it just sort of fell apart instead of instigating purges or gulags. The Soviet Union didn't have the resources.

Even the United States is falling apart. The US government can't even maintain the water systems in this country and it can't maintain the roads. State and federal governments can't pay for colleges anymore. Those in power don't have the money, and they don't have the resources, and those resources will never come back.

If someone would have taken out some important piece of infrastructure in years past, those in power would have been able to replace it. But now the governments of the world don't have the money. The more they spend on rebuilding, the less primary damage they can do.

A resistance movement will be demonized and portrayed as eco-terrorists by the mainstream media. Is there an alternative media in place with a strategy to counter this?

Derrick Jensen: There is an alternative media in place, but will it counter this demonization? No. The alternative media is tepid and full of horizontal hostility. The larger question is, "Is there a media forum that is supporting serious resistance against this culture's murder of the planet?" And the answer, sadly, is no. Even so-called nature magazines have tremendous resistance to promoting anything other than composting or riding bicycles. Or rather, I should say, a lot of the readers do. One purpose of [Deep Green Resistance] is to help create that literature of resistance-an absolutely necessary literature of resistance-that will help to put in place a larger media of resistance. It takes all forms, from comics to films to books to graffiti to people having conversations on their back porches. We need to be discussing this and we need to be discussing it openly. One of the absolutely necessary precursors to a resistance is to talk about it. This has been true of every resistance movement in the past and it will be true as long as there are resistance movements. We must put all the options on the table and discuss them openly, honestly, earnestly.

Is there a solidarity/support network in place to support someone who goes to prison for activism? Is there a support system in place to support someone's family if an activist goes to prison and is the breadwinner?

Derrick Jensen: For the former, there is. For example, Anarchist Black Cross does political prisoner support and there are other organizations that do political prisoner support. But the truth is we need to build a much broader base of that. Prisoner support is actually pretty lacking. And it's pretty easy to do the basic stuff. My mother, every year, writes to many political prisoners on their birthdays and around winter solstice. Many of these people have been in prison for thirty and forty years, and her letters may be one of two or three that they receive throughout the year. So there are organizations in place, but those organizations have to be much more robust. And so far as support for families, no, there isn't. But there should be. These are things that can and should be done by those who are entirely aboveground. We have emphasized throughout this book that not everyone needs to take up serious illegal action. But we need a culture of resistance, and part of a culture of resistance is a robust prisoner support network for those who are on the front lines. We need a system where we support the troops, those who are actually fighting for the planet. That needs to be in place and so far it's not.

Do you have lawyers willing to help us/advise us as we act?

We are currently building legal support for this purpose. We need volunteers for this and other tasks.

How can I accept the risks of being caught when that could mean never being able to see or help my family/lover/children in these difficult times?

Derrick Jensen: Nothing in this book is meant to exhort people to do things they don't want to do. In fact, nothing in this book is meant to exhort people to do anything illegal (recognizing that innocence of actual criminal activity is no guarantee that one will not be punished by those in power). We've said numerous times that there are plenty of ways that a culture of resistance can manifest, any number of activities that you can participate in that are not as immediately risky as below-ground actions. If your primary concern is the risk of being caught, there are plenty of other things you can do.

But remember that when state repression gets really bad, being aboveground does not mean that the state won't come for you. It's often the public intellectuals, the organizers, and the writers who are thrown in jail. The people underground, without a public profile, are sometimes safer.

Perhaps, though, we should turn the question around. "Are you willing to risk not having fish in the oceans?" If things continue the way they are, by 2050 there will be no fish in the oceans. Amphibians are already dying. Migratory songbirds are already dying. The planet is dying. Are you willing to risk that?

None of this is theoretical. When the industrial system starts to collapse, I will be dead. I am reliant upon high-technology medicine for my life. But there is something larger and more important than my life.

If we act effectively against those in power, won't those in power just come down on us harder?

Derrick Jensen: They will, but that's not a reason to submit. This is how authoritarian regimes and abusers work: they make their victims afraid to act. They reinforce the mentality, "If I try to leave him, my abusive husband, my pimp, may kill me." And that is a very good reason to not resist.

This question explicitly articulates what we all know to be true: the foundation of this culture is force. And the primary reason we don't resist is because we are afraid of that force. We know if we act decisively to protect the places and creatures we love or if we act decisively to stop corporate exploitation of the poor, that those in power will come down on us with the full power of the state. We can talk all we want about how we supposedly live in a democracy. And we can talk all we want about the consent of the governed. But what it really comes down to is if you effectively oppose the will of those in power, they will try to kill you. We need to make that explicit so we can face the situation that we're in. And the situation that we're in is those in power are killing the planet and they are exploiting the poor, they are murdering the poor, and we are not stopping them because we are afraid.

But there have to be some of us who are willing to act anyway. We should never underestimate the seriousness of attempting to stop those in power. And we also need to be very clear about the seriousness of what is happening to the world. If you're reading this book, you probably understand how desperate things are.

What is the legacy that we want to leave for those who come after? How do you want to be seen by the generations that follow? Do you want to be seen as someone who knew what the right thing was and didn't do it because you were afraid? Or do you want to be remembered as someone who was afraid and did the right things anyway? It's okay to be afraid. Almost everyone I know is afraid at some time or another. But there is tremendous joy and exhilaration that comes, too, from doing what is right. The fact that those in power will use their power against resisters is not a reason to give up the fight before we even begin. It is a reason to be really, really smart.

What has happened to those who have tried to use violence? Fred Hampton, Laura Whitehorn , and Susan Rosenberg are just a few of the many who have tried to use force and have ended up dead, framed, or in jail. You say we all have a role; how do you feel about proposing that others do what you will not do?

Derrick Jensen: It's not a question of taking more or less risks by going aboveground or belowground. As repression becomes more open, it is the people who are aboveground who are often first targeted by those in power. Erich Mühsam was aboveground. So was Ken Saro-wiwa. Many writers have been. That is our role. Our role is to put big bull's-eye targets on our chests so that we can help to form a culture of resistance. Our role is to be public. And, of course, if you are public, you cannot also be underground; there must be an absolute firewall between aboveground and belowground activities and organizations. This is basic security culture.

We are not asking anyone else to do things we aren't willing to do. In fact, we aren't asking anyone to do anything in specific. We all need to find our own roles, based on our personal assessment of what risks we can take and what our gifts are.

Those in power will come down on us if we resist. It doesn't matter if that resistance is violent or nonviolent. It's resistance that brings the risk and retaliation, and it's resistance that our planet needs.

Civilization is the only thing keeping violent criminals from raping/killing people like in those horrible places far away. Who will protect my family if we dismantle civilization?

Derrick Jensen: A couple of years ago, I got an email from a policeman in Chicago. He was reading Endgame and liking it except that he thought I came down too hard on cops. He said, "Our job is to protect people from sociopaths and that's what I do every day. I protect people from sociopaths." I wrote back, "I think that's really great that you protect us from sociopaths. When my mom's house got burgled, the first thing we did was call the cops. When my house got burgled, I turned it over to the cops. It's great that you protect us from sociopaths. My problem is that you really only protect us from poor sociopaths, not the rich sociopaths."

After Bhopal, Warren Anderson was tried and found guilty in absentia for the atrocities of running Union Carbide. He was sentenced to hang. And the United States refuses to extradite him. If it were up to me, all the people associated with the Gulf oil spill, which is murdering the Gulf, would be executed. That would be part of the function of a state. Instead, one of the primary functions of government is to protect the rich sociopaths from the outrage of the rest of us. Who is protecting the farmers in India from Monsanto? Who is protecting the farmers in the United States from Cargill and ADM?

I did a benefit for a group of Mexican-Americans who were attempting to stop yet another toxic waste dump from being placed in their neighborhood. The toxic waste was, of course, from somewhere far away. The conversation turned to what it would be like if police and prosecutors were not enforcing the dictates of distant corporations instead of the wishes of the local communities. What if they were enforcing cancer-free zones? Or clearcut-free zones? Or rape-free zones, for that matter? And then everyone laughed, because everyone knows it's not going to happen. But what if we in our communities started to form community-defense groups [and militias] and said, "This is going to be a cancer-free zone. This will be a clearcut-free zone. This will be a rape-free zone. This will be a dam-free zone." What would happen if we did that?

That's exactly what we're talking about in this book. We want to have our communities be cancer-free. We want them to be clearcut-free. We want them to be dam-free. We want them to be rape-free. And we need to stop the sociopaths who are hurting us.

As civic society collapses in a patriarchy, things can become much worse. Look at the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there are organized mass rapes. What do we do about that? One of the things we need to do is to prepare now. That's why we've emphasized in this book so often that the revolutionaries need to be of good character. A friend of mine says that he does the environmental work he does because as things become increasingly chaotic, he wants to make sure that some doors remain open. If the grizzly bears are gone in twenty years, they'll be gone forever. But if they are there in twenty years, they may be able to be there forever. It's the same for the bull trout, the same with the redwoods-if you cut this forest, it's gone. But if it's standing, who knows what will happen in the future? And it's the same for people's social attitudes; as things become increasingly chaotic, events become increasingly uncontrollable. We must make sure that certain ideas are in place before that happens. That's why we have emphasized zero-tolerance for horizontal hostility, zero-tolerance for violence against women, zero-tolerance for racism. Because as civic society collapses-no matter the cause of this collapse-men will rape more, and the time to defend against that is not then, but now.

There are two approaches to the problem of men assaulting women. One of them is in a line by Andrea Dworkin, "My prayer for women of the twenty-first century: harden your hearts and learn to kill." Women need to learn self-defense, and they need to form self-defense organizations, and they need to be feminists. And men must make their allegiance to women absolute. They must have a zero-tolerance policy for the abuse of women.

The same is true for race-based hate crimes. As the economic system collapses, those whose entitlement has put them at the top of the heap are going to start blaming everyone else (witness the Tea Party, for example). As Nietzsche wrote, "One does not hate what one can despise." And so long as your entitlement is in place and so long as your entitlement isn't threatened, you can despise those whom you're exploiting. But as soon as that entitlement is threatened, that contempt turns over into outright hatred and violence. As civilization collapses, we will see an increase in male-pattern violence. We will see an increase in violence against those who resist. We will see an increase in violence against people of color. We are already seeing this.

My answer for people of color is, learn to defend yourself and form self-defense organizations. And the job of white allies is to make our allegiance to the victims of white oppression absolute.

There have been many resistance movements who have formed self-defense organizations and their own police forces. The IRA acted as neighborhood police, the Spanish Anarchists organized their own police force in some of the bigger cities, and the Gulabi Gang organizes women to protect themselves and their communities from police and male violence. We need something similar. We need to form self-defense organizations to defend those humans and non-humans who are assaulted and violated. Those assaults will continue to happen until we stop them.

To be clear, civilization is not the same as society. Civilization is a specific, hierarchical organization based on "power over." Dismantling civilization, taking down that power structure, does not mean the end of all social order. It should ultimately mean more justice, more local control, more democracy, and more human rights, not less.

Will civilization just reassemble itself?

Derrick Jensen: I have several answers to that. The first is that, no, this is a one-time blowout. The easily accessible reserves of oil are gone. There will never be another oil age. There will never be another natural gas age. There will never be another Iron Age or Bronze Age. Further, there will never be-or not for a very, very long time-an age of tall ships, for example, because the forests are gone. This culture has destroyed so much that there will not be the foundation upon which a similar civilization could be built. Topsoil is gone. No, there will never be another rise of a civilization like this. There might be-presuming humans survive-some small-scale civilizations, but there will never be another one like this.

Second, I don't really think that's the right question. It's like waking up in the middle of the night and hearing the screams of your family as they're tortured, and then you look up and you see an ax murderer standing over your bed. You turn to the person sleeping next to you and you say, "Darling, honeybunch, how can we make sure that ax murderers don't break into our home tomorrow?" Right now, we have a crisis and we need to deal with that crisis. I wish we had the luxury to worry about whether civilization will rise again in the future, but we don't have that luxury. Right now, we need to stop this culture from killing the planet and let the people who come after worry about whether it's going to rise again.

This question reminds me of another I was once asked: "How much time do you think we have left?" I gestured toward the person next to her. "Pretend she is being tortured in that room over there. We can hear her screaming. How much time do you think she has left before we need to act? How much time should we allow the torturers to continue before we stop them?" There are injustices happening right now. Two hundred species went extinct today. And how much time did they have? None. The question for them is not, will civilization rise again? The question is what can we do to protect them right now. If we see these injustices, we need to stop them.

What should I say if someone says: "I want to form an underground, join an underground, start a safehouse, etc."

Say: "We are an aboveground organization. We do not want to be involved. We do not answer anyone’s questions about personal desire to be in or form an underground."

Immediately cut off conversation if there are breaches of security. Sometimes, you have to end the conversation.

Do not say, "the underground" – this could imply we are in contact with an already existent underground organization. Instead, use, "an underground (which may or may not exist)."

Why hasn't DGR taken a stance on vaccines, 9/11, or any conspiracy theories?

Radical social movements tend to attract people who hold fringe beliefs. While we would never dictate what a person chooses to believe personally, DGR is strategic in what controversies and beliefs we hold positions on and in how we spend our time and energy. These beliefs do nothing to further DGR in achieving our goals and could alienate comrades and potential allies. Members who hold such views are expected to refrain from presenting or debating them while representing or engaging in DGR.

Global warming is a reality, and is referred to in the foundational texts of the DGR organization.

Some fringe beliefs, such as Holocaust denial, are in violation of DGR Principles and Code of Conduct and disqualify believers from membership.

For more questions and answers, see Deep Green Resistance: An interview with Derrick Jensen and Rachel Ivey.