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What We Leave Behind
What We Leave Behind is a piercing, impassioned guide to living a truly responsible life on earth. Human waste, once considered a gift to the soil, has become toxic material that has broken the essential cycle of decay and regeneration. Here, award-winning author Derrick Jensen and activist Aric McBay weave historical analysis and devastatingly beautiful prose to remind us that life—human and nonhuman—will not go on unless we do everything we can to facilitate the most basic process on earth, the root of one being's waste must always become another being’s food.
464 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2009
40 people are currently reading
1172 people want to read
About the author
Derrick Jensen
52 books683 followersDerrick Jensen is an American author and environmental activist living in Crescent City, California. He has published several books questioning and critiquing contemporary society and its values, including A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, and Endgame. He holds a B.S. in Mineral Engineering Physics from the Colorado School of Mines and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University. He has also taught creative writing at Pelican Bay State Prison and Eastern Washington University.
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April 28, 2009
“Industrial civilization is incompatible with life. It is systematically destroying life on this planet, undercutting its very basis. This culture is, to put it bluntly, murdering the earth. Unless it’s stopped- whether we intentionally stop it or the natural world does, through ecological collapse or other means- it will kill every living being. We need to stop it.”
From the first paragraph of the preface through four hundred trenchant pages of well-reasoned and well-researched polemic, What We Leave Behind is a scathing indictment of our culture’s wanton disregard for, and destruction of, life on earth. Co-authored by Derrick Jensen (A Language Older Than Words; The Culture of Make Believe; and Endgame volumes 1 & 2) and Aric McBay (Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life after Gridcrash), the book is unwaveringly forthright, urgent and compelling. While there has been no shortage of recent works written about climate change, environmental degradation, dwindling fossil fuel supplies, and impending catastrophe, there are none as direct, pragmatic, and compassionate as this one.
With an understanding of waste and its associated cyclical processes (decay and regeneration) as the center from which their premise unfurls, Jensen & McBay assert that the disruption of these processes and the increasing toxicity of our garbage (both organic and industrial) are having devastating consequences on the health of ecosystems worldwide. These disastrous effects, they argue persuasively, are intrinsic to the industrial capitalist system. They see this system, based as it is on centralizing control and externalizing consequences, as impervious to any meaningful systemic change, “Industrial capitalism can never be sustainable. It has always destroyed the land upon which it depends for raw materials, and it always will.”
Jensen & McBay employ some sobering statistics to further illustrate how rampant the deleterious effects of our culture have become. In the chapter on plastic they write, “There is at least six times more plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean than phytoplankton.” Though much of the data cited throughout the book is as bewilderingly unreal, the book concludes with over thirty pages of end notes and bibliographic sources, making a reader or would-be critic hard-pressed to make a case that the authors were hurried in their writing or lacking in expertise.
Portions of the book confront the notion of sustainability, and the so-called “greenwashing” of industries that are inherently unsustainable. “It’s a pretty basic point that’s perhaps intentionally missed by almost everyone in this culture who claims to participate in sustainable activities: an action is sustainable if and only if all necessary associated actions are sustainable.” The authors, as example, instance the green architecture movement, and its most renowned champion, William McDonough (dubbed a “Hero for the Planet” by Time magazine in 1999). McDonough worked to install a “10-acre (454,000 sq. ft.) ‘living’ roof” atop the Ford Rogue Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Michigan that serves to “retain half the annual rainfall that falls on its surface… provide habitat… (offer) a glimpse of the transformative possibilities suggested by this new model for sustaining industry.” McDonough also developed “a new, state-of-the-art campus” for Nike’s European headquarters in The Netherlands, described by a Nike executive as “designed to integrate the indoors with the surrounding environment, tapping into local energy flows to create healthy, beneficial relationships between nature and human culture.” Jensen & McBay expose the duplicity often underlying what is passed off as sustainable initiative: “Does anyone besides me experience a deep sorrow that someone called a “Hero for the Planet” and a “star of the sustainability movement” is designing truck factories and Nike headquarters? Ninety percent of the large fish in the oceans are gone. Ninety-seven percent of the world’s native forests have been cut. There are 2 million dams just in the United States. Once-mighty flocks of passenger pigeons are gone. Islands full of great auks, gone. Rich runs of salmon, gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. The oceans are filled with plastic. Every stream in the United States is contaminated with carcinogens. The world is being killed, and this is the response? Not only am I angry, not only am I disgusted, I am also deeply, deeply sorrowful.”
In the chapter that takes aim at McDonough, the authors expound upon the “infighting and petty attacks” that often characterize resistance movements. “It happens enough to have a name: horizontal hostility. It has destroyed many movements for resistance against this culture, and driven people away from these movements in hordes. It’s much easier to attack our allies for their minor failings rather than take on Monsanto, Wal-Mart, Ford, Nike, Weyerhauser, and so on.” By admission, there was reluctance to pen the section criticizing McDonough, as the authors surmise, “He is, after all, at least heading in the right direction.” Correspondence with Lierre Keith, an activist peer, would quell this hesitation, as Keith wrote in response, “But in the end, McDonough isn’t heading in the right direction. He’s heading in the same direction—complete drawdown of planetary reserves of metal, oil, water, whatever—but we’ll get there a bit slower on his plan. Industrialization is still industrialization… So I think their project is corrupt and it’s only prolonging the inevitable. They’re still fighting for a way of life that necessitates destroying the planet.”
Perhaps the most powerful and unflinching parts of What We Leave Behind are the sections where the authors describe, rather acutely, the cognitive dissonance required to go on countenancing the damage our culture has done, and continues to do, while arguing for implementing change that is in contrast to the very culture itself. Jensen & McBay argue that any effort, however small, towards the end of halting the omnicide that our culture perpetuates is worthy and much needed. They refuse, however, to accept the feel-good idealism that these actions by themselves will produce any meaningful change. “How do you stop or at least curb global warming? Easy. Stop pumping carbon dioxide, methane, and so on into the atmosphere. How do you do that? Easy. Stop burning oil, natural gas, coal, and so on. How do you do that? Easy. Stop industrial capitalism. When most people in this culture ask, “How can we stop global warming?” that’s not really what they’re asking. They’re asking, “How can we stop global warming, without significantly changing this lifestyle that is causing global warming in the first place?” The answer is you can’t. It’s a stupid, absurd, and insane question. To ask how we can stop global warming while still allowing that which structurally, necessarily causes global warming—industrial civilization—to continue in its functioning is like asking how we can stop mass deaths at Auschwitz while allowing it to continue as a death camp. Destroying the world is what this culture does. It’s what it has done from the beginning.”
Jensen & McBay spend the final third of their book imagining the future. They refute many of the oft-heard claims that the very technologies that are responsible for so much of the planetary degradation will somehow how save us from the consequences we’ve set an inevitable course for. They consider what possible futures would look like if we continued on and implemented no systemic changes, or if we rely too heavily on a future we envision as “technotopia.” Too, they imagine what is becoming an increasingly plausible, if not downright likely, scenario: collapse.
An overarching condemnation of like-minded works is that they too seldom offer practical suggestions for ways the common person can make a difference. Reducing waste, reducing consumption, recycling, letter writing, donating to local non-profits: the authors concede these are important tasks that do have some effect. “What we are saying is this: we aren’t going to insult your intelligence by asserting that such solutions are even remotely sufficient to address the problem.” A brief exploration of resistance movements provides for some salient observations, as examples of individuals and groups fighting back against the dominant power structure abound throughout history. A quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was put to death for resisting the Nazis, precedes the chapter entitled “Fighting Back” and reflects the authors’ clearly articulated ideas on the matter. While in prison, awaiting execution, Bonhoeffer wrote, “We have spent too much time in thinking, supposing that if we weigh in advance the possibilities of any action, it will happen automatically. We have learnt, rather too late, that action comes, not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. For you, thought and action will enter on a new relationship; your thinking will be confined to your responsibilities in action.”
What We Leave Behind is an important contribution to the increasing body of literature devoted to effecting actual and lasting change. Loathe to offer mere rhetoric, a diluted portrait of how precarious things actually are, or unrealistic promises of technological salvation, the book is unabashedly vehement. What We Leave Behind may unsettle the unwitting reader, but for those with even the faintest hint of the trouble we are facing, it will provide fertile ground from which to grow a greater understanding. Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay have crafted a remarkably well-written, crucial work. Like the peril they so ably convey therein, it is one to be ignored only at great expense.
From the first paragraph of the preface through four hundred trenchant pages of well-reasoned and well-researched polemic, What We Leave Behind is a scathing indictment of our culture’s wanton disregard for, and destruction of, life on earth. Co-authored by Derrick Jensen (A Language Older Than Words; The Culture of Make Believe; and Endgame volumes 1 & 2) and Aric McBay (Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life after Gridcrash), the book is unwaveringly forthright, urgent and compelling. While there has been no shortage of recent works written about climate change, environmental degradation, dwindling fossil fuel supplies, and impending catastrophe, there are none as direct, pragmatic, and compassionate as this one.
With an understanding of waste and its associated cyclical processes (decay and regeneration) as the center from which their premise unfurls, Jensen & McBay assert that the disruption of these processes and the increasing toxicity of our garbage (both organic and industrial) are having devastating consequences on the health of ecosystems worldwide. These disastrous effects, they argue persuasively, are intrinsic to the industrial capitalist system. They see this system, based as it is on centralizing control and externalizing consequences, as impervious to any meaningful systemic change, “Industrial capitalism can never be sustainable. It has always destroyed the land upon which it depends for raw materials, and it always will.”
Jensen & McBay employ some sobering statistics to further illustrate how rampant the deleterious effects of our culture have become. In the chapter on plastic they write, “There is at least six times more plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean than phytoplankton.” Though much of the data cited throughout the book is as bewilderingly unreal, the book concludes with over thirty pages of end notes and bibliographic sources, making a reader or would-be critic hard-pressed to make a case that the authors were hurried in their writing or lacking in expertise.
Portions of the book confront the notion of sustainability, and the so-called “greenwashing” of industries that are inherently unsustainable. “It’s a pretty basic point that’s perhaps intentionally missed by almost everyone in this culture who claims to participate in sustainable activities: an action is sustainable if and only if all necessary associated actions are sustainable.” The authors, as example, instance the green architecture movement, and its most renowned champion, William McDonough (dubbed a “Hero for the Planet” by Time magazine in 1999). McDonough worked to install a “10-acre (454,000 sq. ft.) ‘living’ roof” atop the Ford Rogue Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Michigan that serves to “retain half the annual rainfall that falls on its surface… provide habitat… (offer) a glimpse of the transformative possibilities suggested by this new model for sustaining industry.” McDonough also developed “a new, state-of-the-art campus” for Nike’s European headquarters in The Netherlands, described by a Nike executive as “designed to integrate the indoors with the surrounding environment, tapping into local energy flows to create healthy, beneficial relationships between nature and human culture.” Jensen & McBay expose the duplicity often underlying what is passed off as sustainable initiative: “Does anyone besides me experience a deep sorrow that someone called a “Hero for the Planet” and a “star of the sustainability movement” is designing truck factories and Nike headquarters? Ninety percent of the large fish in the oceans are gone. Ninety-seven percent of the world’s native forests have been cut. There are 2 million dams just in the United States. Once-mighty flocks of passenger pigeons are gone. Islands full of great auks, gone. Rich runs of salmon, gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. The oceans are filled with plastic. Every stream in the United States is contaminated with carcinogens. The world is being killed, and this is the response? Not only am I angry, not only am I disgusted, I am also deeply, deeply sorrowful.”
In the chapter that takes aim at McDonough, the authors expound upon the “infighting and petty attacks” that often characterize resistance movements. “It happens enough to have a name: horizontal hostility. It has destroyed many movements for resistance against this culture, and driven people away from these movements in hordes. It’s much easier to attack our allies for their minor failings rather than take on Monsanto, Wal-Mart, Ford, Nike, Weyerhauser, and so on.” By admission, there was reluctance to pen the section criticizing McDonough, as the authors surmise, “He is, after all, at least heading in the right direction.” Correspondence with Lierre Keith, an activist peer, would quell this hesitation, as Keith wrote in response, “But in the end, McDonough isn’t heading in the right direction. He’s heading in the same direction—complete drawdown of planetary reserves of metal, oil, water, whatever—but we’ll get there a bit slower on his plan. Industrialization is still industrialization… So I think their project is corrupt and it’s only prolonging the inevitable. They’re still fighting for a way of life that necessitates destroying the planet.”
Perhaps the most powerful and unflinching parts of What We Leave Behind are the sections where the authors describe, rather acutely, the cognitive dissonance required to go on countenancing the damage our culture has done, and continues to do, while arguing for implementing change that is in contrast to the very culture itself. Jensen & McBay argue that any effort, however small, towards the end of halting the omnicide that our culture perpetuates is worthy and much needed. They refuse, however, to accept the feel-good idealism that these actions by themselves will produce any meaningful change. “How do you stop or at least curb global warming? Easy. Stop pumping carbon dioxide, methane, and so on into the atmosphere. How do you do that? Easy. Stop burning oil, natural gas, coal, and so on. How do you do that? Easy. Stop industrial capitalism. When most people in this culture ask, “How can we stop global warming?” that’s not really what they’re asking. They’re asking, “How can we stop global warming, without significantly changing this lifestyle that is causing global warming in the first place?” The answer is you can’t. It’s a stupid, absurd, and insane question. To ask how we can stop global warming while still allowing that which structurally, necessarily causes global warming—industrial civilization—to continue in its functioning is like asking how we can stop mass deaths at Auschwitz while allowing it to continue as a death camp. Destroying the world is what this culture does. It’s what it has done from the beginning.”
Jensen & McBay spend the final third of their book imagining the future. They refute many of the oft-heard claims that the very technologies that are responsible for so much of the planetary degradation will somehow how save us from the consequences we’ve set an inevitable course for. They consider what possible futures would look like if we continued on and implemented no systemic changes, or if we rely too heavily on a future we envision as “technotopia.” Too, they imagine what is becoming an increasingly plausible, if not downright likely, scenario: collapse.
An overarching condemnation of like-minded works is that they too seldom offer practical suggestions for ways the common person can make a difference. Reducing waste, reducing consumption, recycling, letter writing, donating to local non-profits: the authors concede these are important tasks that do have some effect. “What we are saying is this: we aren’t going to insult your intelligence by asserting that such solutions are even remotely sufficient to address the problem.” A brief exploration of resistance movements provides for some salient observations, as examples of individuals and groups fighting back against the dominant power structure abound throughout history. A quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was put to death for resisting the Nazis, precedes the chapter entitled “Fighting Back” and reflects the authors’ clearly articulated ideas on the matter. While in prison, awaiting execution, Bonhoeffer wrote, “We have spent too much time in thinking, supposing that if we weigh in advance the possibilities of any action, it will happen automatically. We have learnt, rather too late, that action comes, not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. For you, thought and action will enter on a new relationship; your thinking will be confined to your responsibilities in action.”
What We Leave Behind is an important contribution to the increasing body of literature devoted to effecting actual and lasting change. Loathe to offer mere rhetoric, a diluted portrait of how precarious things actually are, or unrealistic promises of technological salvation, the book is unabashedly vehement. What We Leave Behind may unsettle the unwitting reader, but for those with even the faintest hint of the trouble we are facing, it will provide fertile ground from which to grow a greater understanding. Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay have crafted a remarkably well-written, crucial work. Like the peril they so ably convey therein, it is one to be ignored only at great expense.
Read
September 18, 2010I don't think I agree with Howard Zinn that this book is a "guide" to any kind of living. For me, it presents two main problems:
1. I could give it all up and go live in the forest in order to avoid buying and using plastic (and other harmful practices). However, I'm one of seven billion people. It wouldn't even help much. So I can stay here and agonize over my choice between "relatively" local bananas that are probably full of plastic and arsenic and hormones and antibiotics and radioactive mine runoff... and organic ones all the way from Peru that are wrapped in -- you guessed it -- plastic.
As a friend pointed out, I probably wouldn't be in any given forest for long before a bulldozer would come through and so-called civilization would push its way into that forest as it has into most others.
2. This book is so horrifyingly depressing that I want to read it as quickly as possible so that I can start getting it out of my system (I suspect it has a half-life equal to or greater than that of... mmm... plastic). However, I can only stand it for an hour or so at a time, which means that it may be with me for a number of days yet. I could have a drink, but I can't even enjoy wine without feeling guilty about what a poor use of land vineyards are.
My wise boyfriend reassures me that we are all part of a process, and this is the culture we were born into; therefore, if the process includes destroying the earth, as he agrees it appears to, then so be it.
Update:
This was truly a mammoth. It affected me very deeply and was fantastically difficult in many ways; I also found the tone extremely distressing at times. I admire the authors' acuity and uncompromising attempt to get through to readers, but not by banging us over the head infinitely and indefinitely (I don't think I will ever forget the book's messages).
If you're sensitive, as I am, or have a tendency toward depression or radicalism, be warned.
1. I could give it all up and go live in the forest in order to avoid buying and using plastic (and other harmful practices). However, I'm one of seven billion people. It wouldn't even help much. So I can stay here and agonize over my choice between "relatively" local bananas that are probably full of plastic and arsenic and hormones and antibiotics and radioactive mine runoff... and organic ones all the way from Peru that are wrapped in -- you guessed it -- plastic.
As a friend pointed out, I probably wouldn't be in any given forest for long before a bulldozer would come through and so-called civilization would push its way into that forest as it has into most others.
2. This book is so horrifyingly depressing that I want to read it as quickly as possible so that I can start getting it out of my system (I suspect it has a half-life equal to or greater than that of... mmm... plastic). However, I can only stand it for an hour or so at a time, which means that it may be with me for a number of days yet. I could have a drink, but I can't even enjoy wine without feeling guilty about what a poor use of land vineyards are.
My wise boyfriend reassures me that we are all part of a process, and this is the culture we were born into; therefore, if the process includes destroying the earth, as he agrees it appears to, then so be it.
Update:
This was truly a mammoth. It affected me very deeply and was fantastically difficult in many ways; I also found the tone extremely distressing at times. I admire the authors' acuity and uncompromising attempt to get through to readers, but not by banging us over the head infinitely and indefinitely (I don't think I will ever forget the book's messages).
If you're sensitive, as I am, or have a tendency toward depression or radicalism, be warned.
December 21, 2009
If you've read any Derrick Jensen before--or are paying attention at all to the real world--you know that we're fucked. Humanity is doomed and the only question is how much of the earth and how many species we are going to take with us when we go down.
The authors come at the inevitable through looking at our culture's waste products. Definitions, plastic, philosophies, examples--there is everything and more in here. The chapter on plastics is fucking horrifying.
It's not all terrifying, as both authors are funny, compassionate people. The book is interesting, as well. Take the stuff on recycling, for example. They contrast modern recycling with the fact that, up until recently, recycling and re-use was the norm in our society (like how everything used to be "organic" agriculture until modern chemistry came along). Not stopping with just that comparison, however, the go on to talk about a philosophy of recycling: you take in other beings to survive and you feed other beings as you live and in death.
Hefty, personal, pissed off, depressing, and essential, of course. And I haven't touched on a fraction of what gets covered.
I did like Aric McBray, the co-author. He brought a different sensibility to the book, though no less compromising.
The authors come at the inevitable through looking at our culture's waste products. Definitions, plastic, philosophies, examples--there is everything and more in here. The chapter on plastics is fucking horrifying.
It's not all terrifying, as both authors are funny, compassionate people. The book is interesting, as well. Take the stuff on recycling, for example. They contrast modern recycling with the fact that, up until recently, recycling and re-use was the norm in our society (like how everything used to be "organic" agriculture until modern chemistry came along). Not stopping with just that comparison, however, the go on to talk about a philosophy of recycling: you take in other beings to survive and you feed other beings as you live and in death.
Hefty, personal, pissed off, depressing, and essential, of course. And I haven't touched on a fraction of what gets covered.
I did like Aric McBray, the co-author. He brought a different sensibility to the book, though no less compromising.
February 22, 2010
This is one of those paradigm-shifting books. I picked it up thinking I was doing everything I could, living "green" and being aware. But no, I'm a total corporate tool in ways I never dreamed possible.
This is a thoroughly depressing book that opened my eyes to the magnitude of the problems with human trash. I thought I knew how bad things were, but I was laboring under any number of misapprehensions including the one which says "it can be fixed".
I would write a longer review, but I have to go out and blow up some dams now.
This is a thoroughly depressing book that opened my eyes to the magnitude of the problems with human trash. I thought I knew how bad things were, but I was laboring under any number of misapprehensions including the one which says "it can be fixed".
I would write a longer review, but I have to go out and blow up some dams now.
December 8, 2020
In days of old you got hundreds of piano key coverings from one elephant tusk, but then along came billiards. One tusk yielded only 4-8 billiard balls – “That’s one or two dead elephants per pool table”. This culture since its beginning has been fighting a war on diversity and on nature. But “any way of living that doesn’t help the landbase – any way of living that doesn’t feed the soil what it needs to survive and thrive - will not last.” In 1842, New York City had an estimated ten thousand pigs in its streets. In just 1880, New York City removed 15,000 dead horses from its streets (more than 40 a day). In the past one hundred years, US personal trash has gone from 92 pounds per year per person to 1,242 pounds per year. But if we include industrial trash (the trash made at the factory while making the stuff like TVs and shoes we bought), we see it is a whopping 37 times larger than that 1,242 lbs. figure. Most waste occurs at the factory. The Pyramids of Egypt had a limestone casing that was stripped as well as some of the stone quarried away after societal collapse. The Roman Coliseum was stripped of its marble façade and also used as a quarry post-collapse. In the early US, paper was only made from cloth fibers, not wood. Reuse of materials was common. Hoofs and bones were used to make glue.
When William McDonough built a green truck plant for Ford – it was about sustaining industrial capitalism, not the natural world. Cheap clothing in the US comes from outsourcing to countries that can be 177x more lax than the legal US limit for chemical exposure to workers (and “where 77% of the workers suffer respiratory problems). Nike struggles to use 5% organic cotton, meanwhile pre-Civil War slave produced cotton was all organic. Nike can’t catch up to slavery’s “wretched standard”. Nike allows five minute a day bathroom breaks and often fires any employee who dares take a day off. Ferris Bueller would not last long working for them. Many of the sustainability gate keepers are there to confuse us. Amory Lovins, Al Gore and Paul Hawken hawk their green capitalism to power (for profit) toxic industrial civilization until total collapse. The world is being killed in front of us and the elite response is a slightly kinder capitalism? Too stupid to envision a steady-state economy? or basic socialism? Relax everyone, Ford now has plants growing on top of their factories. Even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon referred to climate change as a threat, not to the planet, but as a threat to “development”. The left is under assault by horizontal hostility. Look it up.
Bakelite was the first true plastic. How does any kind of plastic support the landbase? The largest use for chlorine today is to make PVC. PVC’s job in a hospital is to make you sicker on site two ways: through leaching in use and through constant exposure to the hospital incinerators burning used PVC. Yum. Hospitals also burn mercury in their incinerators which makes great cents, but not great sense. You will be thrilled to know that “pediatric studies have shown that intravenous bags and tubing leach their plasticizers in IV fluid as the pharmaceuticals are administered to patients. EMS workers enjoy covering their hands with nitrile rubber gloves, a.k.a. acrylonitrile butadiene. Dealing with blood-soaked bandages maybe less risky than wearing those gloves. Arsenic embalming was stopped. But today they pump three gallons of still toxic embalming fluid in you as your blood is drained out. Since you can’t decompose naturally, your body instead putrefies into a semi-liquid state – a fitting end for those vainly requesting being embalmed. Cremation requires the energy of 47 gallons of gasoline. Not very sustainable. How do you get away from pollution when, even in 1987, Arctic women were shown to have higher PCB levels in their breast milk than women in cities down south? In 2004, fetuses were studied and shown to already have in them 287 different harmful chemicals.
The biggest problem with Civilization (this culture) is that “it does not give back to the land, the water, the air, the non-humans, the vast majority of humans.” Civilization is the theft that collectively results from elites seeking short-term advantage at the cost of a living planet. To “effectively dominate, enslave, exploit, or simply kill all those who do give back”. Alice Walker said, “Earth itself has become the nigger of the world.” The U.S. produces 3 billion pounds of plastic each year. “Humans are not killing the planet. Industrial humans are killing the planet.” Gold today is found at a concentration of a 1/3 of an ounce per ton. Thus, three tons of rock must be treated in a highly toxic fashion to produce one ounce of gold. 90% of gold mined today uses cyanide – 182,000 tons of it per year. We were all told about Aum Shinrikyo and cyanide, but never told about far more important corporate water poisoning by cyanide in mining. Killing mountains and streams for jewelry (85% of gold is used for jewelry)? “There is no reason good enough to destroy a landbase. None. None at all.” Americans consume 100 million pounds of acetaminophen per year. What will you leave behind? What will be your legacy? “Do we want a living real world, or do we want a social structure that is killing the real world?” Learned helplessness gets our planet nowhere, what is our individual plan for action? We must break our identification with this culture. When did the goal of science become human domination? We are the “younger brothers” of other life-forms; life is not a “predatory jungle” but is “a symphony of mutual respect”.
Depleted Uranium is a “pyrophoric, capable of spontaneous ignition.” Operation Whitecoat involved biological weapons and vaccines being used on “thousands” of conscientious objectors. Most fluoride for drinking water comes as a by-product from aluminum refining. Plastic was introduced as made to be disposable. In the 1870s, toilet paper was reused newspapers or catalogs. Everything used to be sold in open bins, like toothbrushes, happily manhandled by many prospective purchasers. Travelers carried attractive personal collapsible drinking cups to be replaced by the slavery motif Dixie Cup. Thoreau said, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” With just hand tools, you’d be lucky to plant an acre. Industrial agriculture wastes an input of 10 units of fossil fuels to create single unit of food. Did you know the secret city of Oak Ridge had the largest building in the world and “by itself used one-sixth of all energy used in the United States”? High school girls were hired to operate the machinery because they wouldn’t ask questions. Today’s metal railroad tracks evolved from the needs (the heavy loads) of mining. Railroads led to standardization of time zones. Toynbee said Rome fell because it was not built on sustainable economics, but upon continual plunder. This amazing book leaves you with a simple but deep question: “Do you think that Martin Luther King Jr. would have been so successful if the government hadn’t been afraid of Malcolm X?” Another great Anti-Civ book by Derrick.
When William McDonough built a green truck plant for Ford – it was about sustaining industrial capitalism, not the natural world. Cheap clothing in the US comes from outsourcing to countries that can be 177x more lax than the legal US limit for chemical exposure to workers (and “where 77% of the workers suffer respiratory problems). Nike struggles to use 5% organic cotton, meanwhile pre-Civil War slave produced cotton was all organic. Nike can’t catch up to slavery’s “wretched standard”. Nike allows five minute a day bathroom breaks and often fires any employee who dares take a day off. Ferris Bueller would not last long working for them. Many of the sustainability gate keepers are there to confuse us. Amory Lovins, Al Gore and Paul Hawken hawk their green capitalism to power (for profit) toxic industrial civilization until total collapse. The world is being killed in front of us and the elite response is a slightly kinder capitalism? Too stupid to envision a steady-state economy? or basic socialism? Relax everyone, Ford now has plants growing on top of their factories. Even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon referred to climate change as a threat, not to the planet, but as a threat to “development”. The left is under assault by horizontal hostility. Look it up.
Bakelite was the first true plastic. How does any kind of plastic support the landbase? The largest use for chlorine today is to make PVC. PVC’s job in a hospital is to make you sicker on site two ways: through leaching in use and through constant exposure to the hospital incinerators burning used PVC. Yum. Hospitals also burn mercury in their incinerators which makes great cents, but not great sense. You will be thrilled to know that “pediatric studies have shown that intravenous bags and tubing leach their plasticizers in IV fluid as the pharmaceuticals are administered to patients. EMS workers enjoy covering their hands with nitrile rubber gloves, a.k.a. acrylonitrile butadiene. Dealing with blood-soaked bandages maybe less risky than wearing those gloves. Arsenic embalming was stopped. But today they pump three gallons of still toxic embalming fluid in you as your blood is drained out. Since you can’t decompose naturally, your body instead putrefies into a semi-liquid state – a fitting end for those vainly requesting being embalmed. Cremation requires the energy of 47 gallons of gasoline. Not very sustainable. How do you get away from pollution when, even in 1987, Arctic women were shown to have higher PCB levels in their breast milk than women in cities down south? In 2004, fetuses were studied and shown to already have in them 287 different harmful chemicals.
The biggest problem with Civilization (this culture) is that “it does not give back to the land, the water, the air, the non-humans, the vast majority of humans.” Civilization is the theft that collectively results from elites seeking short-term advantage at the cost of a living planet. To “effectively dominate, enslave, exploit, or simply kill all those who do give back”. Alice Walker said, “Earth itself has become the nigger of the world.” The U.S. produces 3 billion pounds of plastic each year. “Humans are not killing the planet. Industrial humans are killing the planet.” Gold today is found at a concentration of a 1/3 of an ounce per ton. Thus, three tons of rock must be treated in a highly toxic fashion to produce one ounce of gold. 90% of gold mined today uses cyanide – 182,000 tons of it per year. We were all told about Aum Shinrikyo and cyanide, but never told about far more important corporate water poisoning by cyanide in mining. Killing mountains and streams for jewelry (85% of gold is used for jewelry)? “There is no reason good enough to destroy a landbase. None. None at all.” Americans consume 100 million pounds of acetaminophen per year. What will you leave behind? What will be your legacy? “Do we want a living real world, or do we want a social structure that is killing the real world?” Learned helplessness gets our planet nowhere, what is our individual plan for action? We must break our identification with this culture. When did the goal of science become human domination? We are the “younger brothers” of other life-forms; life is not a “predatory jungle” but is “a symphony of mutual respect”.
Depleted Uranium is a “pyrophoric, capable of spontaneous ignition.” Operation Whitecoat involved biological weapons and vaccines being used on “thousands” of conscientious objectors. Most fluoride for drinking water comes as a by-product from aluminum refining. Plastic was introduced as made to be disposable. In the 1870s, toilet paper was reused newspapers or catalogs. Everything used to be sold in open bins, like toothbrushes, happily manhandled by many prospective purchasers. Travelers carried attractive personal collapsible drinking cups to be replaced by the slavery motif Dixie Cup. Thoreau said, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” With just hand tools, you’d be lucky to plant an acre. Industrial agriculture wastes an input of 10 units of fossil fuels to create single unit of food. Did you know the secret city of Oak Ridge had the largest building in the world and “by itself used one-sixth of all energy used in the United States”? High school girls were hired to operate the machinery because they wouldn’t ask questions. Today’s metal railroad tracks evolved from the needs (the heavy loads) of mining. Railroads led to standardization of time zones. Toynbee said Rome fell because it was not built on sustainable economics, but upon continual plunder. This amazing book leaves you with a simple but deep question: “Do you think that Martin Luther King Jr. would have been so successful if the government hadn’t been afraid of Malcolm X?” Another great Anti-Civ book by Derrick.
Read
August 26, 2017another no stars review.
this came out in 2009, and it's the first DJ (here writing with McBay) i have read for a few years, ever since he co-founded DGR (Deep Green Resistance) with Lierre Keith and Aric McBay, proposing a hierarchical armed struggle support cult with himself at the head, in near-complete control of principles of the organization and conduct of the membership, and subsequently (along with Keith) outed himself as basically an anti-trans bigot, refusing to let go of some of the most damaging vestiges of second wave feminism. i had kept up with almost every release of his, with Endgame (the title released just prior to this) being perhaps the most influential book in my life of reading books, but wrote him off before he even went big with the anti-trans.
this fall is my 10 year anniversary of having embraced an anti-civ perspective and i wanted to give this book a quick spin (always fairly easy/accessible reading) to see how it struck me a decade later, and after distinctly not devoting any more brain space to this particular writer than i had to for a while.
well, it was probably the best book i've read in a couple years. what can i say? there is a quality of profundity, urgency, and relevance to this writing that is missing from so much else. i'd be hard pressed to find a single paragraph in the thing that wasn't on point (although the jokes and attempts to seem cool are cringeworthy). the effect of the whole thing was to leave me horrified and spellbound again, left with a panoramic sense, laden with facts, of the inherent insanity, abuse, and atrocity of our entire industrial/agricultural way of life, it's effects on everything from the most macro, abstract, global, right down to the most intimate, visceral, personal. i really can't fathom people who claim to be against domination and exploitation refusing to admit it anymore or to even look into or think about it in a sufficient way. it's embarrassing. this way of life is very tangibly based on slavery, colonization, and ecocide, and has taken its toll on the world and on us in ways that tax the imagination to even begin to grasp. the Left and other would-be subversives/social antagonists are going to continue to lose ground if they don't engage with some of the main truths dealt with here, which is something that is pretty hard to imagine happening except for in a woefully too-little-too-late kind of way.
this book came out just before DGR was launched, and though there is a dearth of material in this particular book that even reflects indirectly on the issue (they don't really touch upon gender or sexuality in this book), i, of course, got mad and sad and disappointed and amazed all over again that Jensen and Keith dealt a such a vicious and horrifying blow to trans people, to friends and comrades of trans people, and (in the eyes of many on the Left) to the credibility of the ideas about civilization that they've been trying to get across. which is a shame because their basic premises about agriculture and industry are absolutely unassailable. (McBay, for his part, stuck around for all the other fuck shit until the transphobia, and then bounced from the organization and condemned jensen and keith's transphobic views and actions. maybe he is less of a power mad garbage person).
both jensen and keith talk openly in their books about abuses and manipulations suffered in each of their personal lives. they talk openly and with insight about being ensconced within toxic and deeply mistaken ideologies that they eventually left behind. this personal aspect is famously woven into their writings and ideas and informs their analyses in a gripping way. but on a couple fronts at least, nothing has changed. not only is their transphobia at odds with the other liberatory values they seem to espouse, but their apparent basis for it (looking at their FAQ on their website) is that they are allegedly "gender abolitionists" or "agenderists" and that trans people are the "genderists." um, ok. i know trans and genderqueer folks who do more in a day to subvert the dominant paradigm of gender than probably jensen and keith will ever do. i mean, someone has got to write an analysis of the whole theoretical and emotional underpinning of their ideology, because their is a lot to unpack. meanwhile, it doesn't seem like they seem to give nearly as much shit to cis people in real life for the constructed-ness of their genders, and expressly dishonor trans people by never even admitting they exists but referring to them only as "people who refer to themselves as trans." there are probably half a dozen other angles to come at this question from (including the many claims they make about the origins and nature of transgenderism), and i hope to do more writing about it in the future. there is a gaping lack of vision in deep green milieus when it comes to countering all of the many and terrible reactionary/colonial influences and answering some persistent criticisms to be found all over these scenes.
anyway, yeah, i passed this off to some kid i don't know too well and wrote him a note of caveats/invitations to talk more about it. it still doesn't really seem like many other people are writing "why civilization is fucked" tracts in such an accessible way as this. unfortunate on several and fucked levels. if the authorship was different i'd give this as many stars as they'll let you give, but treachery and betrayal is treachery and betrayal. don't take it lightly.
this came out in 2009, and it's the first DJ (here writing with McBay) i have read for a few years, ever since he co-founded DGR (Deep Green Resistance) with Lierre Keith and Aric McBay, proposing a hierarchical armed struggle support cult with himself at the head, in near-complete control of principles of the organization and conduct of the membership, and subsequently (along with Keith) outed himself as basically an anti-trans bigot, refusing to let go of some of the most damaging vestiges of second wave feminism. i had kept up with almost every release of his, with Endgame (the title released just prior to this) being perhaps the most influential book in my life of reading books, but wrote him off before he even went big with the anti-trans.
this fall is my 10 year anniversary of having embraced an anti-civ perspective and i wanted to give this book a quick spin (always fairly easy/accessible reading) to see how it struck me a decade later, and after distinctly not devoting any more brain space to this particular writer than i had to for a while.
well, it was probably the best book i've read in a couple years. what can i say? there is a quality of profundity, urgency, and relevance to this writing that is missing from so much else. i'd be hard pressed to find a single paragraph in the thing that wasn't on point (although the jokes and attempts to seem cool are cringeworthy). the effect of the whole thing was to leave me horrified and spellbound again, left with a panoramic sense, laden with facts, of the inherent insanity, abuse, and atrocity of our entire industrial/agricultural way of life, it's effects on everything from the most macro, abstract, global, right down to the most intimate, visceral, personal. i really can't fathom people who claim to be against domination and exploitation refusing to admit it anymore or to even look into or think about it in a sufficient way. it's embarrassing. this way of life is very tangibly based on slavery, colonization, and ecocide, and has taken its toll on the world and on us in ways that tax the imagination to even begin to grasp. the Left and other would-be subversives/social antagonists are going to continue to lose ground if they don't engage with some of the main truths dealt with here, which is something that is pretty hard to imagine happening except for in a woefully too-little-too-late kind of way.
this book came out just before DGR was launched, and though there is a dearth of material in this particular book that even reflects indirectly on the issue (they don't really touch upon gender or sexuality in this book), i, of course, got mad and sad and disappointed and amazed all over again that Jensen and Keith dealt a such a vicious and horrifying blow to trans people, to friends and comrades of trans people, and (in the eyes of many on the Left) to the credibility of the ideas about civilization that they've been trying to get across. which is a shame because their basic premises about agriculture and industry are absolutely unassailable. (McBay, for his part, stuck around for all the other fuck shit until the transphobia, and then bounced from the organization and condemned jensen and keith's transphobic views and actions. maybe he is less of a power mad garbage person).
both jensen and keith talk openly in their books about abuses and manipulations suffered in each of their personal lives. they talk openly and with insight about being ensconced within toxic and deeply mistaken ideologies that they eventually left behind. this personal aspect is famously woven into their writings and ideas and informs their analyses in a gripping way. but on a couple fronts at least, nothing has changed. not only is their transphobia at odds with the other liberatory values they seem to espouse, but their apparent basis for it (looking at their FAQ on their website) is that they are allegedly "gender abolitionists" or "agenderists" and that trans people are the "genderists." um, ok. i know trans and genderqueer folks who do more in a day to subvert the dominant paradigm of gender than probably jensen and keith will ever do. i mean, someone has got to write an analysis of the whole theoretical and emotional underpinning of their ideology, because their is a lot to unpack. meanwhile, it doesn't seem like they seem to give nearly as much shit to cis people in real life for the constructed-ness of their genders, and expressly dishonor trans people by never even admitting they exists but referring to them only as "people who refer to themselves as trans." there are probably half a dozen other angles to come at this question from (including the many claims they make about the origins and nature of transgenderism), and i hope to do more writing about it in the future. there is a gaping lack of vision in deep green milieus when it comes to countering all of the many and terrible reactionary/colonial influences and answering some persistent criticisms to be found all over these scenes.
anyway, yeah, i passed this off to some kid i don't know too well and wrote him a note of caveats/invitations to talk more about it. it still doesn't really seem like many other people are writing "why civilization is fucked" tracts in such an accessible way as this. unfortunate on several and fucked levels. if the authorship was different i'd give this as many stars as they'll let you give, but treachery and betrayal is treachery and betrayal. don't take it lightly.
December 27, 2020
This is an anti-civilization book! The first part was super interesting, with all sorts of anecdotes on waste and how society used to be more sustainable. The middle part reflects Mr. Jensen's extreme bitterness which seems to come from years of not feeling heard. As a new reader with an open mind, it's a bit insulting and unproductive. The ending talks a bit about social movements and how they can be effective. My positive reaction to this book is that it's a good perspective, and we are probably fucked. My criticism was that there is no room left for debate or a middle ground, even on how a 'collapse' will happen (incremental vs. all at once) or being able to use technology to work our way out of our current environmental mess. We may not be able to, but I'm not 100.00% convinced that we can not find some middle ground.
November 11, 2018
The chapter "Growing Up" resonated with me. I have told any number of people to grow up lately. Some choice quotes:
If we wish to live sustainably, which at this point means to continue to live at all, we must put aside the childish notion that we have the right to take whatever we want from non-humans.
We must put away the childish notion that human beings are exempt from ecological principles.
We must put away the childish notion that the health of our communities is not our responsibility.
We need to grow up enough to know that others exist.
We need to grow up. We need to take responsibility for ourselves, and we need to manifest that responsibility to our communities.
This is the pledge I make to the land where I live, to life o earth, and to you: I will make the world glad I was born. I will make it so that my birth, my life, and my death make the world a better place than had I never exosted.
If we wish to live sustainably, which at this point means to continue to live at all, we must put aside the childish notion that we have the right to take whatever we want from non-humans.
We must put away the childish notion that human beings are exempt from ecological principles.
We must put away the childish notion that the health of our communities is not our responsibility.
We need to grow up enough to know that others exist.
We need to grow up. We need to take responsibility for ourselves, and we need to manifest that responsibility to our communities.
This is the pledge I make to the land where I live, to life o earth, and to you: I will make the world glad I was born. I will make it so that my birth, my life, and my death make the world a better place than had I never exosted.
May 1, 2023
Interesting to think about. Some good ideas. Some unrealistic ideas. But I am not ready - nor are my neighbors - to shit in the yard.
September 4, 2015
Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay are honest and unrelenting as they take us down the suicidal road modern civilization is taking us all, or that we are taking it, more accurately. This is not only a book of inconvenient truths but also one that calls the reader to revolutionary action. The authors don't mince words, and often lean on the the wilder (and perhaps more disturbing) edge of anarchy as a means for change. Their angst and anger is well supported, though, even if I don't necessarily agree with some of their more radical leanings.
An intricate and well researched history of modern society's evolution into an unsustainable and globally destructive model is on display here. It is intriguing and infuriating all at once as the authors go from our individual parts in the bigger picture of where we're headed to the seemingly unalterable realities of civilization as a whole.
This is essential reading for anyone who wants to live and participate in the world in a positive way. Knowledge is power and power is action. A fantastic, depressing, terrifying, and ultimately inspiring book. Encourage others to read this and perhaps the radical actions Jensen and McBay suggest here will not be necessary to change the course of corporate-driven collapse... hopefully.
An intricate and well researched history of modern society's evolution into an unsustainable and globally destructive model is on display here. It is intriguing and infuriating all at once as the authors go from our individual parts in the bigger picture of where we're headed to the seemingly unalterable realities of civilization as a whole.
This is essential reading for anyone who wants to live and participate in the world in a positive way. Knowledge is power and power is action. A fantastic, depressing, terrifying, and ultimately inspiring book. Encourage others to read this and perhaps the radical actions Jensen and McBay suggest here will not be necessary to change the course of corporate-driven collapse... hopefully.
August 1, 2011
I'm tapping out at the Magical Thinking chapter...probably just going to flip through the rest. This is more of a forum for Jensen and Co. to rant about how everything is wrong, and to swear a lot while doing so. I appreciate what they're saying about the size of the problem. Although, they cite "industrial capitalism" as the problem, but I'm drawn more to the Ishmael view that the problem stems back to whenever some tribe broke away from the Laws of Nature and decided that they could exploit other people and their resources for their own personal gain. Since that's going back a pretty long ways in history, through generations and generations and generations of cultural development and human identity, there is now just such a ubiquitous and ingrained cultural identity of being able to exploit and "own" the earth. It seems like a successful cultural paradigm shift away from that before we blow ourselves up is probably somewhere near impossible. I guess we'll see.
I'm going to start on Powerdown, which seems to be a much more practical text (albeit out of date - written in 2004).
I'm going to start on Powerdown, which seems to be a much more practical text (albeit out of date - written in 2004).
August 11, 2019
A passionate polemic against industrial civilization
While I'm going to disagree with a lot of what Derrick Jensen and his co-author Aric McBay have to say, I am in substantial agreement with their central thesis which is that industrial civilization is not sustainable as it currently exists. Whether industrial civilization can be altered to make it sustainable is what is arguable. Personally I believe it can be. Jensen does not.
I'm giving five stars to this book because it is passionately written and full of insights and knowledge that I wish were more widely known and appreciated. Jensen is an extremely knowledgeable and brilliant man. He is also a bitter and angry man. This book is a long polemic against what he sees as the on-going destruction of this planet by an unsustainable industrial society, a society willfully ignorant of what it is doing.
Where I part company with Jensen is in the identification of the underlying problem, which to me is too many people on the planet. For some reason, although he obliquely acknowledges that we have too many people, Jensen deemphasizes the crucial importance of this fact and even ignores it to concentrate on mostly industrial pollution and the destruction of the planet's ecosystems by the industrial machine. Implicit and central to Jensen's understanding is the idea that if you are spending 10 calories of energy for every one calorie of food produced (see pages 339 and 361 for this claim, which I suspect is close to correct) you have a situation that is headed for collapse in a world with 6.5-billion people. If however the same ratio were applied to a world with say half a billion people, it might be sustainable since there would be a surplus of energy available. Of course it would be much better if we were to both reduce our numbers and to employ more economic and sustainable means of subsistence.
"What We Leave Behind" are the waste products of industrialized society. Jensen makes a distinction between the natural wastes from our bodies--including our bodies!--which help to sustain the planet's ecosystems, and the wastes from our industrial machines which mostly do not. These wastes include everything from toxic metals to rank poisons to plastics to spent nuclear materials. He seems to believe that we cannot keep these wastes from harming the planet whereas I believe we can. It is a question of the proper use of technology and a political willingness to do things in a non-polluting and sustainable manner. In part Jensen's cynicism stems from his observation that corporations which account for most of the pollution are psychopathic entities that exist to maximize profits while externalizing costs. That is their nature: they cannot behave otherwise. Externalizing costs means dumping wastes onto somebody else's backyard or onto the laps of future generations. Make no mistake about it: that is what our giant corporations are doing today and have been doing since their inception.
Let me jump ahead to Jensen's solution. He has a five point plan for resistance in the pen-ultimate chapter, "Fighting Back." I won't outline it here except to mention that for Jensen the goal does indeed justify the means. He wants the culture to be "dismantled completely" (p. 381) and he wants to employ and disrupt the "centralized industrial and economic systems" themselves. (p. 382). He believes that fighting back "means not using violence when it's appropriate to not use violence…" and "using violence when it is appropriate to use violence." (p. 383) Jensen justifies his extreme position with this rationale: "Do you think that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been so successful if the government hadn't been afraid of Malcolm X?" (p. 397)
Jensen's argument rests on two presumptions, one, that things really are so bad and the planet's situation really so desperate that an overthrow of the system is imperative--now. And two, it is impossible for the system to change by its own accord. Like a junkie, industrial civilization must crash and burn before has even a glimmer that change is necessary. After rejecting the possibility of a sustainable "technotopia"--a society in which technology is used in a sustainable way--Jensen comes to what he considers is most likely to happen: collapse. He recalls that Rome collapsed because it ran out of people and resources to exploit. He sees the same thing happening to industrial civilization. In this I think he may very well be correct because of the short-sightedness of our leaders and our institutions that are unable to look much past the next quarter's economic numbers.
Jensen argues that it is not enough to conserve energy and recycle wastes as individuals. Most of the waste and pollution comes from industry itself, as Jensen points out, not from individuals. His clarion call is nothing less than a call to revolution. I think this is correct (and probably inevitable) when the situation is truly desperate. But to take arms against the system when one's belly is full one must have the true believer's mentality, which in this case is the system will not change without the use of force. If there is a revolution against industrial civilization I suspect it will come from without, from those people in the exploited world who may very well be going to bed hungry and who have little to lose. In fact we may be seeing the scattered, disconnected and sporadic beginnings of a planetary revolution in the acts of terrorism that are today instigated by religious extremists. When the Vandals crash through the gates, we'll know. Until then it's unlikely that people in the industrialized world are going to heed Jensen's call to arms.
What I hope happens is that we have enough far-sighted, aware and educated people to bring about a change without having to go through the horrors of collapse or revolution. History suggests however that I am wrong and that Jensen is right.
Read or not read this extraordinary book at your peril.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
While I'm going to disagree with a lot of what Derrick Jensen and his co-author Aric McBay have to say, I am in substantial agreement with their central thesis which is that industrial civilization is not sustainable as it currently exists. Whether industrial civilization can be altered to make it sustainable is what is arguable. Personally I believe it can be. Jensen does not.
I'm giving five stars to this book because it is passionately written and full of insights and knowledge that I wish were more widely known and appreciated. Jensen is an extremely knowledgeable and brilliant man. He is also a bitter and angry man. This book is a long polemic against what he sees as the on-going destruction of this planet by an unsustainable industrial society, a society willfully ignorant of what it is doing.
Where I part company with Jensen is in the identification of the underlying problem, which to me is too many people on the planet. For some reason, although he obliquely acknowledges that we have too many people, Jensen deemphasizes the crucial importance of this fact and even ignores it to concentrate on mostly industrial pollution and the destruction of the planet's ecosystems by the industrial machine. Implicit and central to Jensen's understanding is the idea that if you are spending 10 calories of energy for every one calorie of food produced (see pages 339 and 361 for this claim, which I suspect is close to correct) you have a situation that is headed for collapse in a world with 6.5-billion people. If however the same ratio were applied to a world with say half a billion people, it might be sustainable since there would be a surplus of energy available. Of course it would be much better if we were to both reduce our numbers and to employ more economic and sustainable means of subsistence.
"What We Leave Behind" are the waste products of industrialized society. Jensen makes a distinction between the natural wastes from our bodies--including our bodies!--which help to sustain the planet's ecosystems, and the wastes from our industrial machines which mostly do not. These wastes include everything from toxic metals to rank poisons to plastics to spent nuclear materials. He seems to believe that we cannot keep these wastes from harming the planet whereas I believe we can. It is a question of the proper use of technology and a political willingness to do things in a non-polluting and sustainable manner. In part Jensen's cynicism stems from his observation that corporations which account for most of the pollution are psychopathic entities that exist to maximize profits while externalizing costs. That is their nature: they cannot behave otherwise. Externalizing costs means dumping wastes onto somebody else's backyard or onto the laps of future generations. Make no mistake about it: that is what our giant corporations are doing today and have been doing since their inception.
Let me jump ahead to Jensen's solution. He has a five point plan for resistance in the pen-ultimate chapter, "Fighting Back." I won't outline it here except to mention that for Jensen the goal does indeed justify the means. He wants the culture to be "dismantled completely" (p. 381) and he wants to employ and disrupt the "centralized industrial and economic systems" themselves. (p. 382). He believes that fighting back "means not using violence when it's appropriate to not use violence…" and "using violence when it is appropriate to use violence." (p. 383) Jensen justifies his extreme position with this rationale: "Do you think that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been so successful if the government hadn't been afraid of Malcolm X?" (p. 397)
Jensen's argument rests on two presumptions, one, that things really are so bad and the planet's situation really so desperate that an overthrow of the system is imperative--now. And two, it is impossible for the system to change by its own accord. Like a junkie, industrial civilization must crash and burn before has even a glimmer that change is necessary. After rejecting the possibility of a sustainable "technotopia"--a society in which technology is used in a sustainable way--Jensen comes to what he considers is most likely to happen: collapse. He recalls that Rome collapsed because it ran out of people and resources to exploit. He sees the same thing happening to industrial civilization. In this I think he may very well be correct because of the short-sightedness of our leaders and our institutions that are unable to look much past the next quarter's economic numbers.
Jensen argues that it is not enough to conserve energy and recycle wastes as individuals. Most of the waste and pollution comes from industry itself, as Jensen points out, not from individuals. His clarion call is nothing less than a call to revolution. I think this is correct (and probably inevitable) when the situation is truly desperate. But to take arms against the system when one's belly is full one must have the true believer's mentality, which in this case is the system will not change without the use of force. If there is a revolution against industrial civilization I suspect it will come from without, from those people in the exploited world who may very well be going to bed hungry and who have little to lose. In fact we may be seeing the scattered, disconnected and sporadic beginnings of a planetary revolution in the acts of terrorism that are today instigated by religious extremists. When the Vandals crash through the gates, we'll know. Until then it's unlikely that people in the industrialized world are going to heed Jensen's call to arms.
What I hope happens is that we have enough far-sighted, aware and educated people to bring about a change without having to go through the horrors of collapse or revolution. History suggests however that I am wrong and that Jensen is right.
Read or not read this extraordinary book at your peril.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
June 12, 2020
This book gave me a lot to think about. The narration is somewhat abrasive at times, but I think it's done well to get the emotional response needed in the reader to get the point across. I would have liked a little more citation so I can do further reading and get clarification on some of the information presented in this book. What's done here is good, but not all of the information I wanted to check was cited. I personally liked reading this book, despite the growing sense of unease and disgust with regards to the subject. I've recommended it to my husband to read as well, but I have a feeling he is going to hate reading this because of the emotions evoked in the narration and the degree of blame and responsibility put onto the individual reader.
Read
November 10, 2009Though this book is depressing, read it if you want to see what our culture is doing to this planet. We act as if "our" culture is the only "right" way, but our way is causing the rest of the life on the world we share to suffer. I haven't yet reached the part of the book where the author offers any ways in which we can make any difference and bring change, but I'm hoping he will offer something.
March 6, 2019
Although this book tends towards reduntant explanations and repetition it doesn't dilute the message. It is clear to anyone with an ability to discern their surroundings that we are killing everything, commodifying all sources of nature and all but throwing ourselves into the void that we wont be able to return.
really illumintating segments on industrial level waste and rare mineral harvesting practices. I also very much appreciated the discussion on burial practices, which always seemed to be a strange approach to the cycle of life.
I appreciate the candor which they articulate how drastically human existence needs to change in order to be a benefit to this planet. Our culture is paramount to a lot of folks. But it is also the catalyst for the destruction and annihilation of our planet and resources.
I think the question and mission to ensure that our personal existence hasn't left the world in a worse state than if we were not born at all is an important perspective to maintain. This is a book to read regardless of how environmentally aware you are.
really illumintating segments on industrial level waste and rare mineral harvesting practices. I also very much appreciated the discussion on burial practices, which always seemed to be a strange approach to the cycle of life.
I appreciate the candor which they articulate how drastically human existence needs to change in order to be a benefit to this planet. Our culture is paramount to a lot of folks. But it is also the catalyst for the destruction and annihilation of our planet and resources.
I think the question and mission to ensure that our personal existence hasn't left the world in a worse state than if we were not born at all is an important perspective to maintain. This is a book to read regardless of how environmentally aware you are.
June 26, 2020
I fundamentally agree with the premise of this book. That being said after wading through poetic and not so poetic musings for... nearly 400 pages I realized, this book is not productive. There is no effort to offer a solution, maybe the last few pages but after 400 pages of doom and the destruction of life as we know it a few pages doesn't really cut the snuff, so to speak. If you are going to say, repeatedly, mr I write books for a living, that no one is doing enough, that simple living is not enough (which again I fundamentally do agree with, and knew well enough before I exposed myself to these ramblings) then what, mr I write books for a living, is the solution? It doesn't take 400 pages to explain that we're all screwed. It's pretty obvious to see that we are in fact all screwed. The point I'm trying to make is that this book is essentially pointless, it serves not purpose, and hypocritically does not offer any way forward. I would respect this all a lot more if he really did blow up dams instead of just writing some fricking books. Sheesh.
December 29, 2017
Dark, and heartbreaking, but also necessary. Jensen identifies many of the fears that I have for our planet, but so often his expectations for what must be done seem either fanciful (e.g., feeding 8 billion humans without some some form of industrial agriculture), or outright mean-spirited towards his own species.
He did not manage to make a case for a greater care for the biosphere, which recognises human's part of it, but also our unique role within it, but his indictment and full-throated attack on half-measures and self-serving rhetoric was powerful and alarming.
He did not manage to make a case for a greater care for the biosphere, which recognises human's part of it, but also our unique role within it, but his indictment and full-throated attack on half-measures and self-serving rhetoric was powerful and alarming.
March 31, 2023
This book put words to many feelings of unrest I’ve had lately and has made me feel an emotion I haven’t felt in a long time: anger. Like almost everyone else in the society I find myself in (US of A), I have conveniently looked the other way to the atrocious of industrial civilization. This book created immense cognitive dissonance between what I was realizing to be rational and true and the false reality I have taken to be true for my whole life. I don’t know what to do with all of these feeling but I must do something. I can’t see this society as good at all anymore.
December 29, 2020
Book “What We Leave Behind�� Important READ
Everybody Will “Turn-Out-The-Lights” Answered My Questions “Not-Be-Buried;” Instead “Cremation!” Why Rot Away As A “Rancid Sandwich?” BEST Shop Around For “BEST-COUPON” Deal For “Cremation” Inorder “Leave $ Behind” For The “Greedy Relatives!” Relatives Glad “I” Died Get $!!!!!
Everybody Will “Turn-Out-The-Lights” Answered My Questions “Not-Be-Buried;” Instead “Cremation!” Why Rot Away As A “Rancid Sandwich?” BEST Shop Around For “BEST-COUPON” Deal For “Cremation” Inorder “Leave $ Behind” For The “Greedy Relatives!” Relatives Glad “I” Died Get $!!!!!
August 9, 2017
A bit militant, but good at changing the way we view climate change, and that status quo activism is probably not enough
December 27, 2017
This Book will tell you yours and your progenies future. And it’s not roses and sandalwood.
And you need to read it.
Now.
And you need to read it.
Now.
March 30, 2020
Some tough love for the consumer society. Much food for thought.
March 24, 2017
A book which can depress, overwhelm, anger and ultimately educate and awaken, in short it serves many purposes and if you're prepared to be open-minded and to think deeply, then the message is clear.
January 18, 2010
The ongoing problems of pollution, pacifism, and pillaging resources remains systemic of our country's cultural identity. Egos of the present consumers continue to redirect or obliviously deny our rooted narcissistic dilemma thwarting an eminent revolution as, not unlike Rome, the current social construct must collapse in order for culture to more adequately define a truly sustainable relationship with our host land, the Earth.
Regardless of whether one considers themselves an activist, a magical thinker, or a corporate realist, these identities will dissolve leaving behind a naked truth of our role as tenders of Eden.
The book strikes a primary cord of resonance. We take so many things "personal," in our lives, taking offense to small, trivial mishaps, yet, most of us never once consider the killing of our planet on a personal level. Is this because the scope of the problem is too broad and all encompassing to be processed by the layman? Or is that modern man and woman are so far removed from the grand scheme of life, they can hardly see past their nose?
Jensen text is not full of euphemisms to fragrant the edges of his writing. His style is blunt, fierce, unapologetic and proves to embody the level of volume one must have in declaring the truth of What We Leave Behind.
Regardless of whether one considers themselves an activist, a magical thinker, or a corporate realist, these identities will dissolve leaving behind a naked truth of our role as tenders of Eden.
The book strikes a primary cord of resonance. We take so many things "personal," in our lives, taking offense to small, trivial mishaps, yet, most of us never once consider the killing of our planet on a personal level. Is this because the scope of the problem is too broad and all encompassing to be processed by the layman? Or is that modern man and woman are so far removed from the grand scheme of life, they can hardly see past their nose?
Jensen text is not full of euphemisms to fragrant the edges of his writing. His style is blunt, fierce, unapologetic and proves to embody the level of volume one must have in declaring the truth of What We Leave Behind.
August 7, 2012
There is a lot of repetition in the most recent Derrick Jensen Books, and in his earlier ones too if I stop and think about it. Although by know he has settled on his mature ideology. You will either accept it, or hate it. If you hate it, then you should know that this book does not change from Jensen's work in Endgame, or The Culture of Make Believe or any of his other well known works.
The book starts with an interesting examination of decay and how it leads to life unless civilization gets involves. The book then drops into the hard work of explaining in excruciating detail exactly how much damage humans have done to the environment that supports them and all other species, the damage we have done to ourselves and our collective psyche and how we manage to continually justify this. The book then veers into a sharp and acid debunking of the ecotech-topian theories that are floating around pop culture. And then it finishes up with some theoretical suggestions for how to resist what Jensen and co-author McBay clearly consider to a a suicidal culture with an omnicidal urge.
This book is a hard read, like all late era Jensen work. There is much that Jensen fans will find rewarding and much that will be familiar.
The book starts with an interesting examination of decay and how it leads to life unless civilization gets involves. The book then drops into the hard work of explaining in excruciating detail exactly how much damage humans have done to the environment that supports them and all other species, the damage we have done to ourselves and our collective psyche and how we manage to continually justify this. The book then veers into a sharp and acid debunking of the ecotech-topian theories that are floating around pop culture. And then it finishes up with some theoretical suggestions for how to resist what Jensen and co-author McBay clearly consider to a a suicidal culture with an omnicidal urge.
This book is a hard read, like all late era Jensen work. There is much that Jensen fans will find rewarding and much that will be familiar.
December 26, 2010
If you can finish this book, you will not be rewarded with platitudes about how changing your light bulbs to save energy, or driving a hybrid car, or composting, or any of those types of things will help slow the massive waste the we leave behind (you won't be discouraged from doing these things either). You will, however, be rewarded with a coherent message about a "culture of resistance" and how resistance movements rely on that culture. You will be rewarded with the message that living things can't wait for a popular mass movement before the resistance takes action. You will be told in no uncertain terms that if you care about living things then you must take action. And that my friends is the clearest message of this book, that if you care about living things YOU MUST TAKE ACTION because as Frederick Douglass said, "power concedes nothing without a demand." So, we must demand an end to all things that ultimately do not support and sustain living things. Just read this book, ok!?!?!
June 4, 2010
You won't be happy after reading this book, but you will have a deeper understanding what we've done to planet Earth. "...it's clear to intelligent people, and painful to sensitive people, that we're in a lot of trouble and our efforts to deal with that have so far been pretty ineffective," writes Derrick Jensen. Industrial civilization, says Jensen, is destroying our planet. "What we leave behind" is waste. In nature, one creature's waste feeds another, and has for thousands of years. Yet our waste, what our civilization leaves behind, is toxic. We leave behind plastic, we leave behind pesticides, herbicides and other poisons. We leave behind trash that won't decompose for centuries. Unless we change, and change very, very quickly, and very, very radically, we will end up not only poisoning the planet, but poisoning ourselves, according to Jensen.
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August 5, 2011This is an important book. Not everyone will like what Jensen has to say, that industrial civilization needs to end if we are going to survive as a species and for other species to survive as well. The focus of his argument is waste and how industrial society is lethal in terms of the waste it produces. It is not enough, argues Jensen, for us to recycle, use canvas bags at the grocery and exchange our light bulbs for more energy efficient ones. While important, it is like taking a pebble from Mt. Everest and thinking you’ve made a substantial change. Some of the facts he provides are truly horrifying, but is information of which everyone should be aware. His writing is conversational and at times quite humorous despite the gravity of his message. I’m not sure I agree with him on everything, but I do agree that the situation is dire and the time for action is now.
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December 19, 2013People say this is an extremely negative book. I love this book. It came to me when I was drowning. So many things were bothering me. I had so many questions. Why did no one acknowledge how fucked up our society is? That we're killing off the planet? That there's so much greed and hate? Until I started reading Jensen. Yeah, this is a negative book. But it's a truthful book, which is rare to find.
Yet I don't remember if I finished reading it or not. See, Jensen is a very good writer but he tends to go off into all directions, which I'm not complaining about because they're interesting directions and he makes good points, but his books overlap. If you have read more than one you feel like you've read certain things before. Which is why I don't know where I left off -- or if I finished -- this book.
Yet I don't remember if I finished reading it or not. See, Jensen is a very good writer but he tends to go off into all directions, which I'm not complaining about because they're interesting directions and he makes good points, but his books overlap. If you have read more than one you feel like you've read certain things before. Which is why I don't know where I left off -- or if I finished -- this book.
June 26, 2011
Very good, but I disliked the author's pervasive anger. Of course, such an emotion is justified.
I was also very dissatisfied by Jensen's illogical conclusion: we should risk our selves to become anarchists even though he says the stakes are utterly stacked against us. Individuals are programmed to first act out of self-interest. Others have already commented on Jensen's 'anarchy' through bookwriting.
Otherwise, a great overview for those unfamiliar with plastics, ocean and water resources, and population. (I wish he had gone into more detail of the anthropocene layer, but he does mention the effects of plastic on evolution.) He also details certain aspects of mining, which is usually an overlooked environmental degradation.
I was also very dissatisfied by Jensen's illogical conclusion: we should risk our selves to become anarchists even though he says the stakes are utterly stacked against us. Individuals are programmed to first act out of self-interest. Others have already commented on Jensen's 'anarchy' through bookwriting.
Otherwise, a great overview for those unfamiliar with plastics, ocean and water resources, and population. (I wish he had gone into more detail of the anthropocene layer, but he does mention the effects of plastic on evolution.) He also details certain aspects of mining, which is usually an overlooked environmental degradation.
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