JUNEAU, ALASKA (Tlingit: A’aakw Kwáan lands) — The Trump administration announced plans today for yet another massive timber sale that would destroy more than 5,100 acres of critical old-growth habitat in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska.
“Shame on the Trump administration’s Forest Service for having the gall to continue to burden and overwhelm Southeast Alaskans with yet another needless and money-losing timber sale when we are in the midst of a pandemic and a controversial Alaska Roadless Rulemaking process,” said Dan Cannon, Tongass Forest Program Manager for Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. “As Alaskans await Secretary Perdue’s decision on the Roadless Rule, they will yet again have to advocate for the protection of critical old-growth habitat in their backyards. We don’t know how many times we need to say it: Timber only contributes 1% to Southeast Alaska’s economy, while the fishing and tourism industries contribute 26%. Stop making Southeast Alaskans’ lives more difficult by threatening our true economic drivers.”
The U.S. Forest Service’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the South Revilla Integrated Resource Project timber sale proposes chainsawing 5,115 acres of old-growth forest near Ketchikan. It also would allow bulldozing or rebuilding more than 80 miles of damaging logging roads costing U.S. taxpayers more than $11 million. The public will have until Oct. 19 to provide comments.
“This assault on America’s largest rainforest will destroy important habitat for salmon, bears and wolves, and worsen the climate crisis,” said Randi Spivak, Public Lands Director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Clearcutting the Tongass and wiping out enormous carbon stores is like cutting off part of the planet’s oxygen supply. It’s mind-boggling that the Trump administration wants to decimate this spectacular old-growth forest and erase one of the solutions to averting catastrophic climate change.”
This project and the proposed elimination of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule on the Tongass are part of the Trump administration’s relentless efforts to clearcut large swaths of remaining old-growth across the national forest, consistent with its policy of increasing logging nationwide.
“As forests across the America’s burn, the last thing we need to do is destroy old-growth forests in the Tongass Rainforest — one of the United States’ best defenses against furthering the climate crisis,” said Osprey Oreille Lake, Executive Director for the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). “Existing within the territories of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsmishian peoples, the Tongass is a vital ecosystem necessary to the traditional life-ways of local Indigenous communities. Destroying critical old-growth in the Tongass, not only devastates wildlife habitat and harms the climate, but disregards the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and further perpetuates modern genocidal policies. We must stand together for our forests, communities and the climate.”
The roughly 17 million-acre Tongass is the largest national forest in the United States. Since time immemorial it has been the traditional homelands of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples. Alaska Native people rely on the area for culture, traditional hunting, fishing and livelihoods. People from around the world visit the Tongass for world-class recreation, sport and commercial fishing.
“It was just over two months ago that a federal judge threw out the largest logging project we’ve seen in decades because the Forest Service failed to provide communities with basic information like where it intended to log,” said Olivia Glasscock, an attorney at Earthjustice. “Nevertheless the agency is back again with another massive timber sale targeting irreplaceable old-growth trees in the same cherished national forest. Urgent action is needed to address the climate crisis, and that includes efforts to preserve the magnificent trees that absorb carbon. Unfortunately, this destructive logging plan will only make the problem worse.”
The Tongass is the largest intact temperate rainforest left on Earth and provides vital habitat for eagles, bears, wolves, salmon and countless other species. It is a globally recognized carbon sink and helps to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, storing approximately 8% of the total carbon stored in all U.S. national forests.
“Alaska Rainforest Defenders asked, plain and simple in our September 2018 scoping comments on the South Revilla project, that the Forest Service drop the timber part of the project,” said spokesman Larry Edwards. “As with our recently successful lawsuit against the timber component of the POWLLA project, environmentalists have no complaints over the non-timber components of this project.” Edwards added, “In the DEIS, all of the alternatives for the project are estimated to have a timber sale value appraised at a loss to taxpayers, which means that legally a timber sale could not be offered. Continuing to a final EIS would be gambling with millions of dollars of Forest Service planning effort at taxpayer expense.”
Logging the Tongass has been tremendously costly for taxpayers. A new report estimates that timber sales from the forest have cost taxpayers $1.7 billion over four decades.
“Despite a commitment to move away from unsustainable old-growth timber sales, the U.S. Forest Service continues to offer these sales in the Tongass National Forest. More clearcutting will damage the real drivers of southeast Alaska’s economy: fish, wildlife and tourism. Defenders won’t stand by and watch as the Forest Service despoils irreplaceable wildlife habitat and threatens sustainable jobs and livelihoods in Southeast Alaska,” said Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska Program Director for Defenders of Wildlife.
The Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International www.wecaninternational.org – @WECAN_INTL
The Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International is a 501(c)3 and solutions-based organization established to engage women worldwide in policy advocacy, on-the-ground projects, direct action, trainings, and movement building for global climate justice.
Frenchwoman Maïmouna Doucouré, who wrote and directed ‘Cuties’ (English translation), a film which has sparked an online petition calling for it’s removal from Netflix’s streaming platform, has defended her work against the scrutiny it has come under (largely as a result of the way Netflix chose to represent her film), by asserting that we need to not “blame the girls” in these potentially accurate portrayals of their lives and behaviors.
As one of the many who has not seen the film, I have seen the promotional material: a still image from the film and text provided by an unknown individual describing a girl “who becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew“. The children are eleven years old. The young actors are striking poses that are not hard to see as sexually suggestive. New to social media, my burgeoning role as SJW internet troll is shocking to me, mostly in my quick adaptation to this drug. Perusing the pile-on, there were shades of every argument: from people who had seen the film, explaining that it was about the sexploitation of young females; to people who, enraged, called for it to be removed from the streaming platform altogether.
The alarming normalization of sexualizing children has long been evident in Netflix.
Perhaps not so blatantly as now, but children’s, particularly girl’s, sexualization of themselves (by the age of seven according to Dr. Jessica Taylor) is something that has also long existed in this and other modern, civilized cultures and I would argue, needs to be addressed.
As the creatrix of this soft-core child pornography, Doucouré has here deflected the legitimate question about her responsibility as storyteller to the “sex-worker” argument.
No one said anything about blaming the girls.
The argument against pornography is that real people, in this case eleven year old girls, do the things in real life, in front of a camera. In the case of feature films, often exhaustively with rehearsals, memorization and multiple takes [nearly 700 underage girls auditioned for the lead roles]. It is not just a story anymore. It is perpetuation. Psychically, it is normalization, not a challenge, for participants and audience both.
The shame never belonged to the exploited. To have been exploited is a hard thing to admit in a culture that believes that the shame does belong to the exploited. I think that explains much of the drive toward liberal feminism among young women who do not have direct experience with, or on whose livelihood still depends the pay-for-rape industrial spectrum.
I agree that the film should be taken down, but the story will and must be told.
Disappearing unpleasant or untrue or unwanted theories, arguments or stories transforms them from reasoned, hard “No“s back into question marks.
Trinity La Fey is a smith of many crafts, has been a small business creatrix since 2020; published author; appeared in protests since 2003, poetry performances since 2001; officiated public ceremony since 1999; and participated in theatrical performances since she could get people to sit still in front of her.
This article was written by Malavika Vyawahare on 1 September 2020 and originally published on Mongabay.
People gathered in the thousands in Mauritius’s capital, Port Louis, to protest the government’s response to a recent oil spill.
The Japanese-owned freighter M.V. Wakashio crashed into the coral reef barrier off the island’s southeastern coast on July 25 and leaked about 1,000 tons of fuel oil into the sea near ecologically sensitive areas, before breaking in half a few weeks later.
The stranding of at least 39 dolphins and whales near the site has sparked an outcry, though a link between the Wakashio shipwreck and the beachings has not yet been established.
In a controversial move, the Mauritian government decided to sink the front half of the ship several kilometers away from the crash site in open waters, which some experts say could have impacted the dolphin and whale populations.
Thousands of people demonstrated in Mauritius on Aug. 29 over the government’s handling of a recent ship grounding that spilled 1,000 tons oil in the seas around the island nation. In what appears to be the latest toll in the incident, dolphins and whales have beached close to where the M.V. Wakashio freighter ran aground and broke up. Thirty-nine of the mammals have beached in the week to Aug. 28. Social media is awash with photos of the stranded animals, including mothers and calves.
At a press conference Sudheer Maudhoo, the Mauritian fisheries, marine resources and shipping minister, called the beachings a “sad coincidence.” Though a link between the deaths and oil contamination has yet to be established, disaffection has swelled in the aftermath of the spill, with protesters taking to the streets of the capital, Port Louis, and wielding an inflatable dolphin with “Inaction” written on it.
The Wakashio struck the coral reef barrier off the country’s southeastern coast on July 25; the damage to its fuel tankers led to a leak on Aug. 6. The fact that the ship lay lodged in the coral reef for more than 10 days before any decisive action by the government has become a sour point for Mauritians demanding answers from the authorities.
“The oil spill became like a culmination of growing frustration in the country. Since we have this new government, there were a series of issues and the Wakashio oil spill was the last straw,” said Mokshanand Sunil Dowarkasing, a former member of parliament who now works with Greenpeace in Mauritius. The vessel lay stranded in the vicinity of at least three sites of ecological significance: Blue Bay Marine Area; Pointe d’Esny, the largest remaining wetland in Mauritius; and the coral isle of Ile aux Aigrettes, which is a nature reserve. Facing mounting pressure from abroad and within the country, the government hastened efforts to pump out the oil that remained on board, even as a ship was at the brink of breaking apart. On Aug. 15, it broke into two, but by then most of the oil on board had been removed. The situation, however, has only grown murkier since.
This article was written by Malavika Vyawahare on 1 September 2020 and originally published on Mongabay. The original article can be accessed here:
A new space race has begun. Private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin have begun the process of privatizing the night sky. What comes next? Will humans colonize the solar system and beyond? In this third in a series of articles [Part 1, Part 2] Max Wilbert asks why this culture worships “progress.”
It began with wood and blood; trees and muscle power; the fire and the slave. This built the first megacities on Earth. The first civilizations grew: in Mesopotamia; along the Yangtze River and the Ganges; in the Andes; in Egypt; and elsewhere.
As they grew, they displaced other societies, tribes and nations who had existed for eons. By war or trade or marriage, assimilation or extermination, they grew, and as they grew, forests shrunk.
The limits of muscle and fire soon became apparent. By cutting down the forests, by plowing the earth and turning soil carbon into human carbon, they eroded the soil, they salinized the land, and what was a Fertile Crescent became dust. But these societies had created an ideology based on “more.” The result was war and a feverish search for new sources of energy and power.
The next frontier was to dig deeper, to find carbon that was buried deep under the soil in the crust of the planet itself. The burning of coal and oil was a revolution in energy. Suddenly mines could be pumped dry and shafts sunk deeper than ever before. Goods could be moved more quickly. Factories and war machines belched great clouds of smoke into the air, and the logging became industrial. The conversion of a living planet into a necropolis accelerated.
Coal and oil, when combined with the engineering necessary to create the engine, enabled expansion on a scale never before dreamed of. Soon nations had the power to move mountains, and they did. Coal and oil enabled the construction of the first large hydroelectric dams, and now the circulatory system of the planet was bound to civilization’s endeavors as well. And before long, the next boundary was breached: that of the atom itself.
This is the story of civilizations breaking the covenant humans had lived with for 200,000 years; the story of human beings constructing ideologies and megamachines that demand limitless power, and then pursuing that power to—quite literally—the end of the Earth.
Progress as Sort of God
There is a fundamental premise underlying not just capitalism, but all civilized societies: the premise is that “progress” in technological development is an inherent good; that any harm is overshadowed by this good; and that the pursuit of technological development and the power that results should be one of the primary goals of human society. Expansion is good. Growth is good.
This premise underlies not just capitalism, but civilization itself, and much of modern science.
This article is third in a series of essays responding to a scientific study published in the journal Scientific Reports back in May. The study models the future of global civilization, tracking population growth and deforestation, and finds that there is a 90 percent chance of civilization collapsing within the next 20-40 years. I discussed their collapse prediction in the first essay in this series.
The authors of the study theorize, as Salonika pointed out in the second essay, that the only way to avoid collapse is via expansion, especially expansion in energy generation, which they suppose would allow industrial civilization to surpass ecological limits and expand throughout the solar system. They write, “if the trajectory [of civilization’s technological development] has reached the Dyson limit we count it as a success [in our model], otherwise as failure.”
They are referring to a “Dyson Sphere” or “Dyson swarm,” a theoretical megamachine which would encompass a star and capture a large portion of its power output, which could then be used by a civilization.
The idea of a Dyson sphere has been around since the 1930’s, and has a rich life in science fiction. But it is not something to dismiss. Scientists have been working on the theoretical and technical foundation for space-based solar energy harvesting devices for many decades. More deeply, it is an idea that is deeply reflective of the ideology of civilization, which demands power in unlimited quantities. It is the same idea which has underlain civilization since the first slaves were shackled in rows and lashed and set to work building monumental architecture for the emperor. It is the same idea that drove the deforestation of the planet. It is the same idea that built the Grand Coulee Dam, and the Hoover Dam, and the Three Gorges Dam, and the Belo Monte Dam, and that will build the Batoka Gorge Dam unless we stop them. It is the same idea that has infected politicians and rulers and technocrats and theocrats and entire societies for thousands of years.
It is the idea that expansion is the highest good.
The Kardashev scale ranks civilizations as Type I (a planetary civilization, which can use all the energy available on its planet of origin), Type II (which can use all the energy within a given star system), or Type III (galactic civilizations). In this scale, a Dyson sphere corresponds to a Type II civilization. Global civilization today, using Carl Sagan’s extrapolations, is approximately at Type 0.73.
In this scale, the more energy a society can appropriate for themselves, the more advanced they are.
Those who have slaves can appropriate more energy than those who do not.
Those who cut down the forest and burn it can appropriate more energy than those who do not.
Those who plow the grasslands under can appropriate more energy than those who do not.
Those who break the boundary of the atom will have more energy than those who do not.
And those who are willing to capture sunlight itself—through a Dyson sphere or other forms of technology—will have more energy than those who do not.
It goes without saying that striving for higher levels on the scale is the goal of most people in power. From the beginning, most western science has been underpinned by a philosophy that the more human beings can control nature, the better. From Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance thinkers to Francis Bacon and the Royal Society, scientists have willingly hitched themselves to tyrants and democracies alike to fund their unending curiosity, and in return they have delivered weapons, energy, and economic development.
Control and expand: this is the ideology of conquest.
The Study of Consequences
Legendary science fiction author Frank Herbert wrote in his classic Dune that “ecology is the study of consequences.” The term is appropriate, then, to describe the study of the consequences unleashed by the decisions made by civilizations up to this point.
We’ve already spoken of the forests that are now past tense and the Fertile Crescent that is fertile no more. Agriculture—not gardening, but totalitarian agriculture—is no more than organized appropriation of primary productivity, habitat, and soil fertility from non-human species to benefit a single species (humans).
Primary productivity, or photosynthesis, is the basis of terrestrial ecology—the basis of life on land. On average, in agricultural areas, 83% of primary productivity is extracted by humans, leaving 17% for the non-humans who remain. This is a consequence of civilized agriculture, just as global warming and ocean acidification are consequences of the choice to seek energy from coal, petroleum, and natural gas.
The Fermi Paradox and The Great Filter
We cannot speak of civilization, Dyson spheres, and ecology without discussing the Drake equation and the Fermi Paradox.
Astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake created the Drake equation in 1961 at the first scientific meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. The equation estimates the probability that there are other intelligent life forms in the galaxy with whom we might communicate. The equation is a rough tool, more thought experiment than precise scientific measure, and plugging in different variables can give wildly different results. It’s all conjecture; life has only ever been observed on one planet.
The Drake Equation, however, does suggest that there could be as many as 15 million planets with intelligent life in the Milky Way alone; we just don’t know. This is where the Fermi Paradox comes in. The Fermi Paradox is a mystery posited by Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi: given these huge numbers, why have we found no evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence? A 2015 study concluded that Kardashev Type-III civilizations are either very rare or do not exist in the local Universe.”
Why has SETI failed?
There are many possible explanations, many of them revolving around the idea that the formation of complex life-forms is actually extremely rare, and that life on Earth has passed through some sort of “Great Filter” to arrive at this. An alternative explanation is that societies that develop the ability to transmit radio waves and travel off their own planet tend to destroy their own ecological founds and collapse.
Each of these explanations is horrifying in its own way.
The Colonization of Space
Incidentally, rockets used in spaceflight destroy the ozone layer, release as much carbon dioxide in 2 minutes as a car would produce in two centuries, and are changing the composition of the upper atmosphere, releasing gasses and particles in areas they have never before naturally existed. And this process is accelerating as corporations such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic begin to colonize near-Earth orbit with thousands of satellites and increasing numbers of commercial craft.
It is expected that the number of rocket launches will increase by an order of magnitude within the next few years.
Another Path
Does it have to be like this?
Some would have us believe that science, technology, and progress are the only possibility—the only option that is thinkable. But is this true?
The science of conquest is not the only type of science. There is another; a science that is based on observation, thesis, and evidence, that is based on a peer-review that does not take place in university buildings, but rather in forests, in grasslands, along rivers, in the oceans.
This is the science of the Polynesian sailors, who set out across ten thousand miles of ocean on boats made of sustainably-harvested wood, who navigated the seas and found islands like a pin in the oceanic haystack without compasses, GPS satellites, or steel-hulled boats.
It is the science of the Kalapuya people, who practiced a scientific ecology through prescribed burning of their land, cultivating species beneficial to biodiversity and abundance not just for humans, but for all life, and thus gardened the entire landscape and created one of the most diverse habitats on Earth, and of the Klamath people, who use fire to geoengineer climate on a small scale by setting their hillsides alight when inversions cause the smoke to gather in their river valley, cooling the river and triggering the salmon runs.
It is the science of the Aborigines, who encoded language and culture in songlines and land, and created a continuous culture that has lasted at least 65,000 years. It is the science of those who remain, keeping these traditions alive, who often don’t use the term science, because it is too small a word for what they do.
There are other ways to live, ways that are no less complex or rewarding, no less respectful of human intellect, but which are build on relationship.
What future do we want? The dystopian future of science fiction? A world of control? A world of Dyson spheres and continental solar arrays? A world “red in tooth and claw,” where survival of the fittest means those who will extract more ruthlessly will gain power? Or do we want a world of connection and participation, a world of mutual aid, where we give back as much or more than we take?
I dream of a world where humans practice a different kind of science—not the science of conquest but the science of cooperation.
Max Wilbert is a writer, organizer, and wilderness guide. A third-generation dissident, he came of age in a family of anti-war and undoing racism activists in post-WTO Seattle. He is the editor-in-chief of the Deep Green Resistance News Service. His latest book is the forthcoming Bright Green Lies. His first book, an essay collection called We Choose to Speak, was released in 2018. He lives in Oregon.
For this episode of the Green Flame we celebrate the United States launch of the Women’s Human Rights Campaign with WHRC U.S. co-contact Thistle Pettersen and U.S. WHRC media moderator Austin DeVille.
Our skill-share highlights the WHRC effort to offer mutual support in the face of inevitable backlash:
It is of the utmost importance strategically when you are engaged in radical political movements to anticipate and prepare for push-back and to stand in unity against it. On that note, the Women’s Human Rights Campaign USA has a special committee dedicated to lending solidarity to anyone who has received backlash for signing the declaration. This committee will promptly send a letter to the opposing party in defense of the signatory’s right to resist threats to her safety and dignity. To contact the Solidarity Committee, send an email to solidarity@womensdeclaration-usa.com
We thank Thistle for permission to include her performance Michigan aka Gender Hurts in our program.
Ross Carter offers a critical review of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. He arguably enriches Naomi’s own assessment of the situation by adding a DGR analysis.
By Ross Carter
Using crisis as an opportunity to get rich
In her book, the Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein details a particular trope of modern capitalism. That of using and/or creating shock and disaster to advance its agenda. Like the majority of liberal literature this book left me with more questions than answers. For example, is it just capitalism that uses crises to advance? Was life amazing before neo-liberal capitalism came along? Are discussions about different shades of civilization a waste of time? Is this whole book a distraction? Although frustrating at times and limited in its perspective, the history mapped out in this book did still have a lot to offer and to ponder.
The Traumatised Traumatise
One thing I take home from this book is how modern Capitalism is civilization attempting to continue to function and sustain itself, while everything (eco-systems and social structures) collapse around it. Due to Naomi’s blind commitment to Democracy and liberalism this would not be a take home though without a mild awareness of the history of civilization, particularly how it has always depended upon war, colonisation, control of populaces (social structure, slavery, police, media, religion and law etc.), and environmental and technological expansion, to sustain a hold over humanity and the planet. Civilization has also always fed off of disaster. This can be clearly seen in the fact that although individual civilizations collapse, disasters in themselves, civilization itself has continued to spread across the planet eating up wildlife, including wild humans, in its path.
The story that Naomi tells is not an isolated story, it is one that has been going on in one form or another for as long as civilization has existed. The logic of Civilization is to protect itself at any cost, and that logic continues unabated. Without a deeper analysis you are stuck in the limited perspective that if only we could get rid of those horrible capitalists then everything would be ok. This is a naive over-simplification of the issues we face. It ignores the current and rapid murder of the planet by Industrial civilization.
It ignores the reality of the lives of passive desperation, the mental trauma, anguish and grief that humanity, as a whole, currently lives with.
Another lesson or reminder I took away from reading the book was how war and conflict is integral to civilization and its expansion and survival. All expansion (aka colonisation) has depended on violence and conflict and left destruction in its wake. Civilization in turn traumatises individuals, communities and cultures, then takes advantage of that trauma to grow and expand. This was true in Iraq in 2004 and it was true in Iraq (AKA the Fertile Crescent) in 6-8,000bc when one of the first civilizations is said to have formed/spread their leaving decimation and desert in its wake.
This needs repeating. The land that Iraq now sits on was being pillaged and destroyed by civilization 10,000 or so years ago. The language I am writing in, it is said, evolved out of the Middle Eastern languages of the time. The Shock Doctrine is part of a continuum. We, the civilized, are doing the same things now that civilized peoples were doing 10,000 years ago. Changing from neo-liberal capitalism to a more social capitalism, replacing oil wells with lithium and rare metal mines (for ‘green’ technologies), isn’t going to change anything. The Shock will continue until we do something about the problem at the core, civilization itself. Or until civilization reaches, what seems like an inevitable suicidal endgame. The almost complete end of life on this planet.
“I am not arguing that all forms of market systems are inherently violent” p20.
The Shock process that Naomi defines and recognises is at the core a continuation of colonialism. It is hyper-colonialism. It is a confirmation by those in power that they are in power and that they are willing to do anything to stay in power. It is an extra layer of colonialism. And therefore an extra layer of trauma and destruction. Competition is at the core of all civilized relationships and the civilized psyche itself. It is at the core of agricultural societies who fight each other and wild nature for the space to deforest and grow. It is at the core of modern civilization in all its teachings and all it upholds. Competition we are told is natural and good. We appear to have forgotten what is natural and good. We have seen no other path. We are conquerors and dominators. Takers. We do not know what it is to be human be-ings, only human war-ings. This is apparent in Naomi’s book.
From Chile to Iraq via New Orleans. The only direction we can go is towards increasing levels of control and dominance. Unless we change this mindset we will continue on this path indefinitely. Civilization can wear a facade of democracy or liberalism but it is merely that. A facade. Equality and co-operation are not possible in civilization. They are in direct contradiction to its inbuilt needs to expand and control.
Changing this mindset is an intense and thorough task, but it is the only one that will make a difference long term.
Joe Biden and solar panels are not going to cut it. Just as different leaders and more technology have never made a difference before. Only increased and sped up the expansion and control of civilization. There will be no simple solution or saviour. Our desperation to control and dominate from the White House and board room, to our patriarchal nuclear family, stems from the same place. Mass cultural trauma. As Naomi points out, a broken individual is easy to manipulate and control. And we are all broken by civilization. We are traumatised in the womb. We are traumatised in birth. We are born into generational trauma. We are traumatised within our dysfunctional families and social structures. We are traumatised by our ‘education’. We are traumatised by the boxes we are put in and the masks we have to wear. We are traumatised by pollution, by food, by technologies. Etc. Etc.
The traumatised mind is a warring and competing mind. It is one that cannot be satiated. Civilization commodifies and others us. It turns us into objects and roles. Slave, farmer, chief, wife, husband, etc. THAT is shock and awe. The shock that Naomi defines is an interesting story and one worth hearing, but it is also an addendum, and like all leftist analysis it ignores or denies the rest of the book. It ignores what led to that addendum. If we continue not to see how violence and (our own) trauma and shock are integral to the establishment and sustenance of civilization, not just neo-liberal capitalism, then our solutions and actions, like all leftist/liberal solutions, are going to achieve absolutely zero when facing the bigger picture of the murder and enslavement of the planet and of ALL life on it by civilization.
Our blindness to reality is related to our mass trauma, perpetuated by our education system and media.
The media are masters of shock. Naomi points out how the military targeted certain industries in Iraq to increase the shock to the populace. Just as important was the taking over of the media. Of the stories being told to the Iraqi people. The media pacifies through dumbing populations down, through fear mongering, and simply through lying or covering up the truth, It is quite amusing but also sad to note that Naomi, and all of her other liberal pals, are suffering from the very symptoms she herself defines. That of a forgetting. A cultural amnesia. A reconditioning, brainwashing (let’s call it what it is). Let’s not forget that liberals are traumatised too.
One only needs some basic understanding of the history of civilization to know that at its core since its inception it has depended on slavery (by the whip or by economic/cultural control), genocide, ecocide and colonisation. This is completely ignored though. Why? Why would liberals continue to preach for, and believe in, those very things which are used to oppress them? The Green New Deal and Democracy aren’t going to remove the shock to the system that living hollowed out lives on a hollowed out planet perpetually puts us through. Yet they are worshipped. How could you read this 533 page book, in your break at the office, or sitting in your city apartment, the sound of sirens and cars droning around you, smell of pollution in the air, zero wildlife, about how capitalism uses shock to further its agenda, and not recognise the shock, all around you and within you? The obvious answer is that liberals have been shocked themselves.
We have all been shocked.
Then in this lost, disconnected state we are all susceptible to the easy solutions of religion, gurus, demagogues and techno-fixes. We are all malleable. People do not willingly hand over their personal power and autonomy and that of their community, to civilization, unless they have first been broken as a human and built up again as a citizen. We will only really be able to think clearly and connect to one another and the earth again once we throw off the myths that civilization holds us down with. Once we, as individuals and communities, destroy civilization as a concept and a physical system. For it is only beyond civilization that we can really be free from continued shock and perpetual disaster.
Ross Carter is a sytems thinker, critic and DGR guardian based in the UK.
