I was asked to speak about the state of the planet, and to do it in under five minutes. I can do it in three.
The world is being murdered, flayed alive, poisoned, gutted, dismembered.
Every biological indicator is going the wrong direction.
And it’s getting worse by the day.
Two hundred species were driven extinct today, and they were my brothers and sisters. Two hundred will go extinct tomorrow. And the day after.
There are stolid scientists who are saying the oceans could be devoid of fish in less than 35 years.
Imagine that: the murder of the oceans on this water planet.
The problems are not new. This culture has been killing the planet for 6000 to 10000 years. When we think of Iraq, is the first thing we think of cedar forests so thick the sunlight never reached the ground? That’s how it was, prior to this culture. The first written myth of this culture is Gilgamesh deforesting the hills and valleys of Iraq to make a great city. The Arabian peninsula was heavily forested. The forests of North Africa were cut to make the Egyptian and Phoenician navies. Greece was heavily forested.
Forests precede us and deserts dog our heels.
And not every culture has destroyed their landbases. The Chumash lived here for at least 13000 years, and when the Europeans arrived here, the place was an ecological paradise. Likewise where I live the Tolowa lived there for at least 12500 years, and likewise when the Europeans arrived the place was a paradise. No longer.
A dear doctor friend of mine always says that the first step toward proper treatment is diagnosis. If we refuse to diagnose the problems our actions will never resolve them.
The problems are not soluble by tweaking processes. The problems are inherent in how we perceive the world, how we interact with the world, what we value, and they are functional and inherent to this culture’s economy. What is GNP? It’s a measure of how quickly the living planet is turned into dead products. Trees into two-by-fours, living rivers into kilowatts, schools of fish into fish sticks.
This is not cognitively challenging. We would all understand this if we weren’t from early childhood inculcated into believing that the economy is more important than life, if we weren’t taught that what humans create has meaning and what the world creates does not, that humans have sentience and meaningful lives, and nonhumans and natural communities do not.
But what if this is all wrong? What if life is not a game of monopoly or risk where the point is to run the board, but rather life is a symphony, where the point is to learn your proper role, and play it at the proper time? The point is not for violin players to kill the oboe players and convert them into cash, but rather to make beautiful music together.
The only measure by which we will be judged by those humans and nonhumans who come after presuming any remain will be the health of the earth. They’re going to care about whether the earth can support life.
At this point in the murder of the planet, there is I think really only one question worth asking: is the world a better place because you were born, and because of your life and because of what you do? That is very possible to do. Think about it: how did the world get to be so glorious and beautiful and fecund in the first place? By everyone living and dying. Salmon make forests better places by living and dying. So do redwood trees and lampreys and banana slugs. That’s how life works. So, the question that the world needs for us to live is: especially given that this culture is killing the planet, how do we individually and collectively make the world a better place by our lives and deaths. By our actions. The planet, not the culture. And that is as true for any organization or corporation as it is for any of us individually. How do we make the real, physical still fecund world that is our only home, better, for hammerhead sharks, for coho salmon, for giant anteaters, for Mekong catfish, Amani flatwings, cayman islands ghost orchids, and orangutans, and the larger communities they call home.
In the next four posts I will assess the environmental movement based on the twelve principles of strategic nonviolent conflict that Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler lay out in their book Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century. The principles are designed to address the major factors that contribute to the success or failure of nonviolent campaigns. The authors stress that the principles are exploratory rather than definitive. Read more about the principles in the introductory post to this run of posts here.
Formulate functional objectives
Here we are looking for a clear goal and subordinate objectives. Five criteria help formulate functional objectives. They need to be concrete and specific enough to be achievable within a reasonable time frame. They need to include a diverse range of nonviolent methods. They need to maintain the main interests of the protesters rather than the adversary. They must attract the widest possible support within the relevant society. The objectives need to appeal to the values and interests of external parties to gain their support.
The mainstream environmental movement fails on this principle – formulate functional objectives. It does use a wide range of nonviolent methods, but fails to meet the other four criteria. Most critically, because it’s so large and diverse, it has no clear goal or objectives. I have run a number of workshops on this topic and none of the participants can agree on the goal and objectives of the environmental movement, and get confused between the goals and objectives of the whole movement or specific campaigns. Generally they all want a livable planet in the future and they seem to go about this by trying to convince everyone else that they need to take environmental issues seriously. This slow burn, paradigm shift strategy is not proving effective.
The movement also fails to determine its response based on what needs to happen in the material realm; versus, say, the taking-issues-seriously realm–in light of very pessimistic scientific forecasts–so fails to identify functional and appropriate objectives. Building a mass movement to transition to a sustainable society might have been possible if it had happened in the twentieth century, but we are now out of time and need drastic action to leave the fossil fuels in the ground.
The environmental movement also struggles because nature is currently viewed as property. So those that own parts of nature are legally allowed destroy them, with some minimal limitations. The more nature you own the more nature you can destroy. The environmental movement has been urging a more careful use of that property – environmental regulation. Attorney Thomas Linzey explains that successful movements take property like African American slaves or women before suffrage and convert them from the status of property, to a person or rights-bearing entity. There has never been an environmental movement that has focused on this, and anyone who has suggested it has been labeled radical or crazy. [1]
The environmental movement fails to attract wide support because it is telling people about a problem in the future that will mean they have to change their lives dramatically now. Of course there is also the whole issue of how the culture turn living systems into products to make money, but many don’t seem to notice this. This causes people’s denial reflexes to kick in so many find excuses not to think about it or act: “the science is wrong;” “the government will handle it;” “I recycle so I do my bit;” “they’ll find a technology to sort it out.” And because industrialised countries have such atomised societies with no community, then there is no moral code for anyone to answer to, just the made-up laws from the state.
There is much written about the psychological reasons why people fail to engage and act on climate change and environmental destruction, with seven booksrecently published on the subject.
finite pool of worry – people can only worry about a certain amount at once;
emotional numbing – people get emotionally overloaded;
confirmation bias and motivated reasoning – people seek out and retain information that matches their world view;
defaults – people are overly biased in favor of the status quo;
discounting – people value loss of money far in the future as less important that money now;
ideology – political beliefs are deeply felt and highly emotional, even though it’s not clear how we come to these conclusions.
The phenomenon that psychologists call the “passive bystander effect” is relevant here. If people feel powerless they will deliberately maintain a level of ignorance so that they can claim that they know less than they do and wait for someone else to act first, to protect themselves.
Another recognised strategy to avoid dealing with climate change is to keep it out of your “norms of attention”. Basically people use selective framing so they don’t have to think about climate change most of the time. Opinion polls find that people define it as either a global issue, or far in the future. Others might say it’s only a theory or blame other countries. The fact that climate change is now seen as an environmental issue also resulted in it being excluded from their primary concerns or “norms of attention.” They can say “I’m not an environmentalist” or “The economy and jobs are more important.”
Without a functional, accurate analysis of a situation, there can be no way to formulate functional objectives to confront it. Because most peoples’ norms of attention are not focused on the actual gravity and immediacy of global warming, any organisation formulating functional objectives only accounts for a small number of actively engaged resisters, and what they can realistically accomplish.
The environmental movement is up against a near-impossible task. It is also suffering from being co-opted by capitalism, so it is now more about sustaining human civilisation at the comfort level that those in industrialized countries expect and trying to minimise the impact on nature. In the US, the 10 organizations leading the environmental movement collectively have 15 million members and an annual budget of more than $525 million. Unfortunately the strategies of most big green organisations involve collaborating, compromising and greenwashing industry and have no chance of stopping the destruction of our world.
Recent books on the environment movement paint an optimistic picture. Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything was disappointingly reformist after her excellent Shock Doctrine. Klein seems to have a blind faith that environmental issues will be solved by mass movements and renewables. [1] People in the environmental movement generally look at the good things happening [2] rather than going to the root of the issues and determining what needs to happen. It’s important to say that I know I am part of the environmental movement that is not being effective, so I’m directing this criticism at myself as well.
If we look at the Taxonomy of Actionfrom the DGR book, it’s clear that the environmental movement has focused mostly on political, social, and economic non-cooperation, education, symbolic lobbying and protesting, education and raising awareness. There is very little confronting and dismantling power, which is essential since those with power will never give it up voluntarily.
The climate movement has mainly focused on raising the awareness of environmental issues and climate change, and failed to sufficiently escalate its tactics in line with the threat. [3] The movement has used a substantial amount of nonviolent direct actions, but very few are willing to put their bodies on the line. The movement has failed to seriously damage profits through boycotts and bans. [4] The movement has also failed to get adequate popular support.
Radical environmental activists’ tactics have evolved to make blockading more physically effective but this is still based on the premise of slowing industry, rather than stopping them. These new tactics include tripods, monopoles, cantilevers, and tree-sits; lock-ons, burials, dragons (dig a hole and bury protesters up to their neck to slow removal), pipes, and tunnels; static blocking methods (e.g., boulders); militant direct actions that may involve risk to humans such as occupying an office and denying entry to the authorities. [5]
Assessing the Mainstream Environmental Movement Based on the Principles of Strategic Nonviolent Conflict
Ackerman and Kruegler lay out twelve principle of strategic nonviolent conflict in their book Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century. The principles are designed to address the major factors that contribute to the success or failure of nonviolent campaigns. The authors stress that the principles are exploratory rather than definitive.
The twelve principles are categorised into three groups:
Principles of development focuses on how to create the most advantageous environment,
Principles of engagement looks at how to interact with the opponents so nonviolent methods have the maximum effect,
Principles of conception looks at what strategic options remain and assesses the success of the campaign.
The mainstream environmental movement is mostly committed to using nonviolent methods. In future posts I will assess the environmental movement based on the principles identified by Ackerman and Kruegler. How does the mainstream environmental movement measure up?
This is the sixteenth installment in a multi-part series. Browse the Protective Use of Force index to read more.
Positive things environmentalists focus on: renewables; reduction in endangered species smuggling; tree planting and forest protection; growth of ethical businesses; the Transition Town movement; ‘Reclaim the Streets’ parties and ‘Critical Mass’ bike rallies; sustainable paper use; organic food; guerilla gardening; squatting; learning sustainability from experts; more empowered women; Schumacher’s ideas around “small is beautiful” local economies; and alternative political systems
Counterpower: Making Change Happen, Tim Gee, 2011, page 99
Counterpower, page 184/5
Global Warming, Militarism and Nonviolence: The Art of Active Resistance Hardcover, Marty Branagan, 2013, page 114-122
So many indigenous people have told me that the levels of sustainability their traditional cultures achieved prior to the arrival of colonizers were based on lessons learned from non-humans. Implicit in these lessons is the truth that humans depend on non-humans. This dependence is not limited to the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the food we eat. This dependence sinks into our very souls.
For many indigenous people I have listened to, the basic reality of human dependence demands that humans regard non-humans, regard life, regard the universe with deep humility.
If we simply learn to listen, we will hear non-humans demonstrating humility everywhere. Trees know they are nothing without soil, so they build forests as monuments to soil health – collecting, storing, and restoring nutrients to their life-giver. Salmon know they are nothing without forests to hold river banks together, so they swim deep into the cold oceans to feed, bring their bodies back upriver to die, and, in death, feed the forests. Phytoplankton know they are nothing without a climate that allows warm and cold ocean waters to mix, producing currents that bring them their food. So, phytoplankton feed the salmon that feed the forests that store carbon that has the potential to destroy the climate that feeds the phytoplankton.
Approach non-humans with humility, and you may find them willing to teach you.
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It was the stars who put me in my place. I know this, locating myself in my memories of cold nights in the open air and my sleeping bag, watching the clear sky from the shoulders of sacred Mauna Kea in Hawai’i. I rest north to south. The Southern Cross sits low on the horizon, just above the outline of my toes warmly wrapped in down. I arch my back and look high above me where Polaris holds the sky steady. To my right, the sun pulled the darkness over like blankets on a bed and fell asleep. In the space between Venus and Orion’s Belt, there are more shooting stars than I have wishes. To my left, a faint anxiety grows. When the sun wakes, its siblings – the stars – will disappear.
“I” diminish in these moments. My mind quiets and and there are only the gifts the stars give.
Stars are so fundamental to our existence they give us the ability to contemplate the process that allows us to perceive them. Perhaps, this is why stars are so beautiful. When we view them, we see the beginning of everything.
Stars are the oldest nuclear reactors. The gases they burn produce energy at such great magnitudes they are visible on Earth from hundreds of thousands of lightyears away. They burn like this for time unfathomable until they die in great explosions. When stars explode, the violence alters hydrogen and helium to shower the universe with materials like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, and sulfur. These materials are the basis of life.
Stars give me the ability to experience. I can experience because I have a body. The elemental showers dying stars produce have organized- first as neutrons and protons, then as atoms, and finally as air, water, soil, stone, and flesh – to form my body. But, stars don’t form only human bodies, they form bones, fur, and fins; skin, scales, and exoskeletons; mountains, oceans, and the sky.
Stars give the universe the first wisdom: For there to be life, there must be death. After a life spent in service as a sun, warming a community of planets, a star dies. It is a violent death – a death that destroys a solar system. But, it is a necessary death. A death that transforms the old into a possibility for the new.
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My last essay in this ecopsychology series “The Destruction of Experience: How Ecopsychology Has Failed” generated some curious responses from, specifically, ecopsychologists and ecotherapists. Many of them were provoked to defensiveness, denial, or both by my words. In fact, one commentator Thomas J. Doherty, a psychotherapist, was moved to write an essay for the San Diego Free Press where he characterized my report of the failure of ecopsychology as “greatly exaggerated.”
The responses suggest that some of my readers felt like I was attacking their life’s work. Of course, I was. Ecopsychologists, however, need not feel alone in their failure. With the destruction of the planet intensifying at an ever-faster pace, we are all failing.
As I’ve sought to understand the responses I received, I’ve realized that many students of ecopsychology employ a different definition of “success” than I do. Quite simply, their definition is infected with human supremacism.
One way to understand the difference is to ask: Would extinct species characterize reports of the failure of ecopsychology as “greatly exaggerated?” Would Pinta Island Tortoises, Pyrenean Ibexes, Falklands Wolves, Rocky Mountain Lotuses, Great Auks, Passenger Pigeons or any of the 200 species that were pushed to extinction yesterday, the 200 species that were pushed to extinction today, or the 200 species that will be pushed to extinction tomorrow characterize reports of the failure of ecopsychology as “greatly exaggerated”?
Lonesome George Pinta giant tortoise Santa Cruz (Source: putneymark/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)
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What is human supremacism?
In his 2016 book The Myth of Human Supremacy, Derrick Jensen coined the term “human supremacism” and gave human animals the analysis we so badly need to understand the murder of our non-human kin.
Human supremacism is a system of power in which humans dominate non-humans to derive material benefit. Agriculture is a classic result of human supremacism Agriculture requires clearing the land of every living being in order to plant and harvest a single crop which is then used to feed humans.
Human supremacism makes the fossil fuel industry possible. To produce electricity, to fuel cars, planes, and ships, to produce fertilizers for their crops, humans poison water, rip the tops off mountains, carve scars into landscapes, and fundamentally alter the climate. Even so-called “green energy” is produced by humans dominating non-humans as fragile desert ecosystems are destroyed for wind farms, rivers are dammed for hydroelectricity, and the land is gutted for metals and minerals like copper and aluminum to be used in solar panels.
The power humans have gained over non-humans is rooted in human supremacists’ maintenance of a monopoly of the means of violence over non-humans and their human allies who dare to challenge human supremacism.
The history of wolf-hunting in civilized nations, as just one example, demonstrates this monopoly. Despite centuries of demonization, wolves pose little direct threat to humans. However, when agriculture encroaches on the homes of wolves’ traditional prey causing these species’ populations to collapse, wolves will eat domesticated animals. Human supremacists throughout history have responded with wolf extermination campaigns. The extinction of so many wolf species while many other wolf species tinker on the edge of extinction is testament to the wrath of human supremacism.
Deep ecologist, Neil Evernden, pointed out that scientists in vivisection labs cut the vocal cords of the animals they experiment on. If humans heard the screams of their non-human kin, they would not murder them. Human supremacism takes this practice to the psychological level. You can physically cut the vocal cords of individual non-humans you plan to torture. Or, you can achieve a total silencing of the non-human world if you convince whole human societies that non-humans are incapable of communicating, incapable of screaming, incapable, even, of feeling pain.
Human supremacism cuts the vocal cords of the non-human world, and achieves this silencing, by developing cultural myths teaching that non-humans are “resources” to be used by humans. Living forests are no longer living forests; they are so many square feet of board lumber. Wild rivers are no longer wild rivers; they are so many cubic meters of water. Old-growth prairies are no longer old-growth prairies, they are so many acres of tillable farmland.
Another myth human supremacism propagates is the notion that humans are superior to everyone else. Because humans are superior, human domination of non-humans is completely justified and natural. Jensen shows how strongly humans cling to this sense of superiority. He writes, “Human supremacists – at this point, almost everyone in this culture – have shown time and again that the maintenance of their belief in their own superiority, and the entitlement that springs from this belief, are more important to them than the well-being or existences of everyone else.”
Human supremacists cannot tolerate anyone who reminds them of the insanity of human supremacy. They systematically annihilate traditional cultures and indigenous peoples with sustainable cultures based on human humility. Despite their best efforts to silence the non-human world, on a fundamental level the task is impossible and human supremacists come to hate non-humans for refusing to die quietly. And no one dies quietly. Human supremacists hate the reminders, so they must destroy the reminders, and in the destruction they are reminded again. If we do not stop human supremacists, their vicious cycle will only end when there is total silence.
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The responses I received for daring to suggest that ecopsychology has failed reveal that the maintenance of human supremacism is more important to many ecopsychologists than ensuring the survival of life on earth.
Let me be clear: There are positive trends within ecopsychology. At its best, ecopsychology uncovers the connection of human souls to the soul of the world, illustrates human dependence on the non-human, and demands effective action to protect the soul of the world and the non-humans we depend on. At its worst, ecopsychology privileges human psychological health at the expense of non-humans, seeks to use the natural world to promote false feelings of peace, becomes an anesthetic in the face of planetary collapse, and is infected with insidious human supremacy.
Ecopsychology’s human supremacist infection is as understandable as it is unforgivable. All of us born into the dominant culture have been indoctrinated to the central tenets of human supremacism. Radical psychologist R.D. Laing, who spent a brilliant career trying to understand how we arrived at a moment where humans were empowered to destroy the planet through forces like thermonuclear war, explained how deeply this indoctrination runs. He wrote, “Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves with high I.Q.s if possible.”
Despite these high I.Q.s that even good-hearted ecopsychologists are equipped with, human supremacism is so entrenched that it is almost invisible. On his way to ripping the mask off human supremacism, Jensen wrote in his study of hatred The Culture of Make Believe that “hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion…” And, when ecopsychologists place the primacy of human mental, emotional, spiritual, and even, physical health over the continued existence of forests, mountains, rivers, non-human species, and the planet’s capacity to support life, we must extend Jensen’s idea to conclude: Hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, it feels like ecopsychology.
Too many ecopsychologists, ecotherapists, and so-called environmentalists spend the vast majority of their time devising means to promote human mental health and feelings of peace, hope and acceptance through phenomena like what Doherty calls in his essay “nature contacts.”
Reducing non-humans to “nature contacts” objectifies them. Human supremacist ecopsychologists view living forests as therapy tools. They view rivers as anti-depressants. When humans view forests and rivers as objects to use to gain mental health, they act like men who view women as objects to use for sexual gratification, and white people who view people of color as objects to use for economic benefit.
But, living forests and wild rivers live for themselves.The world is not filled with “nature contacts.” It is filled with aspen groves, great-horned owls, elk, black bears, pinyon-juniper forests, rainbow trout, this smooth blue pebble, that red rock canyon, a particular wisp of fog moving through sage brush. In short, the world is filled with living beings who exist for their own purposes that you and I may never understand.
Ecopsychologists demonstrate where their concern lies through their actions, or what they actually do in their day-to-day lives. When students of ecopsychology are more concerned with how the natural world improves human mental health than they are with the murder of the natural world, they are acting as human supremacists. When their day-to-day lives are spent leading “wilderness immersion trips” for the sake of healing human minds while that very wilderness is threatened with human-induced collapse, they are acting as human supremacists. When their day-to-day lives are spent in the clinic office helping clients “cope” and “adjust to” the insanity of civilized culture while that culture threatens the existence of life on earth, they are acting as human supremacists.
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I am writing this series because I know there are students of ecopsychology who want to wield ecopsychology’s insights to make the environmental movement more effective, as I do. But to do this, we must be willing to take an honest assessment of ecopsychology that goes beyond human health, to the health of the natural world.
Exploring the different definitions of ecopsychological success helps us make this assessment. It is only possible to consider ecopsychology a success if you subscribe to a liberal, human supremacist worldview.
The human supremacist definition of success begins with what appears, at first glance, to be a series of obvious conclusions. First, human actions are causing planetary collapse. and humans actions flow from human psyches. So, it follows that changing human psyches is the path to stopping planetary collapse. For human supremacist ecopsychologists, planetary collapse is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy for the trauma it causes humans.
While I have no problem with the conclusion that human psyches need to change, I do have a problem with the means liberal ecopsychologists think will achieve this change. Most people on the Left attach positive connotations to “being liberal” and may be surprised by my criticism of the liberal worldview. Nevertheless, one reason planetary collapse is intensifying is the failure of the Left to forsake liberalism for a radical analysis.
The brilliant author Lierre Keith has devised an accurate articulation of the liberal worldview. She explains that, for liberals, the basic social unit is the individual. For liberals, individuals can be understood separate from the social environment constructing them. Liberals believe that attitudes are the sources and solutions of oppression, that pure human thought is the prime mover of social life, and, therefore, education and rational argument are the best engines for social change.
Liberal, human supremacist ecopsychology, because it embraces the notion that the basic social unit is the individual, focuses on healing human psyches one individual at a time. Because liberal ecopsychologists obsess over human thought as the primary culprit in psychopathology, they insist that individual education and rational argument are the best ways to heal widespread, cultural psychopathology. The prevalence of ecotherapy, whether its the healing of individuals in the clinic office, on wilderness immersion trips, or simple talk-therapy sessions conducted outside, is the result of a liberal belief that individual education will save the world.
The liberal, human supremacist worldview allows for ecopsychological success to be achieved on a personal and individual level. For liberal ecopsychologists every person, who alleviates depression with walks in a forest, or engages in grief work to come to acceptance of mass extinction, or finds a personal sense of joy amidst the destruction, is a success.
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My definition of success, on the other hand, is biocentric and radical. A biocentric definition of ecopsychological success recognizes that non-humans have souls, too, that human souls and non-human souls are expressions of Life’s soul. And, with these souls, comes a right to exist on their own terms. Humans are responsible for planetary collapse and changing human psyches is necessary to stop the collapse. But, the biocentric definition of success recognizes that the human psyche is fundamentally dependent on relationships with non-humans. So, the development of healthy human psyches requires, before anything else, a healthy biosphere.
My definition is also radical. Though most people misunderstand “radical” to mean “extreme,” radical simply means “getting to the roots.” For radicals, “getting to the roots” means understanding, and then dismantling, oppressive power structures on a global level. As part of this, radicals see groups and classes as the basic social unit. An individual’s group or class socially constructs the psyche. Most importantly, radicals understand that material power – the physical ability to coerce – is the prime mover of society. Social change, then, requires organized resistance geared at wielding power.
While I am very happy for individuals with access to existent natural communities who alleviate their mental illnesses through ecotherapy, these individual victories will be more and more difficult to come by so long as more and more natural communities are destroyed. As natural communities are destroyed, rates of human psychopathology will accelerate. Humans will become evermore insane while they cause ecological collapse and, causing ecological collapse, they ensure the impossibility of the physical survival of life.
Liberalism – with its individualism – and human supremacism – with the narcissism it facilitates in the human species – encourages ecopsychologists to ask “What can I do?” This question is no longer adequate. A biocentric, radical analysis pushes us beyond asking “What can I do?” to ask: “What needs to be done?”
More than just human individuals need to be saved. Human cultures where widespread psychopathology is impossible need to be created. To achieve these cultures requires dismantling the power structure causing ecological collapse, the power structure crushing sustainable cultures, and the power structure thwarting efforts to recreate sustainable cultures. Civilization – defined as a culture resulting from and producing humans living in populations so dense they require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life – is this power structure.
Civilization must be dismantled. This will not be achieved in the mind. Civilization is not an emotional state. It is not a misunderstanding. It will not be cured with rational argument.
Civilization is maintained by force. Men with guns and bombs ensure that business is conducted as usual. These guns and bombs give human supremacists power. They give human supremacists the ability to coerce everyone else. Human supremacists gain their guns and bombs, the physical force they require to protect civilization, through destruction of natural communities. Guns and bombs require mines, pipelines, and factories and the pollution mines, pipelines, and factories produce. To deprive human supremacists of their power requires depriving human supremacists of their physical ability to exploit natural communities. It requires dismantling mines, pipelines, and factories.
The question is, what are we waiting for?
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In the end, we are waiting for death. This death can be psychological. We can let the misguided hope in ineffective tactics die. We can let the mistaken belief that human well-being on a collapsing planet is possible die. We can let the insane insistence that we are more valuable than non-humans die.
Or, all of us will die.
I return to the stars. The stars illuminate our radical dependence on the non-human world for our existence. The stars teach that death brings new life. Death can be painful. I’m sure the death of a star, and the incineration of a solar system, is incredibly painful. But, after the pain, after the death of the old, a new life begins. Human supremacism must die, so a new human humility can begin.
Will Falk moved to the West Coast from Milwaukee, WI where he was a public defender. His first passion is poetry and his work is an effort to record the way the land is speaking. He feels the largest and most pressing issue confronting us today is the destruction of natural communities. He received a Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego Chapter, 2016 Journalism award. He is currently living in Utah.
This post will look at if nonviolence is effective and why it has become the default tactic of activists in industrialised countries. I’ll then conclude this run of posts on the problems of pacifism and nonviolence.
Is Nonviolence Effective?
Nonviolent resistance dominates most activist groups and campaigns in industrialised countries. If it were effective as a tactic, wouldn’t things be better than they are? Perhaps many nonviolent campaigns and movements do not adequately plan out their strategy and tactics. A number of nonviolence fundamentalists do state that nonviolence is powerless against extreme violence, [1] which is perhaps a good description of the society we live in.
Ward Churchill is clear that revolutionary strategy and tactics need to be tested to see if they’re able to achieve the goal of liberation. [2] If a critical assessment is not done, then there is a risk that the dogma of nonviolence takes precedence over achieving the goals that have been collectively set. [3]
Using pacifist and nonviolent methods self-restricts activists to a limited number of tactics and gives little chance of surprise. Their responses become predictable to the state. Those advocating force are not doing so because they want violence, but because our options are so limited that at times it’s necessary. [4] We need to use nonviolent tactics to resist but it’s not enough. We need the whole range of tactics to be available to us if we’re going have a chance of a livable planet (see the Taxonomy of Action image below, and a full page version here).
Why Has Nonviolence Become the Default Tactic of Activists in Industrialised Countries?
Nonviolence became popular during the civil rights and anti-war movements, and has now become the accepted method of challenging the state. Many radical activists have internalised the taboo around the use of force and go along with the generally accepted view that the use of force is wrong under any circumstances.
There has been little intellectual or practical effort to examine the nature of revolutions and what’s required to ensure they happen in industrialised countries. This has created a vacuum, which has been filled with the most convenient and readily available set of assumptions – pacifism or nonviolent resistance. [5] Gelderloos puts this shift down to the disappearance or institutionalisation of the social movements of the past. [6] The heavy involvement of NGOs, mass media, universities, wealthy benefactors, and governments has made a move towards “civil” resistance all but assured. [7]
Another very important factor that has caused nonviolence to become the most common tactic in mainstream activism is that it allows people to protest and campaign without too much risk to themselves. They can feel that they are doing something to alleviate their guilt about the way the world is run and the amount of suffering taking place. They can bear moral witness, posturing as decent people but actually being complicit in the crimes that they purport to oppose by not doing what it takes to win. This is also known as the “Good German Syndrome.” [8]
According to Derrick Jensen, claims that militant actions will threaten one’s own resistance are similar to death camp inmates employing different approaches to survival. In these camps, some want to make things more comfortable, and perceive those that want to escape as threats to those who want a bit more soap or food. This causes a “constriction in initiative and planning” in those inmates who have not been completely broken and approach the daily tasks of survival with ingenuity. Indirectly, their field of initiative is constantly narrowed by those in control. This relates to the lack of effectiveness of our current resistance to the state; many are captives of this culture who have not been completely “broken,” but have been traumatised to the point that their “field of initiative” has been consistently narrowed by the state. Prolonged trauma results in a reduction in active engagement in the world because the victim learns that they are being watched, that their actions will be thwarted, and that they will pay dearly for them. [9]
Churchill outlines a process of radical therapy with five phases to work through the pacifist problem.
Values clarification, where the need for revolutionary social change is explained. The difference between needs based on reality or feeling is explored. The goal of this phase is to determine if the person’s values are consistent with revolutionary change or reform.
Reality therapy, which involves direct and extended exposure to the lives of oppressed people in industralised and less industralised countries. Those undergoing therapy would live in these communities for extended periods of time, eating the food and getting by on an average income for that community.
Evaluation, which is a period of guided and independent reflection upon the observation and experiences in “the real world.”
Demystification, at this point participants will argue that militant resistance is necessary but may not want to engage in it themselves. They may have never handled weapons, so are scared of them. In this phase, they are trained how to use weapons. This stage is not about training guerrilla fighters, but rather showing the participants that they can learn these skills—that a weapon is simply a tool, although a powerful and dangerous one—and therefore that the decision to use force is a tactical one.
Reevaluation, in this phase participants will be helped to articulate their overall perspective on the nature and process of “revolutionary social transformation,” which includes their understanding of what specific roles they might take in the process. [10]
Where does this leave us? Jeriah Bowser argues:
[There is an] incredible amount of misunderstanding, narrow-minded dogmatism, and animosity that I obverse with many resistance communities. No matter what the social issue at hand, I have almost always found the parties involved to be rigidly polarized on the issue of violence: is it an acceptable tool to use for resisting oppression or not?
I believe both camps have much to offer the other, but we must first look at ourselves and examine our own positions critically, seeing the ways in which we might limit our own cause through hypocrisy, ignorance, privilege, personal fears and insecurities, and a misunderstanding of historical events. Then we can begin to understand the other side of the position, see the reasons that many people have chosen the alternative option, and ultimately try to find truths within their position that we can echo and sympathize with. To fail to consider and understand the other is to consciously remain ignorant. [11]
I completely agree with Bowser that those advocating force and those advocating nonviolence need to learn from each other, work together in solidarity where we have the same aims. It is achieving our collective goals that is important, not the tactics we employ—assuming these tactics aim to defend life.
Nonviolence fundamentalists paint those who think it might be necessary to use force as evil; but they all want the same thing: a just, sustainable world. The choice between using non-violence or force is a tactical decision. Those who advocate for the use of force are not arguing for blind unthinking violence, but against blind unthinking nonviolence. [12]
People who care about living in that just, sustainable world need to truly commit to their passion and act in whatever way makes sense to them. It is up to each individual and community to decide how to resist. The ultimate arbiter should be effectiveness. It is not right for others to judge those who choose to use force in service of revolution, especially if they are white, male and privileged.
