by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 14, 2018 | Music & Art
by Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance
“And for destroying the destroyers of the earth…” — Revelations, 11-18
The film “First Reformed” has an interesting premise. Toller (Ethan Hawke) is the sad, solitary pastor of a small church who is asked to help Michael (Philip Ettinger), an activist and member of his congregation, who is struggling.
The two begin a dialogue, and Michael shares a sense of hopelessness in the face of ecological collapse. “It’s 2017,” he says, “and the IPCC said in 2010 that if drastic changes weren’t made by 2015, the entire planet’s ecology might collapse.” He also points out that hundreds of environmental activists are killed worldwide every year.
As Toller grapples with the existential questions brought on by this conversation, Michael’s wife Mary (played by Amanda Seyfried) finds explosives and a suicide vest hidden in the garage, and shows them to Toller, who takes them away. After discovering that his stash gone, Michael commits suicide.
The first major flaw in the film is the perpetuation of the stereotype that being aware of the state of the planet—toxification, species extinction, global warming, the refugee crisis, etc.—is to be consumed by all-encompassing depression. Michael is also described as having “no friends” and being “barely even sociable.”
These ideas are inaccurate and dangerous. The key message is this: if contemplating ecological collapse will drive you to suicide, then the science and discourse around ecological collapse is dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. This idea strengthens and validates the culture of denial that dominates popular discourse, and the stereotype that revolutionaries are depressed and alone.
In my experience, the opposite is true: those of us who fight back have rich communities and better mental health than the average. These themes resurface later in the film as well.
Toller is left to provide some small support to Mary, now a widow. But he remains deeply troubled by the statistics and trends on ecological collapse that the film accurately depicts.
The film sets up a tension between Toller’s small, struggling church and a massive nearby congregation—generously funded by a large fossil fuel corporation. The subtext is clear, and meant to examine the tension between religion at its best, as a source of moral guidance and inspiration for freedom fighters such as those on the underground railroad, and at its worst, as a narcotic, as the opiate of the masses and a tool of colonization.
At this point in the film, Toller’s simmering rage, sadness, and emotion waiting to explode become more apparent. Hidden beneath the puritan veneer of a small-town preacher lies alcoholism and a deep sadness. “No sooner do I close my eyes than desolation is upon me,” he says at one point in the film, after recounting the death of his son in Iraq—a war he encouraged his son to join, then later came to see as unjust.
After a promising start, the film takes a nosedive. There are two points on which the ending of the film fails completely. The first is feminist, the second environmental.
I thought, at first, naively, that this film wasn’t going to fall into casting the female lead as a sex object. But, predictably, it did, in a strange scene in which Mary, who is presumed to be in her early 30’s and who is pregnant and recently widowed, asks Toller, in his late 40’s, alcoholic and a minister, to snuggle with her. However, the scene seems to remain platonic, despite its strangeness and improbability.
After this, tortured by the thought of environmental collapse and by the collaboration between the oil company and his fellow Christians, Hawke decides to take the suicide vest (which he has kept) into a public event and blow himself—and the oil executives—up. After seeing Mary unexpectedly arrive, he doffs the explosives, wraps himself in rusty barbed wire, and prepares to commit suicide himself by drinking drain cleaner. Then Mary comes into the room, her and Toller begin kissing, and film ends abruptly.
What the fuck?
This is why I hate Hollywood and don’t really watch movies. Provided with a fascinating topic and a talented cast, all the filmmaker can muster is this emotional trainwreck, this pointlessness.
As is so common in popular culture, the artist (the director, in this case) confuses emotional turmoil with deep meaning. The final message might as well be a line Toller reads from his bible: “…the knowledge of the emptiness of all things, which can only be filled by the knowledge of our savior.”
Both of Toller’s final approaches—the suicide vest and the barbed wire—represent the self-flagellation of total helplessness. They are only personal solutions, not social or moral or political ones.
Revolutionaries don’t need this shit. We need cultural products—art, music, film, books, poetry, etc.—which nurture our resistance spirit, encourage our hearts, and teach us about healthy lives and effective ways of fighting empire.
Don’t waste your time on this film, or any other bullshit coming out of Hollywood.
by DGR News Service | May 5, 2014 | Music & Art
By Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
Most popular music makes me sick. If it isn’t misogyny and objectification of women, it’s blatant materialism. Even music that doesn’t fit into popular oppression is likely to be completely vapid, empty of any soul, culture, or political meaning.
That’s why I’m so pleased with British Columbia-based hip-hop artist The Filthy Politicians. Their latest album, “The Modern Man”, is also their first full-length album, with eleven tracks, and it’s a great album.
The music is characterized by samples from popular songs, elegant mixing, and humble, intensely political lyrics that just about anyone can relate to. Dan Peters, the vocalist and producer, largely avoids the contrived feeling that some political music conveys; instead, his lyrics come across as personal. Most hip-hop fans will enjoy just about every track on the album.
The album starts off with a strong beat in “On The Level”, where Peters raps:
Everything about now is fucked and I’m tired of tip-toeing around it.
Other strong tracks include the title track, “Modern Man”, which critiques the modern lifestyle, “6am”, which looks at the alcohol-fueled lifestyle of the average 20-something, and “200 Species Every Day”, which follows a hypothetical duo of underground saboteurs dedicated to shutting down industrial civilization.
Yes, that’s really what the song is about. And it’s great.
The Filthy Politicians don’t have a website or bio online, but I did find this:
In a world held captive by empty plastic promises, Dan Peters of the filthy politicians is trying to figure out how it’s all come to this and what we might do about it. Beyond the shallow, token analysis and solutions offered up by the ones that continue to benefit from the destruction of our Mother Earth, the filthy politicians set out to take a deep look at an extreme situation and urge those with more human than machine left inside to respond accordingly- at the risk of being labeled extreme ourselves. Equal parts urgency, analysis, vitriol, and encouragement, the effort is completely DIY with all tracks composed, recorded, and produced in the woods on a small farm on a small island. the filthy politicians just released his first full length album ‘Modern Man’ on February 14, 2014. If you love life then check it.
Learn more about The Filthy Politicians and check out their music here:
Bandcamp: http://thefilthypoliticians.bandcamp.com/ (free download of “Modern Man”)
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcj4UIyXiGZrXj7naWxp5lw (includes some old music videos)
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/thefilthypoliticians (every song they’ve ever made)
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 6, 2012 | Listening to the Land, Music & Art
By Ben Barker / Beautiful Resistance Distro
What follows is an interview with Aurora Lewis and Max Lockwood of Big Dudee Roo, an ecologically-inspired music group from Wayland, Michigan. I had a chance to talk with them around the new year of 2012 about their new album, what inspires them, and being part of a culture of resistance. Visit their
website to learn more about them.
Beautiful Resistance Distro: Hello, It’s Ben for Beautiful Resistance Distro. I’m honored to have the chance to have a discussion with members of the music group Big Dudee Roo. To start, would you please give a brief explanation of who you are and what you do?
Max: We’re a folk-rock band from Wayland, Michigan. We write a lot of original music and play a lot of shows around Michigan. I think our music has a wide range of themes, as far as the songs that we write. Me and Nate, our banjo player, tend to focus on different environmental and social justice themes, in sort of a way that relates to people individually and emotionally. As far as the music itself goes too, we really try to focus on having a unique, original sound that is still grounded in folk and rock influences, and those genres. We pay really close attention to the songs. There’s really no virtuosic playing in the band. Everyone kind of plays their role and contributes to the song itself without stepping all over the song. You know, there’s not a lot of solos or anything. So, it’s sort of more egalitarian the way we make music.
Aurora: Yeah, I think mostly we all just love to play. You know, we just love music.
Max: And, we’re all really close friends. We all grew up in the same small town here in Southwest Michigan. So, we have a close bond with each other.
BRD: When did you start playing music together as Big Dudee Roo and what first led you to begin using your gifts as musicians as a tool for expressing your personal views on environmental, social, and political issues?
Aurora: As far as when Big Dudee Roo started playing: like we said we all went to the same high school. Everybody else in the band is a few years older than me. I’m Max’s little sister. They started playing— Max and Nate played 7th and 8th grade talent shows. And then Justin was your friend too, and so is Kurt, so they started playing together.
Max: Kurt was actually Justin’s next door neighbor. We needed a drummer and Justin was like, “I think Kurt’s a drummer”. And Kurt used to babysit Justin back in the day because they live right next to each other.
Aurora: Yeah, and then I started singing backup with them when I was about fourteen years old and I officially joined the band when I was about sixteen.
Max: And, we used to be called Big Dudee Roo and the Raptors.
Aurora: We all had nicknames; raptor nicknames.
Max: It’s such a long name that no one could remember or get it right. They’d be like, “What…did you just say?” So for practical purposes we just cut off “the Raptors”.
Aurora: Yeah, there was one venue that put up a flyer about us that said “Big Dundee Roo and the Rafters”.
Max: As far as when we started using our musical talents to support or promote different political and social causes: that was something that attracted me about music right from the beginning. When me and Nate were in 8th grade we had a pop-punk band. That’s how we got our start. I was attracted by—back then I remember there was a band called NOFX that I was into. They had some political songs, some anti-Bush songs and I thought that was so cool. So, when I first started writing songs that was something I started doing really early, trying to write protest songs. Then, over the years our political consciousness as individuals and as a band grew a lot and I personally got really into Deep Green Resistance activists and writers. I read a lot of Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith and even spent some time over in Bellingham, Washington, working with some members of Fertile Ground, who are still really great friends today. So, it’s always been important to me, and I think it’s important to everybody in the band, to see music not just as pure entertainment, but as something that can make people think and get at their emotions. You know, on one hand music is entertainment—you want to make music that sounds good and that people are going to enjoy, that they can dance to, move to—but on the other hand it’s always been more than that for me. I remember in high school I was totally obsessed with the band Pearl Jam. It sounds funny, but I was totally attracted to how they did things like took on Ticketmaster for having a monopoly. A lot of their songs actually deal with feminist issues. There are lots of songs that concern abortion and also songs about the abuse of the culture. That was something that really attracted me. Anyways, we love—like last year when we got to play at Candlelight Collective in West Bend—that was so much fun and we had such a great night. Because a lot of times we play in bars and different places aren’t necessarily paying close attention to the words, and maybe even not the music, sometimes. So, it was great to play at a place like that where everyone was super engaged and playing attention to the words we were saying. And, we could tell the stories about the songs. That just feels so good. Those are the shows we love to play.
Aurora: The gems.
BRD: Many of your lyrics seem to express affinity and love with the natural world, as well as anger for the destruction of it. Does the land where you live inspire your songs, and if so, how? Are there any specific nonhuman neighbors who inspire each of you?
Max: Totally. Yes, to all of that. Actually, where we’re sitting right now is our parents’ house where we grew up as kids. Right back here behind me there used to be an old swamp marshland with pretty old growth oak forest, actually, which is surprising because we’re in a suburban area. But, somehow that survived. But not for long: when I was thirteen it was all clear cut and there was going to be a condominium development back there, but the developer ended up going bankrupt. Now there’s just a road back there with no houses. The swamp was filled in and now it’s kind of restoring itself. There’s a pond, and a lot of frogs back there now. Despite the destruction, it is fun to watch it come back because it’s just being left alone. That’s been kind of interesting. As a little kid, we used to spend a lot of time back in those woods. I remember there used to be turtles in our backyard all the time and deer right behind the fence. This land had definitely inspired a lot of my own lyrics, as I take a lot of walks back there. I distinctly remember one song—it’s called “Yours is my Origin”, from our first E.P.—where I was sitting here in summer with the slider door open, and I could hear birds outside and the wind rustling through the trees. I was playing the guitar and I would walk around in circles and I could literally feel the trees giving me inspiration for the words in the song. I would just feel it. I’d sit down and look out there and then I’d write a lyric down, and then go back and forth. And, as far as individual animals, I have always had a strong connection with ravens and crows. And there’s a song about ravens and a song about crows on the new album. So, that shows up a lot, too. They’re even in my dreams.
Aurora: Max has a song that he wrote on our new album, and it’s called “Being Free”. There’s one specific line that, when we’re playing shows live, I just close my eyes and get really inspired by because it says, “this land isn’t our land, this land is its own.” It reminds me of when the woods behind us were totally clear cut and it was so sad. I was like nine years old. And I remember me and my mom went out there and we tried to do all this stuff to get the developers to stop. She went to so many city council meetings trying to fight it and get them to leave the woods, but it never worked. I’m always really inspired by that line in Max’s song because this land is totally its own, it’s taking a new form and it’s rebuilding itself and making itself its own again. And, I feel a really big connection to animals. I get really inspired by the way they interact with each other. Especially birds; how they can all fly in unison, and it’s totally intuitive for them. They all fly as one and it’s amazing and I love to watch that happen and it really inspires me.
BRD: I was actually humming “Yours is my Origin” as I was walking around the forest today.
Aurora and Max: Awesome!
BRD: You recorded most of your latest album live in a barn. Can you explain more about making this album and about the barn itself?
Aurora: Oh gosh, there’s so much to be said about the barn. Well, first of all it was beautiful. It was huge and it was one of our friends, totally just lent his barn to us to record. So, when I got up there and saw it for the first time, I was just in awe. There were Christmas lights hung everywhere in this huge barn. The guys stayed up there for three days straight. They slept there, they cooked there, everything. I never slept there because I was only needed for the vocals which we did on the third day. So, when I went there I remember thinking it was so awesome and there were roosters down beneath the barn, there were hens. There’s so much to say, but it was just really sweet.
Max: When we recorded it, we played the music live in the barn. It’s a big open area. And, in quiet moments on the CD, you can hear the roosters from down below. Or you can hear crickets or frogs outside or swallows flying around the barn.
Aurora: Yeah, there’s a whole track: “Crickets and Frogs”.
Max: The barn is old and beautiful and there were bats flying inside it with us at night, when we would fall asleep. It was a great weekend too because it was a full moon. And, the barn has all these Christmas lights strung up in it and there’s great lighting in there. We would flip on all the lights in the barn at night and we’d go outside and walk down the hill. There was the great line of Osage Orange Trees that are old and all packed close together and we would stand along there and look up at the moon and then look at the barn and just feel like “wow, I can’t believe we’re here right now”. It was such an amazing experience to record the album like that. The way we did it, too, you can really hear the sound of the barn on the record. We even had one or two microphones set up to capture the ambient sound of the music reverberating in the barn. I think it’s a pretty unique sound and we’re really lucky to be able to do it there. Greg Peterson and his family were so kind to us. Oh, I should say that Greg’s son, Adam, is around our age—a college student—and he’s very environmentally conscious. He had the coolest bike I’ve ever seen. He had taken a used copy of Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, cut out all of the pages, and glued it around the frame of the bike, everywhere. So, his bike frame was Sand County Almanac. It was just so cool.
BRD: That’s amazing! What responses has your work evoked from your community?
Max: Good question. Well, it depends. I think we have friends and fans who are really plugged in to the political and environmental aspects of the music and we get a lot of feedback from that, especially from you all, who really picked up on that and are inspired by it, which in turn inspires us a lot. We’ve got friends here who are also really inspired by that. Honestly, and unfortunately, it’s tough to say what our community is because for one thing we’re kind of all spread out about the state right now. When I think of our community, though, there is a strong music community here of different artists and musicians and friends. We’ve been getting a really great response from that community. We had one of our friends, and I think a hero of everybody in the band, Samuel Seth Bernard, who is another Michigan artist—he and his wife May Erlewine do a lot of music together, and they are very inspirational to us—play lap steel guitar on the new CD. He has a lot of songs that confront the destruction of the natural world in a very positive manner. He played on the new album and loved it and says a lot of great things about us, so that felt great. You know, it’s tough to say right now because on one hand we haven’t gotten our music out there that much because we haven’t been around very long.
Aurora: Lately we’ve been getting pretty enthusiastic responses to our music, whether that is because people like our music or our lyrics or both, or us as people. It’s been really awesome and inspiring.
Max: Actually, now that I think about it I would say we really just started to build a community that’s in our fans and friends. It’s pretty cool because while we don’t have a whole ton of fans right now, the fans we do have are really devoted and we give and take a lot from those people. That’s been really cool to see and that’s what we want: a more close relationship with our friends and fans who appreciate the music.
BRD: What experience or impact do you hope a listener or audience member will take away after hearing your music?
Max: That’s a tough one because it’s such an individual thing for everybody. Personally, I think the number one thing for me as a song writer—I think a lot of my own opinions come through a lot in the songs and that’s always going to happen, but I’m not necessarily looking for people to think like me. Really, what I want the most is for people to think for themselves and sort of take an honest appraisal of what’s happening in the world. If they like my view of it, that’s great, but if it sort of convinces them to just think for themselves and be inspired to do something, that’s the most that I can hope for. Also, to feel more of a connection to themselves and to their community and their friends and family and build on that, build community. One of the songs I’m proudest of on the new record is “You are Your Own”, because it emulates all of those things for me, even just the title “You are Your Own”. That’s what I want people to get out of it, I think.
Aurora: I think that some of the best things that happen after a show or after somebody hears our album is when somebody says to me or Max or anybody else In the band, something like “Oh my gosh, that was so inspiring. I want to just get up and do something and take action now.” Like, I had a couple of people say that. I feel like that’s the best thing that can happen when somebody hears our music. Whether somebody says it to us or is just thinking it, awesome. That’s the best thing that can happen, is that it inspires people and makes them want to do more for themselves and everybody else.
Max: I’m really excited that we’re putting this album out right after the whole Occupy movement has really politicized young people in this country for the first time in a long time and now it’s sort of unavoidable to think about these things. Just in our home base, Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the size of the city, there’s a really strong Occupy group there with quite a few people who are Deep Green Resistance-type folks. It’s just great that there’s that cultural shift that’s happened, so those themes in our music are maybe a little more easily picked up on because people are just thinking about those things more right now. I hope that’s true.
Aurora: Well said.
BRD: Resistance seems to be a reoccurring theme in your songs; resistance to ecological destruction, sexism, capitalist culture. Would you like to see your music as being part of a culture of resistance? Please explain.
Max: Yes, of course. I think a lot about where music fits into that, and I think it is really important. One thing I’m thinking is there’s a lot of music out there that’s really popular, that a lot of young people listen to and are influenced by, that is totally toxic. A lot of the most popular music just scares the crap out of me. To think that young people are hearing this—like, what’s that Rhianna song, whips and chains excite me or something?—that’s just scary. So, the people who are creating those songs and are promoting abuse or destructive attitudes have really good, well produced music with really talented people to help them, and I think we deserve that too. We deserve to have a lot of really great music and art and writing, poetry—you name it—that supports causes that we identify with, like how we feel about these things. Obviously, music isn’t something that has very direct effects as being part of a culture of resistance. Music isn’t going to sequester carbon or anything like that. But, I think it is important and has a really strong ability to foster community. It just brings people together in a way that doesn’t happen very often in this culture. I think it’s really important to have music to build solidarity within a culture of resistance. Also, I see our music as trying to bridge the gap between the people who are actively working in the culture of resistance and the people who would support it if they knew more what it’s truthfully about. Those people might never take strong action, but it’s that unquantifiable crowd that supports the idea of resistance or its legitimacy, just in their conversations with friends and family, or anything like that. Just that base of support that I think is really important but it’s hard to put your finger on what it is exactly. So, we’re trying to create culture, and we’re trying to create it where there isn’t a culture of resistance so we have to start from the ground up.
Aurora: I think it would be really cool if we had more young people that listen to our music, because a lot of young kids and teens grow up listening to some really degrading, awful music. I totally did when I was twelve years old. That effects people subconsciously so much more than anyone will ever know. I think it’s really cool when young people listen to our music because subconsciously and consciously, I think they start to say, “Oh, this is what’s happening and this is making me wonder what they are talking about”. They start, maybe, to recognize what’s going on.
Max: How I first got into anti-civilization thought is Pearl Jam, like I said, has an album called “Yield”, and it has a song—they were all passing around Daniel Quinn’s book Ishmael when they wrote the album—called “Do the Evolution” that Eddie Vedder always said is pretty much directly based on that book and his reaction to it. I loved them and so I went and picked up Ishmael and I read it in about a day and a half. I was about fifteen years old and it totally blew my world open.
Aurora: That’s what started me with realizing what was going on.
Max: So, I’m a perfect example of the fact that music can lead someone down that path. From there I got into Derrick Jensen. Also, I think music is inherently emotional and gets at people’s emotions in a very deep way; it gets at their deepest fears and desires, even when it doesn’t have words attached to it. I heard someone say music is “what feelings sound like”. That’s so true. When it’s connected—like our lyrics—to political or environmental causes that we feel strongly about, that we want people to feel similarly about, that emotional aspect helps a lot.
BRD: Do you have advice for other writers, musicians, or artists who are creating politically focused art?
Aurora: It’s awesome that people are taking a political focus in their music and there seems to be a lot more of that today but a lot of young artists, poets, authors, musicians don’t know what to do with all of their political work and they don’t know how it’s going to help the world or where it’s going to go or if they can do anything with their work. But, you totally can. I’m a really firm believer that if you have a piece of work and you show it to one person, that’s making a difference. I personally believe that. So, don’t give up. Show it to as many people as you can and get it out there with the resources that you have and make it known. It doesn’t matter if it’s one or one thousand people; I really think that if one person sees your work it can make a difference.
Max: To speak to that, I think it’s a funny way that political art impacts people. I think it’s unusual that people immediately respond to it. With recorded music especially, somebody hears a band they like and they pick up the CD and go home and maybe flip through the lyric booklet and go, “Oh, wow”, and have a more instant relationship with the words and what the band is saying politically. A lot of times there’s not an immediate recognition that people have really picked up on your political message. It happens with time; when they come back to it they read it a second time and then they really get drawn into that. Then, maybe that picks up their consciousness a little bit and maybe they’ll research for themselves more. And, not everybody does that. It’s a fairly small amount of people that might end up actually doing that, but that’s still so important and it’s those people who really have a strong connection with the work. Another thing is that something I’ve struggled with, personally, while trying to make political songs or writing is what is the line between being preachy—I don’t want to say that you shouldn’t be preachy, if you need to preach. Basically, the rule should be if there’s something in you that you feel needs to get out and that people need to hear, that you need to express, that’s the number one thing. You shouldn’t even question for a second what it is. If you feel strongly it needs to be out there, then it’s got to be out there. I think for me, like I said, I really want people to think for themselves, and I don’t want people to think like me. I want them to figure things out for themselves and I’ll give them the information that I have and the feelings that I have, and put them out there for them to think about. Once you put a work out there, you can’t control the way people are going to think about it, the way they are going to interpret things, so you have to try to be as clear as you can with the feeling you want to express. That said, I have a lot of strong opinions and I can’t help but put those forth in the art that I make. It’s a fine line to walk. For me, I try not to be too preachy, but at the same time I try to be direct and clear about the way I feel about things. You can’t worry about what everyone is going to think about your music or your poem or your artwork. There are always going to be some people that don’t like it, and some people that really like it. When you make that connection with the people that really do like it, it’s just the most beautiful thing. So that’s what’s important.
BRD: Is there anything else you’d like to mention before we end the interview? Any websites or contact information you’d like to plug.
Max: Yeah, our CD is online and we all the social networking things—facebook, twitter. Both of our CD’s are available at bigdudeeroo.com and you are selling our CD in Beautiful Resistance Distro, which is really cool, we’re really excited about that. That’d be a great place to pick it up. It’s called Listen to Your Discontent. To everyone out there: keep in touch, find us online, and hopefully we’ll see you in the flesh someday.
BRD: Great. Thank you!
Aurora and Max: Thank you.
From Kid Cutbank: http://kidcutbank.blogspot.com/2012/01/music-of-resistance-interview-with-big.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 8, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Music & Art, Strategy & Analysis
By Derrick Jensen
RECENTLY, I’VE BEEN THINKING about something I wrote fourteen years ago, which has become one of my most quoted passages: “Every morning when I wake up I ask myself whether I should write, or blow up a dam.” Despite having faith in my work as a writer, I knew that it wasn’t a lack of words that was killing salmon in the Northwest. It was the presence of dams.
Since that time, things have gotten much worse for salmon, and for almost everything on the earth. By now we all know the numbers, or we should. Two hundred species per day driven extinct, 90 percent of the large fish in the oceans extirpated, more than 98 percent of native forests destroyed, 99 percent of prairies, and on and on. Virtually every biological indicator is pointing the wrong direction. Native communities—human and nonhuman—are under assault. Where I live, frog populations have collapsed, as have newt populations, butterfly populations, crane fly populations, dragonfly populations, banana slug populations, songbird populations. Crow populations have collapsed. Bat populations. Woolly bear populations. Moth populations. Bumblebee and solitary bee populations. And these are just some of the absences I’ve noticed. Salmon of course have continued to collapse. At this point I give salmon fifteen years. If we can bring down industrialized civilization in the next fifteen years, I think salmon, in time, will be fine. Much longer and they will not survive.
So where does writing fit in? Far too many of us have forgotten, or never knew, that words can be used as weapons in service of our communities. Far too many of us have forgotten, or never knew, that words should be used as weapons in service of our communities. For far too long, too many critics and teachers have told us that literature should be apolitical (as though this were possible), and that even nonfiction and journalism should be “neutral” or “objective” (as though this, too, were possible). If you want to send a message, they told us, use Western Union. I once spoke with a nature writer who refused to lend his name to a campaign to protect a species about whom he had written, giving as his reason, “I’m a writer. I have to remain neutral.”
When the world is being murdered, such a position is inexcusable. It is immoral. And it reveals a great ignorance for what it means to be a writer. Have these people never heard of Steinbeck, Dickens, Crane, Hugo? Charlotte Perkins Gilman? Rachel Carson? Frederick Douglass? Harriet Beecher Stowe? Alexandra Kollontai? George Eliot? Katharine Burdekin? Zora Neale Hurston? Andrea Dworkin? B. Traven? Upton Sinclair? A little Tolstoy, anyone?
I would not be who I am and I would not write what I write without having learned from some of my elders who refused to believe that writers should or can be apolitical or neutral or objective. The truth is most important, they said. It is more important than money. It is more important than fame. It is more important than your career. It’s more important than your preconceptions. Follow the truth—follow the words and ideas—wherever they lead. Words matter, they said. Art matters. Literature matters. Words and art and literature can change lives, and can change history. Make sure that your words and your art and your literature move people individually and collectively in the direction of justice and sustainability. They said literature that supports capitalism is immoral. A literature that supports patriarchy is immoral. A literature that does not resist oppression is immoral. But you can help to create a literature of morality and resistance, as each new generation must create this literature, with the help of all those generations who came before, holding their hands for support, just as those who come after will need to hold yours.
I was also taught that art can be and is and, to be moral, must be a combat discipline.
Recognizing that art can be a combat discipline is part of a process necessary for social change, but it’s not all of it. If too few of us remember that words can be weapons, even fewer of us remember that, as weapons, words cannot fight alone. Words themselves do not topple dictators, they do not stop capitalism, they do not stop oppression, they do not halt species extinction, they do not stop global warming, they do not remove dams. At some point someone actually has to do something. At some point someone needs to physically dismantle the infrastructures that allow capitalism to metastasize, oppression to continue, species extinction and global warming to accelerate, dictators and dams to stand.
That job is up to all of us.
A friend and mentor once asked me, “What are the largest, most pressing problems you can help to solve using the gifts that are unique to you in all the universe?” That question shows precisely where I have succeeded as a writer and human being, and precisely where I have failed.
There are many ways my writing life could so far be considered a success far beyond anything I daydreamed about when I was younger. I have twenty books out. People seem to enjoy reading them and coming to my talks, both of which honor me beyond belief. Despite the truth of the old cliché about writing, that it is a terrible way to make a living and a great way to make a life, for at least the last few years I’ve been able to financially support myself through writing. More important than all of these, however, is that I have been true to my muse, and have at least attempted to tell the truth as I have come to understand it. And I have sometimes succeeded in articulating some of those things I know in my heart to be true, and in so doing have, I hope, helped some others to articulate some of those things they may know in their hearts to be true.
This is all to the good. But the fact remains that if we judge my work, or anyone’s work, by the most important standard of all, and in fact the only standard that really matters, which is the health of the planet, my work (and everyone else’s) is a complete failure. Because my work hasn’t stopped the murder of the planet. Nor has anyone else’s. We haven’t even slowed it down. It’s embarrassing to have to explain why this is the only standard that really matters, but at this point embarrassment is the least of our problems. The health of the planet is the only standard that really matters because without a living planet nothing else is important, because nothing else exists. Compared to this, the number of books one has published doesn’t matter. How beautifully or poorly they are written doesn’t matter. Financially supporting oneself doesn’t matter. Life itself is more important than what we create.
These days when I wake up, I’m even less certain that my decision to write is the right one. I know that a culture of resistance needs every form of action, from writing to legal work to mass protests in the streets to physically dismantling destructive infrastructures. And that too few people are calling for actions that are commensurate with the threats to the planet. And so, for better or worse, most mornings, articulating the truth and defending it and rallying others to defend it in whatever ways they know how is the method of combat I choose.
The time for waiting is long gone. It is time to stop this culture from destroying life on earth. So take my hand. Take the hands of all those who came before us. But keep your other hand free, to make a fist or to pick up a pen. The health of the oceans, the forests, the rivers, the salmon, the sturgeon, the migratory songbirds, are all more important than you or I individually, and they are more important than your or my accomplishments. Their health will be the measure of our success.
From Orion Magazine: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6698/
