THOUGHT TO EXIST IN THE WILD
Awakening From The Nightmare of Zoos
By Derrick Jensen
Photographs: Karen Tweedy-Holmes
Review by Abolitionist-Online

This culture is killing the planet Derrick Jensen writes. In part it is because of how we perceive the world. We act according to how we experience the world.

Thought to Exist In The Wild is born out of a question Jensen asked himself: What is the point of zoos? What do they teach us about ourselves?

The answer is clearly heartbreaking, the photographs being a worthy testament to the sheer boredom, isolation, confinement and anguish our species has subjected the nonhuman Other to.

Imprisoned in our own thought forms, humans have inflicted that onto the nonhuman Other. What does a human get out of visiting a zoo in any case?

Derrick Jensen will tell us its “the thrill is purely in the novelty, as with a rare stamp or coin. It isn’t in the animals themselves, who are in this purview nothing more or less than commodities.”

Making comparisons between zoos and women inside the internet pornography industry is one of Jensen’s hallmarks. What is happening to nonhuman Others, happens to humans eventually.

Zoos are about power, he tells us. Power over another. It’s a theme that runs right through his professional published life. Zoos demonstrate that everything is up for graps and zookeepers aren’t the only one’s who interact exploitatively with their surroundings.

This is pure vintage Derrick Jensen at his best.

A stimulating, interesting, refreshing book. Without actually articulating it, Jensen elevates the human condition back to its natural, concerned and dignified state that acknowledges that the world is a long way off the beaten track when it comes to the nonhuman Other, the environment and human space and place needed to sustainably survive and thrive on the planet.

Jensen doesn’t make the comparison, like so many others in the animal rights and environmental movement, that we are “just one more animal.” We are not. The human species has a contract with the nonhuman subject and their habitat. We have the capacity to act for a nonhuman Other, not the other way around – obviously! Instead we imprison them and deny them their natural rights. That in itself speaks volumes.

It’s a book written with great sensitivity, insight and knowledge. It comes highly recommended. Derrick Jensen par excellence.