ENDGAME Volume 1: The Problem Of Civilization and Volume 2: Resistance

Willing or not, ready or not the human species is involved in an all-out, no holds barred war against the dominant culture, western culture. Most people are not competitors, they are the stakes. The spoils, no less, is every living, beating heart and every soul of sentient life upon the planet. The effects of the dominant culture are obvious in every polluted river, the devastation of wildlife, destruction of habitat, the loss of the Coho salmon, dioxin in every mother's breast milk and the habitat of great grizzly bear to name but a few examples from the book. Derrick Jensen wants that turned around. No one can be exempted from the dominant cultures effects. No sector of our lives remains untouched. No sector of any non-humans life remains untouched. Endgame invites us to fight back.

From the standpoint of the traditional left, the vices of contemporary culture – the Machine - what Derrick Jensen uncovers might be all too easily explained away to that old devil capitalism. Another mundane interpretation might centre around the evils stemming from the unrestricted pursuit of profit and the manipulative deceptions of the few profiteers as a major corrupting influence. Endgame isn't like that thankfully.

Sure, Jensen recognises that to ensure the bone and marrow of the dominant cultures value system, the central mechanism must exclusively fixate on human worth and human values exclusively and to achieve this end, indoctrination or “education” from womb to tomb is mandatory. On one hand there must be a constant reinforcement of the dominant cultures ideals with an emphasis on each individuals total dependence on a system that has a death urge and is killing us, the land, the non-human animal kingdom and sentient life all at once.

Endgame's piece de resistance is in exploring this death urge and then finding ways to resist it. The author has gone there before us and saw that mid-wifed by the entrepreneur, the banker, the technocrat, the scientists and ultimately the lawyer of the dominant culture, this sane and sustainable way of living can not, will not, be born from between the printed sheets of pacts and agreements; joint ventures and mergers; contracts and covenants and international treatises signed and countersigned by the political bureaucrat.

Endgame neither lacks cultural resonance or political closure. It engulfs both.

In the Abolitionist's interview with the author, Derrick Jensen notes that even when our best efforts are applied, both eco and animal activists always seem to lose. Although emancipatory promises are possible, they are not being realised by activists around the globe today and the problem is on this battleground, this landscape, the contenders are not prepared to fight the culture itself as a whole. Localised actions, no matter how noble and while still important, do not seek to address the power structures already in place from the dominant culture. The dominant culture itself knows as surely as any lethal cancer that to “win” all you need to do is plughole the power base, the essentials for life such as the utilities, electricity or oil for example, and then what is extraneous to that kind of control is allowed to wither and die or if resisted, is then politically sought out for extermination. In short, western culture's agenda is a ruthless form of materialist monopoly playing itself out.

Jensen's genius is such that he is capable of providing a spiritual dimension to the ecological project. The Machine's lifeblood sets anonymous abstractions like ‘productivity' and ‘efficiency' far above human, non-human and planetary needs and it's this the kind of culture Jensen seeks not to reform but to demolish.

Endgame identifies vested interests which survive by controlling the state, the western “productive” apparatus and the institutions of “civilized” life that are by their very nature parasitic and predatory. This in turn plays upon the consciousness of the individual that sets up expectations with strategies of repressive normalization that imposes false needs on individuals. True needs are clean water, air, food and lodgings at some ecologically sustainable level of culture.

The world is on the brink of a human catastrophe of unprecedented proportions and the critical mass, the western intellectuals, along with activists working within the system have fallen prey to malaise and inaction. An unspoken theme running throughout Derrick Jensen's work is how to connect the microcosm with the macrocosm. In this he articulates a type of spirituality that is not transcendent as such, but is based squarely on our connection with the land and defending that same land-base and the ones we love. His work fosters biodiversity, respect and responsibility for the land and for indigenous people. He knows that indigenous peoples demands for rights to their biodiverse environments are direct challenges to the way in which hegemonic political discourse of the Machine and traditional critiques of capitalism are framed today.

Endgame recognises the living force of new ideas or a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living incarnated into political culture, as it now stands, is impossible. What Endgame proposes is the antithesis of the dominant cultures political structure and therefore has to be worked at from outside the system.

In fact an influx of living ideas, such as Endgame has produced, into the existing political structure is a direct threat to that structure. Derrick Jensen has said that what he wants is the fall of civilization and he's not kidding. He's not interested in “democratic egalitarianism” or a style of “liberal democracy”. He's called for a revolution but who, the next question is asked, has heard the call?

Endgame knows that the dominant culture has no moral base and never did have, as a mooring point for any system of government, because it does not require it for its specific functioning. What currently passes for a moral base is nothing more than pressing needs calling for immediate action that are responded to on a situation by situation basis. Jensen makes a convincing case for its opposite – a relationship that is symbiotic, constant and intimate with the earth, others and living nature.

If not we are left with competing systems and the inexorable paradox of humans deprived of an essential dimension of their being as market forces alone determine the price of what's good and what's valuable.

Nothing short of the rudest shock of ultimate reality – of life and death – will change the mindset. Jensen asks where is our wrath in all of this? Why ask for mercy on a system-the Machine- that shows no mercy? And then he offers us a robust challenge of our time.

Anarchists and existentialists both know that if the dominant culture has made the world confused, ambitious, greedy by seeking power, position and prestige and if the dominant culture is aggressive, brutal, competitive and has built a culture that is equally competitive, brutal and violent then our responsibility lies in understanding ourselves first and then to act dynamically from out of that knowledge source.

The dominant culture is a malignancy that will keep devouring new resources even if that means undermining the very body – nature herself – upon which it depends. How are the specifics of that to be best understood?

Endgame Volume 2 Resistance

Derrick Jensen wondered, “What resistance would look like and what it would accomplish – what the world would look like – if those of us who care about life on the planet leveled the playing field?”

He goes on to say, “What if we said, “In the war you are waging against the world, you will kill some of us, but mark my words, we shall destroy all of this civilization that is destroying the planet””.

I'll bet money on it that the author gets a lot of flak for that statement alone. Destroying civilization?

However, I'll also bet equal money that holocaust survivors and those who are living or have lived in the extreme know exactly what he is talking about. Docile acquiescence and abdication of will and judgment can be found well beyond the concentration camps; they are everyday behaviours. The young rabbinical student who stood at the door to an Auschwitz gas chamber and cried, “We must submit to the inevitable” did nothing shameful. Obviously today however, the radical eco-environmental and animal liberation movement has a choice to make. What side are you on?

This is an exceptional book that is potent enough to change lives and revolutionise within. Essential reading.