Derrick Jensen is the author of many books including A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe and Endgame. Derrick’s outlook on the current state of the earth is about as bleak as it gets. He argues that modern industrial society is unsustainable and inevitably doomed. It’s just a question of time. However, despite this he is very funny and the talks he gives verge on stand up comedy. It’s weird how our collective imminent demise can be so amusing. Chuckle Chuckle.

Hi Derrick. Are you a pessimist?

No – because I don’t think this culture is a good thing. The best thing that can happen is if this culture collapses. Amphibians are collapsing. 90 percent of large fish in the oceans are gone. Cormorants are starving because the fish are gone. If Western industrial society collapses it would be a good thing for them.

Do you hate humanity?

I think if you care about life on this planet you have to be upset about the hairless apes. But humans are not inherently destructive. The Tolowa lived here in Northern California for about 12,500 years if you believe the myths of science and since the beginning of time if you believe the myths of the Tolowa. And they didn’t trash the place. And that wasn’t because they were too stupid to do it. But so many humans have now caught the extremely contagious disease of culture. It’s a soul destroying illness.

You use the word “contagious”. Is this a reference to Richard Dawkins’ ideas on memetics?

Richard Dawkins is someone who I despise probably above all other human beings. His books rationalise this projection of capitalist, socio-pathological exploitation of the natural world. For Dawkins humans are the only meaningful intelligence on earth, and possibly in the universe. The world then consists of objects to be exploited, not other beings to enter into relationships with. There is no magic. No meaning inheres in the world: the only meaning is what we project. A quote from Dawkins: “You won't find any rhyme or reason in it [the universe], nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

In contrast indigenous people perceive everything as being sentient. In Western culture there is no volition in nature so no need to have any empathy for it. Thus we can exploit it. The Portuguese, for example, had an economic interest in not perceiving the Africans as human beings when they arrived in that continent. They said of the Africans, "When they speak they fart with their tongues in their mouths." So because the Africans did not speak Portuguese they evidently do not speak, which means it is okay to enslave them.

But indigenous cultures were also ruthless, also hunted, also killed.

For indigenous people the implications of hunting an animal and feeding your people with it was that you then took responsibility for the survival of that species. So yes they were ruthless, but it was a kind of ruthless cooperation. If you believe the world is a nasty place and you need to be terrified of it, you will try to control it. Indigenous cultures see nature as their home, the key to the their survival and not an enemy to be feared and exploited. Christianity took meaning from the earth and put it into the sky and it’s a small step from there to no meaning all.

In relation to your very funny environmentalist version of Star Wars, what’s wrong with the environmental movement today?

It’s just not serious enough. People say, “I’m ready to take action.” And then they go buy a composter. What would we do if space aliens had come down and were changing the climate? We would know exactly what to do. We would attack them. When the Nazis invaded France, at first the resistance was pretty pacifistic. What turned the tide was when people realised that the system was vulnerable; that the Nazis weren’t impervious. Now that the system is collapsing around us, the nature of protest is going to change.

Instead of writing books why don’t you just go and blow up the major corporations that are ruining the planet?

I think that every morning when I wake up. I suppose it’s because there needs to be an absolute between above ground and below ground activities. The IRA was separate from Shin Fein. We need infrastructure. We need warriors and we also need those who can go about propagandising the ideas.

Some people would say that what we are facing is just another mass extinction. There have been six or so such extinctions throughout the history of the earth. Nature will survive, with us or without us.

Well firstly that’s not necessarily true. Global warming could very possibly turn the earth into Venus, killing all life on the planet. And to answer your second point - a couple of years ago a friend gave me a huge bowie knife. What if I picked up that knife and walked over to you and said: “I’m just going to cut off your pinkie. You don’t mind do you? You’re going to die someday anyway and I’m not killing you, I’m just changing you.”

And if someone was doing that to me and you were watching, what would you do? You’d stop it. When you see an injustice in front of you what you do is you stop it.



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