A Language Older Than Words [Paperback]

Derrick Jensen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2004

At once a beautifully poetic memoir and an exploration of the various ways we live in the world, A Language Older Than Words explains violence as a pathology that touches every aspect of our lives and indeed affects all aspects of life on Earth. This chronicle of a young man's drive to transcend domestic abuse offers a challenging look at our worldwide sense of community and how we can make things better.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Singular, compelling and courageously honest, this book is more than just a poignant memoir of a harrowingly abusive childhood. It relates the extraordinary journey of one man striving to save his own spirit and our planet's. Comparing his physically and sexually abusive father's destruction of his family with humankind's systematic destruction of civilization, New York Times Magazine contributor Jensen (Listening to the Land) tells a story about the hope for regeneration in a landscape of human and natural desolation. Throughout, Jensen mobilizes his experiences as student, teacher, environmentalist, beekeeper, high jumper, abused child and survivor to delve deeper inside his own wounded psyche while condemning the constrictions of a culture that fosters abuse. In lyrical prose, Jensen calls for accountability and urges people "to live in dynamic equilibrium with the rest of the world." Rather than na?vely proposing an answer to the ills of modernity, he demonstrates the complexity of the problems by examining an array of environmental and sociopolitical atrocities, including the Holocaust, and what he sees as the reckless production of plutonium to further space exploration and the maltreatment of indigenous peoples by self-serving neighbors. His visceral, biting observations always manage to lead back to his mantra: "Things don't have to be the way they are." Jensen's book accomplishes the rare feat of both breaking and mending the reader's heart. 15,000 first printing; 10-city author tour. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Singular, compelling and courageously honest, this book is more than just a poignant memoir of a harrowingly abusive childhood. It relates the extraordinary journey of one man striving to save his own spirit and our planet's . . . His visceral, biting observations always manage to lead back to his mantra: 'Things don't have to be the way they are.'"--Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 418 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing (March 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931498555
• ISBN-13: 978-1931498555
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #102,028 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #17 in Books > Science & Math > Environment > Environmentalism

More About the Author

Derrick Jensen is the prize-winning author of A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Listening to the Land, Strangely Like War, Welcome to the Machine, and Walking on Water. He was one of two finalists for the 2003 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, which cited The Culture of Make Believe as "a passionate and provocative meditation on the nexus of racism, genocide, environmental destruction and corporate malfeasance, where civilization meets its discontents." He is an environmental activist and lives on the coast of northern California.

Derrick Jensen's Tour Schedule

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

111 of 113 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Reading Experience... October 17, 2001

By Lance Pierce

Format:Paperback

Derrick Jensen's latest, A LANGUAGE OLDER THAN WORDS, is one of the most uncomfortable books I've ever read. As such, I suspect it was also highly uncomfortable for him to write. Its poetic use of words and skilled syntax only serve to emphasize, not obscure, the brutal honesty that he puts forth here.

The thesis is a simple one: We are killing the world. It's Jensen's rugged, insightful, and raw analysis of how and why we're doing it that makes me shudder when I read it. Having studied many of these themes before (well-written in books like Daniel Quinn's ISHMAEL), I've not encountered this subject in a way that touches the nerves that Jensen has managed to tap into. Killing the world, after all, is a horrifying thing, and Jensen exposes the horror by shining a bright light on it and analyzing where it comes from.

It's a brave book and a bold statement. And one that will be hated by many, particularly those who have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are. The bottom line is this: if you read this book and find yourself affected by it, there's a chance for all of us. If you read this book and wonder what all the hoo-hah is about, you're too far gone and wrapped up in our cultural ways and vision to ever find your way out. If you read this book and find it threatening to your way of life, then you're the enemy, and you need to reconsider which side of the line you stand on.

I can't think of a higher compliment to give a book than to wish that I'd had it within me to write it myself. I wish I had this kind of insight and courage, and I'm grateful that Jensen does.

121 of 134 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Dance of World Destruction September 14, 2002

By J.W.K

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Jensen opens with a series of body blows: "Do we think about nuclear devastation, or the wisdom of producing tons of plutonium, which is lethal even in microscopic does well over 250,000 years?" Unlikely. "Does global warming invade our dreams?" Do wet plutonium dreams count? "In our most serious moments do we consider that industrial civilization has initiated the greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet?" I'm still considering whether to do my kitchen floors in linoleum or hardwood. "How often do we consider that our culture commits genocide against every indigenous culture it encounters?" That's the way the Darwinism cookie crumbles, right? "As one consumes the products manufactured by our culture, is s/he concerned about the atrocities that make them possible?" Not if one wants to look cool.

Do we ever stop to think about how messed up the world is? The answer, of course, is an overwhelming no. And if we do, it's not for very long. We don't think about these problems, we don't talk about them, and more importantly we don't try and stop them. In Jensen words, "We don't think about them, because they are too horrific to comprehend." They are too foreboding and ominous to stomach. They are, in effect, unspeakable.

After taking an honest look at the evolution of Western Civilization, Jensen draws the only logical conclusion that can be found: Our culture is insane. We are off our collective rocker. Reason, science, technological advancement and the work-a-day world have only driven us deeper into the carnival of horror and madness. Things are not getting better. They are getting worse with each passing day. Oops, I went and said it.

But you still believe in progress. Casually examine the context of your own life.... In the last fifty years, "sane" men have killed 100,000,000 of their "sane" fellows (perhaps now a few women have gotten in on the action too). Maybe you knew some of them. Perhaps they were family members. Or perhaps it was you that dropped bombs, laid land mines, pulled the fatal trigger. Or perhaps, like me, your father went off to war and came back crazy. War... an aspect of our culture that is now more familiar and ordinary than ever before. (Need I even mention what "Dubya" is planning right now?)

Yet we are all live in work in this web of destruction together. Perhaps your paycheck comes with each fresh clear-cut, or perhaps you simply buy those clear-cut trees in the form of a new house, deck, or furniture. Perhaps you draw energy from a dammed river, helping kill off the last of the salmon. Or perhaps you are more intimately linked to the web of murder, genocide, mass rape, abuse, wage slavery, systemic impoverishment and ecocide that characterize life in the twentieth, and now twenty-first, centuries. Perhaps you are a victim. Perhaps you are an abuser. More than likely, you dabble in both.

That said, wherever you fall within the totem of abuse, don't ever admit there is a problem. Don't say with me, "My name is j.w.k., and I live and take part in a system that is utterly abusive, coercive and wrong." Rather, keep telling yourself that everything is fine. That is all right. Yes, we'll pull through. Humans are too bright to destroy themselves and the planet.

But that is exactly what we are doing... A fourth of all animals slated for extinction - 1000 times the natural rate of extinction. ("The government will do something. Anyway, extinction is part of life.") A quarter of all American women are raped, and another 19 percent are sexually abused. ("They should take self-defense courses and stop wearing such sluttish clothes.") Skin, prostate, colon and breast cancers are on the rise from industrial pollution, UV radiation exposure, and poor food quality. ("Our scientists will fix it. They'll invent something new and make it all better.") 150,000,000 children are enslaved, carrying bricks, chained to looms, or otherwise filling the Wal-Mart's of the Western world. ("Work builds character.") 32,000 people die of hunger everyday, in a world where one billion are too busy stuffing their faces with steak and marshmallows to care. ("I can hardly pay my own bills.")

Rationalizations... Sometimes witty, sometimes humorous, but always easy, efficient and painless ways to avoid the facing cognitive dissonance. They are the bedrock of our philosophy in a world awash with deprivation, hunger, war, famine, abuse, and ignorance amid waste, plenty and absurdity. Nazi Germany was good at rationalizing, too. Smoke billows up from Auschwitz: "It sure is a cloudy, Heinrich, isn't it?"

"When we do allow self-evident truths to percolate past our defenses and into our consciousness, they are treated like so many hand grenades rolling across the dance floor of an improbably macabre party."

Today we all live under concentration camp conditions, without even realizing. We also live in a world of hopeless and impending death. The only difference is, we can watch TV and pretend `it's all good.' As Kunster says in Home From Nowhere, "We demand fantasy in order to distract ourselves from the reality of life's tragic nature, and since reality tends to be insistent, we must keep the TVs turned on at all waking hours and at very high volume." Bring on the CNN. Hail Friends, Survivor, and the Comedy Channel.

Comedy amid horrors - next to oil it's our best selling commodity. After waking up to apocalypse every morning, one gets used to it. It becomes completely natural. Yet in our more lucid moments, should reality suddenly appear the phantasmagoria of pain, suffering, and hell it truly is, we can deny everything. We can take mental holidays or look the other way; but one thing is becoming increasing clear: We cannot play the denial game much longer. Something will give. If we do not awake from this nightmare of plutonium, rape, genocide and ecocide, we will most certainly perish along with the rest of the species we have consigned to eternal oblivion. Even our scientists now say so - when they can be heard over 500 billion screaming TVs.

Don't believe it, though. Don't believe any of it. It's a bunch of lies. Propaganda. Reactionary hype. Jensen is clearly out of his mind. Perhaps he's a communist. Don't listen to him, don't listen to me, nor to anyone else who blackens your rainbows or eclipses your sunshine. Don't buy this book. It might affect you. Go to the mall, plop down in front of the TV, or hit the disco and dance away the thought of this pessimistic review - but do keep an eye out for those grenades.

Essential reading.

j.w.k. Read more ›

62 of 69 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most deeply-moving books I've ever read April 19, 2000

By Cactus Ed

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Oh how I wish I could get every member of Congress, say, or every schoolboard member across the country to read this profound book. Imagine such "leaders" having the sensitivity, insight and values that Derrick Jensen displays in this book! Our world would not be the same. The book has a lot of sadness to it - and why not, since the subject - the pain and destruction being inflicted upon our dear old mother earth and all her children - is a sad one indeed. There's a lot of honesty here, and a willingness to go places the less-courageous would never go. A sad, moving and powerful tale this is, but not a depressing one, for it goes deep into what ails us and our planet home, and that kind of depth is ultimately exhilerating and encouraging. A truly remarkable book - please buy it! In fact, buy as many as you can and give copies to friends and foes alike!

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The most disturbing, jarring, NECESSARY book I've ever read September 4, 2000

By [e-mail]

Format:Paperback

Derrick Jensen has written this book from his own, and the world's, soul. What starts as a "feel-good" book on interspecies communication becomes a searing examination of his own silencing as a child (his father viciously abused him, his mother, and his siblings), and his perspective widens to encompass the silencing of all life on earth through the murderous practices of industrial, religious, military, and political institutions through history. Jensen indisputably links individual suffering and violence with that of other life forms -- and of the Earth that we continue to ravage in our denial of pain. This book is a masterpiece; it is agonizing to read -- yet hopeful...though in a most cautious manner. To anyone daring to awaken to the signs in and around us, time is running out for us humans to change our suicidal and ecocidal behaviour. Jensen dares us to face our pain and transform it into loving action on behalf of Life. I consider him a prophet. He spares us nothing in his passion for healing. We must pass through raging agony in order to wake up and shake ourselves free of our denial and inertia -- but the pain we (and everything else that lives) will feel if we don't change our ways will be indescribably worse.

I also recommend Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown's book, "Coming Back to Life," which gives us specific practices that individuals, groups, and communities can do to take loving action. WE CAN DO THIS -- and we need to do it together.

Please -- read this book and act with it!