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.
