If you read your morning newspaper, if you watch the nightly news, if you cruise the Internet, or if you only see the world as you commute to work each morning, it's easy to see that we live in a world full of problems. Vehicles pack our streets. Smog hangs in a thick blanket over our cities. Wildlife is scarce and often is seen by the urban commuter only as roadkill. If you're happy in your job, you're the exception. Most of us change jobs as often as we change residences, restless, constantly moving, looking for -- something. Violence seems to be as American as a chicken in every pot. It dominates the headlines and insinuates itself into our entertainment. Often, it can be found in our homes, and it's easy enough to see it on the streets, in the apparel and, more tellingly, in the eyes of our homeless. We buy and discard aluminum, plastic, and cardboard products as though the sources from which they are derived will never dry up. The person who drinks water from the tap is rare. Most filter it or avoid it altogether, choosing to purchase water in large bottles or small because, quite simply, we can't trust the water that bubbles underground. Why should we? We cover the land with pesticides and exhaust and effluents. We hide our trash underground. The crimes committed in the name of nuclear energy -- well, let's not even go there.
When I was young -- and this was not so long ago, the early 1960s -- I lived in a suburban town in Connecticut. I remember lying on my lawn in the spring and fall and watching flocks of birds numbering in the hundreds fly over my house. Within a half block there was a tiny bridge, and under the bridge flowed a brook that could almost be called a stream, especially in certain seasons. Frogs and snakes and minnows and, sometimes, tiny trout could be found in abundance in the clean, sparkling water. Just beneath the bridge, on the downstream side, the brook formed a small pond -- small in name only because, during the winter, it formed a sheet of ice large enough to skate upon. Beyond were huge fields that stretched for acres, one of them containing a steep hill that, during the winter, was perfect for sledding.
A couple of years ago, I returned to that town. The bridge is still there, but no water runs beneath it. None. Not a trace. No frogs, no snakes, no trout. The hills I played on are filled with houses, large ones, owned by the conspicuously wealthy.
And the birds -- well, just look in the sky. Look for a long, long time. Or don't. Perhaps you can recall without looking the last time you saw a flock of a hundred, or even a few dozen.
My point -- and I do have one -- is this: We all know these problems exist. We see them every day. We may not acknowledge them, but we see them. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say we are aware of their existence, but we don't see them, or at least don't acknowledge them. Perhaps it would be even more accurate to say that to acknowledge them, to see them, to open our eyes truly and comprehend precisely what is happening to our world -- not to us, to our world, of which we are only a small, some would say insignificant, part -- is simply too painful, too horrible. So we turn away. We close our eyes.
Derrick Jensen doesn't. In this, his newest book, he opens his eyes wide and takes a good look around. He sees clearly, more clearly than anyone I have ever encountered, so much so that I am afraid nothing I might write could do justice to what he has written, to the sacrifice he has made to create this powerful, all-encompassing treatise on the horror of western culture. Certain books should be required reading for the human race. Derrick Jensen writes these kinds of books.
This might not be enough for you. After all, a review is supposed to be a summation, a critique, not a story. Perhaps my approach is too personal. Perhaps I sound like a spoiled child who has become disillusioned. This is not the case. I still see magic in the night. I still see beauty in the wind moving the trees. The problem is I see less of this beauty every day. Tears fill my eyes as I write this. I wish I could say the solution was as simple as loving each other, loving the planet, but it isn't because the problems go much deeper than that. Or perhaps I should say the problem goes much deeper -- that we value production over all else. That the myriad, overwhelming issues from which we all turn away every day stem from the way we have been trained to see the world and everything in it, as objects for our use. Not subjects that are interconnected and interdependent, but living objects to be exploited and discarded. That every day we strive for nothing more than to turn the living, be it minerals, trees, animals, or human beings, into the dead.
If you read this book, I can't say you'll like it. If you read this book, I certainly can't say you'll agree with it. But read it. You must. If you profess to care about our children, read it. If you profess to care about your fellow beings, read it. If you profess to care about the environment, about the future, about history, wild things, the poor, the aged, the homeless, education, spirituality, the world -- if you profess to care about the multitude of problems facing the planet, read this book. For me -- I feel like I was blind, and now I can see.
