What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire Page #11

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Empire has conquered the world.

But that conquering has bounced back on

the conquerors, leaving everyone wounded.

if the world, the system that we're

living in, is harming other people,

then that's something that, you

know, you can't live with that.

So if you look at the people who have

been assimilated into Empire,

and if you look at the Imperialists themselves,

you find an incredible dissociation from reality.

Dissociated from the reality of the

planet, we don't act on its behalf.

Feeling for nature is diminishing to the

degree that people are less desiring

and less able to influence policy about nature,

to do anything to protect nature,

to have any feeling for nature.

it's hard to have feeling for it if you

never have any contact with it.

And it's hard to have any contact

with the rest of the world

because we're living like an animal in a cage.

Just think about an animal in a zoo.

An animal's deprived of the very things that keep

that animal going.: the smells, the sights, the

sounds, the instincts, the hunting.

And they become psychotic. Literally psychotic.

I think that we've done something to

ourselves that is exactly analogous to that.

We've put ourselves in a cage -

this cage of civilization, of cities.

And it's made us, in a way, psychotic.

That - if you would have a group of hunter-

gatherers - and this has happened a lot -

hunter-gatherers watch behavior of people

in our society, they would think we

were crazy for the way we behave.

Because we are.

I stop. I listen. I watch the world.

The disconnection is everywhere.

You learn it as a child. You learn to not

feel the kind of pain that is inflicted

upon you be the lack of connection.

By being in a crib by yourself in a dark room.

By not having the breastfeeding. By not having

the constant contact with other people's bodies.

Television viewing for children, and

I think to some degree for adults,

is a training for more hyperactive lifestyles

and hyperactive informational systems.

And that is putting people into a kind of

emotional psychological state, which

makes it impossible to relate to nature.

So, I mean, it's concrete alienation again.

most of us don't have a human community

where we can rest and feel safe and feel like

"i'm going to be taken care of".

in our culture there's so many things that are

set up to stop us from connecting directly.

If you go to a bar- we take this for granted -

if you go to a bar it's dark.

There's really loud music playing.

Because if it were quiet and there were good

light people would get freaked out to have to

deal with each other so directly.

Our economy thrives on this.

It's pretty easy to sell stuff to people

who are so disconnected from the

things that they most need.

The stores are filled with bandages

for the wounds of Empire.

There are other ways to look at this wounding.

Derrick Jensen sees the dominant culture as an

abusive system, leaving its members suffering

from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

What happens if you're not traumatized once

or twice, but if you're actually in captivity

for a long time? if you're held as prisoner?

One of the things that happens is you

become afraid of all relationships and you

have to control everything around you.

You forget that mutual relationships are

possible and you begin to believe that all

relationships are based upon hierarchy.

Because that was your experience.

And you come to believe that all relationships

are based on power. And, of course, when we

look around that's what we see.

So we are too frightened to enter

into a relationship with these trees,

with all of our neighbors.

And so we call them resources:

those to be exploited.

Everything within an abusive family structure is

set up to protect the abuser. Everything.

And be the same token, everything

within this culture is setup to protect the rich.

That's what this culture is about.

Why do so many victims of abuse

stay with their abusers?

Because they're identified with the system.

And they've been taught since they were

very - since early on - that everything

is about protecting that system.

with civilization, we've been taught to identify

with this larger whole that isn't us.

We identify more strongly as "civilized"

than we do as living beings.

Over the years I've begun to break my own

identification with the dominant culture,

to reconnect with myself as a

living creature walking the Earth.

I'm still not finished with the task.

A daunting challenge.

And yet one of the most

rewarding things I've ever done.

I've also learned to view this culture

through the lens of addiction.

Addiction is based on continually seeking

more of what it is we don't really want.

And therefore, never being fully satisfied.

There's a deep need. There's

a deep hole, a deep longing,

a deep fear, a deep grief, a deep rage.

And so there's food, there's cigarettes, there's

alcohol, there's drugs, there's computers,

there's TV, there's movies, there's

shipping, there's music. . .it's endless.

Chellis Glendinning.: All of that, that

we've now determined people can be

addicted to, it's like a technological fix.

So as long as that's working, why would I stop?

I won't stop. An alcoholic doesn't stop.

A drug addict doesn't stop as long

as it's working. But you reach a point

where it doesn't work any more.

After centuries of abuse, disconnection,

delusion and addiction, it looks as though

we're desperate to hit bottom.

it's almost as if we're wanting to hit

bottom so hard that we either shift or die.

Cause it's not worth continuing like this.

so many people are so very, very unhappy.

And they want this nightmare to end.

And they don't recognize that the death that

they want is a cultural death, and is a

spiritual and metaphorical death.

That would explain why we

continue to foul our nest.

If what we want is to hit bottom, we've

found the perfect means to get us there.

Denial.

Denial.

Denial.

Denial.

Denial.

Denial.

Denial in huge neon letters that blink on and off

like the old Rycke and Bullwinkle

credits at the end of the show!

Again I stop. And listen. And watch

as I move through the landscape of Empire.

The denial is so thick that you

could cut it with a paper knife.

If only you weren't still using it to frost that cake.

Denial takes tremendous energy.

And if you have to work really, really hard

to not acknowledge the fact that

this culture's killing everything,

you're not going to have much energy left over.

It's the energy I freed up when I stepped

out of my own denial that has made this

documentary possible.

The more I let down my defenses, the more I

find the power to look more deeply at the world.

And when I look I find the story of

"somehow", a fantasy that keeps us

passive in the face of the world situation.

"We've muddled through things before. And

somehow we'll muddle through this one."

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