LEGACY
Whatever I have said about my deeds and words in this trial, I let it stand and wish to reaffirm it. Even if I should see the fire lit, the faggots blazing, and the hangman ready to bring the burning, and even if I were in the pyre, I could not say anything different.
—JOAN OF ARC
WHAT WILL BE YOUR LEGACY? What will you leave behind? Will it be regions deforested by your actions and inactions? Will it be the wreckages of forest communities you destroyed or allowed to be destroyed? Will it be lots of money? Will it be forests you did not work to save? Will it be the remnants of forests you worked to save (as I worked to save this one) but did not succeed in saving (as I did not succeed with this one)? Or will it be forests you saved? How many families of slender salamanders will continue to live because of who you were and what you did? How many coho salmon? How many green sturgeon? How many warblers, whippoorwills, chickadees, phoebes, bobwhites? How much deeper will be the soil because of you? How many tons of greenhouse gases will have not been emitted because you lived, and because you acted? I’m not asking how few you caused to be emitted—I’m not letting you, or me, off the hook that easily. I’m asking how many you caused to be not emitted because of your actions. There is all the difference in the world.
Will your legacy be a world who is healthier, stronger, more resilient, more diverse, than had you never lived? If not, then the world would have been better off without you. If not, the world would have been better off had you never been born. This is neither an accusation nor a threat, but a simple—even tautological—statement of fact.
Further, will your legacy be a world that is healthier, stronger, more resilient, more diverse, than it was before you were born? What will it take for that to be your legacy?
If you would like for this to be your legacy—and this improvement, this strengthening of the world, is the legacy of the overwhelming majority of humans and nonhumans who were or are not members of this culture (and if you disagree, then simply ask: how did this world get to be as diverse as it was, and for now still is, unless the inhabitants of this world were making it so by their existence and actions?)—how will you achieve that? What will you do to leave behind healthy soil, healthy forests, healthy oceans? What will you do to stop those who would destroy, and what will you do to help this planet—this planet who is our only home—flourish? What will you leave behind? What will be your legacy?
Would the world be better off had you never been born?
I don’t mean the culture. I mean the world. The real, physical world. Would it be more resilient, stronger, more diverse?
Is the world better off because you were born?
I don’t mean the culture. I mean the world. The real, physical world. Would it be more resilient, stronger, more diverse?
I cannot think of a deeper, more solid—more real—foundation for any morality than this question, put both ways. What is more real than the real world? What is deeper, more solid—more real—than life on earth?
For a morality to be conscionable, forgivable, livable, necessary, it must be based on the health of the world, because without a healthy world no one has any morality whatsoever, because there is no life whatsoever. In all physical truth.
In Endgame I described clean water—and more broadly the fact that I am an animal, and that without clean water, clean air, livable habitat, I will die—as the basis for a livable morality. I wrote: “If the foundation for my morality consists not of commandments from a God whose home is not primarily of this Earth and whose adherents have committed uncountable atrocities, nor of laws created by those in political power to serve those in political power, nor even the perceived wisdom—the common law—of a culture that has led us to ecological apocalypse, but if instead the foundation consists of the knowledge that I am an animal who requires habitat—including but not limited to clean water, clean air, nontoxic food—what does my consequent morality suggest about the rightness or wrongness of, say, pesticide production? If I understand that as human animals we require healthy landbases for not only physical but emotional health, how will I perceive the morality of mass extinction? How does the understanding that humans and salmon thrived here together in Tu’nes [the Tolowa name for where I live] for at least 12,000 years affect my perception of the morality of the existence of dams, deforestation, or anything else that destroys this long-term symbiosis by destroying salmon?”
I liked that moral foundation at the time, but now I see it as only a partial foundation—necessary but grossly insufficient—because while it does indirectly express concern for one’s larger community (in that clean water can benefit not only that individual but others, including fish, amphibians, and so on), it is still fundamentally self-centered. It would be entirely possible for people to trash landbases, ruin rivers—ruin the planet—yet in the meantime maintain fantastically expensive water treatment factories that provide somewhat clean water to those humans who can pay for the services of water treatment (or bottled water) corporations. Of course this would only be workable in the short run—and even then only more or less workable, and even then only workable at all for those on whom the externalities are not forced—but in that short run those who own these fantastically expensive water treatment factories; those who operate them; those who consume their product; and those in the government who oversee (and in fact order, and pay for through taxpayer subsidies) the toxification and destruction of natural water supplies (also known as lakes, rivers, and aquifers) can feel as though they’re performing a moral act by providing somewhat clean water to the humans who can pay for that product at the expense of the larger community.
But these questions of whether you make the world stronger, more diverse, healthier—and these questions hold for any relationship: if your partner isn’t stronger, healthier, more resilient because of your relationship, that person would be better off without you (and conversely, if your partner doesn’t help you to be stronger, more resilient, healthier, then you should, in the immortal words of Little Charlie and the Nightcats, “Dump that Chump”; further, if your culture doesn’t make you (and the world) stronger, more diverse, healthier, then get rid of it, too)—point the way past self-centeredness. These questions point us toward a morality that works for the common good. The real common good. In other words, they point us toward a real morality.
Would the world—the real physical world—be a better place had you never been born?
Is the world—the real, physical world—a better place because you were born?
Those really are the most important questions.
What are your answers?
Why do you answer as you do?
What, if anything, is the relationship between your answers to these questions and your internal morality?
What, if anything, is the relationship between your answers to these questions and your external morality?
Why do you answer as you do?
Once again, is the world a better place because you were born?
I don’t think that putting plants on Ford truck factories, designing eco-groovy Nike headquarters, and designing “sustainable airports” is sufficient to make the answer yes. Rhetoric of “sustainability” aside, I don’t think these actions make the world a better place: a truck factory—native plants or no—is one of the last things we need. A transnational athletic shoe company—especially one using sweatshop labor—is another. An airport is a third.
Turning the mirror back on myself, I don’t think writing books railing against this culture’s destructiveness is good enough. I don’t believe that the world is a better place because I was born.
Sure, there are many thousands of acres of forest still standing in part because I helped protect them through my activism (although they probably would have been saved anyway—I only helped—and in any case unless this culture is stopped it will ultimately destroy these forests anyway). And sure, right now I am helping my mom to protect (and serve) this land we both live on, this land which would surely have been cut and “developed” by someone as sleazy as Sawyer and Smith were we not protecting it. And sure, I helped catalyze the neighbors to partially stop or at least slow Smith in this case. And sure, even if the land is eventually destroyed, there will have been at least a few generations of salamanders and butterflies and frogs and slugs who will have been able to remain in their homes. And sure, people tell me that my work has inspired them in their own activism, which means a bit more of the wild saved (for now).
But living within this culture necessitates at best a complex calculus of harm and healing. How many acres have been cut to make my books (as well as the books I read)? And using recycled paper (on the occasions publishers even choose to do that) doesn’t entirely nullify the damage caused by the industrial fabrication of my books (or we could say the industrial mass reproduction of my ideas). Collecting recycled paper takes energy, as does repulping it, as does transporting it, printing on it, binding it, transporting the books, and so on.
People who live simply within this culture somewhat reduce the harm side of the equation, but just because they live simply doesn’t mean they should get too self-righteous or excited. The industrial economy is inherently destructive (it takes from the land, not only failing to give the land what it needs, but even worse, poisoning it), and if they participate in the economy at all, they cause great harm.
It doesn’t help any of us to pretend that there is any participation in an industrial system that doesn’t harm the planet. For it does. How much ecological harm occurs just because I eat? I don’t feel
too bad about the cow I just purchased from a local rancher: I live in a reasonably wet area, and the cow was pasture-raised, which means that the cow wasn’t too unhappy, watering the cow didn’t draw down the aquifer too much, and the cow contributed his shit to the soil. Of course the pasture where the cow was raised used to be a redwood forest, it
should be a redwood forest, and it
needs to be a redwood forest, yet the cow’s grazing helps prevent the forest from returning, so once again I shouldn’t feel too self-righteous. I shouldn’t feel self-righteous at all about the peas and corn I had last night, both of which (whom) came from the grocery store, which means they came from factory farms, which means the plants had miserable lives and their growing
213 toxified the soil and drew down the aquifer. And it doesn’t much matter whether they came from Iowa or the San Joachin Valley: in either case they’re from beautiful and fecund regions devastated by agriculture.
This is a point I’ve hammered in all of my books, but it’s a point that needs to be repeated. Not every human culture has damaged its landbase; not every human culture has been unsustainable. In fact, most, until they were conquered, were sustainable: they didn’t damage their landbases. Not every culture has twisted even simple, necessary, beneficial, and beautiful acts such as eating into harmful activities. To turn acts like eating or shitting into unsustainable acts is extraordinarily stupid, for reasons I hope are obvious. If at this point they still aren’t obvious we’re in even worse shape than it would otherwise seem. But hell, this culture is killing the planet, which is literally the most stupid action possible—even imaginable—so I’ll be explicit: if even the most fundamental and necessary daily activities harm the landbase—we’re not talking about luxuries here—there is no chance at all for sustainability under the current system.
But you knew that already, didn’t you?
Coho salmon make the world a better, richer, more diverse, stronger, healthier place by their existence and actions, by their eating and being eaten.
Red-backed voles make the world a better, richer, more diverse, stronger, healthier place by their existence and actions, by their eating and being eaten.
Northern spotted owls make the world a better, richer, more diverse, stronger, healthier place by their existence and actions, by their eating and being eaten.
Torrent salamanders make the world a better, richer, more diverse, stronger, healthier place by their existence and actions, by their eating and being eaten.
The Tolowa Indians, on whose land I now live, made the world a better, richer, more diverse, stronger, healthier place by their existence and actions, by their eating and being eaten.
I need to as well.
I just got a note from one of the neighbors. She finally got a hold of someone at CDF. Her note read: “The CDF agent said he’d inspected Smith’s site more than any other; I told him that was good as it was under so much scrutiny by the neighborhood. He said he’d cited Red Cloud for failing to file paperwork on the creek easement in a timely manner, but that was the only violation. [There was, of course, no mention of the soil in the stream. Why does that not surprise me?] He also said the road looked pretty muddy. I asked about a water tanker for cleaning the vehicles to prevent the possible transmission of Port Orford cedar root rot, and he said he wasn’t aware of a need for that. He looked it up in the plan, found it, and thanked me for pointing it out. But the next thing he said is that it didn’t matter, because it had been dry. It took me a moment to even understand what he was saying, because of what he’d said earlier about the road being muddy. But before I could say anything, he said that it also didn’t matter because unless he actually sees a violation as it occurs he can’t cite them. So even though the road is a mess, and even though we’ve asked him to watch the site, and even though we’ve witnessed them violating the law, there is nothing, he says, that he can do.”
Don’t you wish the law treated us all the same? There is only one CDF inspector for the entire county, and if he doesn’t see a violation with his own eyes, it’s treated as though it didn’t happen. So let’s pretend that analogously there was only one cop in all of this county, and let’s pretend the rules were the same: you can’t be arrested unless this lone cop happens to actually see you commit the crime. How would your actions be different? Would single mothers who were poor take their hungry children to corporate grocery stores so they could eat their fill? If they needed a little cash, would they go to corporate banks and withdraw the banks’ money? After all, if the lone cop never actually saw them do it—remember, we had pictures of Smith’s violations—they wouldn’t have to worry about where next month’s rent comes from.
But of course it doesn’t work that way. Cops, like courts, like the whole judicial system, like entire governmental systems, do not have fairness as a fundamental guiding principle. We all know this. These are all set up primarily to protect the profits of the already-powerful.
If someone were to destroy Sawyer’s equipment, I would be arrested—after all, didn’t he already accuse us of spelling out threats?—whether or not the cop saw me do it, and even if it wasn’t me who did it anyway. Sawyer, Smith, et al. violate law after law, and what happens? They make money.
That’s how the system works.
“They made us many promises, more than I can remember. But they only kept but one. They promised to take our land and they took it.”
214Two of the three days before my neighbor talked to the CDF agent—two of the three days he said the road was dry (although somehow still muddy)—it rained. Hard.
Still he saw no violations.
Everyone I talk to locally says this CDF employee is the most diligent they have ever encountered.
What does this say about this culture’s morality?
