PREFACE

Industrial civilization is incompatible with life. It is systematically destroying life on this planet, undercutting its very basis. This culture is, to put it bluntly, murdering the earth. Unless it’s stopped—whether we intentionally stop it or the natural world does, through ecological collapse or other means—it will kill every living being.

We need to stop it.

There are many reasons for this culture’s ubiquitous destructiveness (and of course, especially at this point, understanding or articulating the reasons for this destructiveness are only important insofar as that understanding or articulation helps us to stop the horrors). In my book A Language Older Than Words, I used the lens of domestic violence to explore the more personal aspects of this culture’s destructiveness. The Culture of Make Believe explored the culture’s system of rewards, and how the dominant economic system inescapably gives rise to (and requires) atrocity. In Endgame I showed how the culture can never be sustainable or anything other than destructive so long as it requires the importation of resources, that is, so long as it requires more than the local landbase provides (and now that I put it this way, it makes me wonder why it took more than a thousand pages to say this elsewhere: duh). In Welcome to the Machine, the emphasis was on this culture’s relentless drive for control, which leads inevitably to standardization—standardization is a nice way of saying the destruction of all diversity—and ultimately the murder of all that is living (dead creatures are much easier to control than live ones).

This book takes a different approach to this culture’s destructiveness. Or rather, it takes two different approaches: two approaches because this book is not, in fact, one book. It began as one book, and partway through, it speciated.¹ It became two books: one about shit, decay, regeneration, life, death, and the suffocation of the planet under the weight of this culture’s waste products; and the other about sustainability, denial, reformism, magical thinking, resistance, death, life, and the processes that many of us undergo in pushing past our denial to confront the reality we face, and from there to acting to defend life on this planet.

Aric and I thought, Fine, so we have two books. Just pull them apart, put different titles and covers on them, and let’s move on. But when we tried to pull them apart, both died. Further, we found ourselves unable to discern their precise boundaries. The books were intertwined, interdependent.

All of this bothered us greatly, and time and again we tried to tear apart the books: this one here, that one there. But we slowly began to realize that the problem was not with the book but rather with our way of thinking about the book. The book was merely manifesting the miscible edges and intermingling that we were writing about. The book wasn’t about shit, decay, regeneration, sustainability, resistance, or any of the other topics we thought it was about. It was about the spaces in between those topics. It was about their interplay, the tangling and untangling of topics, where one moved into another and another moved into the one.

If the language sounds at least a little sexual, that’s because it’s supposed to (and not just because at some point we write for a few pages about orgasms): when you make love, where do you stop and where does the other start? You’re still two distinct beings, and yet there’s something else happening, too, right?

That’s really the point. We finally gave up on attempting to impose our will on this book and allowed it to teach us to think more realistically. For the real world never has boundaries sharp as books, sharp as scientific equations, sharp as a bottom line. Where do salmon stop and streams begin? Where do spotted owls stop and ancient forests begin? What happens if you try to separate the two? What happens if you try to treat them as utterly distinct? Or, if you don’t care about salmon or spotted owls, consider this: there are a hundred times more bacteria in your body than there are your “own” cells. Many of these bacteria are absolutely crucial to “your” continued existence. Without them “you” die. Without “you,” they die. Where do you stop and the bacteria start? You’re distinct beings, and yet there’s something else happening, too, right?

As in sex, as in the rest of the real world, the real action happens in between.

In part because this book is as much about identity as it is about decay, Aric and I struggled all through the writing with how we would deal with the fact that this book has two authors, and each one of us tells stories in the first person. We knew right off we didn’t want to promote the pseudo-objectivity and phony distance-masquerading-as-perspective so standard among so much formal (academic, philosophical, and journalistic) discourse by writing only in the third person. We also, for obvious reasons, eschewed the royal We. We considered and eventually rejected the use of italics to set off one of us while the other used Roman. Finally, we began to understand that because the book is not so much about identification as identity itself, the only appropriate action would be for us to leave each I as I and let readers use context or sleuthing (admittedly the sleuthing won’t be too tough) to figure out who this or that I is, presuming it really matters.

And in many ways it doesn’t. We must begin to remember not only how to distinguish, differentiate, separate, categorize—all of which this culture kind of teaches us how to do—but also how to recognize (and let ourselves fall into) those places where boundaries dissolve. I write this right now looking out a window—an artificial, more or less impermeable barrier—at the wind moving through and among and between redwood needles. The branches dance and dip and rise again. I shift, and see the ground, where fallen needles decay and feed grasses who live and die and feed the soil who feeds trees who live and die and dance in the wind. And where does each start and stop? Does it really matter?

I step outside, see a pond, feel the cool, moist wind on my cheek and hands, see wind rippling the surface of the water, see the moving dimples where water striders walk, hear frogs, smell soil and redwoods, smell cedars and spring.

When I smell cedars, redwoods, soil, I take tiny parts of them into my body, hold them, sense them, analyze them, join with them, remember and recognize them. Who’s to say, at this point, where cedar, redwood, soil ends, and I begin? Who’s to say where I end and they begin?

I walk to the grave of a dog I buried last week. He was seventeen. I’d known and loved him—and for that matter still know and love him—for far more than half of my adult life. I buried him next to another dog, whom I also knew and also loved—and still know and love—for fourteen years, and whom I buried a year ago. They both, of course, are still a part of me, as is the beloved cat buried not ten feet away.

As well as being part of me, they’re also each a part of the forest here, more fully and intimately now than I am, since I only live here. And each day they grow more fully and intimately a part of the forest than they were the day before. Once again, where does one stop, and the other begin? Does it matter?

The real action, as always, is in between.

How we perceive the world affects how we think about the world. How we think about the world affects how we perceive the world. How we perceive and think about the world affects how we behave in and toward the world. This culture’s behavior is killing the planet. We need to change our behavior. This means we need to change, among other things, how we perceive and think about the world.

And at base, that’s what this book is about. It is about remembering how to think realistically—that is, to think like life itself, to think with boundaries as permeable as deep, soft, rich soil. To begin to think again like life itself will be one step toward protecting that life, on this beautiful and extraordinary planet, our one and only home.