Endgame Vol.2

“THE CURRENCY OF THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM IS FAITH,” BRIAN SAYS. “The whole system runs on faith. Insurance runs on faith. Banks run on faith. When people stop believing in it, the system crashes, and quickly.”

There is yet another reason that the civilized have been able to defeat the indigenous. This is perhaps the most important reason of all. Many of the indigenous began to believe that the gods, spirits, mysteries, processes who had protected them forever on their land had abandoned them. This destruction of their faith came about because these protective forces did not save them from the civilized. The civilized burned their villages. The indigenous fought back. Their villages were burned again. They fought back again. And then their villages were burned again. Fewer fought back. Their villages were burned again. Still fewer fought back. Their villages were burned again. They capitulated. No longer did the conquerors need to burn their villages, except once in a while to remind them who’s in charge. The conquerors’ new subjects had lost faith in their old ways. They had become demoralized.

This is how abusers work. One insult, one threat, one strike, is rarely enough to defeat a woman or break a child’s will. The wearing away is repeated, often timed so that just when she begins to recover faith in herself he slaps her down again. Timing is important. Too soon and the demoralization isn’t maximized, too late and she might begin to build up reserves of confidence. Even more important than timing, though, is repetition. She must be forcefully taught that there is no escape, that resistance is futile. She must be pacified.

We’ve all experienced demoralization in ways large and small. Here are a couple fairly small ones I’ve experienced this summer.

This May I decided I “needed” a new computer. My old one was freezing a couple of times per day. This was a bit of an annoyance, but what really got me was that each time it froze I had to turn it off and then back on, and after it came on it spent about fifteen minutes scanning the hard drive for errors. Fifteen minutes! Of course I couldn’t just go do something else—like walk in this beautiful forest—for fifteen minutes when I could be on the computer! So I went to the local electronics store—the owner is a really nice guy, and if you don’t watch yourself you could easily end up talking to his chatty assistant for an hour—and priced new computers. They were a bit spendy for my pocketbook, so I checked eBay and got seduced by the low prices there. So not only did I support the industrial economy by purchasing a computer, I didn’t even support a local business. Before you smack me down for this, let me assure you that the computer gods already did. I was excited when the computer arrived—But $70 for shipping? What a rip off!—and started to set it up. The computer gave me error messages even before I finished installing Windows.³²⁰ No problem. I did what most of us would do: I ignored the error messages and persevered. Then the drivers that came with the computer didn’t work. No problem. I just used my old computer to find drivers on the internet and download them. The CD drive still only worked part time (and the sound system not at all), but I thought if I were able to studiously enough ignore these problems they would fix themselves. I installed antivirus software, and tried to get my Windows updated at the Microsoft site. The download was supposed to take several hours, but it aborted after forty-five minutes, told me there were problems with my system.³²¹ I tried again. This time the antivirus software told me the computer had some viruses (I first wrote that the software told me that I had some viruses: talk about identifying with the machine!).³²² I swept the computer, found and deleted the viruses. I tried the download again. This time it aborted after three hours and turned off my computer. I turned it back on. It turned itself back off. (If only we could get all of civilization to turn itself off as simply as that computer! Note to self: figure out how to do that. Have a plan ready by next Thursday. Do it on the following Monday, sometime after lunch.) I turned it back on. It turned itself back off. I called a friend who works for Microsoft. He said I had a virus (I guess we’re both identifying me with the machine). Much as I like his politics, I cursed Brian, even though he didn’t write this particular virus. I realized I was stupid for entrusting communications to a device and a corporation over which I have no control but I was still mad at hackers because it was two o’clock in the morning and the damn computer didn’t work. I took a deep breath and thought, No problem. I reformatted the hard drive,³²³ started to reinstall Windows. I got error messages, just like the first time. I ignored them, just as we all ignore the larger error messages given to us by the planet. I followed the same procedure, got the same results, and by now the sky was turning gray in the east. I could hear birds. Disgusted, I went to bed. I tried the same thing the next day, and the day after that. By the sixth or seventh time I no longer cursed, but pleaded. By the eighth time I was finally prepared to send back the computer. I was defeated.

Unfortunately I wasn’t quite defeated enough, because I still went to the local electronics store and bought a computer. At least I supported a local business (and the computer works great), but you’d have to hit me just a bit harder than this to demoralize me enough to break my addiction to having a computer.

The second demoralization this summer has been more personal. I somehow ended up with a nasty prostate infection. The last thing you need to read is an extended discussion of trouble in my privates, so I’ll simply say that for the past several months the pain has come in waves that last a couple of days, then subside for a couple of days. At first I attempted to ignore the pain, and simply hoped it would go away. (Sound familiar?) When that didn’t work I tried thinking good thoughts. That didn’t work either. The first several times the pain subsided, I was convinced I was on my way back to health. When the pain returned I cursed. When the pain went away I hoped. But this constant raising and dashing of hopes has been wearing, probably at least as wearing as the pain itself. I’ve become demoralized, or maybe I’ve moved through the first three of Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s five stages of grief—denial, anger, and bargaining—and into the fourth, depression. If it doesn’t get better soon I may move into acceptance.

How does this apply to taking down civilization?

We all—even those of us who are wildly anti-civ—buy far too much into the myth of the primacy of the machine. We believe civilization works. We believe civilization is resilient. Whether we want to admit it or not, we believe in the deus ex machina, the god in the machine who will save us in the end.³²⁴ This is certainly true of those who believe that science or technology will save us from problems partially created by science and technology. But nearly all of us believe in the machine far more deeply than that.

What do you do when you’re thirsty? If you’re like me, you go to the sink, and you’re utterly certain that when you “turn on” the water it will flow from the tap. It’s automatic. It’s a complete, and completely invisible, belief backed up in the short term by consistent experience. Likewise when we flip a switch we’re absolutely certain that ghost slaves will light up the night. We’re certain that when we go to the grocery store we’ll find food (which we can purchase from transnational corporations). It may surprise us to learn that for nearly all of our existence humans have had this faith not in technologies but in landbases. They knew for certain they could drink water from streams. They knew for certain the salmon would come, or the passenger pigeons, or the bison, or the char, or whatever creatures they relied on for food. But no more. Our faith has been replaced. Our new faith—deep, abiding, unshakable—is in civilization, that it will one way or another take care of us, that it will continue. This faith is strong enough that nearly all of us no longer perceive it as faith. Indeed, most of us do not even think about it at all. I would imagine the possibility that civilization will not take care of us into the foreseeable future is a thought that never once occurs to nearly all Americans in their entire lives. Not once. Civilization with all it entails is simply the way things are. Not many people consider themselves to have faith in gravity. Gravity just is, and if you trip you fall down. No faith is involved. Civilization is perceived the same way.

Even those of us who oppose civilization also generally have an unshakeable faith that civilization will win, at least in the short run. It has defeated so many who have tried to fight it before, so surely it will defeat us too. This faith, too, is so commonly held as to no longer be considered an article of faith, but rather the way things are.

But civilization is not gravity. It is not an immutable force of nature. It is nothing more nor less than one social organization among many. It is a social organization centered around war and maximizing the exploitation of resources. Civilization is a great mass of people who have been driven individually and collectively insane, driven equally out of their minds and bodies by the exploitative violence that characterizes this mode of social organization. Civilization is nothing more nor less than cities using increasingly sophisticated technologies and increasingly more force to steal increasing amounts of resources from increasingly depleted and ever-increasing parts of the globe. That’s it. That’s all it is. And it will not last.

Civilization will not win. I know this as surely as I know that rain falls and carries away exposed soils. I know this as surely as I know the sun shines, bringing light and heat, and I know this as surely as I know there is night. I know this as surely as I know that you cannot use something up and expect to use it again. I know this as surely as I know I am an animal.

Civilization cannot continue. I know this as sure as I know I am alive. I know as sure as gravity that we will win.

I’ve written extensively throughout this book of the need to break people’s identification with civilization—as those who rely on and identify with the processes and artifacts of civilization, who rely on and identify with machines and with the machine social structure—and to help them to remember they are human animals reliant on their landbase. I have written of the importance of identifying with one’s landbase. It’s obviously best if this reidentification can take place through discourse, gentle guidance, and direct personal interactions with wild nature. But the fact remains that cities must not be allowed to continue to steal resources from the countryside. Dams must not be allowed to continue to kill salmon, to kill rivers. Deforesters must not be allowed to continue to deforest. Rapists must not be allowed to continue to rape.

There are, I suppose, at least four generic ways you can get someone to stop doing something. The first is that you can kill the other person. The second is that you can make it physically impossible for this other person to continue. This could happen through incarceration, for example, or also through removing the means the person is using to commit the act. An example of the latter is that it would be almost impossible at this point for those who are killing the oceans to continue at their present rate if they did not have oil to power their ships. Thus, denying them oil would go a long way toward stopping their actions. The third is that you can convince the other person to stop. This can be accomplished through providing rewards for changed behavior. It can be accomplished through teaching better ways. It can be accomplished through threats, backed up by the means and a willingness to enforce them. The fourth is that you can demoralize the other person.

One argument for pacifism, if you recall, is that we should never use violence or sabotage against those in power because they and their servants will hit back hard. As true as this may be, it also only looks at that first act. If you hit them, and hit them again, and keep hitting them, eventually they will grow discouraged. This is precisely the tactic they use to break all of us. It works both ways.

If my electricity goes out I get annoyed. If it happened very often I would get very annoyed. I might even get annoyed enough to start spending some time outside. If it happened even more than that I might begin to no longer be able to feel that I can rely on electricity. And that, my friends, is a very good start.