Endgame Vol.1 (81 page)

I’ll tell you my fantasy, which is that as some fed reads this book, perhaps with an increasing sense of outrage, that instead of ordering me arrested or killed, he disproves me. I would like nothing more than to be shown conclusively that my premises are wrong and that we do not have as difficult a path ahead of us as I know we do.

Show me how a way of life based on the use of nonrenewable resources can be sustainable. Show me how a way of life based on perceiving those living beings around us (and often ourselves) as resources can be sustainable. Show me how civilization can and does benefit landbases. Show me how civilization isn’t based on systematic and widespread violence. (As Ursula K. LeGuin writes, “All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up hate with pretty words” [
The Sun
, March 2004, 48].) Convince me. I don’t think you can do it.

I mean, by the way, really convince me. I don’t mean throw at me your angry and absurd roadblocks to understanding, tossed at me simply because you are too afraid of the implications not only to allow yourself to examine them but to allow anyone else to examine them either (see R. D. Laing’s Jack and Jill above). I get enough of that already. For example, after a recent talk someone emailed me with this question: “If you don’t like civilization and all it brings, why don’t you and your liberal [
sic
] friends just move someplace else?” I mentioned this at a talk I did a couple of nights later, and a woman in the audience exclaimed, “By Christ, tell me where I can go! The fucking culture is everywhere. I can’t get away from it. The poisons are in my cells, and they’re in the cells of everyone everywhere. Civilization is killing the planet!”

That email is one example of what I’m talking about. Here’s another. Immediately after another show I did, an older man with a gray ponytail and loose-knit sweater rushed the stage. He demanded, “Do you have a bank account?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because if you do, I can discount everything you say.”

I stared at him, eyes wide, dumbstruck.

“All through your talk, I kept wondering whether you’re a hypocrite. If you participate in the system, you’re a hypocrite, and then nothing you say matters at all.”

I pointed to his sweater. “Where do you think this was made? And your pants? Your shoes? My shoes? My backpack? Just because we’re immersed in this culture that systematically eliminates alternatives doesn’t mean—”

He cut me off, looked smug. “Ah, ha! So you feel defensive. You do have a bank account then.”

I just shook my head and walked away.

Back to the feds and other cops reading this book. If you don’t like what I say, disprove me. I don’t think it can be done. And if you can’t disprove me, don’t simply act out your denial and kill or arrest me. Join me. Do the real work. Protect your landbase. I’m sure we could use your skills.

I want to be clear, by the way, that this is not a general invitation to debate my life or work in private. I do enough of that in public and have no interest in doing it in private. And frankly, more or less all of the “attempts to disprove me” I’ve seen have been nothing more than these roadblocks I mentioned or, even more often than that, plain old bursts of anger (and especially passive aggressiveness) because people are afraid, and so they lash out (never once, of course, admitting they’re lashing out). This paragraph is instead a very specific invitation for servants of power not to fall back
on force to defend that power, but to try real discourse. And for them to seriously examine the premises of this book. If they honestly find errors in my premises or thinking, I’d be willing to reexamine everything I’m saying, on the condition that if they cannot find errors, they not only seriously examine their own role in the ongoing apocalypse that is industrial civilization, but help stop the apocalypse—help bring down civilization.