Endgame Vol.1 Read Free Page A

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    Or how about this : It should be clear to everyone by now—even those with a vested interest in ignorance—that industrial civilization is killing the planet. It’s causing unprecedented human privation and suffering. Unless it’s stopped, or somehow stops itself, or most likely collapses under the weight of its inherent ecological and human destructiveness, it will kill every living being on earth. It should be equally clear that the efforts of those of us working to stop or slow the destruction are insufficient. We file our lawsuits; write our books; send letters to editors, representatives, CEOs; carry signs and placards; restore natural communities; and not only do we not stop or slow the destruction, but it actually continues to accelerate. Rates of deforestation continue to rise, rates of extinction do the same, global warming proceeds apace, the rich get richer, the poor starve to death, and the world burns.
    At the same time that we so often find ourselves seemingly helpless in facing down civilization’s speeding train of destruction, we find that there’s a huge gap in our discourse. We speak much of the tactics of civil disobedience, much of the spiritual politics of cultural transformation, much of the sciences of biotechnology, toxicology, biology, and psychology. We talk of law. We also talk often of despair, frustration, and sorrow.
    Yet our discourse remains firmly embedded in that which is sanctioned by the very overarching structures that govern the destruction in the first place. We do not often speak of the tactics of sabotage, and even less do we speak of violence. We avoid them, or pretend they should not be allowed to enter even the realm of possibility, or that they simply do not exist, like disinherited relatives who show up at a family reunion.
    Several years ago I interviewed a long-term and well-respected Gandhian activist. I asked him, “What if those in power are murderous? What if they’re not willing to listen to reason at all? Should we continue to approach them nonviolently?”
    He responded, reasonably enough, “When a house is on fire, and has gone far beyond the point where you can do anything about it, all you can do is bring lots of water to try to stop its spread. But you can’t save the house. Nonviolence is a precautionary principle. Before the house is on fire you have to make sure you
have a fire hydrant, clearly marked escape routes, emergency exits. The same is true in society. You educate your children in nonviolence. You educate your media in nonviolence. And when someone has a grievance, you don’t ignore or suppress it, but you listen to that person, and ask, ‘What is your concern?’ You say, ‘Let’s sit down and solve it.’”
    I agreed with what he said, so far as it went, but that didn’t stop me from understanding that he’d sidestepped the question.
    Before I could bring him back, he continued, “Say a father beats his children. Once he has already reached that stage, you have to say, ‘What kind of a childhood did he have? How did he not learn the skills of coping with adverse situations in a calm, compassionate, composed way?’”
    This Gandhian’s compassion, I thought, was entirely misplaced. Where was his compassion for the children being beaten? I responded that I believed the first question we need to ask is how we can get the children to a safe place. Once safety has been established, by any means possible, I said, and once the emotional needs of the children are being met, only then do we have the luxury of asking about the father’s emotional needs, and his history.
    What happened next is really the point of this story. I asked this devoted adherent of nonviolence if in his mind it would ever be acceptable to commit an act of violence were it determined to be the only way to save the children. His answer was revealing, and symbolizes the hole in our discourse: he changed the subject.
    After I transcribed and edited the