Derrick Jensen
Derrick Jensen
Derrick Jensenis an American author and radical environmentalistliving in Crescent City, California. According to Democracy Now!, Jensen "has been called the poet-philosopher of the ecological movement."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth19 December 1960
CountryUnited States of America
dream civilization people
To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them. At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?
self civilization ignorant
To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation.
thinking culture killing
I think a lot of us are increasingly recognizing that the dominant culture is killing the planet,
school people hated
As is true for most people I know, I've always loved learning. As is also true for most people I know, I always hated school. Why is that?
believe law justice
So long as we only believe in the justice of the state, of the law-made by those in power, to serve those in power-so long will we continue to be exploited by those in power.
morning writing blow
Every morning when I awake I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam. I tell myself I should keep writing, though I'm not sure that's right
love trust mean
Have you ever felt love? Did you need scientific proof of this? How would you have definitively and scientifically proved your love existed? If you could not prove it, would that mean your love didn't exist? What would you trust: your own feelings, or science?
men land dimes
I thought that, given the system of rewards central to our economic system, in which profit maximization is valued above all else and specifically above life, it is probably just as irresistible to the owners of capital (human or otherwise) to exploit workers (and the land): "Nothing personal," they say as they load their property onto the ship bound for the Middle Passage, "but a man's gotta turn a dime.
lying onions layers
Like the layers of an onion, under the first lie is another, and under that another, and they all make you cry.
lines resistance grassroots
The big dividing line is not and has never been between those who advocate more or less militant forms of resistance, or between mainstream and grassroots activists. The dividing line is between those who do something and those who do nothing.
community injustice ifs
If your community is founded on an injustice, that injustice cannot be questioned.
integrity roles example
We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.
thinking differences views
Many Indians have told me that the most basic difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that Westerners view the world as dead, and not as filled with speaking, thinking, feeling subjects as worthy and valuable as themselves.
inspiring dream memories
There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists...