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
bad consists left mainly matter people recognize
My audience consists mainly of people who already recognize how bad this culture is, and I want to push them to become more radical. It doesn't really matter to me if they are Left or Right.
depriving destroy mean people poor steal talk
People say 'what do you mean' when you talk about 'bringing down civilization.' What I really mean is depriving the rich of the ability to steal from the poor and depriving the powerful of the ability to destroy the planet. That's what I really mean.
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?
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?
people enough ends
There is always money to kill people. There is never enough money for life affirming ends.
sleep gun people
Those in power have made it so we have to pay simply to exist on the planet. We have to pay for a place to sleep, and we have to pay for food. If we don't, people with guns come and force us to pay. That's violent.
civilized emphasized indigenous natural ways
In all of my books, I've emphasized that the fundamental difference between civilized and indigenous ways of being is that, for even the most open-minded of the civilized, listening to the natural world is a metaphor.
entitled incapable relation whom
If you see yourself as entitled to a resource, and if you're not willing or incapable of seeing this other as a being with whom you can and should be in relation with, then you're going to take the resource.
asked label
I get asked quite often if I'm an anarchist. If they want to put a label on me, that's fine. What is most important to me is to live in a world that is not being murdered.
based figure rocket scientist
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that any way of living that's based on the use of non-renewable resources won't last.
begin calendar frogs keeping last pay year
I want you to begin keeping a calendar of who you see and when: the first day each year you see buttercups, the first day frogs start singing, the last day you see robins in the fall, the first day for grasshoppers. In short, I want you to pay attention.
central excuse gaelic literature wrote
Maud Gonne was - excuse me, Maud Gonne was central to the Gaelic literature revival. She wrote plays, and she sang.
almost dependent difficult exploiting imagine outside physically system
Part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it, and it's very difficult physically for us to live outside of it.
presented
If the world is presented as resources to be exploited, then, more than likely, you're going to exploit the world.