Derrick Jensen

"Ive never written this before in public, but my first thought on September 11 when I heard someone was attacking the World Trade Center is, Ah, so now it begins. Someone is finally fighting back. Given the terror that the United States routinely inflicts on people (including nonhumans, of course) the world over (and of course now a couple of years later the United States calls these programs of systematic terror Shock and Awe), Im surprised it didnt happen long ago. The poor have been very patient and long suffering, more patient and long suffering than anyone could ever expect. That is what I thought."

"Jeanette [Armstrong, "a traditional Okanagan Indian"] said, Attitudes about the species communication are the primary difference between western and indigenous philosophies. Even the most progressive western philosophers still generally believe that listening to the land is a metaphor. She paused, then continued emphatically, Its not a metaphor. Its how the world is."

"I am in this same river. I cant much help it. I admit it: Im racist. The other night I saw a group (or maybe a pack?) or white teenagers standing in a vacant lot, clustered around a 4x4, and I crossed the street to avoid them; had they been black, I probably would have taken another street entirely. And Im misogynistic. I admit that, too. Im a shitty cook, and a worse house cleaner, probably in great measure because Ive internalized the notion that these are womans work. Of course, I never admit thats why I dont do them: I always say I just dont much enjoy those activities (which is true enough; and its true enough also that many women dont enjoy them either), and in any case, Ive got better things to do, like write books and teach classes where I feel morally superior to pimps. And naturally I value money over life. Why else would I own a computer with a hard drive put together in Thailand by women dying of job-induced cancer? Why else would I own shirts made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, and shoes put together in Mexico? The truth is that, although many of my best friends are people of color (as the cliche goes), and other of my best friends are women, I am part of this river: I benefit from the exploitation of others, and I do not much want to sacrifice this privilege. I am, after all, civilized, and have gained a taste for "comforts and elegancies" which can be gained only through the coercion of slavery. The truth is that like most others who benefit from this deep and broad river, I would probably rather die (and maybe even kill, or better, have someone kill for me) than trade places with the men, women, and children who made my computer, my shirt, my shoes."

"If we wish to stop the atrocities, we will need to understand and change the social and economic conditions that cause them."

"I would say that when hope dies, action begins."

"We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means--all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity."