Eco-consciousness and the Rise of the Eco Warrior
Call to Arms
“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much
life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”
–
Henry
David Thoreau
This article is about
Nature versus Anti-nature.
It’s about Natural Order versus the Great Lie. And it is about how to choose
the right side, that is, the healthier side. What is anti-nature? It is the
runaway train that we call industrial civilization, which is systematically
destroying the world under the false flag of “progress.”
What is the Great Lie? It
is the propaganda that has been shoved down our throats all our lives, set in
motion by a plutocratic regime that has a greedy stranglehold on the vital
resources of the planet. Like Peter Joseph said, “We live in a plutocracy not a
democracy, and the only true power is behind the curtain, not in front. The
financial and business powers not only own and control this country they own
and control the entire planet; and no, it’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s a
value-system disorder.”
We
inhale what trees exhale, and trees inhale what we exhale. So you see, the tree
and us are one.
It’s high time we changed
this exploitative value-system. We live in a world where unsustainable
civilizations slowly, and violently, deplete the environment of its vitality,
all because we’re preached that we have to keep buying things in order to
survive. We have to keep consuming beyond our needs. We have to “keep up with the
Joneses.”
We must must must have a
J.O.B. or we’re a degenerate, or a dirty hippie, or somehow evil. This is all
part of the Great Lie. Like Derrick Jensen wrote in Endgame: The Problem of
Civilization, “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… The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of
the economic system.” The violence must stop.
And the Eco Warriors are
not waiting around for some bloated windbag in power to make a pathetic attempt
at change through petitions and corrupt elections. No, the Eco Warriors are
daring to take the wheel of this runaway train and drive it right off its
unsustainable tracks.
When a nation favors
competition, taking, and hoarding over cooperation, sharing, and gifting, it is
approaching spiritual death. When profits are valued over people, money over
meaning, entitlement over justice, and ‘us’ over ‘them,’ then we have given
into the great lie: that everything is separate and not connected. That
everything is a product. That everything has a price-tag on it.
We need to put the “eco”
back into economy. It must be people before profits, equality before equity,
and the heart before money. We need to return to the ethic of reciprocity: to
the Golden Mean, the middle-way, and the Golden Ratio. Otherwise we’re just
floundering aimlessly in an immoral, unhealthy, unsustainable system of governance.
We need to ask questions
like the wise eco-feminist, Starhawk, asked, “How does my spiritual practice
and daily life serve the earth? How does my spiritual practice and daily life
affect the poorest third of humanity? How will my spiritual practice and daily
life affect the generations to come in the future?”
Toruk Makto
When the blockbuster
movie Avatar
was released back in 2009, there was astrange
epidemic called “Avatar Blues” that showed a rise in depression and
suicidal thoughts. The
pundits tried to write it all off as just “utopian wishful thinking,” or
“wanting to escape reality.” But I disagree. I think the depression was a
genuine response to the giant metaphor the movie represented: that Pandora
(Earth) is being destroyed by a greedy corporation that will obtain the
“precious” resource unobtainium (oil) at all costs.
It was like a slap in the
face. Toruk Makto, the movie’s hero, was a symbol, or archetype, for unified
nature against ecocide. Here on planet Earth, Eco Warriors are the
personification of this archetype, whereas mega-corporations represent the
ecocidal impulse. Just replace Pandora with Earth, unobtainium with
Gold/diamonds/oil, the militarized mining company with overreaching
corporations, and Toruk Makto with Eco-warrior and the metaphor is complete.
We need a Toruk Makto, a
force of unified nature. Hell, we need thousands of them. Like the great Carl
Sagan said, “Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake
and a basic understanding of how the world works.”
As it stands, we have
a critical decision to make: proactive responsibility or apathetic
indifference? The
state perpetuates apathetic indifference. Indeed, it conditions and
propagandizes it to no end. We’re either a victim of this propaganda or we’re
turning the tables on it. If we wish to transform our apathy into empathy, then
we should assume an Eco Warrior disposition.
If we wish to transform
our indifference into proactive courage, then we should assume an Eco Warrior
temperament. If we wish to transform our unsustainable irresponsibility into
sustainable responsibility, then we should assume an Eco Warrior perspective.
Sometimes this means acting amoral in order to bring
morality back to an otherwise immoral system. One must act amoral in order to
transform the immoral back into the moral. It’s like Isaac Asimov wrote, “Never
let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.”
“I rebel; therefore we exist.”
– Albert Camus
Indeed, the amoral
agent’s way of taking this world seriously is by disrupting it and then giving
it a new form. We amorally rebel; therefore morality exists. In an immoral
world we must oppose it amorally in order to compel it to moralize itself. The
Eco Warrior is precisely the kind of amoral agent needed to fight against the
immoral infrastructure that is destroying the world today.
Let others have their
moral high ground; let’s stick with the amoral middle ground and change the
world for the better. Like Bertrand Russell suggested, “Find more pleasure in
intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence
as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.” Or from
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, “If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible,
forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, or rebellious, you’re on the right track.
If you have never been called these things, there is yet time.”
Despite what you may
think, fierceness, fearlessness and ruthlessness are all possible without
resorting to violence. So it is with being and becoming an Eco Warrior. The
world doesn’t need more trigger-happy militarized crackpots with nationalism
and patriotism scrambling their brains into exploitable soup. It needs
compassionate Eco-warriors with the courage to challenge the powers-that-be,
while also bringing tonality to an otherwise atonal world, using progressively
sustainable solutions that show how a new world is possible.
Like Derrick Jensen
wrote, “We cannot hope to create a sustainable culture with any but sustainable
souls… Love does not imply pacifism.” Only you can transform yourself into a
sustainable soul. Tap into your inner Toruk Makto. Be fierce. Be fearless. Be
ruthless. Be an Eco Warrior.
Image Source:
Call
to Arms
Tree
Hug
Toruk
Makto
Camus
Quote
Tree-hugger
From Fractal
Enlightenment @ http://fractalenlightenment.com/27006/sustainability/eco-consciousness-and-the-rise-of-the-eco-warrior
For more information
about environmental activism see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/activism
- See ‘Older Posts’ at the end of each section
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