Posted on 10/21/2019 1:47:08 PM PDT by Mount Athos
Yes, yes, I know. The climate is breaking down. It’s urgent. An emergency. We’ve only got a few years left to ‘fix’ it.
Indeed, we won’t fix it. Weather patterns will become increasingly unstable and unpredictable, and the effects it will soon have on how humans around the world grow food will be devastating, likely causing harvests to fail across entire continents and food prices to sky-rocket. Millions have already suffered due to the amplified instability. We’re facing imminent societal collapse (whatever that means), both around the world and in the UK. All of our lives are soon going to radically change. None of this is particularly controversial. When a bus is driving with a certain momentum towards a person, it gets clearer and clearer that it will hit the person. After a certain point, it’s inevitable. And that’s where we stand now, with regards to the momentum of climatic change. The bus is about to hit us. Our lives are about to change. It’s not clear whether or not we’ll survive (as a species). Many species have already been run over. Two hundred species each and every day go extinct.
I’ve been with Extinction Rebellion (XR) from the start. I was one of the 15 people in April 2018 who came together and made the collective decision to try to create the conditions that would initiate a rebellion. I was a coordinator of one of the original five working groups, and I’ve been organising with XR day-and-night since then (frugally living off my savings so I don’t have to work, having quit an industry that paid me £1000/week). And I’ve been in RisingUp (the organisation from which XR has emerged) since the first RisingUp action in November 2016. I’m a RisingUp Holding Group member, and a member of the XR Guardianship Team.
And for the sake of transparency: that previous paragraph is all about me ‘pulling rank’ — I’m trying to convince you to listen to what I have to say…
And I’m here to say that XR isn’t about the climate. You see, the climate’s breakdown is a symptom of a toxic system of that has infected the ways we relate to each other as humans and to all life. This was exacerbated when European ‘civilisation’ was spread around the globe through cruelty and violence (especially) over the last 600 years of colonialism, although the roots of the infections go much further back.
As Europeans spread their toxicity around the world, they brought torture, genocide, carnage and suffering to the ends of the earth. Their cultural myths justified the horrors, such as the idea that indigenous people were animals (not humans), and therefore God had given us dominion over them. This was used to justify a multi-continent-wide genocide of tens of millions of people. The coming of the scientific era saw this intensify, as the world around us was increasingly seen as ‘dead’ matter — just sitting there waiting for us to exploit it and use it up. We’re now using it up faster than ever.
Euro-Americans violently imposed and taught dangerous delusions that they used to justify the exploitation and reinforced our dominance, while silencing worldviews that differed or challenged them. The UK’s hand in this was enormous, as can be seen by the size of the former British empire, and the dominance of the English language around the world. There is stark evidence that everyday racial bias continues in Britain, now, today. It’s worth naming some of these constructed delusions that have been coded into societies and institutions around the world: The delusion of white-supremacy centres whiteness and the experience of white people, constructing and perpetuating the myth that white people and their lives are somehow inherently better and more valuable than people of colour. The delusion of patriarchy centres the male experience, and excludes/hinders female assigned people from public life (reducing them to a possession or object for ownership or consumption). Patriarchy teaches dominating and competitive behaviours, and emphasises the idea that the world is a place of scarcity, separation and powerlessness.
The delusions of Eurocentrism include the notion that Europeans know what is best for the world. The delusions of hetero-sexism/heteronormativity propagate the idea that heterosexuality is ‘normal’ and that other expressions of sexuality are deviant. The delusions of class hierarchy uphold the theory that the rich elite are better/smarter/nobler than the rest of us, and make therefore better decisions. There are other delusions. These delusions have become ingrained in all of us, taught to us from a very young age.
None of these delusions have ended, although some of the arguments that supported them (e.g. phrenology) have been dispelled. They continue to play out through each of us, in our ways of relating, regardless of our identity. The current pride in the history of the British empire, or the idea that the USA is on the side of ‘good’, continues to enable neo-colonialism in 2019, taking the form of palm-oil plantations, resources wars, and the parasitical financial sector, to name but a few. The task of Extinction Rebellion is to dispel these delusions. We need to cure the causes of the infection, not just alleviate the symptoms. To focus on the climate’s breakdown (the symptom) without focusing attention on these toxic delusions (the causes) is a form a denialism. Worse, it’s a racist and sexist form of denialism, that takes away from the necessary focus of the need for all of us to de-colonise our selves.
My ancestors are European, some of whom claimed to ‘own’ people as slaves. There are black people with the name Basden in the Americas, and I have begun to mobilise my (white) family to make contact in order to seek to pay reparations.
However, my own accountability cannot be fully paid through this. The insanity* of the mind of the coloniser continues today. It continues in the extraction of fossil fuels, minerals and water from the earth. It continues in deforestation and industrial agriculture. It continues in a callous culture of consumption, which intensifies each Christmas. It continues in evictions and deportations. It continues in the ways of relating to those around us that perpetuate separation and division.
The result is isolation, pain and suffering. The result can be felt at the individual level — in the endemic levels of loneliness and mental-health illness. It can be felt at the community level — in the theft of land for plunder and profit by largely-European-and-US-based banks and corporations. And it can be felt at the global level — in the polluting of our air and oceans.
So Extinction Rebellion isn’t about the climate. It’s not even about ‘climate justice’**, although that is also important. If we only talk about the climate, we’re missing the deeper problems plaguing our culture. And if we don’t excise the cause of the infection, we can never hope to heal from it.
This article is calling to all of those who are involved in XR who sometimes slip into saying it’s a climate movement. It’s a call to the American rebels who made a banner saying “CLIMATE extinction rebellion”. It’s a call to the XR Media & Messaging teams to never get sloppy with the messaging and ‘reduce’ it to climate issues. It’s a call to the XR community to never say we’re a climate movement. Because we’re not. We’re a Rebellion. And we’re rebelling to highlight and heal from the insanity that is leading to our extinction. Now tell the truth and act like it.
Ole Stu here needs an intervention, like NOW.
So, he wants to smash heteronormativity to save humanity?
Pfft! Just another unattractive guy that can’t get chicks with his personality, sense of humor or ability to provide.
Thus, when Europeans, from much younger civilizations, DID develop that technology, they overcame the primitive societies of Africa, exploited their resources, and brought a measure of success, education, and prosperity to the otherwise backward natives.
Almost all African nations are now "independent" from their former imperialist rulers. And look how well they're doing. They were crapholes before the Europeans came; they managed to experience some degree of civilization briefly while the Europeans were there then they threw them out, now they're crapholes once again.
So spare me the "European Oppression" Chorus.
Wow...that is breathtaking.
As usual with leftists, there is not a hint of the solution, just an endless list of grievances. What is their solution? Wiping out the entire human race? Is just wiping out people with European ancestors?
I read about Manson back in the eight grade.
Until then I thought about hyppies as dopey but well intented dropouts.
After reading ‘Helter Skelter” I viewed them as dangerous, revolutionary pyschos intend on destroying American and Western civilization
Probably why I became a conservative.
“Damned Dirty Hyppies”, I say!
So much bull puckey piled up in one place.
Reading this made me feel like I need a shower...though I had one 3 hours ago.
How can these unwashed crretins stand being the same room with themselves?
Gee, with a moral backpack full of that much Euro ancestor guilt, why doesn’t Mr. Stuart just end it all? That act of self-destruction would probably have more real effect on resolving “the problem” than all of his activism and moralistic bleating.
In fact, he should probably delay his own departure and instead use his considerable organizing talents to encourage as many of his like-minded fellow travelers to off themselves as soon as possible. To have maximum effect on reducing the terrible impact on the environment, they could even hold great “Offing Festivals” where participants (especially the longer lived young) could get high, listen to really cool music, eat healthy vegan cuisine, hear motivational speeches, have tantric sex with whoever/whatever, climb into self-closing body bags (to make clean-up and disposal quick and easy), and finally take fatal drugs for their trip into oblivion.
Of course, disposal will be “green” as well. What a feast for the worms.
< /sarcasm>
It would make no sense to be telling us the real problem is the underlying way we relate ... because the underlying way we relate is meaningless if everybody is going to be dead in 11-point-whatever years if we don't take immediate drastic action.
In other words, if a person is in the middle of a deadly heart attack, and the EMS people are telling the family 'ok well now we need to have a conversation about salt and fat' ... etc. ... instead of rushing the person to the hospital, then we can conclude the EMS people are not really concerned about a heart attack, i.e. there is no heart attack.
The logical conclusion of this person's argument is that 'XR does not believe there is a real climate danger.'
***We’ve only got a few years left to ‘fix’ it.***
We were told the same thing back in 1968 with the coming collapse of civilization. Remember all those HOW TO SURVIVE books back then?
We were supposed to be living in the Stone Age by now.
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