Endgame Book Review

Endgame.

Volume one ? The Problem of Civilisation
by Derrick Jensen

Seven Stones Press

Review by Glenn Ashton

Anybody who reads a newspaper or listens to the radio or watches that most dilute of media, television, is aware we are faced with several severe environmental crises.

Climate change looms large. Oceans are being depleted of fish. The ozone hole is expanding. Tropical forest is disappearing at over 10 football fields per minute and if we continue at this rate nothing will be left of it in 50 years time.

Each of these issues represents a crisis of overwhelming proportions.
Clearly we have to do something. Most people are shocked into inaction by the sheer magnitude of the implications. We are aware of what's happening but how do we tackle these crises?

Derrick Jensen goes some way, in this first of a series of two books, to answer some of these questions. He aims to not only to inform us ? he assumes most who read the book are well informed anyway ? but to go some way towards providing solutions.

His approach is of necessity fairly radical ? after all, given the extreme scale of the problem, radical thinking is required in order to arrive at meaningful solutions. His proposal involves taking individual and collective direct action to turn this situation around. This may appear anarchic or anti-establishment but his proposals are somewhat more nuanced.

The book throws the reader in at the deep end by setting out twenty premises, which at first reading appear subversive. For instance, premise one is that civilisation, especially industrial civilisation, is not and can never be sustainable. This may seem obvious and moderate but the premises rapidly become more profound. Premise three states that our way of living is based upon, requires and would collapse very quickly, without persistent and widespread violence. Premise ten states that our culture as a whole is insane and is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life. The other seventeen are no less provocative.

Now even for someone who has spent his entire rational life engaged in pointing out that humanity is headed down the drain if we don't change our ways, Jensen appears borderline.

On the other hand his premises are, when closely examined, incontrovertible - something he elucidates over the next 450 pages. He does so with not only the necessary sense of seriousness but also with a sense of irreverence and - dare I say it - fun. He revels in debunking those who believe that only a peaceful path can lead to solution of our problems. He baits capitalists and new age advocates alike, for not dissimilar reasons. The capitalists for being unfeeling, the new-agers for blunted faculties and failure to act.

Jensen has some unique tools to assist the reader in guiding us through what is fundamentally dangerous and subversive ground. He is a survivor of an horrifically abusive home, ruled by an unpredictably violent and nasty father. Just as each of us is shaped by our past, so Jensen uses his history to rather poignantly and accurately show how we are each trapped in an abusive relationship with our planet and our fellow travellers, be they trees, salamanders ? one of his favourite examples ? fish, or anything else that lives on earth.

If this book has any shortcomings, they lie entwined amongst its rather long-winded, polemical passages. Had these been heavily edited the book would have make its points in 150 pages less. However Jensen writes well and uses some remarkable quotations and references ? the omission of which would have rendered the book rather more sterile and less profound.

Humans are the fulcrum of levering our future global sustainability and history. We can either reform our relationship with nature, as Jensen proposes by radically reassessing how we interact with those who hold the reins of power, or we can assume responsibility for the collapse of the natural systems upon which our survival relies.

Either course will render life - as presently experienced - unrecognisable in 100 years time. Jensen takes us on a necessarily provocative journey in assessing the status quo, in order that we - the people - can have a say in precisely what the status ante will be.

Endgame is a book that everyone who wants to save anything of this world for their children should read. I look forward to reading volume two, Endgame ? Resistance, which is now available, where Jensen will unpack precisely how he proposes we should take responsibility for the perilous state of our planet.

Endgame Book Review

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