Fighting Civilization

Interview with Derrick Jensen

“The salmon are dying. We’re changing the climate. Earthworm populations in the Midwest are disappearing. I picture people coming 20, 30 years later, after civilization collapses, and they’ll be reading some old book anywhere in this region, up the coast, and they’ll say, “there were so many salmon that people were afraid to put their boats in the water for fear they’d capsize… and I’m fucking starving to death”.

What do you think is going to happen in the next 40 or 50 years ?

“An increase in grinding away at whatever natural and human diversity is left. People will lead increasingly  miserable lives, not paying attention as long as they’ve got a television. I think about all of these people who sit in front of their TVs: they might as well be in SHU (isolation unit at Pelican Bay). Their world consists of the space between the couch and the TV. I do not see us having a transformation to a sustainable way of living that is either voluntary or that maintains capitalism or industrialism. I see the next 100 years being pretty nasty, no matter how you look at it.


Thanks to Scott Meredith of Alas Babylon for the link. Derrik Jensen is the author of “A language older than words”, his interview appears in Nov/Dec 2001 issue of Clamor Magazine.