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"My friend Jeannette Armstrong says, "We all have cultural, learned behavior systems that have become embedded in our subconscious. These systems act… - Derrick Jensen
"My friend Jeannette Armstrong says, "We all have cultural, learned behavior systems that have become embedded in our subconscious. These systems act as filters for the way we see the world. They affect our behaviors, our speech patterns and gestures, the words we use, and also the way we gather our thinking. We have to find ways to challenge that continuously. To see things from a different perspective is one of the most difficult things we have to do." She continues, " I have to constantly school myself in the deconstruction of what I believe and perceive to be the way things are, to continuously break down in my own mind what I believe and continuously add to my knowledge and understanding. In other words, never to be satisfied that I'm satisfied. That sounds like I'm dissatisfied, but it doesn't mean that. It means never to be complacent and think I've come to a conclusion about things, to always question my own thinking. I always say to my writing class to start with and hold on to the attitude of saying bullshit to everything. And to be joyful and happy in the process. Because most of the time it's fear that creates old behaviors and old conflicts. It's not necessarily that we believe those things, but we know them and so we continue those patterns and behaviors because they're familiar
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About Derrick Jensen
Derrick Jensen (born 19 December 1960) is an American author and environmental activist who lives in Northern California.
Biography information from Wikiquote
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Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves.
I am in this same river. I can't much help it. I admit it: I'm 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 I'm misogynistic. I admit that, too. I'm a shitty cook, and a worse house cleaner, probably in great measure because I've internalized the notion that these are woman's work. Of course, I never admit that's why I don't do them: I always say I just don't much enjoy those activities (which is true enough; and it's true enough also that many women don't enjoy them either), and in any case, I've 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.
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