Derrick Jensen

An author I have yet to mention in my blog is Derrick Jensen. I have read two of his books, The Culture of Make-Believe, and A Language Older than Words. I will not attempt to summarize them. It would be impossible to do so because the books do not progress linearly; there is no simple way to describe what the books are about. I have attempted to do so when telling individual people what I am reading, but that serves them a great injustice. I guess I could at least share what I've said in those instances here. The Culture of Make-Believe explores racism and sexism, or more broadly, hate, and attempts to discover why people hate. The book I just finished (which actually was published before Culture) explores our perception of the world as being silent and the consequences that has regarding how we relate (or fail to relate) to the world. The hard part about reading good books is to realize that I should never believe anything I read, that I can't learn from it until I've experienced what it was trying to show me firsthand.

I have changed, and I have been changed. There is no going back. That is, if I were to ever somehow convert "back" to Christianity, I would be a very different Christian than I ever was. I don't really see that happening though. (So yes, Uncle Dan, in response to your comment, I have concluded that Christianity is false. And I don't say that claiming to know what is True, either. I obviously have only reached a point where I know how I don't want to live, not how I want to live. But that is part of the journey and process of life. It's that process that is constantly interrupted by things like class and homework. I don't mean to complain. I mean to acknowledge so that I can understand where I go with the process from here.) In many ways, this blog has had as its central focus my search for God in my life. It started with the third post I made, and permeated many posts since. In some ways, that stage is over, and in other ways, that search is beginning to manifest itself in a different way that may be hard for some people to understand- how can a search for God continue if I'm saying I don't believe in a God? How can I determine and judge the wrong ways to live my life without having a standard like God to base that judgement from? That's the logical conclusion, right?

I've been taught in my theology classes that a partial provision of evidence of God's existence is the fact that we question and that we fear death. Our questions lead to a never ending search for some ultimate Truth, and if that Truth doen't exist, our lives would be a futile exercise in frustration. We fear death, knowing somehow that it is not right that we should die, that our souls must be immortal. Of course, some Christians are successful in convincing themselves not to fear death because they are absolutely secure in the knowledge of their own salvation. Otherwise, this fear of death manifests an insecurity that should be warded off by stated faith. At any rate, each of these perspectives are ways in which humans pridefully elevate themselves above the rest of the world, the world they assume is theirs to dominate and destroy as they please. The elevation of humanity is an act of isolation. We have become disconnected from the community we were all born into. I'm not talking about the limited, and admittedly quite broken community of humans; the same way Christians perceive their lives to be sustained by the love of God is the way in which our existence is entirely dependent upon the living community which physically surrounds us and which provides us with sustinence, both physical and spiritual. We are dependent upon the ecosystems we are destroying in the same way Christians believe they are dependent upon the God they killed. I'm not sure why I am drawing these parallels, but I see them. Perhaps, with the years of religious education I have received, I can't help but be deeply informed about how the Christian religion explains everything so tidily, but the faith that blindly accompanied that accumulating education fell away very quickly as I was exposed to the ways in which the Christian mythology justifies de facto such life-destroying practices as "subduing" the world to humanity's selfish purposes. I have studied the Catholic Church's social justice teaching, but the fatal error we make is in creating and supporting the hierarchy of dignity in God's Creation. Naming humanity as above the rest of the world and as chosen by God gives humanity the license to carry out all of the destructive realities we are surrounded by: war, rape, racism, ecocide, famine. Speaking of famine, this attitude is clearly demonstrated with the fulfillment of the Catholic mission to "increase and multiply." This is ignorance and arrogance to assume that the the population of humans should be allowed to expand indefinitely, and indeed, exponentially, at the expense of every other species on earth. And so we have famine in Africa and throughout the world. And that's not to say its because of a lack of food. We certainly have created a surplus of food, quite unnaturally (talk about playing God). And as any biology teacher could show you, surpluses of food for a population always lead to expansion in population size to meet the amount of food available (waste not, want not). And if the amount of available food decreases, so too does population size. All of the problems we are futilely trying to solve through social programs, treating only the symtoms, not the causes (poverty, hunger, war, etc.) stem from the fundamental problem that we have arrogantly assumed control over our source of food (agricultural revolution) in order to remove ourselves from dependence on the rest of the community, and causing increasing harm to the community as a result.

Dammit, I went off and started summarizing. That would have to be one long post. I'll try to keep my reflecting personal and local instead of theoretical and abstract (i.e. far away, like my notion of God always was). Well, let's see. The semester is quickly coming to a close. I will be returning to school next January where I shall daily take up the struggle to make what I am being taught (notice the passive) important, relevant, or otherwise applicable to me. I am getting involved with the local chapter of Food not Bombs, which is getting started again after lack of a wide enough interest. I might go dumpster diving tomorrow for the first time (for the hell of it (actually, I only have $3.13 in flex points to use for oncampus dining, so it may save me from having to buy groceries to sustain myself for the next three days)). I'm going to celebrate my friend, Nathan's birthday tomorrow night. I am trying to immerse myself in the struggle of making (and not buying) gifts for people this Christmas season. I am not proud to say that I would be very grateful to receive a pair of boots that fit this season, for riding my bike in tennis shoes in 15 degree weather is not good for blood flowing in my toes. Sara will be leaving shortly after the new year begins to study abroad in Belgium, an event I certainly have mixed feelings about. Although, distance affords each of us the freedom to focus more fully on developing parts of our lives that we may be distracted from now (every decision and action has both a benefit and a cost). I am somewhat looking forward to the courses I will be taking next semester: a writing course, a 300 level course in urban crisis, intro to women's studies (feminism is not man-hating. that would be sexism), a hopefully easy biology course called diversity of life (I am hopeful that I will be learning the complexity of interrelationships in different ecosystems), and finally intro to anthropology. I certainly have an interest in anthropology, but probably not in the way it will be taught (with the use of such labels as "prehistory"). We'll see. That is all for now, as I am tired and have much to do tomorrow (like begin another book by Daniel Quinn).