But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and hereโs the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.
Derrick JensenNo matter what we call it, poison is still poison, death is still death, and industrial civilization is still causing the greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet.
Derrick JensenA culture that values production over life values the wrong things, because it will produce things at the expense of living beings, human or otherwise.
Derrick JensenAs is true for most people I know, I've always loved learning. As is also true for most people I know, I always hated school. Why is that?
Derrick JensenIt's no wonder we don't defend the land where we live. We don't live here. We live in television programs and movies and books and with celebrities and in heaven and by rules and laws and abstractions created by people far away and we live anywhere and everywhere except in our particular bodies on this particular land at this particular moment in these particular circumstances.
Derrick JensenCivilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.
Derrick Jensen