Thursday, June 11, 2009

Give up hope on the environment


A wonderful thing happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place. Hope implies powerlessness, a lack of agency, and a reliance on forces beyond your control. To focus on an abstract sustainable future neglects the real-world actions that can be taken right now. When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to ‘hope’ at all. We simply do the work. Derrick Jensen, 2006
More here.

Image by Brian Carlson, licensed under Creative Commons.

3 comments:

eddy carroll said...

Fucken great! Thanks for posting that

Permapoesis said...

Derrick Jensen is to writing what David Holmgren is to sustainability.

Permapoesis said...

well, actually they are both bonza when it comes to sustainability. both live exceptionally well. both have arrived at the same point: that if we mimic the systems of wild nature socially, environmentally and economically we can mitigate the forthcoming interrelated crisis' of global warming, peak oil and continued psychological/physiological unwellness.