This text far supersedes Nihilist Communism as a source of not only disillusionment, but despondancy for literate radicals. Not that there aren't some good scatterings to be found, however...
The most nutritious scattering in the text is this:
Turning the pain we feel into resistance is better than turning it on each other, our own class and our own bodies. It is environmentally healthier (to use a degraded term) to defend wild freedoms than let all of earth become civilisation’s territory.But this sentiment pretty much already saturates anarchist literature.
Written in the same fashion and published by members of the same team which brought back "impossibilism" into our ideological lexicon, Desert is addressed to anarchists of all stripes, and those leftists currently migrating in that direction. While Nihilist Communism – written initially for revolutionary organisationalists of Marxist' as well as platform/syndicalist-anarchist' persuasion – was appreciated for exposing just more-of-the-same blueprint-derived social engineering repoducing the state along 'new-and-improved' lines, Desert informs us that it doesn't really matter: we're all fucked. Oh, not right away, but probably twenty to fifty years down the road. O'brien's advice? Not "Do Nothing" like the Duponts sugest, but "Do whatever, it won't matter". Well, there's also "Be Afraid". Civilisation's in good hands, no matter the hits it takes, at least until the real coming armegedon with planetary suicide. We'll most of us be long dead. What a great story to encourage our children, and it's backed by real science!
The author(s) of Desert – who I like to call O'brien, after that despicable character in Orwell's 1984 – relies heavily on Lovelock, who early on gave us incredibly prophetic analysis of global ecology but ended his carreer advising increased reliance on the nuclear power industry, as in the long run, it's mostly harmless. Wow! Good advise for some: stocks for General Electric skyrocketted, in typical self-prophetic fashion. But back to the Desert, which most twenty-somethings will soon witness (not us old folks, what relief!), O'brien is not so optimistic as Lovelock, primarily after researching academic scientists sycophantic to the press like those turds responsible for those absurd BBC "Science Headlines" which almost always make it into colloquial wisdom. But as well, we are inundated with news from top police and military sources: those dudes are invincible thanks to modern technology.
The first set of unquestioned assumptions begins to clarify. Of course, there's the oldy but goody direct from the cops: "We always get our man" and the stand-by: "Crime doesn't pay". Obviously they've never heard of John Locke and empiricism which simply states "look around before coming up with your grand truths!" Of course, revealed wisdom has gotten a bad rap since the religious types started counting angels dancing on heads of pins, but I'm not so sure today's brightest minds are doing much different. Where are we to locate the victories of the economists and clinical psychologists? Shouldn't we all be happy and rich by now?
My first clue to this critical stand toward this text came with the repition of old wives tales concerning the origins and progress of civilisation, particularly in medical technology, and there's also the "fact" that capitalism has attained a complete "mastery of the world". If this were the case, we should all be "no worries" – "It's under control!". Then they tell us to forget about historical contexts and romantic futures. Sorry, but such is the way folks become eager slaves, when they are assured "It's the only game in town". Lip-service is paid to anthropological research, merely suggesting that base has been covered. Evidence? Because of modern medicine, rich folks live ten years longer than everybody else. Has anyone since the 1890's veterinarians considered the effect environmental stress (including but not limited to malnutrition) has on health? Travelling medicine-show proprieters and voodoo witch-doctors have long depended on the connection between psychology and physiologic function. And I wonder: Do healthy folks really take more medicine than the sick? I guess privilege has its privilege, at least from the stresses mitigated by financial security.
The thing is, the college of medicine doesn't even teach science, so medical science is a bit of an oxymoron. Doctors are technicians following blueprints laid down by the pharmaceutical and insurance companies (who actually do practice empirical science: the science of extracting money from their clientele and from those who aren't). What I'm suggesting is that a sheep herder could set a broken bone with comparable facility, and personally, I wouldn't want a doctor anywhere near the delivery room. Oh, technology has its advantages, I guess. One of the new "hypersonic" military jets zoomed over this morning doing about warp 5 and the house actually bounced twice on its foundation (or was that an earth-quake influenced by fracking up southern british columbian sands?) We're told repeatedly of the capability of today's techno-hacking youth and what they can do with a laptop. How come no one is making those automated oxygen burners take a wrong turn and slam into a mountain? Given, the recouperative powers of capitalist civilisation, still, I don't think they could re-boot after that sort of crash.
Toward the end, O'brien further distinguishes himself from the Duponts:
That’s not to say that all resistance is futile (if meaningful, achievable objectives are kept in mind, and tactics not transformed into aims), nor that we should desist from growing communities in which to live and lovethen goes on to endorse protecting your little patch but forget the planet, whilst at the same time, offering us the "big picture". Seems to me big picture thinking would go beyond one's own little patch. When O'brien does it, it's educational; when we do it, it's delusional idealism or magical thinking. The difference is a matter of facts and who owns them.
You still want plain speak? Who anymore even knows what those three ten-dollar words, "community", "live" and "love", mean? Security culture? hunker down? and sacrifice for the greater good? The hopeful tactics laid out in the penultimate chapter contradict the hopeless global surveilance and capitalist might described in the previous eight. And that sense of doom is well-prefigured by the time we read the encouraging final remarks. I come away not feeling encouraged, but instead feel as if I was just told "do your best to clean your plate, but there will be no cake afterward".
So what's my alternative? Don't give me that shit ... and I won't give you mine! But since you asked, I try to accept no answers and still question everything. Medicine or no, Thoreau said only a handfull of white folks have ever even died in this country ... you have to live first, and that often means taking chances. You want to be immortal? That would take a bit more self-initiative than, I think, we're any of us prepared for. Better to be a democrat, I guess. That makes just about everything somebody else's problem.
It is probably true that millenarian hope solves nothing, but without the expectation of our own future, what possibility is there for transgressive direct action (meaning of course, "I hope taking these risks won't backfire") Fearless Leader once explained, "I never promised change, only hope for it!" Is the appropriate response to give up hope altogether? Might as well slit yer own throat.
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