Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

Endgame #1

by Derrick Jensen

The long-awaited companion piece to Derrick Jensen's immensely popular and highly acclaimed works A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe. Accepting the increasingly widespread belief that industrialized culture inevitably erodes the natural world, Endgame sets out to explore how this relationship impels us towards a revolutionary and as-yet undiscovered shift in strategy. Building on a series of simple but increasingly provocative premises, Jensen leaves us hoping for what may be inevitable: a return to agrarian communal life via the disintegration of civilization itself.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Environment, Politics, Ecology, History, Nature

495 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2006

About the author

Derrick Jensen is an American author and environmental activist living in Crescent City, California. He has published several books questioning and critiquing contemporary society and its values, including A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, and Endgame. He holds a B.S. in Mineral Engineering Physics from the Colorado School of Mines and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University. He has also taught creative writing at Pelican Bay State Prison and Eastern Washington University.

Reviews

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s a scene early in Asimov’s Foundation when Hari Seldon is on trial for sedition (he’s been prophesizing the collapse of the Empire) and the prosecutor asks him about the group of people he’s assembled, if they’re there to save the Empire. Seldon replies (and I paraphrase freely since I don’t have the book in front of me):

“Oh, no, the Empire’s toast. The most we can do is make sure the ensuing dark age doesn’t last as long as it might without our intervention.”

Another author who’s brought to mind is Olaf Stapledon, who, in Last And First Men, recounts the fall of the First Men – having exhausted all the energy and mineral resources of the planet, they were unable to cope mentally or physically with the ensuing catastrophes:

“The collapse of this first world-civilization was due to the sudden failure of the supplies of coal. All the original fields had been sapped centuries earlier, and it should have been obvious that those more recently discovered could not last for ever…. (A) superstition had arisen in the clouded minds of the world-citizens that it was in some mysterious manner inexhaustible….

“The sane policy would have been to abolish the huge expense of power on ritual flying, which used more of the community’s resources than the whole of productive industry. But to believers in Gordelpus such a course of was almost unthinkable. Moreover, it would have undermined the flying aristocracy….

“(T)he race was now entering upon an unprecedented psychological crisis, brought about by the impact of the economic disaster upon a permanently unwholesome mentality.” (pp. 70-71) (Note 1)

There’s also Mike McQuay’s duology, which I read 15+ years ago, Pure Blood and Mother Earth. That series ends with civilization destroyed, and the survivors reduced to the Stone Age.

And then there’s H.M. Hoover’s Children of Morrow>, one of my favorite books when I was a kid. It’s the story of a post-apocalypse world where ecological collapse has left the planet oxygen starved, and the survivors struggle to eke a marginal living out of the depleted soil.

And what would a review be without a reference (two actually) to the Malazan Book of the Fallen?

“There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one's own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage alone a foul, tortured path...is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come.” The Bonehunters

DERRICK JENSEN:


KARSA ORLONG:


Separated at birth? Perhaps not but both have the same goal – to bring down civilization.

I’m reminded of all these books (and more) because all reflect Derrick Jensen’s view of human civilization. As he succinctly puts it on p. 231 of volume one:

“We are fucked. We are so fucked.
“Not in the good sense of the word.”

Or in a more nuanced – and less scatological – version:

1. Industrial civilization is unsustainable. It’s not a question of “if” but a question of “when” it’s going to fall.
2. The fall is going to be messy.
3. The longer it takes civilization to fall, the worse the tragedy. In that light there are two things we should be doing: Bringing about the fall sooner rather than later; and preparing to survive it.

He puts forth his case in 20 premises (which I list below in abbreviated form), and the pages following present his evidence and his arguments. (Note 2)

Civilization is not sustainable.

Traditional communities do not voluntarily give up their resources.

Industrial civilization requires persistent and widespread violence.

Civilization is based on a hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower down is invisible or rationalized as necessary; violence done by those lower on the hierarchy is taboo.

The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more important than the lives of those lower down.

Civilization is not redeemable; it cannot undergo a transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living.

The longer civilization takes to fall, the worse the crash and the longer it will take for humans and nonhumans to recover.

The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.

The current level of human population will be reduced drastically.

That reduction will be violent and involve privations – not necessarily because the means are violent but because violence and privation are the defaults in our culture.

Civilization is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.

Civilization is a culture of occupation.

There are no rich; there are no poor; there are just people. The “rich” make claims against the “poor” and enforce them with police and other instruments of authority, aided by the deluded collusion of the poor.

Those in power rule by force.

From birth, humans are conditioned to hate life, the natural world, themselves and others. If they weren’t, they would be unable to destroy the world around them.

Love does not imply pacifism.

The material world is primary.

It is a mistake to base decisions on what to do about the situation on whether or not it will frighten fence-sitters.

Our sense of self is no more sustainable than our use of energy or technology.

Civilization’s problem above all is the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.

Economics drive social decisions that are justified by how well they are able to control or to destroy the natural world.

I wish I had the time and the endurance to look at each premise and discuss it here in this review. But he covers such a wide range of topics in such a discursive manner that it’s difficult to summarize them or to mount rebuttals (if you have a mind to). Like many reviewers on this site (at least the ones who’ve written anything), I agree with Jensen that civilization is moribund. Even if it is not doomed to utter collapse, its fate will be an unhappy one for the foreseeable future.

But there’s something troubling about his prescriptions.

For me, the first is an overly romanticized view (IMO) of indigenous cultures. For example, he mounts a hysterical (in the Victorian sense of the word) attack against Charles Mann’s analysis of pre-Columbian tribes and their exploitation of the natural environment (in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus), excoriating Mann for suggesting that Native manipulations of forest and wildlife were in any way similar to industrial civilization’s manipulations of the same environments – examples of humanity’s desire to control nature. He even goes so far as to call Mann “evil,” which (I think) is going a bit far. I don’t know – and I doubt Jensen knows – what Mann’s position on the merits of the respective exploitations is. I’ve read the book in question and, if anything, would be inclined to think Mann prefers the Indian’s management over the cock-up we’ve made of things.

The second concern I have is that Jensen’s language is the fanatic’s or fundamentalist’s. I understand his fear and his anger; that the elites who control the wealth and thus politics and economic development seem to be unreachable by anything short of violence; and that most of us act like battered wives, refusing to see how destructive and deadly our relationship is, but I fear his certitude – that he’s right and there’s only one thing we can do – hinders convincing more people that we have a problem. I’m accepting of his premises because I was already a convert but if I were one of his “fence-sitters” or a mainstream environmentalist, I’d probably shut out his arguments when confronted with the anger and his advocacy of violence (Note 3). His attitude is too cavalier and dismissive of the consequences. Violence has a way of spiraling out of control, of hurting unintended targets, and of provoking responses that are even more violent. It prompted me to reread Emma Goldman’s essays on the subject because she ultimately rejected violence in most circumstances (Note 4).

At the end of reading these volumes, Jensen’s question – What are you going to do? – is still the correct one, however.

What am I going to do?

The problems are overwhelming but the solutions are awful to contemplate.

I don’t know…. I sincerely don’t know.
________________________________

Note 1: While prescient, Stapledon did give our species 4,000 years of supremacy before he drew down the curtain. In think in Jensen’s view, we’ll be lucky to have 40 years of continued civilization before everything we know of the world and how we live in it ends.

Note 2: Mostly “arguments.” The hard facts and figures he usually relegates to a citation in the notes.

Note 3: Jensen is very coy about this advocacy. He argues that violence is about the only method left to effect real change at this point, but he doesn’t tell anyone to commit a violent act. He says that, after reading Endgame, it’s up to you to decide how you are going to respond – if that includes blowing up a dam, committing arson, toppling cellphone towers or hacking into computer networks, that’s your choice.

Note 4: Emma Goldman is one of the saints in my pantheon (it’s she and not Jane Austen’s Emma after whom my cat is named). Her essays on violence and the prison system read as if they were written only yesterday, and she anticipated Derrick with some of her conclusions, e.g., “(I)f the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life” or “The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of very human being to liberty and well-being.”

And, unlike Jensen, who claims never to have had the nerve to commit a violent act, Emma “walked the walk.” It’s that experience and her observations of the Russian Revolution that informed her subsequent conclusions. “Though Goldman grew skeptical about the value of individual acts of violence…she never doubted the necessity for collective revolutionary violence against capitalism and the State…. After her experience of Bolshevik terror in Russia…she began to reexamine her feelings about sustained collective revolutionary violence as well…. ‘I know that in the past every great political and social change necessitated violence…. Yet it is one thing to employ violence in combat as a means of defence. It is quite another thing to make a principle of terrorism, to institutionalize it, to assign it the most vital place in the social struggle. Such terrorism begets counter-revolution and in turn itself becomes counter-revolutionary.’”

And, “The one thing I am convinced of as I have never been in my life is that the gun decides nothing at all. Even if it accomplishes what it sets out to do…it brings so many evils in its wake as to defeat its original aim.”

[Kaelan Ratcliffe ▪ كايِلان راتكِليف · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, F*ck.

I originally wanted to only use a quote from this book as my review. Yet, having now finished it, I do want to add a few more words. Due to my kind nature, however, I will insert this quote as an alternative for readers not wanting to read my slightly longer critique. See below:

"We're f*cked. We're so f*cked. Not in the good sense of the word."

I feel this is a good summary.

Now for anyone looking for a bit more information on this book please feel free to read further on.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before I start, I need to make a separation between the subject Jensen tackles, and him as a writer.

The first distinction, the subject matter, is utterly unquestionable (in my humble opinion), and is the most important part of this book a potential reader should bare in mind. In fact, I would go as far to say that the subject matter overrules anything else discussed in this review. I found myself in total agreement with Jensen on many, many points he makes in this book. We are heading for a nightmare scenario, and reading this has only made it all the more clearer to me. Not just the facts of what we're doing (amount of trees harvested, miles of oceans vacuumed etc.), but the spiritual suicide we're committing. Readers of this review be warned, Jensen makes absolutly sure to dissect our spiritual loss in EXCRUCIATING detail. His editor made sure to leave no stone unturned in his critical annihilation. As an example, I considered myself pretty aware of the lack of care for nuance in our society, and the contempt those in power hold for our planet (global warming, psychopaths in power, my belief that our system needs a complete overhaul), but I was proven disastrously unprepared for the multiple emotional horrors Jensen was to make me conscious of. I won't detail more, as I hope you will give this book a try regardless of opinion. The subject matter is too important.

The second distinction - Jensen as a writer - I found to be not quite as solid in my analysis. This is my first Jensen book, and I'm still unsure as to whether it might be my last. About midway through reading I found - through a decent amount of time flicking through Goodread reviews - that this may not have been his most concise work. His other texts such as 'A Language Older Than Words' and 'A Culture of Make Believe' seem to be his most well regarded compendiums. Unfortunately, having not read them myself, I can't really make any comparison. As such, I can only go on this reading, and I found it a mixed bag to say the least.*

A good first half of Endgame, and it's thought-to-paper analysis of our current situation as a species, will punch the readers gut like a shotgun blast from two feet away. When Jensen hits his stride he's practically unstoppable in decapitating myths and long held beliefs raised high by 'civilised' cultures. Unfortunately, approaching the second half of the book, the reader may notice Jensen running out of steam. I tried to rationalise and compound this problem into something simple when thinking of writing this review, and I think I can sum it up in one or two sentences. Jensens straight-to-the-point, no bullsh*t criticisms eventually sneak up on him, and his (well founded) bitterness on the topic overwhelms his writing process. There really is only so many ways to convey the same "we're f*cked" message to readers in a 451 page book (and let's not forget it's sister novel, 'Volume II: Resistance', which if we add them together, totals a whopping 800+ pages). There's plenty of different aspects on the topic that Jensen covers, as well as great stories and examples he gives (Star Wars particularly sticks out) of how he feels we need to start viewing the world. But he also repeats himself, multiple times, about the same things, worded differently, throughout. He also manages to create more than a few unnecessary pages of subject matter that simply doesn't gel together (and this is coming from a reader like myself, who will happily put aside nit-picking [see my review of Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges] an authors style if I believe the topic itself is far more important than the person drawing attention to said topic).

As such, I suggest the reader pick this up with the aim to engage in what Jensen is getting at - with regards to the subject matter -and not hope for a consistently engaging read along the way. Overall, I believe you will be rewarded for this - especially if you haven't read Jensen before, and especially if you haven't read anything environmental based - as the powerful outweighs the mundane in this mans writings by good mile.


* I do aim to read his other works, and the fact he uses said books as references in Endgame solidifies my belief that I'll aim to do so.

[else fine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Derrick Jensen doesn't seem quite as on top of it in this book - he seems angrier and more tired, and it feels less cohesive. It's like Culture of Make Believe was a heartbreaking knife of a book, and this new one is a giant blunt axe. It is so brutal that it's difficult to get through, even for long-time readers of Jensen. It's given me weeks of nightmares.

Why, then, should you read it? Because this is the world we live in, and these are the facts, and at some point we will all have to face up to them, and it's just not going to get easier. Start now.

[Zachariah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I probably would have given this book three stars - for being an interesting read. Derrick Jensen calls himself an anti-civilization anarchist. His basic premise is that because we take more out of the earth than we give back to it, our civilization will eventually fail. He is very radical in his views and is far from a boring author.

I gave it only two stars (and would give it 1 and 1/2 if I could) after he came to my class and spoke. He looked and smelled like a bum. His hair was unkempt, he had mismatched and missized clothes and was in all very unimpressive. His speech was pretty canned and he shamelessly used a lot of the clever soundbites from his book. He had a following of equally disheveled and stinky people who obviously adored him. He lives with some Indians in California and couldn't stop talking about the salmon.

The first thing he said to our class was "I have seen Britney Spears' genitals."

I suppose the way he is in person shouldn't affect the way I feel about the book, but I honestly couldn't believe that what seemed to be sophisticated writing came from such a slob.

His message is that the world is coming to an end and there really is no way to fix it, except in theoretical, which would be move away from the global culture and become 10,000 tiny hunter/gatherer type cultures.

Read for the first chapter or two for a good laugh, but then go read something more edifying, like Danielle Steele.

[=====D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Derrick Jensen’s point is that civilization is going to very likely kill us all if allowed to continue. It may be global warming, but more likely it will be a number of things, all making disturbances in the ecosystem, disrupting it, and causing it to fail. When ecosystems fail, it happens dramatically and quickly, and although life is wonderfully adaptive, the kind of life that sustains human beings is but one kind, and there is no reason to believe that the forms life adapts into will be so convenient to our survival.

All signs point to this narrative being pretty spot on. I have a suspicion that this isn’t an issue for the handful of people who run things, pushing everything towards a global catastrophe, because they have the means to build themselves hermetically sealed palaces where they can ride the collapse out indefinitely. Since I am not on the guest list for this party, I am personally concerned about the fate of myself and the other 7 billion people on earth who will be left to fend for themselves once "the shit hits the fan" and thereafter, as the world turns largely inhospitable to life.

If you think that we will scientifically solve all of the problems we’ve created, you are misled about the very nature of science: it has always worked in the service of profit, and not the other way around. Science and technology should have been working to understand our impact on the planet all along, but instead, they do nothing but multiply the harm we do. Imagine if a scientist came out with the news that we are on a course towards run-away populations, mass extinction of species, pollution that will threaten all of life… they did! But the logical outcome of their findings, that the rape of indigenous peoples and lands must stop, that technology has to be deployed only after careful consideration of its net effect on the environment (our species included), that huge sums of money must be invested in studying the likely trajectory of our civilization’s path towards collapse, etc., were, to say the least, unpalatable to those in power then. As they are unpalatable to those in power now, despite all the extra accumulated evidence for these facts. Man on TV say, "global warming not real."

It is probably easy to go over the top when dealing with this subject, because as far as our society is concerned, this is the most unacceptable subject of them all: we have been taught that civilization is good for so long that most of us can’t conceive of it any other way. When dealing with Luddites and their arguments, we say things like, “I like my technology,” and clearly, we would have no technology if not for civilization. But on the other hand, we are not happy people, in general, and not knowing better, we assume that people have always been as unhappy as we are now. This utterly false notion is hammered into our heads from the day we are born: in the past, we are told, life was “nasty, brutish and short,” and surely, a nasty/short life is an unhappy life. In reality, there is more suffering in the world today than ever before, whichever way you want to quantify it. Those with a vested interest in keeping us in line use our unhappiness (and ignorance) to great advantage, making sure that we remain as unhappy and as ignorant as possible. If we were less unhappy, we might not think that having a new and better gadget is that great, and if we were less ignorant, we might actually get outraged when the powerful (repeatedly) rape the powerless. I hope. At least when the powerless getting raped happen to be us.

Growing older, I find that I am less and less inclined to think it possible that the destruction of the world will be halted, in time or at all. As another Goodreads reviewer pointed out, people do seem to be living out some kind of pre-programmed imperative, driving them to do nothing to halt the destruction of their environment, their biological support system. This revelation carries with it certain powerful implications for our understanding of the human race-- in this case, not so different from any "lower" species that would deplete its environment of all sustenance until the inevitable population crash. But I don't want to over-think it... My goal has become to simply find a way to live a humane life myself, which means finding a way to live among others in mutual goodwill and support, for the most part. Even this seems damn near impossible sometimes though, so good luck to us all.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a point, about half way through Endgame: Vol 1: The Problem of Civilization, where I was sick of Derrick Jensen's obsessions. I was tired of reading about dams and salmon and Indians and rape. I was tired of his rambling style, his repetition, and his tendency to let quotations from others speak for themselves (a bad rhetorical habit I constantly strive to teach my students to overcome).

In most circumstances these annoyances would be enough to make me put down my book and walk away (ever since reading Anna Karenina I do my best to avoid wasting my reading time). But there was no putting down Endgame: Vol 1: The Problem of Civilization

There is too much of value in Jensen's words.

For anyone who is awake to what this world around us has become, for anyone aware of their own enslavement, for anyone aware of civilization's inherent destructiveness, for anyone who is appalled by consumerism, for anyone struggling with the forced contradictions between their beliefs and they way they must live, for anyone willing to give up comfort for life, for anyone who simply loves life, Endgame: Vol 1: The Problem of Civilization is a masterpiece you must read, and the call to arms you've been waiting to hear.

For years I have been talking to my classes and anyone else who will listen about many of the things Jensen has written about, and I always felt I was talking into a vacuum. To know there is someone else out there, another anarchist (and, yes, that can be a fine thing), who sees the things I see and is connected to a whole community of like minded people is liberating.

Jensen's most moving chapter is entitled "Hope." Never have I seen a better argument for the banishment of hope. Jensen sees hope as an ill, the primary motivation of slaves. Hope destroys agency, and once a person hopes and stops taking action they are a slave to whatever they should be fighting. As long as we hope for change, as long as leaders like Obama generate hope in us that we can make a change, we will make no change because we have hope instead. I liberated myself from hope long ago, but to see someone else talking about hope as the negative it is, rather than as the positive the most people want it to be, is quickening.

I disagree with some of Jensen's analogies, and I got bored with his obsessions, but I'm neither bored nor in disagreement with any of his goals.

He has it right. Now we need to listen and take action (and have no fear about Jensen's commitment. He will most certainly blow up a dam before he dies.)

[Sarina · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book bores me to death. I have never been a fan of Jensen's writing, while agreeing with many of his basic premises & enjoying the themes he touches on. I think he's a terrible writer. It seems like every other page has something like, "The other day I was talking to a friend, & she said that..." or "I'm writing an email right now, & a bird is chirping outside my window"...Come ON. Some call that approachable, relatable. I call that terrible writing. This guy quotes himself at length in this book, I believe pages & pages of excerpt from A Culture of Make Believe or something. This book passed through a fucking editor? How is that possible? This book could be 1/4 of the size if he had had an editor with the heart to do the job correctly, & that's how most of his books feel. His voice is boring, if you've read any of his books you've pretty much read them all. Also, if you're a person of color like me, you may find his blatant tokenizing of brown & indigenous cultures to be infuriating.

I can pretty much sum up his ideas as all oppressions are connected, civilization is doomed & we're doomed with it, most people suck, blow up the dams. & salmon. He'll never let you forget the salmon. His wheel of oppressions that he breaks down rarely recognize queer or color oppression unless it serves his own interests. It's insulting, boring, & we can all do better than this.

[Max Carmichael · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is bloated with sloppy writing and sloppy thinking - like the work of environmental guru Ed Abbey - but like Abbey's books, Endgame has apparently won a following among frustrated, desperate environmentalists.

Jensen makes many accurate observations about the human institutions and behavior patterns that may be aggregated into the abstraction "civilization." I found nothing new here - I've been making these observations myself for decades, and I've also read much more insightful and coherent statements of them by smarter and wiser observers like Ted Roszak and Wendell Berry. I salute Jensen for achieving these insights, but I pity him for succumbing to an anger that blinds him to further experience that might reveal still deeper insights.

His thinking is so muddled by his anger that even as he rails against civilization as an abstraction, he bases his arguments on civilized paradigms: books, statistics, scientific and technological concepts like energy and "the planet." He pays lip service to natural cycles as an alternative to progress, then advocates the linear historical paradigm of revolution: "taking down" civilization as if it's a temporary mistake that can be eliminated, instead of the cyclical pattern repeatedly produced by the very indigenous cultures he reveres. He's like the Bolsheviks, bourgeois academics who claimed to support the working class, but who were ignorant of what it was they were supporting, and who sought only to destroy, without knowing how to create.

While professing ecological and social wisdom, he shows profound ignorance of the functioning of natural ecosystems and human societies - which is also true of many academic ecologists and sociologists, not to mention environmentalists. Advocating resistance and violence, disparaging pacifism, he fails to see that in the long cycles of ecology, organisms which avoid violence and adapt to changing conditions outlive both the aggressors and those who violently resist. Violence begets violence, just as the revolution of the Bolsheviks led to the purges of Stalin.

Jensen writes as if "civilization" is something distinct from people, an idea that can be stopped and discarded. But looking at the archaeological record with eyes unclouded by anger, we can see that civilization is what the majority of humans do. To fall back on the old academic argument about noble hunter-gatherers evolving linearly into exploitative, enslaving agriculturalists, as Jensen does, is to fall back into the civilized paradigms of linear time and progress. When we look around us at our species and its works, we see many large-scale societies engaged in large-scale destruction. And if we probe further into the nooks and crannies, we find many tiny minorities - some of those being Jensen's indigenous groups - engaged successfully with healthy natural habitats. Looking back into the cultural memories of these societies and groups, we see the same things, repeated in natural cycles.

Despite his professed sympathy for animals, Jensen fails to recognize that humans are also animals, and like other animals, we are incapable of transforming our species behavior, of which civilization is clearly a majority component, arising again and again in long cycles. To stop it, we would need to evolve dramatically or commit species suicide - which may happen, but not intentionally.

Iconic books are of paramount importance to civilized people like Jensen, to Muslim fundamentalists, to evangelical Christians. Books like this, like the books of Ed Abbey, will continue to inspire angry young people to lash out against the works of specific large-scale societies like the U.S., taking small chips out of the armor of particular civilizations as much larger innate forces slowly bring these societies down, to be replaced by others in the long cycles of human time.

In the Endgame, Jensen is just another alienated product of large-scale consumer society - a parasite like the rest of us. Lacking the experience, knowledge and wisdom to become a productive, supportive member of a sustainable community, all he can do is vent his anger and advocate destruction, falling prey to the misguided myth of the noble warrior. My heroes are the creators, not the destroyers - and the creators are not writing books or taking vengeance on evil industrialists, they're working productively with their local communities and habitats to provide food and raise healthy children, in tiny niches scattered throughout the countryside in the nooks and crannies overlooked by civilization. The industrialists and the monkeywrenchers will destroy; the creators will sustain.

[The Big Idea Bookstore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeating in the mirrors of reason. When we emerge, perhaps we will realize we have been dreaming with our eyes open, and that the dreams of reason are intolerable. And then, perhaps, we will begin to dream once more with our eyes closed. -- Octavio Paz

What do you do after reading Endgame? Here are your choices: (a) blow up dams (b) reject the entire idea and plunge back into civilization, (c) nothing. You simply wrest in your sleep, blacking out with intermittent bouts of rage, thinking “they are too big. They can’t be stopped.”

Endgame is a poisonous book, righteous and indignant. It is perilous because you can not stop thinking about the terror of a malignant civilization which you are very much a part. You have three options: Terrorism, Republicanism, or Inactivity. Here are the problems:

Terrorism.
To enact the dam-blowing-up this book invokes, you are not a terrorist, but a freedom fighter. This phrasing is used because that is what you will be called. When imprisoned and stripped of your voice, this is how you will be referred to. I have heard of a “Jensen”-clique being broken up by intelligence officers, who only had to record members of this outfit condoning the act of blowing up a dam, to imprison them for 20 years. They did not buy the explosives, they did not blow up the dam, they did not do anything wrong except answer “yes” to the question, “Would it be beneficial to blow up a dam?”

Republicanism.
You can reject the tenets of this book. That there is an enslavement of the natural world, of indigenous cultures, of cyclical processes and a condemning of Civilization. Join the status quo, get married and have kids with the snap of a finger and avoid the fact that you’re powerless, but say that you’re an individual. What can an individual do? Protect the state, keep it going and merrily happen the problem and ignore the qualities of life descending around you. It’ll work for a while.

Nothing.
This is a double-edged sword. Because this is not a real answer. Your wresting at night, your incapability of dealing with the consequences of revenging nature are not apathy. They are an inquisition. If you choose © and feel like you are dying, it is because of metamorphosis. You are changing. This butterfly or whatever that is becoming could easily die, thus enabling ignorance, but if it doesn’t you are bound to re-evaluate.

That is what I think this book is good for. Re-evaluating the whole structure. It is impossible to get away with being as revolutionary as Jensen concedes, but it is possible to seed that inflammation and do what you can to protect yourself, the natural world and defend against the corporate, historically European-colonialist, industrial usurper that is snaking its way into our cerebral cavities and making us think there is only one option.

We are beginning something, it is restless and it is not terrorism. The future is scary as hell, but it‘s also beautiful as hell. You just have to be doing the right thing, fighting for the right thing.

To follow this book then is to combine two aspects of Jensen’s philosophy: Even if you believe the united States and the global economy are fundamentally destructive, you cannot use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.

This is not about dominating the current power structure with a revolution. It is about revolutionizing our relationship with the world: Were we not abusive to the land, to each other, to ourselves, we would sit back and see what the landscape gives willingly, what it wants us to have, what it wants from us, what it needs from us. That’s what you do in relationships, if you’re not abusive

This book emits restlessness because it awakens us, to a factor that we are not regularly reminded of: a lot of this shit is not real. Aesthetics are contrived. Beauty is subjective. And that is the most important aspect of this book, we are not defined. We have yet to emanate our own identity. .

The two aspects then is that we come from a natural world that permit’s the continuation of itself, eating and feeding back into itself. The other aspect is that readers of Endgame are not a part of this natural world, but of an anonymous one, that enables rationalization to excuse abject confrontation and dilutes the power of self into a powerless particle, i.e. Abusers have no identity of their own.

If you decide to pick up this book, know it’s strength. An endemic suicide is our concrete landscape, what’s underneath it? Expect violence and terror, because change is incapable of being radical. To save freshwater salmon, dams have to go. “you can’t use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house” This is not an overthrow. It is a departure. And most importantly, Who are you?

--reviewed by L.Z.

[Marshall · Rating 1 out of 5]

Probably the worst environmental book ever written, by a narcissistic, nihilistic eco-feminist whose childhood abuse became his adult politics. The main premise is that civilization is not and can never be sustainable, and the only way for us to survive as a species is to go back to the stone age. He calls indigenous warfare a form of "play." He equates all labor with slavery, all trade with theft, all technology with violence. He is a master of hyperbole.

His solution? More violence. How original. He's a wannabe eco-terrorist, advocating destruction of property and assassination, which he justifies with moral relativism. But he only talks about it, endlessly, rather than actually doing it. He is, in his own words, a coward. He thinks that what civilization builds are for the nefarious purposes of "those in power," rather than to meet the demands of regular people like himself. I guess he thinks his hatred of capitalism excuses him from actually understanding how it works.

Nonetheless, he does make a lot of good points about the problems facing our civilization, and some of his analogies made me think. The environmental crisis is the greatest challenge we've ever faced. Indeed, it goes to the root of everything civilization is built on. Does that mean it's not possible for our civilization to become sustainable? Does that mean that it's not worth trying? He believes there's nothing redeemable about civilization, and that root problems are insoluable.

I'm not exactly a big believer in the system, but I'm also not interested in hunting and gathering. I like my pre-cooked meals and central heating, and I do very much believe it's possible to live comfortably AND sustainably. Just maybe not as comfortably as most Americans would like. Jensen is a crackpot who would like to destroy my property and lifestyle in the name of his righteous cause. Or rather, he'd like to persuade his readers to do it for him.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

The US spends $44 billion per year on spying. The US military spent more than $100 million on unused airline tickets over seven years which could have easily been cancelled. Bombing Afghanistan into rubble in 1991 cost American taxpayers a billion dollars a day. US annual humanitarian aid to Afghanistan back then equaled the $ amount that the US would spend bombing it for a mere hour and forty minutes. Derrick goes into grim details about the 15,000 lb. BLU-82 Daisy Cutter, the MK-84 and the CBU-75 (each containing 1,800 BLU-26 Sadeyes which contain “six hundred razor sharp shards”) and the damage all these US weapons cause to civilians. Daisy Cutters can only be used when your opponent is defenseless because you have to shove them out of slow moving cargo planes which would normally be an easy target. Yum, BLU-82’s launched by cowards on the defenseless. Sociopath Brit Hume questioned on TV whether civilian casualties are even part of war. One newspaper told its editors that another Florida paper had used photos of civilian casualties and was deluged by “hundreds and hundreds” of threatening emails. No Republican wants you to know that simple garbage collectors have a far more dangerous job than cops have. Speaking of manufactured fear, sharks have a 20 million to one chance more likely to be slaughtered by a human than they have to bite a human.

Depleted uranium’s half-life is 4.5 Billion years. So, whenever the US liberally deploys such toxic stuff in in other countries, like Iraq, it’s our way of saying, “Whatever you did to anger us, we will now make all your descendants pay …for 4.5 billion years”. Ah, pyrophoric depleted uranium, the gift that keeps on giving. What did those 96,000 depleted uranium shells dropped on Iraq do to it? There are photos from Iraq which tell it all: children without eyes or brains, US warmongers will delight to see one child born with no head above the eyes, or how about a “head with legs”? or a few babies w/o genitalia? How about a little girl born with her brain outside her skull? Or this picture of buttocks with a face and arms? Or the child with eyes below the nose? One large eye in the middle of the face? No problem, thanks to the generosity of the US Military. What do you do with an actual living Iraqi child born with no anus? Perhaps Brit Hume could serve as that child’s asshole.

Tenochtitlan had a population five times larger than London when Europeans first saw it. Before the razing of the city and the slaughter and enslavement of its people, Cortes said it was easily the most beautiful city on earth. Ah (as Noam says), the threat of a good example.

“Do you believe our culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living?” “There is an arrogance of the humanists, who believe us separate from and superior to non-humans.” A US Planning Guide said the US must maintain a monopoly of force “to achieve full spectrum dominance” and make certain no others are able “to protect their legitimate interests.” That document uses the term “full spectrum dominance” thirteen times in an 8,700-word document. Whether Biden or Trump, it’s full spectrum dominance time. All the wonderful colors of the rainbow …completely under bipartisan surveillance.

Many activists wanting to protect a small piece of the planet, develop a questioning mind about the benefits of Western Civilization. I recently noticed how the 1941 movie Meet John Doe begins with the threat of a man using the written word to attack Western Civilization by name. Imagine Africa today if Western Civilization had not removed 100 million Africans for slavery and funded warfare for captives between tribes. Those born after Civilization disappears will wish that it was brought down earlier so that their life wouldn’t be so cruel. Where we are headed is where we came from, “to become completely free from dependence on prehistoric energy.” Civilized man would need the carrying capacity of ten earths to continue his present “exuberant way of life”. “Within this culture, wealth is measured by one’s ability to consume and destroy.” Canvas was made by hemp, now it’s made by DuPont. Jan Lundberg said, “One reason they outlawed hemp was that DuPont was able to make substitutes. Medicines, clothes, it’s all there.” Anurada Mittal told Derrick that, “former granaries in India now export dog food and tulips to Europe.” “Without constant economic expansion capitalism will collapse almost immediately.” “Without massive public subsidies far larger than the total profits the entire corporate economy would collapse overnight”. We could reforest, but instead we pay Weyerhaeuser to deforest. “Consider our utter disregard for overshooting carrying capacity.” This culture is “insane” and “driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.” A 1998 list showed that more money is spent annually worldwide on destroying each other (war and weapons) and destroying ourselves (drugs, alcohol, sugar stuff, and cigarettes) than on anything else. It’s our culture.

The source of our life is our land base. It’s the #1 thing we must protect in our lifetimes. “Bringing down civilization” is about defending the health and life of our own land base. The EPA came up with the safe amount of carcinogenic pollutants for a human lifetime and then found that a baby living in L.A. will pass that safe limit in two weeks while a baby in San Francisco will pass that limit in three weeks. This culture poisons all. Western Civilization is based on the basic premise of “It’s difficult to control people who have access to land.” “It requires that people be inculcated to believe land can be bought and sold.” Take away the land and its game on. Civilization = eliminate free food sources and wild nature.

The air guns that map the ocean floor for oil companies, kill beaked whales because they fire blasts that reach 260 db. 260 db is 10,000 times louder “than the sound of a nuclear explosion at a range of five hundred meters.” The US Navy meanwhile is deploying their own system to use air guns in 80% of the world’s oceans at 200 db. Whales live by their ears.

Derrick sees the dominant abusive wetiko culture also at the personal level: “Abusers cut off victims from family and friends: so that in time victims will have no other standard other than the abusers’ by which to judge the abuser’s world views and behavior. Abusive behavior can then become in the victim’s mind normalized”. I agree with Derrick how when you clearly try to define your boundaries to wetiko/Taker/abusive people, they will claim you have no right to censor their opinion, or say how their imaginary friends or even therapist warned them you were trying to squelch their true voice. Childhood trauma gives us an airtight excuse to not do what we think we should do, but in the end, we are what we do. And so, resistance begins: “Would you rather have the best excuse (for inaction) in the world, or would you rather have a world?”

Picture civilized religions of the world as religions of occupation and indigenous “religions” as religions of place, dedicated to living within the means of one’s land base, and responsible to protect and nurture it. Instead of trees and animals telling us how to live, we trust imported religions that want us to believe in dominion over nature. This culture kills non-civilized people and nature “in order to preclude to possibility of our escape.” So, what’s more important? Your land base? Or your God? Remember, without your land base, you are just a starving Ned Flanders whispering, “Why God, hast thou forsaken me?” Any science of civilization will be a science of occupation. You can’t live on the land base as occupiers. If the trees of New England are coming back, it’s only because somewhere else is losing their trees, or other things are still being used for heating other than wood. Remember the big famine in Ethiopia? During the height of it, Ethiopia was exporting green beans to Europe. During the Irish Potato famine, Ireland was sending grain to England. That’s this culture. 2% of the US is paved. That paved portion is 10% of all US arable land. Silicon Valley took perfect soil and rendered it toxic. Why is any human life worth more than the health of the land base? Note that “even the trees in cities are in cages.” Ownership comes with responsibilities. Before WWII, world synthetic pesticide production was zero. It’s now over 500 billion tons per year.

The CIA knows threats are best served coldly, without rage. The CIA fed one captive Honduran woman an eighty-night menu of raw dead birds and rats after her repeated beatings and sexual molestations. In the 50’s the CIA learned in Germany about applying turpentine to a man’s testicles. About Vietnam, look at the CIA’s, “Operation Phoenix” – men forced to live in tiny tiger cages that deform their bodies so that they move by “scuttling like crabs”. Don’t forget also pouring “buckets of lime” on them. And the CIA tapping “six-inch dowels through victim’s ears and into their brains.” Luckily, the CIA no longer need be so barbarian. Now the techniques are much more elegant: liquefy the kneecaps, smother lovers of freedom inside of a sleeping bag, and ladies don’t forget, a simple rechargeable electric drill does wonders on kneecaps, shoulders and skulls. After they’ve gone through hours of agony which one CIA agent called “smackyface”, comes that classic renegotiation technique: “we have access to your children”. Our cherished FBI after 911 removed 60% of the agents working on white collar crime. Street crime + terrorism = a lot less $$$ than white collar crime.

Christian fundamentalists expect the rapture and believe “the natural world is inconsequential to God’s plan”. So, lifting a finger to avoid extinction, ain’t going to happen with them. A Christian fundamentalist who believes the world is 10,000 old certainly doesn’t understand how fossil fuels were slowly made over time, especially if he thinks it’s Rapture Time at any moment. Read about industrial fishing with lines more than thirty miles long. How do we stop this culture? Today’s military Boot Camp is not about shouting “Yes Sir!” like in the movies. You won’t kill non-white strangers around the world on command with stuff like that, so now they enthusiastically shout “Kill”. Privates get shown nasty U.S. massacre videos over a Metallica soundtrack. Here’s an actual current little ditty that is flying up the Basic Training Sadism Charts with a Bullet: it’s called: “We’re gonna rape, kill, pillage and burn, gonna rape, kill, pillage and burn.” Evidently sociopaths in charge of basic training songs have never heard of a Middle 8 or they’d add “and we have access to your children”. Get your troops to commit moral injury before they deploy with this other sadistic gem: “Throw some candy in the schoolyard, watch the children gather round. Load a belt in your M-60, mow them little bastards down!!” Ah, the perfect song for any U.S. patriot to proudly sing in front of their aghast wife at the start of the next P.T.A. meeting. Those who resisted during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, had a higher survival rate than “those who went along peacefully.” Most rapes are committed by someone who professes to love those who they hurt. Re: Atrocities, “Any perceived threat to entitlement will provoke hatred.” Example: After the Civil War, the number of lynchings flew up.

Okanagans solve their problems by dividing into four groups: Youth, Elder, Fathers, and Nurturer’s/Mothers. They decide how the problem affects each group and then make a decision as to how everyone will be affected. Dams were originally erected to kill non-corporate controlled native salmon stocks and kill tribal (Leaver) culture (like the white slaughter of the Buffalo). Today the public still pays to kill the salmon as corporate interests stop the removal of dams. Derrick sees the primary function of the police is to “use violence or its threat to serve those in power.” Allied attacks on Nazi railroads during WWII were the number one cause of Germany’s economic collapse. The sadistic firebombing of Hamburg had almost no effect.

“Hey, this culture might be violent but I’m not.” Really? Think hidden violence attached to you. For example, your computer’s manufacture required “520 pounds of fossil fuels, 48 pounds of chemicals, 3,600 pounds of water”. We are all part of the problem. For something to be sustainable, “it must benefit the land base.” It’s easier to do bad things if you have a “claim to virtue”; the Nazis said they were “purifying” the Aryan race. Richard Slotkin says that throughout US History there is the claim to virtue: “We wanted to be nice to them Injuns, but they were fighting dirty so...” One US soldier said, “you got to understand, although it seems harsh, the Iraqis they only understand force.” Justification. Learn the story of Lean Bear - He was given a “peace medal” by Lincoln only to return home to be shot dead by soldiers while still clutching his “friendly documents”. Christianity’s job has become “rationalize submission to power.” If you know Star Wars, then see Western Civilization as the Death Star.

This book, like most books by Derrick, is amazing. If you can, you should read the whole thing. But if you can’t, at least this review has a lot of it’s good bits.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jensen gets a ton of credit from me just having the balls (or ovaries, as he would qualify) to write this stuff. It is indeed a comprehensive and thorough analysis of the psychopathology of our civilization, perhaps the best I've read. He provides convincing arguments with such precision that it is difficult to refute them. His stance on violence has been revelatory for me, and has gone a long way toward helping me flesh out my own ideas on the subject.

That said, I do have problems with the book, mostly stylistic. The book is incredibly engaging for its length, but it gets bogged down at times, for various reasons:

-It is too long. He hammers the same points home over and over again (especially if you've already read A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe -- see my review), and I found myself skimming, especially toward the end of the book. I know that he's reserving it for the 2nd volume, but I got tired of hearing about how "we're going to get into" the stuff we can actually do to fix this, and never actually getting there over 450 pages.

-His narrative style is uneven. He vacillates between 1) a very informal and personal conversational style, bordering on cheesy, annoying or intrusive (including endnotes), and 2) erudite scholarship, showcasing his large vocabulary and impressive structure (even though pervasive use of words like "reification" and "palliate" were more confusing than clarifying). There seemed to be no real pattern between stylistic shifts, making it jarring and distracting.

-He comes across as not exactly arrogant, but maybe just pretentious and immature. This is most evident in his overuse of the [sic:] device, which is funny at first but then just becomes ridiculous. He should give his readers credit for being able to detect irony. Overall, Jensen strikes me as a fascinating guy, super-intelligent, and someone I'd definitely like to meet and have a conversation with. Though judging by his writing, any sort of regular social interactions would get annoying (there I go with some pretentiousness of my own).

-He does a good job of explaining (rationalizing?) his reluctance to blow up any dams himself, and I do admire his honesty and humility in confessing this. Nonetheless, it damages his credibility, and I imagine it will continue to do so until he eventually drops the keyboard and picks up the C4 (as he intimates he comes closer to doing every day). I respect and agree with his opinion that he is providing a unique service in his capacity as writer/speaker, but the credibility gap remains. When/if he takes the plunge, I'll certainly miss his writing, but be more impressed by his example.


Not Bad Reviews

@pointblaek

[Mark Dickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I almost feel the need to not give this book a rating at all, because a singular rating system isn't really applicable to this type of book. Though at almost no point while reading this book would I say that I "liked" it, I did find it challenging and thought-provoking, and would ultimately consider it a worthwhile read. Important books are not always likable. It's important to note, however, what makes this book important: it's not that Jensen characterizes a novel problem, or even that he forwards a novel (or even viable) solution, but rather that he frames the problem (of human civilization) as one that we must have a stance on. Despite any qualm you might have with Jensen's ideas or rhetorical style, it's hard to read this book without feeling how gravely precarious our civilization's (especially Western civilization) balance is. Jensen lodges something in your craw that you will not easily be loosed. And this, if nothing else, is extremely important. On a variety of issues, it is important that we have an opinion on this book.

Before launching into my critique of Endgame, it's worth mentioning that, fundamentally, I agree with almost all of the book's premises. There are too many of us, using too much stuff, at too fast a rate, and (as a larger culture) we're not going to change. This is, of course, a slight simplification, but is one that Jensen himself could probably get behind. The typical reader of this book will likely already agree to the first three statements, but may have to be dragged forcibly through the fourth--on the whole, our culture will not make the required changes to avoid any of the impending collapses (environmental, economic, etc).

In my 10+ years as a vegan, it's become much easier to eat vegan--suggesting to me that the number of vegans is growing and that the social structures required to support a vegan diet are strengthening. As a result, I often allow myself to feel a certain degree of optimism about the future, and to pat myself on the back for my choices. Yet when presented with the data (just the info on peak oil alone should alarm us), it seems that this incremental positive change will not rise up swiftly enough to meet the impending energy catastrophe. If Jensen convinces you of this, then this book, on some level, has been a success (though you might get a more cogent analysis, perhaps, from someone like Mike Ruppert [check out the documentary Collapse for a brief primer on Ruppert's recent efforts]).

My reaction to this book was visceral in both directions, however; while I was moved to fury and dismay at times (as, I think, Jensen intends), I also found myself frustrated, bored, and annoyed in turns. To summarize the problems, I'd suggest that the book is too emotional--not sufficiently well thought-out--for my tastes. In conversation with some intelligent, well-respected friends, I've gleaned that this can alternately be considered one of the book's chief assets. I typically like to bring my own emotions to bear on a problem, and like writing that leaves me room to establish my own reactions.

To be more specific:

The Noble Savage Myth: Jensen subscribes uncritically to the so-called "Noble Savage Myth." He believes that the ideal stage in human social/cultural evolution was the Stone Age. Humans, he suggests, were happiest, best, and least problematic in their pre-agriculture hunter-gatherer stage. He claims (explicitly) that warfare among peoples with Stone Age-level technology is a form of "play". I can't remember the last time a game of cards resulted in my getting scalped. It's all too typical for those of us who are feeling culture-sick to turn to what seems to be a simpler way of life. What disgruntled college student hasn't dreamed of a life in the woods, building their own cabin by hand? The reality is that Stone Age life was probably quite difficult. If it was such a happy, peaceful life, it seems unlikely that humans would have settled down. Even the reasons for settling down are contested: Did population expand at a rate that required the intensiveness of agriculture? Did humans' spiritual needs compel them to build temples and altars, around which settlements arose? Did climate change (the ebb and flow of ice ages) force humans to radically change their lifestyle? While it's certainly not reasonable to expect Jensen to answer any of these questions, his disregard--if not total lack of awareness--suggests that his desire for the happy Native life is woefully unsophisticated. If he dismisses progressing forward as a childish fantasy, then his simple-minded desire for noble savagery is positively jejune.

Rape: While any reader should be moved and horrified by the fact that Jensen was beaten and raped by his father, it should not compel us to uncritically accept his analogy of civilization as abuser and citizen as abused. It should, in fact, make us even more critical of his analogy. You can easily read the unwritten syllogism: It is insane for a father to rape his own children. This only happens in civilization. Civilization, therefore, is insane. In a way, it's pretty hard to argue with this conclusion. On many levels, civilization is insane. And a culture that produces, or somehow fails to stop, an incestuous child rapist, does have some problem with it. This does not, however, validate the inadequate--and over-used--analogy of abuser/abused. In many ways, civilization can be better understood as a system of trade-offs, with the wealthy trading on both the poor and the future. Sure, you can say that the wealthy are committing a rape of sorts, decreasing others' prosperity and/or happiness in exchange for their own, but this comparison quickly collapses into a critique of egocentrism, hedonism, or solipsism. Add to this critique some hundred pages of Jensen's own personal tale of being raped. Again, while moving, it's hard to find the discussion consistently pertinent--it turns the book into a confessional self-help book, rather than the scathing critique and call-to-arms it's meant to be. Worse, it trivializes the book's message. It often seems that Jensen, like many victims, is attempting to find meaning in his personal tragedy through his activism. His horrible past will somehow be okay if he can just affect some radical change. If I were him, I'd want to bring down the system too. But I'm not him. To all outward appearances, the system is working just fine for me. And yet I find it greatly troubling. I'm with Jensen, but somehow we're coming from two very different places.

Rhetorical Style: I think Jensen intends to come off as a sort of affable scoundrel, a Socrates-like fly-in-the-ointment character. Instead, he comes off more like a well-intentioned Rush Limbaugh, puffed up and self righteous. His constant (mis)use of “[sic]” after every statement he disagrees with creates a feeling of editorial hiccups. Instead of conducting cogent, precise arguments, we insults readers who disagree, and browbeats his strawman friends in various recountings of personal debates. Because the style is conversational, you feel—quite viscerally sometimes—like you want to participate. But it's a book, so you can't. Instead, you are forced to read on as other ask questions and defend points less articulately than you might, and watch Jensen summarilty reduce these arguments. That I wanted so badly to participate, however, may speak to some level of efficacy on Jensen's part. That I often found myself wanting to argue with him—even on points on which I agree with him—perhaps sums up my general emotional reaction.

New Age-y Pantheism/Anti-Scientism: Man, Jensen really loves trout. And trees. And rivers. In his quasi pantheistic worldview, these things are all (seemingly) afforded the same level of consideration. Don't get me wrong; I like nature. I like fish. And I certainly worry about them. And fundamentally, I actually agree with his notion of our responsibility toward the survival of things we're living in communion/ in a community with. But at times we seems to want to blow up dams because rivers want to be free. I don't think rivers have volition in the same way as sentient beings do. Nor do trees. Jensen is very down on “science”, simply because some scientists are doing unconscionable research (the sections on this could drive anybody into a murderous rage). That doesn't mean that the methods by which we learn new things about the world are inherently wrong. Even his beloved Natives used the scientfic method all the time. Is he really proposing a world without cause and effect? I'm sure if asked, he isn't, but this seems to me the logical conclusion of his anti-science stance. Technology, the application of “science” has brought some pretty horrifying things in the last several millenia, but the spears and stone axes of the Stone Age were no less technology. Where then is the logical cut off? The pre-Stone Age? Even monkies and apes use technologies of various sorts. I suppose what gets me the most are the instance when Jensen sits under a tree and purports to receive wisdom/answers from the tree. I think walk in nature, free from the constant buzz of information inherent to society, is definitely a great way to clear your head and to think undistractedly and deeply. But I don't think trees have spirits and talk to us.

Ultimately, I do think Jensen's most fundamental point is correct—we're headed for a collapse of some sort, and we need to do our best to (a) mitigate the effects of the collapse, and (b) have systems in place to ensure that we continue to thrive after the collapse. Jensen is convinced that the sooner the collapse occurs, the less extreme it will be, and thus that helping to usher it in will minimize its effects. Since we have no systems in place yet, however, we'd still find ourselves in a bad way. It's perhaps because he can't imagine those system that would allow us to thrive—truly not enough of us have the skills required to live in the primitive way Jensen envisions. A move directly to primitivism would be violent in every way imaginable, and is not an outcome I'd hurry to usher in. Even if (b) forestalls (a), I think it would ultimately have greater mitigating effect. And if I'm delusional, as Jensen suggests, than I can't see any reason for the continuation of our species. Monkies and apes have already got the primitive thing down, so what would we have to offer in a primitive world? Probably more abjection and misery than Jensen would account for. Not that I think my rain barrels are the solution to our energy dependence, resource over-consumption, and virus-like population growth, but I hardly think hanging out in the woods in a loin cloth with a stone axe is either.

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since I probably won't be writing a review of this anytime soon, this excerpt, just posted on commondreams.org, will more than suffice:

# # #

We all face choices. We can have ice caps and polar bears, or we can have automobiles. We can have dams or we can have salmon. We can have irrigated wine from Mendocino and Sonoma counties, or we can have the Russian and Eel Rivers. We can have oil from beneath the oceans, or we can have whales. We can have cardboard boxes or we can have living forests. We can have computers and cancer clusters from the manufacture of those computers, or we can have neither. We can have electricity and a world devastated by mining, or we can have neither (and don't give me any nonsense about solar: you'll need copper for wiring, silicon for photovoltaics, metals and plastics for appliances, which need to be manufactured and then transported to your home, and so on. Even solar electrical energy can never be sustainable because electricity and all its accoutrements require an industrial infrastructure). We can have fruits, vegetables, and coffee brought to the U.S. from Latin America, or we can have at least somewhat intact human and nonhuman communities throughout that region. (I don't think I need to remind readers that, to take one not atypical example among far too many, the democratically elected Arbenz government in Guatemala was overthrown by the United States to support the United Fruit Company, now Chiquita, leading to thirty years of U.S.-backed dictatorships and death squads. Also, a few years ago I asked a member of the revolutionary tupacamaristas what they wanted for the people of Peru, and he said something that cuts to the heart of the current discussion [and to the heart of every struggle that has ever taken place against civilization:]: "We need to produce and distribute our own food. We already know how to do that. We merely need to be allowed to do so.") We can have international trade, inevitably and by definition as well as by function dominated by distant and huge economic/governmental entities which do not (and cannot) act in the best interest of communities, or we can have local control of local economies, which cannot happen so long as cities require the importation (read: theft) of resources from ever-greater distances. We can have civilization -- too often called the highest form of social organization -- that spreads (I would say metastasizes) to all parts of the globe, or we can have a multiplicity of autonomous cultures each uniquely adapted to the land from which it springs. We can have cities and all they imply, or we can have a livable planet. We can have "progress" and history, or we can have sustainability. We can have civilization, or we can have at least the possibility of a way of life not based on the violent theft of resources.

This is in no way abstract. It is physical. In a finite world, the forced and routine importation of resources is unsustainable. Duh.

Show me how car culture can coexist with wild nature, and more specifically, show me how anthropogenic global warming can coexist with ice caps and polar bears. And any fixes such as solar electric cars would present problems at least equally severe. For example, the electricity still needs to be generated, batteries are extraordinarily toxic, and in any case, driving is not the main way a car pollutes: far more pollution is emitted through its manufacture than through its exhaust pipe. We can perform the same exercise for any product of industrial civilization.

We can't have it all. The belief that we can is one of the things that has driven us to this awful place. If insanity could be defined as having lost functional connection with physical reality, to believe we can have it all -- to believe we can simultaneously dismantle a world and live on it; to believe we can perpetually use more energy than arrives from the sun; to believe we can take more than the world gives willingly; to believe a finite world can support infinite growth, much less infinite economic growth, where economic growth consists of converting ever larger numbers of living beings to dead objects (industrial production, at core, is the conversion of the living -- trees or mountains -- into the dead -- two-by-fours and beer cans) -- is grotesquely insane. This insanity manifests partly as a potent disrespect for limits and for justice. It manifests in the pretension that neither limits nor justice exist. To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation. And it is to have paid absolutely no attention to the past six thousand years.

# # #

One of the reasons we fail to perceive all of this is that we -- the civilized -- have been inculcated to believe that belongings are more important than belonging, and that relationships are based on dominance -- violence and exploitation. Having come to believe that, and having come to believe the acquisition of material possessions is good (or even more abstractly, that the accumulation of money is good) and in fact the primary goal of life, we then have come to perceive ourselves as the primary beneficiaries of all of this insanity and injustice.

Right now I'm sitting in front of a space heater, and all other things being equal, I'd rather my toes were toasty than otherwise. But all other things aren't equal, and destroying runs of salmon by constructing dams for hydropower is a really stupid (and immoral) way to warm my feet. It's an extraordinarily bad trade.

And it's not just space heaters. No amount of comforts or elegancies, what that nineteenth-century slave owner called the characteristics of civilization, are worth killing the planet. What's more, even if we do perceive it in our best interest to take these comforts or elegancies at the expense of the enslavement, impoverishment, or murder of others and their landbases, we have no right to do so. And no amount of rationalization nor overwhelming force -- not even "full-spectrum domination" -- will suffice to give us that right.

Yet we have been systematically taught to ignore these trade-offs, to pretend if we don't see them (even when they're right in front of our faces) they do not exist. Yesterday, I received this email: "We all face the future unsure if our own grandchildren will know what a tree is or ever taste salmon or even know what a clean glass of water tastes like. It is crucial, especially for those of us who see the world as a living being, to remember. I've realized that outside of radical activist circles and certain indigenous peoples, the majority has completely forgotten about the passenger pigeon, completely forgotten about salmon so abundant you could fish with baskets. I've met many people who think if we could just stop destroying the planet right now, that we'll be left with a beautiful world. It makes me wonder if the same type of people would say the same thing in the future even if they had to put on a protective suit in order to go outside and see the one tree left standing in their town. Would they also have forgotten? Would it still be a part of mainstream consciousness that there used to be whole forests teeming with life? I think you and I agree that as long as this culture continues with its preferred methods of perception, then it would not be widely known to the majority. I used to think environmental activists would at least get to say, ‘I told you so' to everyone else once civilization finally succeeded in creating a wasteland, but now I'm not convinced that anyone will even remember. Perhaps the worst nightmare visions of activists a few hundred years ago match exactly the world we have outside our windows today, yet nobody is saying, ‘I told you so.'"

I think he's right. I've long had a nightmare/fantasy of standing on a desolate plain with a CEO or politician or capitalist journalist, shaking him by the shoulders and shouting, "Don't you see? Don't you see it was all a waste?" But after ruminating on this fellow's email, the nightmare has gotten even worse. Now I no longer have even the extraordinarily hollow satisfaction of seeing recognition of a massive mistake on this other's face. Now he merely looks at me, his eyes flashing a combination of arrogance, hatred, and willful incomprehension, and says, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

And he isn't even entirely lying.

Except of course to himself.

# # #

from the chapter "Choices" pp. 148-51

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

I must admit, I share this man's sentiment, that we must move to a more natural state of being that is better on the earth. But, I don't agree in killing (allowing naturally the deaths of) billions of people to do it. If we went back to a primitive lifestyle, I would die, most of us would. I don't know how to find food in the wild, I don't know how to make the medicine to fight my chronic illness. He makes that point clear, by saying "stock up" when technology falls apart. Is that my only option? He said he is willing to self sacrifice himself, if he had to. Well, if or when He does that, maybe his words will have more weight to me. Derrick Jenson's dream will come true when we have a huge nuclear winter, which is still possible. Or when the earth gets so hot that the only place inhabitable is Antarctica and .002% of us survive, which is still possible.

On the bright side, He has some wonderful criticisms of pacifism, and the leftist movements as a whole, that I enjoyed. He has the ability to be logical and reasonable when he is not discussing the environment.So, that's why it is on my favorites, Because those criticisms have been delayed too long. But most of the book is just ranting and raving, kind of like one long internet blog.

We must look at ourselves, and Say indeed, What a mess we have made! But, it's not the absence of technology that will solve our environmental woes at the population we have today. It's Technology itself that will push us into a cleaner, brighter, better world.

[Monster · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jensen's writing style is repetitive and perhaps mildly obnoxious. however, Endgame gets a good rating by virtue of the ideas therein. it's the first anti-civ book i've read in years and looking past its iconic position among anarcho-primitivists (which tends to be offputting), it remains a point well taken. i hear the second volume is even better.

[Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not for the faint of heart.

If you never questioned a thing in your life, you might want to start doing so before reading this.

[Roel Peters · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave it 150 pages, but this book is simply an unbearable read. Although Jensen's premises should be the framework wherein the book operates, the author is all over the place. It reads like a very long conversation between two drunk angry men sitting at the bar using hyperboles to complain about society. Furthermore, Jensen wants to show off his knowledge on a variety of subjects that are completely irrelevant to the narrative, putting it all between brackets, forcing you to read some paragraphs over and over again.

Even with a firm background in political philosophy it is hard to put the bits and pieces together into a compelling ideology.

This is a pity, because I am truly interested in anarcho-primitivism. This endless rant didn't do it any good.

[Lumen Natura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book that everyone in the USA should read. Our culture of greed has already caused many plants and animals to go extinct. How many more before it is too much? How long do we have to wait for something to change? Is pacifism really gonna get us there? Many questions that no one really ever dares to ask are put to us here with a clear and real manner.

Our culture will not last forever. We need to see this and take steps to deal with the situation before it all comes tumbling down around us and it is to late.

Derrick Jensen is a prophet and he speaks in a language we can all understand and feel on a deeper level.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone familiar with modern environmentalism has been introduced to the idea that human society is not and cannot be sustainable the way it is currently running. This book is truly inspiring in realizing that civilization is not the comfort that we think it is but rather is maintained by violence toward the environment, people and ourselves. He believes that it is our obligation to take down the system that is so damaging and I agree wholeheartedly. Thanks to Derrick Jensen for renewing some of that spirit back into my life.

[Viv JM · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has taken me a very long time to read. I fought it all the way because NOOOO! I don't want it to be true. Jensen's premise is that civilisation is essentially pathologically violent and needs taking down. The premises he states and the examples he gives to back them up do not make for comfortable reading, but I found it hard to disagree with them.

So, now what to do?!

[Benjamin Hasselberg]

Mom I'm an eco terrorist anarchist now.

[Dameon Launert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this quote by Henry David Thoreau: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

Derrick Jensen strikes at the root, which is civilization. This is the fourth of his books that I've read and so far it's my favorite. None of the material is exactly new, but I do appreciate how he outlines the problem in twenty premises, which I'll paste below.

The idea that was impressed upon me the most was that civilization is like a military invading and occupation force upon indigenous peoples, wildlife, and their habitats. It is like swarm of locusts that chews up area after area, constantly expanding in a race to feed itself and stave off collapse just a little longer, but the wall of ecological debt keeps climbing higher and higher.

Like his other work, I don't buy into the (eco)feminist perspective, and there are a few other relatively minor points with which I disagree, but otherwise his analysis is deep and insightful as always. He's also easy to read (except for the superlative use of parentheses) and sometimes quite funny, which makes the pill easier to swallow.

Jensen is understandably, given a traumatic childhood, obsessed with rape. Not that I excuse it, but I wonder what Jensen thinks about the prevalence of rape in the animal kingdom, especially considering his drive for humans to rewild ourselves. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_...

You can watch Jensen give an hour and twenty minute talk on Endgame here: https://youtu.be/mtuxHVD4Srw

Submedia.TV did an excellent documentary, hosted by CrimethInc, based on the book: https://youtu.be/UyoPFKiL-Ag

Here are the twenty premises:

Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.

Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

Premise Four: Civilization 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.

Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.

Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.

Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.

Another way to put premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.

Premise Nine: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps longterm shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.

Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.

Premise Eleven: From the beginning, this culture—civilization—has been a culture of occupation.

Premise Twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.

Premise Thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of llusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.

Premise Fourteen: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case—we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.

Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.

Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.

Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.

Premise Eighteen: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.

Premise Nineteen: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.

Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.

Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.

[John Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Derrick Jensen is the most passionate living justice author that I have encountered. He is enraged by the environmental and social injustice wreaked by a culture of consumption and resulting oppression, and he is unequivocal in his perspective on what needs to be done.

In this, the first part of a two-part series, Jensen provides a very clear definition of civilization that he uses to vehemently argue that civilization is inherently exploitative and destructive (and, thus, evil). In this way the very core of our beliefs lead us to ruin. He has personal experience with individual abuse (in his own life) and addictions (in the lives of prisoners that he has taught), and he points out parallels between these and institutional abuse and cultural addictions. When he says (repeatedly) that "all writers are propagandists", he clearly includes himself, but he is very transparent about his core premises, and he strongly supports each of them.

His style, and the quotes that herald the beginning of each new chapter, are like a punch in my civilized gut. Jensen makes me feel the depth of the problem of civilization with an intense clarity and powerful sadness that rejuvinates my desire to grapple with the problem. I particularly appreciate his writing voice, which is so informally sardonic at times that I laugh out loud right as I might otherwise start weeping. He writes intimately, as if there is no barrier between him and the reader, and this certainly affected me emotionally. Even with this personal style, he includes a rich set of references and bibliography, both of which can help to empower readers to dramatically increase their understanding of the problem.

I recently encountered others who had tried to read Endgame, but who found that it made them too angry. This, however, ought to be seen as a good thing.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the book to be entertaining and provocative. Jensen's style of writing is conversational, which makes it an easy read, but also left me wishing he had delved a little more seriously into some of the topics rather than just repeatedly making fun of those who disagree with him (as entertaining as that was). It started to drag and get a bit repetitive by the second half of the book. Overall, though I found it very refreshing to read his ideas about the environment and our culture. Some of his ideas were totally novel to me. For example, I think he is right that environmental rhetoric about all us being part of the problem because of individual/consumer choices we make is simple-minded and can even be harmful. Rather, Jensen points out that it's our social/economic system that's the problem (as well as those individuals in power and those who value the system over the planet). It's much more straightforward to work against the people who are destroying the planet than it is to work against yourself, thinking that consumers are somehow causing the whole problem simply because we buy commercial airline tickets (for example).

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing else I`ve read has ever made me so generally fired up, at least not since I was 15 or so. I read it while I was working long days doing construction, which I don`t know anything about and am terrible at, so busting my thumbs with hammers and startling myself with the nail gun and trying not to cry as the guy I was working for made me all too aware of what an amateur and a fuckup I was. I was living out in a tent in the woods, but it was March, and, y`know, Canada, so it was too cold to have any kind of sleep other than nightmares.
But I was reading this book, and I had a little fire-smelling pot where I could make tea to keep my hands warm, and so with those two things I was able not just to abide and survive but to feel stronger and fiercer than I ever had. DJ is cogent and funny and he hates Buddhists as much as I do and he made me want to grow up to be a farmer who blows up dams, and that is the highest praise I can think to give. I just ordered the second volume and can`t wait to read it.

[Jonathan Pistorino · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book describes every major aspect that is the error of civilization. Derek Jensen does a great job of laying out the destructive culture of civilization and he halts all reasoning for its continued existence. Through many examples he draws a picture of how civilization is fucking us and our world through its existence. He uses some very personal examples which help is argument even more.

My only qualm is that he uses a minor amount of petty banter with the reader which is somewhat tiresome for an entire book (or first volume). But considering the heavy subject at hand this is easy to overcome.

Although I am not sure that I personally agree with every one of his statements he discusses the real topics that politicians overlook entirely. Instead of debating about petty details he sets his sites directly on those who are harming our world.

This book is unbelievably important and should be read by everyone despite its few faults.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jensen's language can be occasionally smug/poetic, but the dude repeatedly belabors a very good point: civilization is unsustainable and killing all of us. The criticism of the book in the reviews below are either logically unsound ("some Native American tribes developed agriculture therefore the book is invalid because it claims some Native American cultures lived in tune with the land"), naive ("we shouldn't let billions of people die") or embarrassing ("guy smelled bad and dressed funny when I saw him speak live, therefore his book is bad").

I challenge anyone to read this book and not come away from it angrier and more educated. I look forward to reading Jensen's other works.

[Will · Rating 1 out of 5]

People are totally lame. Because: science. Science is totally lame. Because: people. Also, everything is a religion, and every religion is bad. Because: culture sucks. History was not my best subject in school. Everything I say is a generalization, stereotype, or hyperbole. Um. What else? Oh, have I mentioned salmon yet? I will be mentioning them every other page. And lastly, there is no hope--except in some abstract scholastic doublethink sort of way. I mean, why try when we're like unsustainable and junk?

[Rift Vegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The world is not being destroyed because of a lack of information: It's being destroyed because we don't stop those doing the destroying." This book has really gotten me thinking about what it means to be an activist. (Just thinking. Not doing. Yet.) ;)