Derrick Jensen

Derrick Jensen, an American author who lives in Northern California, has published several books which challenge contemporary society and cultural values, including The Culture of Make Believe (2002), and many essays.

Jensen emphasizes the hate, dishonesty, and destructiveness in contemporary industrialized culture. He argues that this culture will soon collapse because of the damage being done to the planet.

Jensen proposes that a different way of life is possible, and it can be seen in many past societies including many Native American cultures. This different way of life is characterized by honesty, appreciation of beauty, and connection with the natural world.

Politically Jensen's work is in favor of a revolution in values, the self, and society. His ideas are often in line with eco-anarchism, anarcho-primitivism and neo-Tribalism.

Common themes in Jensen's work include discussion of his abusive father, the similarity of different forms of oppression in industrial society, the role of lying in maintaining systematic oppression, interspecies communication, and what he sees as the need to bring down civilization.

Related authors include Jack Forbes (Columbus and Other Cannibals), Dave Edwards, Daniel Quinn (Ishmael, The Man Who Grew Young), John Zerzan (Against Civilization: A Reader and Elements of Refusal), Neil Evernden (The Natural Alien), Stanley Diamond (In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization) and Lewis Mumford (Technics and Human Development and The Pentagon of Power).

He has taught creative writing at Pelican Bay State Prison and Eastern Washington University.

Quotes from Derrick Jensen's Work

"We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means--all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity." Listening to the Land

"There can be no real peace when living with someone who has already declared war, no peace but capitulation. And even that, as we see around us, doesn’t lead to further peace but to further degradation and exploitation. We’re responsible for not only what we do but for what is in our power to stop. Before we can speak of peace, we have to speak honestly of stopping, by any and all means possible, those who have declared war on the world and on us. Those who destroy wont stop because we ask nicely. There is only one language that they understand, and everyone here knows what it is. Yet we don’t speak of it openly." A Language Older than Words

Partial list of published works

Derrick Jensen, Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture, and Eros, 1995, 2002
, George Draffan, and John Osborn, Railroads and Clearcuts: Legacy of Congress's 1864 Northern Pacific Railroad Land Grant, Spokane: Inland Empire Public Lands Council, 1995
A Language Older Than Words, 2000
The Culture of Make Believe, New York: Context Books, 2002, ISBN 1893956288, LoC HT1523.J46 2002
and George Draffan, Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests, 2003
Standup Tragedy (live CD)
The Other Side of Darkness (live CD), 2004
Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution, 2004
and George Draffan, Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control, 2004
Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization, 2006
Endgame, Volume 2: Resistance, 2006

External links

American environmentalists | American non-fiction writers | American anarchists | Feminist writers

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Quotes from Derrick Jensen's Work

Partial list of published works

External links