What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire Page #4

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That they will not

(alarm clock begins to beep and grows louder...)

(click off)

Ah. . . what a nightmare. . .

Well, Johnny, you are in a pretty serious situation.

But we believe - your myther and

Mr. Benton and I - that you can

make good without being sent away.

There has always been a part of me that has

suspected that I would see the end-of-the-world-

as-we-know-it in my lifetime.

It seemed built into the situation,

a certainty of population dynamics,

the inevitable end to Mr. Malthus' musings.

At some point we would near the sun,

our wings would fall, and we would

plummet back to the earth.

"F***!"

New voices spoke of possible futures.

"Hey can i have some of those purple berries?"

Crosby, Stills and Nash

sailed the Wooden Ships.

"Sh*t, not again!"

Riddley Walker wrote his connexions.

And Charlton Heston ate Soylent Green with

The Omega Man on the Planet of the Apes.

"You maniacs!"

The world looked insane to me but nobody

else seemed to notice so I buried

my thoughts and muddled on.

Deep inside, this was tearing me to places.

I remember looking in at night on my

sleeping children, and feeling a deep

and gnawing terror for their futures.

But I locked my fears tightly in my heart, hit the

snooze button, and slept a while longer.

And then I came across Daniel Quinn and

Derrick Jensen, two writers who helped me,

with books such as Ishmael and

The Culture of Make Believe,

to recognize the stories of our culture,

the beliefs and assumptions and fables

that have shaped our lives,

the fairy-tales we have told ourselves, the

madness we have made manifest in the world.

Quinn speaks of the Nazi regime, of Adolph

Hitler and the story he told the German people.:

a story about the lost destiny of the Aryan race,

a story of oppression and defilement,

a story of victory and vengeance

and greatness regained.

And Quinn explained how the entire nation,

oppressors and oppressed alike,

Jews and Good Germans and Gypsies and

Gays, were all held captive by that story.

We who live today inside the dominant global

culture are similarly captives of stories.:

stories that surround us like the air we breathe,:

stories that we enact at our own peril,:

stories that threaten the community of life itself.

Have you heard the one about humans

being separate from "nature", different,

special, the pinnacle of creation?

Or about humans being innately flawed -

violent, selfish and greedy?

How about the one that says that the world

was made for human beings, to manage,

control, and exploit as a resource,

and that the world has

no value beyond its utility?

Or the story about there being only one

right way to live, and one right way to

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