Dark Green Religion and Radical Environmentalism

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Dark Green Religion and Radical Environmentalism
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Some of the following slides both reference
specific individuals and aspects of radical
environmentalism that were discussed in Dark
Green Religion. Others provide images that
illustrate, somewhat impressionistically, the
political, ethical, and spiritual bricolage that
characterizes the movement .
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William C. Rogers, aka Avalon
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Vail Colorado Ski Resort Building, set on fire in
1998 by Avalon others in the Earth Liberation
Front
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Bioregional Deep Ecology and Radical
Environmentalism

• Spiritual Biocentrism The earth and its life
  processes are sacred - but Western religion
  philosophy foster anthropocentrism that leads to
  an. . .
• Extinction Crisis fueled by
• the greed of corporations and . . .
• Corrupt Governments which
• refuse or otherwise fail to arrest
• these extinctions

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Binary Associations in Radical Environmentalism
and Deep Ecology

• Good
• Foraging (small-scale organic horticultural)
  societies
• Animistic, Pantheistic, Goddess-Matriarchal, or
  Eastern Religions
• Biocentrism/Ecocentrism
• (promotes conservation)
• Intuition

• Bad
• Pastoral and Agricultural Societies
• Monotheistic, Sky-God, Patriarchal, Western
  Religions
• Anthropocentrism
• (promotes destruction)
• Reason (especially instrumental)

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More Binary Associations

• Good
• Holistic Worldviews
• Decentralism
• Primitive Technology
• Regional Self-Sufficiency
• Anarchism/Participatory
• Democracy
• Radicalism

• Bad
• Mechanistic Dualistic Worldviews
• Centralization
• Modern Technology
• Globalization and International Trade
• Statism, Corruption,
• Authoritarianism
• Pragmatism

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Grief and anger over the destruction of nature
fuels movement passions. Social criticism,
history, ecology, and myth fuse in a radical
worldview which shapes political priorities, and
justifies lawbreaking
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• Ecological Analysis fuels the ubiquitous
  Apocalypticism, found in movement literature,
  poetry, and music
• e.g., Time Bomb, Ghost of a Chance,
  Disorder, and End of the World. (see sound
  section for downloadable music)

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We who can still hear the jaguar
scream We dream of a day when all things wild
will again be free It is a dream we will fight
for until the day we die
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• Ecological Analysis fuels the ubiquitous
  Apocalypticism, found in movement literature,
  poetry, and music
• e.g., Time Bomb, Ghost of a Chance,
  Disorder, and End of the World.

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The Myth of the Fallfrom a Foraging Paradise

• Agricultures destroy or force the conversion of
  indigenous peoples living in harmony with nature
• Agricultures replace foraging societies and their
  place-based gods and nature spirits and ethics of
  kinship toward all life forms, with sky-gods.

• To re-harmonize humans in nature we must
  re-sacralize our perceptions of the earth.

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Resacralize earth by promoting animistic and
pantheistic perception through . . .

• The Arts
• poetry, prose, music, dance, visual art can evoke
  proper spiritual perception
• Ritualizing
• recovering and re-inventing green religion
• Ethical Action
• defending the earthen spiritualities of surviving
  indigenous nations

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Roadshows as Wilderness Revival Meetings The
Council of All Beings . . . ritualizing toward a
kinship ethic with non-human nature Advanced
Ritual Workshops . . . deepening proper spiritual
perception Direct action . . . binding people
with each other and the natural world
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Radical Environmentalism and Bioregional Deep
Ecology A bricolage of spirituality,
ecology, and radical political ideology
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Songs like I am an Animal (Dana Lyons) express
the kinship ethic and anti-anthropocentrism of
the movement. (see favorites/sound)
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Radical Greens v. Bioregionalists Differing
Strategic Priorities

• Radical Environmentalists
• Engage the Destroyers Resist!!!

• Bioregionalists
• Promote sustainable lifeways

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• Dave Foreman Prophet of Radical
  Environmentalism
• Monkeywrenching or ecotage is a form of
  worship toward the earth. Its really a very
  spiritual thing to go out and do . . . You are a
  religious warrior for the Earth.

• Gary Snyder Architect of Bioregional Social
  Philosophy
• The closer you get to real matter, rock air
  firewood, boy, the more spiritual the world is
  

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Let our Action Be our Prayer . . . cause if
you havent done everything imaginable, you
havent done shit!

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Fortress Wall, Warner Creek Blockade, Oregon
(USA) The year long blockade was eventually
successful in blocking a large timber sale 1993
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Spiritual Warfare . . .
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Voodoo doll to scare loggers, who are often
conservative Christians.
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PAGAN PENTAGRAM some radical environmentalists
are self-consciously pagan.
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Cove Mallard, Idaho
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. . . Earth First! Army Corp of Engineers . . .
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Barricades made from trees cut for logging roads,
rearranged to blockade the loggers from access to
the large timber sales in Idaho (USA)
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Album Cover . . . note the burning
bulldozer in the background
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Live Wild or Die urges a feral revolution of
desire, anarchist rebellion, and inflammatory
tactics. This is the cover of its premier
issue (1989) 3-6

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Drawing rubric from European paganism and the
model from the most militant EF! Activists,
Elves in the UK form the Earth Liberation Front
(1992)
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The swiftness of deer The vision of eagle The
strength of bear The sureness of cougar The
stealth of snake The wildness of wolf Guide
these steps of mine My hand as it releases These
flames of lifes hope Toward that which would
destroy us all. Destroy what destroys you!
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Bioregionalism
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Consecrating Home, and Venerating Earth, through
sustainable living
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Bioregionalisms focus. . .

• Premise those who live in a place can better
  learn its and nature spirits and sustainable
  lifeways than people far away
• Goal Redraw political boundaries to cohere
  with those of different ecosystem types
• Hope overturning nation-states in favor of
  decentralized, regional, community self-rule.

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Bioregional Strategy Promote sustainable
lifeways

• Promote regional identity and activism through
• bioregional congresses and local groups
• Permaculture and Organic Agriculture
• pagan ritualizing
• Bioregionally-oriented wildlands advocacy

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Relative optimism or Apocalypticism shapes the
strategic choices

• Could catastrophe be averted through human
  action?
• Can governments play a positive role?
• Does hope lie only after the collapse of
  industrial civilization and the destruction of
  modern technology?

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Bioregionalists are slightly more hopeful than
radical environmentalists

• They generally expect that industrial society
  will collapse, but are less sure this will occur
  dramatically and with great suffering
• They retain some hope we can learn our way toward
  sustainability, rather than have it forced upon
  us by ecological collapse.

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Yet, Apocalypticism reigns among virtually all
radical environmental activists and most
bioregionalists.
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Is there an international Radical
Environmentalism and deep ecology
movement? Colin Campbells theory of the cultic
milieu is illuminating in this regard.
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Campbell The West as breeding ground for a
Cultic Milieu . . .

• . . . the the cultural underground of Western
  Civilization including all deviant
  belief-systems and their associated practices
  including heretical religion and deviant medicine
  and science.
• Cultic groups are generally tolerant and
  receptive to each others beliefs gtgt syncretism .
  . .
• they share a mystical tradition emphasizing that
  unity with the divine can be attained by a
  diversity of paths

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Expanding on Campbells theory, Radical
Environmentalism and Deep Ecology movements
can be viewed as a bricolage of spiritual
epistemologies and traditions, as well as of
countercultural political ideologies and movements
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Re. Spiritual epistemologies. . . earthen
spirituality borrows widely

• Mountain epiphanies
• Muir and all of Deep Ecologys developers and
  earliest proponents, were mountain climbers.
• Naess, estranged from people, found solace and
  connection in nature, and felt love from the
  mountains with which he identified.
• Deep ecology intellectuals are often drawn to
  Spinoza and pantheism.

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Arne Naess, and other deep ecologists and radical
greens urge us to re-discover the animistic
perceptions of our childhoods, claiming they are
still present among tribal peoples. Naess states
the epistemological premise so common in the
movement

• To do this we must spend time in mountains, or
  where free nature, can stimulate a sense of
  oneness, wholeness, and identification with
  nature.

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Such episteme, and the general radical
environmental myth, fuel the impulse to borrow
from Native American cultures and spiritual
practices, as well as eastern religions, which
are viewed as superior to western societies.
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Taoism and esp. Buddhism influence the Wests
spiritual countercultures, perhaps nowhere as
significantly as in bioregionalism and radical
environmentalism. e.g., Gary Snyder, Joanna
Macy, John Seed, Dolores LaChappelle, Michael
Soule, Reed Noss, to name a few.
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Earthen Spirituality is contested in multiple
ways, and criticisms of such appropriation have
altered practices in the radical environmental
movements.

• Sacred objects sometimes removed
• Sweat Lodges become sacred saunas
• Activists turning to own heritages, as much as
  possible.
• Yet shared ritual is common, as with prayer and
  purification during litigation.

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Other ways Earthen Spirituality is contested

• Battles between Indian and Non-Indian activists
  and Christians opposing their paganism.
• Activists, sometimes clumsily, try to express
  solidarity with Native Americans (at least ones
  they believe are still connected to the land and
  its spirits).

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These slides are from the campaign to prevent
telescopes from being constructed on Mt. Graham
in Southeastern Arizona (1993).
Environmentalists and Native Americans in their
own ways believed the project would desecrate a
sacred place.
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The Vatican Observatory was involved in the
project which intensified the religious
dimensions of the conflict
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Despite some criticism, Native American images
and practices remain important in dark green
spirituality.
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North America as Turtle Island
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Turtle Island totem salmon in a mandala
inspired by religions of the far east
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Desert epiphanies (Edward Abbey)

• The desert's austerity distinguishes it, in
  spiritual appeal, from other forms of landscape,
  and is more effective than mountains at
  overturning human arrogance.
• Abbey called himself an earth-ist and was a
  pantheist who saw the spirit in all things
  (Loeffler) . . .
• And resonated with Daoism, considering it ancient
  nature-based spirituality, calling the Tao te
  Ching is the best goddamned book ever written.

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Hallucinogens (or Entheogens)

• Decisive or important impetus for some involved
  in dark green religion.
• Peyote sets one up spiritually to understand the
  sacred quality of this planet . . . It puts one
  in direct contact with another wave-length with
  the universe and one immediately intuits that the
  entire planet is the living organism in which we
  are members (Jack Loefler, Ed Abbeys best
  friend)
• Only extended, solo camping provided equally
  powerful spiritual perceptiveness, according to
  many radical environmentalists.

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An Ecotopian Holy Trinity song, sung by the
late Judi Bari and her comrads, lauded the
spiritual teachings of marijuana, magic
mushrooms, and big old trees.
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(Neo) Paganism . . .

• Critically and increasingly influential,
• practitioners spread its ritual resources
  widely in green circles.
• Drawing on putatively European sources, it is
  seen as less problematic than forms drawing on
  indigenous societies.

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Deep Ecology Ritual goes international this
graphic is from a tabloid announcing a 1994
Workshop for All Beings in Poland.
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Time for an Entmoot . . .
From Entmoot, the title of Washington EF!s
Newsletter, 1994 Here is another example of the
ecelectic bricolage of dark green religion, and
also, of the influence of the arts in inspiring
it.
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There was a light in Treebeards eyes, as if the
green flame had sunk deeper into the wells of
his thought . . . . He spoke about how, down on
the borders, they are felling trees good trees.
. .
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Wicca Spiritual Ecofeminism

• Wicca is often in co-production with
  neo-paganism, and incorporated into dark green
  spirituality
• E.g., the Spiral Dance ritual spreads the
  metaphysics of interdependence.
• Songs and art challenge patriarchy within and
  outside of green subcultures.

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Political Tributaries

• From the old and new left, and anti-nuclear and
  anti-war movements . . .
• To themes of freedom prevalent in the Western
  world
• To individualist, libertarian forms common in
  many Western states. . .

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Political Tributaries (cont.)

• increasingly, anarchism, which . . .
• best fits the myth that a centralizing,
  totalitarian agriculture is destroying nature and
  everything spiritual.
• Legitimizes priority on local politics
• De-legitimizes centralized governments
  reinforcing Direct Action rationale

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• Radical Affinities
• Almost any radical perceived to be green and an
  opponent of a globalizing industrial civilization
  is honored.
• Mumia abu Jamal, and Move, are looked to as an
  outbreaking of nature religion among Americans of
  African heritage.
• AIM activists
• Traditional Indians resisting development or
  displacement (e.g., the Hopi traditionalists)
• Wangari Mathai and the Kenyan Greenbelt movement,
  and . . .

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The antiglobalization movement has many
affinities with dark green religion and many of
its supporters are radical greens. This
photograph is from the protests against the
World Trade Organization in 1999, which
catapulted the movement into public consciousness.
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Hoping for the Collapse of Industrial
Civilization as the only path to egalitarian,
ecologically sustainable, societies (sometimes
aided by anarchist revolution and even terrorism)
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but some want to accelerate the process
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If you can BAKE A CAKE . . . . . . you can
MAKE A BOMB
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One anarchist version of radical environmentalism.
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Glen Canyon Dam, 4963 AD, after the collapse of
industrial civilization, wildness is returning .
. . hopeful apocalypticism
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Quietly passed around during the 1997 National
Earth First! Rendezvous in Northern Wisconsin
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The preceding slide is from a flyer passed out at
aradical environmental gathering in the mid
1990s. The opposite side proclaimedReturn to
Wild Natureand had these words
"Joan of Arc and the 19th century abolitionist
John Brown employed violence and gave their lives
in struggle. These visionaries were considered
demented by their contemporaries, but are now
revered. It may be that the Unabomber will be
looked upon similarly, as a kind of
warrior-prophet who, as Arleen Davila wrote,
tried to save us.' To un-learn our illusions is
to begin to save ourselves . . . Return to Wild
Nature - Destroy the Worldwide Industrial System
- FREE TED KACZYNSKI."
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What are we to make of all of this? .

• What are the impacts of such countercultural
  spirituality and politics?
• There have been many specific successes we could
  point to that have been won by these movements.
• But their greatest influence may be just
  beginning, for . . .

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As argued in Dark Green Religion, Nature
spirituality is not just for radicals anymore.

• It is altering the political and ecological
  landscape around the world
• .and entering the cultures main streams.

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Increasingly found in survey research are

• intrinsic value of nonhuman nature
• organicism/animism
• natural rights
• to a lesser extent pantheism

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Organizations are proliferating that are grounded
in and promoting of such spirituality

• Native Plant Societies (wild ones)
• Butterfly gardeners
• Biodiversity defense and restoration groups
• Seed Saving , community supported agriculture,
  sacred agriculture movements (to name just a few)

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Even the U.S. Forest Services Leaders

• . . . increasingly articulate biocentric values
  and discuss positively the important spiritual
  value that nature has for Americans when
  defending new, forest protection policies

For example, introducing a book on ecosystem
management by his employees, USFS Chief Jack Ward
wrote . . .
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• Nature-based spiritual beliefs are generic to
  all forest users, whether holders or nonholders
  of sectarian religious beliefs . . . diverse
  types of nature-based spirit-renewing benefits .
  . . are common across all types of users, whether
  a timber cutter, a hunter, a member of an
  environmental organization, a hiker, or a Native
  American.

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• Dark Green Religion does have a radical branch
  and increasing impacts around the world.
• The question remains, what will the extent and
  timing of its future influences?

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Why climb a mountain? There is no mountain,
Nor myself Something moves up and down In the
air
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Conservation biology and American Buddhism
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• Ecological Analysis fuels the ubiquitous
  Apocalypticism, found in movement literature,
  poetry, and music
• e.g., Time Bomb, Ghost of a Chance,
  Disorder, and End of the World.
• Time bomb (Dana Lyons)
• sorder (Casey Neil)