Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

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.

Customer Reviews:

Fits Like a Gun in Your Hand

By J.W.K - February 24, 2007

Derrick Jensen is one of those authors that people love or hate. As for myself, I have mixed feelings about the guy and his message. Despite these mixed feelings, though, I never fail to read his books when they come out - and Endgame was by far an away the most anticipated and climactic one yet due to its highly controversial subject: taking down civilization. That's right, taking down civilization.

But why would anyone want to take down civilization, you might ask? At this point, I should say that if you have not already had the pleasure of receiving a formal introduction to the man and his work, you might want to start with one of his earlier publications, such as Listening to the Land, A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Strangely Like War and Welcome or the Machine. In fact, I would recommend reading them all. They lay the groundwork from which Endgame both springs and builds upon: specifically, that civilization is F-U-B-A-R and doomed to... read more

Great book

By Scott Meredith "SeeOtter" - July 4, 2006

It's a great book. Read it and think and then "do" something if you feel the urge.

But just one thing I really would like to understand better (even if attempts to understand things, as opposed to blowing them up, are just so much mental masturbation) is how phrases like "crash of civilization" and "civilization has to go" and such are thrown about with abandon.

I want to know what would constitute truly uncivilized (and therefore presumably preferable) conditions. Not by genuflection to the idyllic American Indian past, but with reference to our own future when, by hypothesis, civilization will either have crashed on its own or will have been elbowed off the pavement by readers of this book.

I would like specifics about what level or rate or manner of technology, mobility, consumption, and reproduction would qualify as "uncivilized" and pass muster with Derrick? I am not trying to be trollish here, I really want to know. Because if we don't know,... read more

Important reading

By Shahma Smithson - December 10, 2006

Civilization is killing the planet. I can see you rolling your eyeballs, but wait: what does "civilization" mean? Derrick Jensen defines civilization as (abbreviated): "...a complex of stories, institutions, and artifacts - that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities,...with cities being defined...as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life." (Endgame Vol 1, p. 17)

This civilization goes way beyond even food and other necessities. Look around you: just about everything in sight is a human artifact. Where did those artifacts come from? If you start to investigate and realize how many species are wiped out (hundreds of species per day, as opposed to a natural extinction rate of one species every 5 years), how many indigenous people are ousted from their own land (where they were subsisting by growing or gathering food on that land) in order to support our... read more

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Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

Customer Reviews:

Fits Like a Gun in Your Hand

Great book

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