In a recent article posted to the Orion website, Derrick Jensen rails against the shift towards thinking that personal change is more important than activism. Titled “Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Change Doesn’t Equal Political Change” Jensen effectively castigates the 21st century movement towards simplicity, driving less and consuming less. He claims that these are only props that make us feel like we are doing something, without actually doing anything that will truly lead to real change.
Jensen states:
Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance.
I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.
Let me be clear, I am still thinking out my response to this essay, which is basically a call to action. The question is: What kind of action? Jensen at one point says that we can rehabilitate streams, remove dams, and disrupt a political system tilted towards the rich, destroy the industrial economy. While the first one is a totally clear and doable action, the ones that follow, including removing dams are nothing short of daunting. I for one am not ready to go out and blow up a dam, since that would probably end up with me in prison, where I don’t think I would do much good, and frankly, which is a thought that terrifies me. My great- great-grandfather Anselmo Figueroa went to prison at McNeil Island for revolutionary actions in 1915 (he was the publisher of a newspaper established by Mexican activist Ricardo Flores Magon). He contracted tubercolosis in his dank, gloomy cell. When he got out, he returned home to Yuma, Arizona, and died soon after.
So basically, the question I want to address is: How do we disrupt the political system? How do we bring down the industrial economy? I’m all for it. I don’t want any more oil spills, any more unjust wars, anymore killing of kids in Africa so that I can have coltan for my cell phone. But aside from controlling and lowering consumption of the items that lead to these atrocities, what is to be done? What are forms of activism that really work? Voting? (man, even hearing that word makes me tired), street protest? Looking for answers, not giving answers at this point.
Is Jensen correct in his assertion that personal change does not equal political change? What are ways to keep the activism flame alive?
