My name is Adam Kranz. I am presently a Junior Environmental Studies Major at Lawrence University. I live in an environmental activist coop house called Greenfire. I lead actions with Greenfire and spend much of my time doing organic, intensive agriculture at the Sustainable Lawrence University Gardens, SLUG. I was arrested in the Tar Sands Action on September 2, 2011, to stop the Keystone XL pipeline and begin slowing the tar sands industry.
While my activism and interest has focused on environmental issues, I have come to the conclusion that oppression in nearly all its forms - from issues of gender, race, and sexuality to wealth inequality to environmental justice to class warfare are all deeply connected and stem from the same ultimate causes. Thus I feel that these issues can and should be addressed together, at their root causes. In my search to pin down the nature and origin of this root cause, I came to realize that it was by no means a recent problem - neither the Powell Memo nor the Industrial Revolution can be blamed for these systemic issues. In fact, the problems seemed to go back as far as recorded history, and most of the authors I read seemed to believe that the emergence of written history itself, as a symptom of the broader emergence of what they called "civilization," was the problem.
The major influences that led me to these ideas were Crimethinc. and Derrick Jensen. Jensen has been my primary intellectual influence since I moved away from Crimethinc a few years ago. His writing is incredibly powerful and his analysis has much to offer. I have learned a great deal of things I value greatly from his writings. His perspective throws out many conventional assumptions and comes at problems from an admirably non-traditional viewpoint.
Yet that is not to say that his thought is itself objective or scientific. For while Jensen may have arrived at his ideas by throwing out sacred assumptions like "civilization is good," he has replaced those assumptions with many of his own. These assumptions vary in the extent to which they are grounded in fact or legitimized by more scientific perspectives. As I read Derrick's works, I often felt muddle-headed. The things he said made the most sense to me, I could critique the positions of others in light of his arguments, and I saw few explicit flaws in his seemingly-airtight reasoning. But there was a lingering feeling that he was doing something to my head. He is, as "all writers are," a propagandist, and he happens to be a very good one if you're at all amenable to his bent.
I went into college with the assumption that its primary aim would be to help me develop my own worldview. It turns out that Lawrence these days, for better and for worse, thinks of a worldview as something too political to touch and too personal to be developed in an academic framework. So I floundered about for two and a half years, frustrated that no one ever seemed to talk about the issues in Environmental Studies that drew me to the subject in the first place, the questions that would help me analyze and develop my worldview and thus calibrate effectively the way I spent my life (starting from the perhaps strange assumption that I ought to live my life according to my own view of what was right despite my understanding that there is no objective morality in the Universe). After talking over my issue with some older students, it occurred to me that the best way to resolve my problem was to seek out professors with whom I could address my questions head-on.
That is the purpose of this blog. With the help of a professor of Environmental History and a Professor of Anthropology, I'm carrying out two independent studies to identify and examine the claims and arguments Jensen makes in a critical academic context. I plan to post here periodically on my findings, in the perhaps vain belief that there are other people out there who are seeking out just this sort of friendly critique (something I couldn't find anywhere else online).
N.B. - The blog's title refers to the writings of Deep Green Resistance in general, embodied in Derrick's writings as well as the book by Lierre Kieth and Aric McBay by that title, not the latter book in particular.
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