Raping the land is a tactic

Otherwise, why do it?

Vol. 4 issue 16

Heading back from a paddle out to hear the woodthrush. You can listen along as you read by clicking on the audio below.

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Greetings,

This summer Fate has smiled upon me, not in a toothy way, more of a wry grin, since the reasons I have been blessed are bittersweet, but one of the blessings of my unexpected situation of being down South all summer has been near daily sunset kayaking adventures in and out of remote coves along a semi-wild lake in a rural corner of Tennessee.

Unless some weather of note is imminent, every evening, I paddle to one of my favorite little hide-aways, without fail, and listen.

If you’re reading this while also listening to the companion audio I’ve provided, then you are hearing the fluting trill of the wood thrush, a fairly secretive bird that in the past 50 years has had its population here in the US decimated by more than 60%.

Of course, the reason for their decline is down to the usual suspects which largely can be grouped under consumerism gone berserk, or more specifically, loss of habitat to folks who really do need a house the size of Windsor Castle, because Manifest Destiny never actually died, and so their right to a fiefdom remains intact.

It is an otherworldly delight to hear the wood thrush sing. This speckled and velvet brown creature’s melody beckons you to focus your attention on the mysterious beauty of the forest more than most birdy little ditties have the power to do. If you haven’t turned on the audio, please do. I’ll wait.

See what I mean?

Enchanting.

Woodthrush. Credit: US Fish & Wildlife Service.

So, why is it that only a handful of conservationists, and not the general public, are interested in the survival of this tiny musician? Why does its habitat continue to disappear?

I won’t bore you with the litany of all the reasons we usually read about when it comes to how our endless pursuit of growth and the heaps of Capitalistic shaming that gets dumped on anyone who dares to bring up the plight of the earth have all lead to there being an extinction rate of well over 100 times greater than that of the last 5 mass extinctions on earth. In fact, I will even direct you to a website where you can have a statistical look at how this is happening, without any sentimentality, and actually leavened with some sanguinity about how this kind of massive die-off seems to be part of the Earth’s way of achieving homeostasis.

And yet, the piece ends with an emphasis on the importance of conservation because, well duh. Cruelty was never one of the drivers of extinction until now, and cruelty is a tactic, not necessarily a fact of life.

Instead of harping on that, I will share with you a thought I had while I was gently paddling around this evening, listening to the feathered fairy voice of the forest.

Alone on the water, quiet and introspective, I contemplated what it means to “rape the land.”

It occurred to me that occupation and colonization of another culture or nation follows a predictable pattern. First comes the attempt to negotiate the indigenous peoples out of what is theirs by offering them bogus deals that never are in their favor. It’s easier and cheaper to steal than kill.

But to really conquer a people requires demoralizing them. So far as my recollection of history describes, that means first raping the women, no matter their age or circumstance and second, desecrating the culture’s holy sites.

In the US, the indigenous peoples revered the land. It wasn’t worship of the land so much as respect and common sense: the earth and her bounty supported these people, so they figured it would have been stupid to disrespect and squander her resources.

When they were conquered and colonized, there was not just rape of the women, but also desecration of the sacred sites within nature, which ironically, we all generally agree upon calling Mother Nature. So, raping the earth is truly raping the women, raping the sacred. Desecrating the feminine, demoralizing all who love her.

It’s a tactic.

And that got me thinking about a previous piece I wrote about being colonized and occupied in my upscale neighborhood back in Washington, where I am one of the ones doing the work of preserving a small, wooded glen that money men are quick to conquer and enslave, selling it as theirs, and making the beauty of it work for them, like an indentured servant.

Harnessing Nature’s beauty while you continue to rape it? It’s a tactic.

Not caring about wildlife, not caring about fresh water, not caring about clean air, not caring about leaving the earth balanced and her beauty accessible to all is also a tactic.

I also have been thinking a lot lately during my nightly kayaks about how skilled at sticking to the script Republicans are. They know how to tell a story and stick to it. They have managed to acculturate even those who disagree with them to think that Capitalism actually is the American Way, that everything must be about growth and never about preservation, and that the right to consume is synonymous with our Constitutional law. To contravene any of this calls into question our acceptability as a reliable patriot, our worthiness to be called an American.

Even if we know this is bullshit, even if instead of consumption, we argue for the right to preserve a quality of life that promotes life for all living beings, we are always starting on the back foot. The status quo maintains that life is not cyclical, but instead must flow power up to the top where it stays unless it trickles down, which of course it has failed to ever, ever do.

Mass extinction might be inevitable at some point in the earth’s history, but is cruelty really inevitable in human history? And especially, cruelty that quickens the arrival of a mass extinction, including of humans? It seems to me, yes.

Why would hard core committed Capitalists want to keep raping the land, desecrating what is good and giving and nurturing if it will kill them, too? How is something that so clearly defies common sense, isn’t supported by even the simplest of sciences – that of observation! – and which requires an enormous amount of energy to sustain as a fable-as-fact be what these blasphemers choose? And if it’s not blasphemy, it is certainly ignorant idiocy, because nothing, not a thing, in the universe is linear except Capitalism. Everything else is based on circles and cycles.

I can only guess. Here are some thoughts that come to mind, in no particular order: these people are a death cult. They do not value the earth because they will either go to Mars, the Moon, or heaven, and the rest of us suckers who are not as special as they are can go to hell. They are too arrogant and stupid to care. They are evil alien star seeds and when their job of screwing up the earth is done, they will board their spaceship for home and so do not need to care.

Whatever the reason, raping the earth and shaming those of us who wish for it to stop, is a tactic. It is meant to demoralize us. It is meant to cause fear and pain. If it weren’t, it would stop. No one would do what kills them unless they were either masochistic, addicted, or somehow motivated to harm.

I don’t want the serial rapists to win. So, I make time to listen to the wood thrush who fills my heart with hope. And then, I look for and celebrate other forms of beauty on this gorgeous orb of perfectly balanced elements, this planet that supports you and me. I do this because it is an act of defiance in the face of these deathbots. It is an act of courage as mass extinction spreads. And most of all, it is so very American of me to do this. So, here’s to being a real American: God bless Mother Nature.

Peace,

Whitney