Deep Green Resistance - Foundation

If there is one realisation upon which the idea of Deep Green Resistance stands, it is the knowledge that humans are not only not the only form of life upon the Earth, but also that they are not even the most important form of life.

That, in a nutshell, is how it was with me.The foundation of my radicalisation.

So many, many humans have a stunted, truncated view of life - it ends somewhere around the place their skin does. When they do allow that others have a right to life, health and the planet, it's usually in terms of their family, extended family, friends or social network. It may even extend to their pets, this nod to the fact that the universe does not revolve around themselves; and sometimes to 'other' human beings - the poor and the oppressed, the landless and the victims of violence.

But Deep Green Resistance begins with the profound knowledge that all life is equally worthy.

I used to be an anthropic-centred human, too. What mattered, although this was rarely articulated in so many words, was the existence of humanity. Our great works of literature, music, and architecture. Our magnificent forays into knowledge we called science. Our miseries and wants; our beliefs and lack of them; our loves and joys and fears. How we treated each other. And all of this is important, of course. But it's such a myopic view of the All.

You don't have to become a shaman to realise - in your bones, in your blood - that every thing has a Being. It may not be consciousness as we mammals know it - and we have only just started to acknowledge that our mammalian cousins, the Other Animals, share something we can recognise as consciousness - but it's an awareness of Being which is shared in some form or other by every single scrap of matter in the cosmos.

I believe it's called panpsychism, and until you have truly acknowledged that the living spirit is shared by All, you cannot begin to resist what a few of us have been doing to the material base of this Life.

The destructiveness of our present culture is breathtaking.

But if I have to tell you this, because you don't know it, you have got to lay the foundation, still.

Each one of us has a deep obligation not to fob off our conscience with the faddish greenwashing which the dominance hierarchies are starting to use to lull us into compliance. To make, first of all, a stand of realisation.
When you have it down inside you that the truth of our Being is shared, and common to all, you can begin to resist.

This is where it starts. In your mind, in your soul:
Grok Earth. Pray without ceasing. . And then you can act.