Is violence to protect nature justifiable?

Yes. Let’s kill each other in the name of preventing us from killing ourselves.

the environment and the planet will endure long after we destroy ourselves.

Yes. But personally, it has to stop short of killing somebody. I feel strongly about trees in the Amazon being cut. I’ve never been there but it feels so wrong considering how ancient that natural world is. It’s sacriligeous even. And I’m so amazed with those people who try to save those whales from hunters, risking their lives for the cause. Wow!

Define your terms.
What violent action? In defense of which environment and how? Justifiable in which way and to whom?

I don’t think physical violence is the answer to much of anything. @blondesjon puts it perfectly, while we all want to protect the planet, destroying humans in our attempt to so makes no sense. Now let’s all hold hands around the trunk of a tree and sing Kumbaya.

I do think that the people who are systematically raping the planet for profit should be put to death.
And I have to say that eco terrorism is the only kind of terrorism I have any pathos for.

Yes, it can be justified. What people tend to forget when poo-poo-ing such actions is that environmental defense is really defense of living creatures, including humans. Environmental devastation is the main cause for so much human suffering.

But anyway, sabotage is more effective for this than violence.

Anything is “justifiable,” to those that do it, it’s justifiable. To the typical average citizen it’s probably not justifiable as they can’t get through their thick skulls that sometimes if you’re going to try to save everything, you have to save a few, thus sacrifices have to be made somewhere.

No

I’m a pacifist in many ways, but…if anyone even looks at my geese with visions of plum sauce or pate, or gets a gleam in their eye over a down comforter, well, lookout for Coloma and her hoe!
If the hoe doesn’t scalp you, the pitchfork will nail you to the goose barns wall.

Step away from my geese! lol

@incendiary_dan . . . Just curious, do you support the death penalty in criminal cases?

No, it’s not. I do not consider a plant or tree, or whale, or any other organism above the life or well-being of human being.

With the right spin, anything is “justifiable”. But justification is a sad excuse for justice.

Many would argue that it is in Man’s nature to be violent.

And maybe in man’s Nature too.^ :D

I don’t think so, but many disagree.

Not violence, but civil disobedience is okay. I do not see blocking Japanese whaling boats as violence nor raiding labs where animals are sacrificed to the cosmetics industry.

Not really.
I swear why does man need to kill or hurt other creatures, if it’s not one thing then it’s another. Seriously though am I the only one who feels as if we need it like we need oxygen

With no details it’s difficult to comment. A lack of details usually doesn’t stop me from running my mouth, however. Let’s see what I can do….

If by “protect nature” you mean “protect the resources that support my family”, then I can’t see why violence would be completely off the table as a last resort.

@Blondesjon I don’t, but that’s more to do with my critique of the (in)justice system and both its ability and legitimacy to conduct fair and community-supporting trials, rather than a compassion-based ethos of some kind. My compassion is for life, and my love reserved for community and landbase.

Coincidentally, this article was just published on Alternet. It’s an interview of three of my favorite writers, about their new collaboration.

@incendiary_dan . . . So what you’re saying is that state sanctioned violence (the death penalty) is not bad, just the group of people and the methods they use in deciding to use violence (the death penalty) that are bad?

How is it that the state’s decision making process in implementing their violence (normally a decision based on what’s “good for the people”) is unjustifiable and an environmental group’s decision making process in implementing their violence (normally a decision based on what’s “good for the people”) is justified?

Eco-terrorism is still terrorism (the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes) no matter how lofty the ideals.

@Blondesjon So what you’re saying is that state sanctioned violence (the death penalty) is not bad, just the group of people and the methods they use in deciding to use violence (the death penalty) that are bad?

Essentially, though as many know here I don’t recognize the legitimacy of nation-states as a democratic way to represent the people, but rather promote individual communities’ autonomy. If a community decides to execute someone who’s wronged them in a fair manner (and there are of course huge issues in that alone), that could be acceptable. The state, on the other hand, has repeatedly proved itself incapable of providing justice for people of color and the working poor.

Note that I said ”can be justified” in my initial post. Ultimately, any sort of violence and the decision to use it needs to be weighed based on the situational factors and the true effects it will have. Groups like MEND and EZLN have been given precious little recourse but to pick up arms. Deciding whether or not violence is justified and useful for an eco-defense group is basically the same as it would be for any resistance movement, which is what they essentially are (at least the legitimate ones).

And as I said, sabotage is generally more effective, because it more directly addresses the source of environmental degradation. Killing people rarely does.

Eco-terrorism is still terrorism (the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes) no matter how lofty the ideals.

If we’re going to talk about definitions of terrorism, and use that one, it would be disingenuous to do so without noting that no group labeled “terrorist” by governments have ever committed even a fraction of the sort of terrorism routinely used by governments and corporations (insomuch as they’re separate in this regard) in their efforts to extract resources and destroy the traditional communities who depend on them.

Not to mention that “eco-terrorists” as identified by our government, particularly groups like ELF and ALF, have never used violence but are still called terrorists. If you rely on buzzwords and associational reactions, you’ll get nowhere but some sort of Orwellian nightmare.

@incendiary_dan . . . It seems to me that you are more stuck on a flavor than you are on any type of ideology. I still see no difference between your thought process and that of the governmental organizations you claim to be so different from.

Since your “side” is something you believe strongly in, you are able to convince yourself that your methods and mores are “better”.

They’re not. They’re the same, no matter how eloquent you may make it sound (and you did put it very well, by the way).

For the record, I agree that our government is not actually “ours” in any way, shape, or form. I also agree that it is a bloated, corrupt, out of control beast that will eventually ruin, among other things, the very country it is meant to protect. This does not change the fact that many groups, like the environmental movement, spew much of the same governmental bullshit they claim to despise. They just spin it and wrap it in a different color, recycled paper. Violence as a means to an end is fine by me. I just want to make clear that it makes you no different than the target of your violence.

Instead of 1984 perhaps you should read Animal Farm.

We cannot complain or justify violent actions against eco terrorist acts that we are guilty of committing ourselves in the past. Just because we’ve changed our minds about something, doesn’t mean that others have.

Whatever technological advancements that lead to our abandonment of our own atrocities, we should be willing to share those same tech advancements with the ones we now accuse of terrorism. We cannot expect them to finance that. If we really feel so deeply that it is wrong, then we should be the ones to buck up and pay the piper his due.

Someone said, “Teach a man to fish”. I believe that meant to teach responsible fishing.

I’m with @everephebe – it depends.

@Blondesjon – While I appreciate the genuine attempt at discouraging violence, it appears that you’re advocating a kind of moral relativism. (I could be wrong, however.) – especially the “I just want to make clear that it makes you no different than the target of your violence.” stuff.

I will try not to bring up the H word for fear of Godwins Law alarms going off. Is it possible that you can think of a situation currently or historically that would morally allow for a level of justified violence? What about the Zapatistas in Chiapas following NAFTA, or a rising of a population against an oppressive government of your choosing?

@Blondesjon Got anything besides naked assertion?

Here’s a tip for polite and constructive discourse: don’t talk for me, or anyone else who hasn’t given approval. You’ve spoken as if you know my personal feelings on something that I haven’t said. You place me on a “side” that I’ve made no claim to, though yea, I side with my landbase and do support some militant action. You’re ascribing to me tacit approval of all militant eco-actions, when I’ve even said I don’t necessarily approve of them due simply to the motivation. In short, don’t use straw man arguments. Read what I write, not what you want to argue with for convenience.

Violence in defense is always justified. No questions on that. If your very ability to live is being threatened by environmental damage, which is the case for many people all over the world, then you’re well within your rights to fight for survival. If you can’t tell the difference between that and, as @everephebe put it, “raping the planet”, I have no respect for you and no interest in wasting my time. If you can’t understand violence committed by a tyrannical ruler is fundamentally different from violence used to defend an oppressed people, you’re hopeless. Trying to conflate the two and obscure the issue with relativism is at best poor discourse, and at worst complicit behavior.

Arundhati Roy was recently quoted as saying “If you’re an adivasi[tribal Indian] living in a forest village and 800 Central Reserve Police come and surround your village and start burning it, what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to go on hunger strike? Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation.”

Us Westerners have an audience. Sort of. Most in the world don’t.

Let’s all put our privilege aside for a minute and realize not everyone lives in the conditions we do. Imagine you’re an adivasi, or a Dine’ person trying to keep wastewater from being dumped on your sacred mountain, or a native living along the Athabaska and having all your food poisoned from the Tar Sands, or an indigenous Peruvian having half your clan machinegunned so a corporations can put in a megadam that’ll wipe out most of your neighbors, or a working class black family living in a cancer cluster that the government has no interest in cleaning up nor holding the corporations responsible. The same story is repeated over and over worldwide.

When it comes to defending you and yours, I concur with Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams: use any means necessary.

Humans are not independent from nature. Pretending the two are separate is simply idiocy, a pathological ignorance borne of a profoundly sick society. We would do well to remember that

Edit: P.S.: Those of you who are on my Facebook and therefore know my real name will be pleasantly surprised to see my name in the credits of the movie I linked to. The one supporting the growth of a “culture of resistance”.

What I object to is a couple of people who live in typical residential homes going out and burning down an apartment complex that under construction as an environmental protest. It’s just plain criminal, and does not protect anything.

Sure, @YARNLADY – everyone hates that type of manufactured, bourgeois excuse for doing crazy shit. Here in the states, we have the image of the part-time environmentalist who goes to work in an SUV and yells at people in his office for not recycling. Like @incendiary_dan mentions, however, there are people in other parts of the world where environmentalism really means survival.

I’m not trying to say that violence is wrong. I’m an American. I fucking love violence.

I’m just saying that violence is violence regardless of how you try to pretty it up. I get tired of seeing folks try to ease their conscience and/or the consciences of others by saying that Violence A is ok and Violence B is totally wrong. It’s all the same coin.

I’m not asking anyone to recant their ways. I’m asking them to nut up and own it for what it is.

@Blondesjon: “I’m just saying that violence is violence regardless of how you try to pretty it up”

I guess that’s where we disagree, and why I mentioned above that it sounded like you were advocating a type of moral relativism.

If a strange man grabs my daughter and attempts to strangle her (“violence A”), and I end up beating that man to a bloody pulp (“violence B”), I do not feel that violence A == violence B. I don’t feel that claiming violence A to be wrong requires that I also declare violence B to be wrong as well. Some people feel this is the case, and it seems this is what you are saying (correct me if I’m wrong).

He’s strangling your daughter because she poisoned his wife. She poisoned his wife because she kicked her dog. And you’ll get shot for beating the man to a pulp because his brother is watching.

Violence goes way beyond how a single person “feels” about it @tom_g. Violence is violence on the merit of violence and violence alone. And the individual “feeling” is just a catalyst. Dynamite is dynamite, and there is nothing inherently good or bad about dynamite. The good or bad comes from the catalyst… The one who lights the spark.

We should not declare that the violence is right or wrong. Only the motivations can be declared right or wrong. And motivations are always questionable and debatable… For the man you beat to a bloody pulp just found a cure for cancer which will save billions of lives over the coming decades. Your motivations may prevent that cure from ever being realized.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies – But she didn’t poison his wife.

Of course motivations are debatable. That’s what makes us ethical beings. Those of us who believe that morality involves the process of determining the actual implications of actions (as opposed to believing in the childlike carrot/stick “morality” of the bible) have our work cut out for us.
I think we are in agreement here – with one exception. It is not possible to know every potential outcome or variable involved in every situation (your cancer cure guy, for example). I don’t think this type of omniscience is required to make ethical decisions. Reasonable people can make decisions that will either increase or minimize suffering. We can judge those decisions based on the information that is available to us. We can’t be lazy about it, but we certainly shouldn’t drown in relativity because of our lack of omniscience.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies What if I’m really the Grand Emperor of this quadrant of the galaxy?

Excessive and unrealistic “what-ifs” are basically useless in this regard.

In addition to what @tom_g said so eloquently, I think the real effects of actions are as important as motivation. That’s an area where you really can’t be lazy.

And of course, that gets to the heart of why eco-sabotage and such is necessary. When land-destroying projects are carried out, they’re not done with proper regard for the effects they have. They’re directly impinging on the ability of others to live life. Following the Haudenosaunee standard, it damages our descendants seven generations or more down the line. That’s just evil, no matter how you cut it.

“effects of actions”

Consider this may be where our disagreement really lies.

I don’t believe that actions are related to effects. Let me explain. I get extremely precise with these notions, and feel it necessary to do so because these ethical discussions are so incredibly intricate.

cause relates to effect

thought relates to affect

Cause/Effect relates to our basic laws of physics. They are irrelevant to notions of human motivation (thought) unless the earthquake has destroyed the village. At that point we must isolate what is really happening. There are two possible truth statements which can arise from this, and one of them is false.

1.) The earthquake caused me to move away from the village, thereby effecting my life.

2.) I decided to move away from the village after thinking through the situation, thereby I affected a reasoned change upon my life. I could also decide to stay and rebuild the village.

it’s the difference between random mutation and controlled mutation. a human will either express controlled mutation with thought/action, or an random mutation with cause/reaction

When one says, “He made me do it”… that’s no different than saying “The Devil made me do it”. We conflate and confuse our re-actions with actions.

A Reaction is “ouch” from a pinprick. It caused an effect.

An Action is the result from reasoned Thought about why/how the pinprick occurred, and why/how it is_ judged_ valid or invalid, and why/how one may address it with mindful intelligence.

We are not rocks subject to the cause/effect of the cosmos. We are humans, with the capacity to exercise thought/affect upon the cosmos.

_____________

“When land-destroying projects are carried out, they’re not done with proper regard for the effects they have.”

Key term “projects”. This denotes an affect from thought, not an effect from cause. An earthquake effects a forest. A project affects a forest.

_____________

“the Haudenosaunee standard, it damages our descendants seven generations or more down the line.”

Shall we lower ourselves to the level of thoughtless rocks, and react. Or shall we elevate ourselves to the level of thinking humans and engage thoughtful actions upon the challenges before us?

Cause will always engage a single Effect. Basic laws of physics.

Thought will always provide options for multiple Affects. The realm of creative imagination.

One option that thought allows is to express abstract reasoning, thereby giving humans the ability to see things from the perspective of others. This is where the higher notions of empathy, forgiveness, charity arise from. Rocks cannot express these higher notions.

Sure, we can think to attack and kill and that may be the quickest easiest solution to reasonably solve any problem.

But we can also express many options beyond our immediate lower emotions. We can understand why a person is doing something, and upon expressing that empathy, we can share our gold (our Beaver with the Haudenosaunee) by sharing technology of agriculture, medicine, responsible trapping, equal opportunity for all humans bereft of greed and the satisfaction desired by any one community over another.

Insight works upon a principle of infinite depth. There are questions put upon us as a human race. Shall we allow the mute cosmos to answer them with thoughtless cause/effect, or shall we express our authority over the cosmos and answer the greater questions with thoughtful reason and humane affects?

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies What the hell are you talking about? You’ve gone so far off of what we were talking about as to be derailing.

just because you don’t understand my comments does not mean that my comments cannot be understood

The notions I speak of are deeply connected to issues of what “justification” really is, how it relates to true justice, and the fundamental principles which lead to “violence” being defined as an action or a reaction. I don’t believe these questions can be answered by swimming on the comfortable surface waters. We’ll need to swim with the sharks to get to the bottom of this.

Careful, there are hungry shark eaters down here.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies – I know I am not the smartest guy, but that last post appeared to be masturbatory and unrelated. Try and speak all simple-like for us dull folk.

I know that my concepts can be confusing to those who haven’t considered them.

I simply stated that our difference of position may lie within our personal definitions of “effect” and “affect”. And then I explained what I believe those differences are, and why it is important to note them.

There is no attempt to dull anyone. My hope is to promote further discussion. That may require digging deeper. Perhaps not.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies I’m not exactly a greenhorn when it comes to philosophy. This is just rambling relativism and postmodernist obfuscation.

Do you deny there is a difference between effect from cause and affect from thought?

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies – I have read and re-read that post, and still have no idea what you are talking about. Seriously, I’m interested in knowing if you really did just pick random words from the dictionary and string them together. It’s also possible that you really do have something relevant to say here, but you’re incapable of expressing it clearly. So I’ll ask again: Could you please rephrase what you are trying to say? If it helps, pretend I’m a little kid.

When someone says “effects from actions”, and claims that as insight for predicting future potential outcome, they are doing well to envision circumstance beyond the immediate moment. Abstract thinking is important to problem solving. The foundation which supports the abstract is the statement “effects from actions”. The abstract would never arise without the foundation to support it upon.

I do not question the expression of abstract thinking. I encourage it.

I question the stability of the foundation the abstract is built upon. I encourage everyone to kick the tires of their reasoning skills.

I don’t care what a person thinks. I care why a person thinks the way they do, and how they came to think it.

Therefor, analyzing the statement “effects of actions” is a valid pursuit. And I have explained in great detail why I believe it to be an invalid statement. There is no shame in questioning the validity of truth statements we build our world views upon.

If there is a demonstrable difference between cause/effect and thought/affect, then the truth statement of “effects of actions” must fall. If the truth statement falls, then the resulting abstract must be brought into question.

So… Is there or is there not a difference between cause/effect and thought/affect? And if there is, then which one should determine the process of human interactions?