By CoyotePrime (Reporter)
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“Change”

by Derrick Jensen

“History is predicated on at least two things, the first physical, the
second perceptual. As always, the physical and the perceptual are
intertwined. So far as the former, history is marked by change. An
individual’s history can be seen as a series of welcomings and
leavetakings, a growth in physical stature and abilities followed by a
tailing off, a gradual exchange of these abilities for memories,
experiences, and wisdom.

Social histories are similarly marked by
change. The deforestation of the Middle East to build the first cities.
The first written laws of civilization, which had to do with the
ownership of human and nonhuman slaves. The fabrication of bronze, then
iron, the ores mined by slaves, the metals used to conquer. The first
empires. Greece and its attempts to take over the world. Rome and its
attempts. The conquest of Europe. The conquest of Africa. The conquest
of the Americas. The conquest of Australia, India, much of Asia. The
deforestation of the planet.

Just as with my own future history, I
do not know what the future history of our society will be, nor of the
land that lies beneath it. I do not know when the Grand Coulee Dam will
come down, nor whether there will still be salmon to reinhabit the Upper
Columbia. I do not know when the Colorado will again reach the sea, nor
do I know whether civilization will collapse before grizzly bears go
extinct, or prairie dogs, gorillas, tuna, great white sharks, sea
turtles, chimpanzees, orangutans, spotted owls, California red-legged
frogs, tiger salamanders, tigers, pandas, koalas, abalones, and so many
others on the brink.

The point is that history is marked by change. No change, no history.

And
some day history will come to an end. When the last bit of iron from
the last skyscraper rusts into nothingness, when eventually the earth,
and humans on the earth, presuming we still survive, find some sort of
new dynamic equilibrium, there will no longer be any history. People
will live once again in the cycles of the earth, the cycles of the sun
and moon, the seasons. And longer cycles, too, of fish who slip into
seas then return to rivers full of new life, of insects who sleep for
years to awaken on hot summer afternoons, of martens who make massive
migrations once every several human generations, of the rise and fall of
populations of snowshoe hare and the lynx who eat them. And longer
cycles still, the birth, growth, death, and decay of great trees, the
swaying of rivers in their courses, the rise and fall of mountains. All
these cycles, these circles great and small.”

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