Derrick Jensen (activist)

Derrick Jensen is an American environmental activist, author and ecophilosopher in the anarcho-primitivist tradition. He believes that human civilization is and has always been unsustainable for the planet.

Early and personal life

Derrick Jensen was born in 1960Template:R in Nebraska and was raised in Colorado. He attended the Colorado School of Mines with a scholarship and graduated with a bachelor's degree in mineral engineering and physics. Even before graduating, he intended to become a writer. Jensen worked briefly in engineering and as a small commercial beekeeper. He became ill from Crohn's disease and had a slow recovery. His experience with the disease contributed to his approach towards Western culture. In 1991, Jensen received a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Eastern Washington University.

He lives in Crescent City, California, and has cats.Template:R

Writing and activism

We don't think about the violence that makes the comforts and elegancies of our way of life happen. The world is being destroyed before our eyes, and it's really not that hard to tell the truth about it. It doesn't take that much courage.

Derrick JensenTemplate:R

File:JensenKeithOccupyOakland2011.png

Lierre Keith (left) and Jensen (right) with Deep Green Resistance at Occupy Oakland in 2011

Jensen contends that human civilization is and has always been unsustainable for the planet. His writing and philosophy centers on the destructive tendencies of Western culture and how it proliferates between people and generations. His The Culture of Make Believe, a nonlinear composite of memoir and philosophy, outlines how Western culture was built upon brutality. Jensen has said this approach comes from wanting to be honest and "forthright without whining". When writing about massacres, slavery, and industrial forestry, he balances statistics and personal stories to "mix analysis with blood".Template:R

He wrote for two environmental organizations in 1995. A commission from an environmental organization led to his co-authored Railroads and Clearcuts, and Sierra Club Books published his interviews with activists, Listening to the Land. Jensen began A Language Older Than Words in 1996, published by Context Books in 2000. He described the book as beginning a trilogy, starting with how to be "sane in a crazy culture", followed by what one sees by becoming sane (The Culture of Make Believe), followed by what to do about what one sees.Template:R

Jensen is a critic of the mainstream environmental movement's focus on preserving civilization and technology over preserving the natural world. He promotes civil disobedience, radical activism, and dismantling infrastructure on a massive level in order to halt what he has called "the murder of the planet".

Lierre Keith and Jensen co-founded Deep Green Resistance in 2011. His belief, and the organization's position, that women-only spaces should exclude trans women has drawn criticism.

Reception

Utne Reader named Jensen among "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World" in 2008, and Democracy Now! says that he "has been called the poet-philosopher of the ecology movement".

Selected works

• Republished by Chelsea Green in 2004 with Template:Isbn.
• Republished by Chelsea Green in 2004 with Template:Isbn.