Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Inspired by Rev127's Thread to provide this quote from Derek Jensen's latest book Endgame VolII Resistance; -Keehah


Derrick Jensen writes: What if we said to the police, “You will beat and shoot some non-resisting protesters (or how about the regular old everyday people cops kill: between four and six Americans die every day because they encounter police), but we shall hold you accountable, and shall destroy all of you who do that”?

What if we said to those who are killing rivers, “You will be able to stop some of us, but we shall destroy all dams”?

What if we said to those in power, “You will be able to imprison or kill some of us, but we shall destroy all harmful economic activites”?

What if we said, “In the war you are waging against the world, you will kill some of us, but mark our words, we shall destroy all of this civilization that is killing the planet”?

Even more important, what if we meant it?

Even more important than that, what if we put it into action?

Derrick Jensen also has twenty premises:

PREMISE ONE: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

PREMISE TWO: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources - gold, oil, and so on - can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.

PREMISE THREE: Our way of living - industrial civilization - is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

PREMISE FOUR: Civilization is based on clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and fetishization of the victims.

PREMISE FIVE: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control - in everyday language, to make money - by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called “justice”.

PREMISE SIX: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapes. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

PREMISE SEVEN: The longer we wait for civilization to crash - or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down - the messier the crash will be, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.

PREMISE EIGHT: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system. Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality,and intelligence (as well as justice) require the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your land base.

PREMISE NINE: Although there will clearly someday be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population may occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some will be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear Armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by a crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default of our culture. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence - required and caused by the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich - and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps long term shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we don not approach it actively - if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it - the violence will almost undoubtedly be fare more sever, the privation more extreme.

PREMISE TEN: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.

PREMISE ELEVEN: From the beginning, this culture - civilization - has been a culture of occupation.

PREMISE TWELVE: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something - or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks - and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions alomost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.

PREMISE THIRTEEN: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.

PREMISE FOURTEEN: From birth on - and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case - we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes - and our bodies - to be poisoned.

PREMISE FIFTEEN: Love does not imply pacifism.

PREMISE SIXTEEN: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or even the Great Mother to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth - whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here - the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.

PREMISE SEVENTEEN: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from them will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.

PREMISE EIGHTEEN: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.

PREMISE NINETEEN: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.

PREMISE TWENTY: Within this culture, economics - not community will-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself - drives social decisions. Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve. Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve. Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below. If you dig to the heart of it - if there is any heart left - you will find that social decisions are determinded primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.

http://flux64.wordpress.com/2007/04/...me-resistance/

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Our Sun Will Go Super Nova Someday

:smile: Psst...we are doomed anyway.

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

But how are we to live till that 3 billion years from now event? A remaining few enslaved in a sterile world to service (be abused by) psychopaths or free to co-operate sustainably with life?
:mad_m:

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Dunno keehah. Many people stopped believing that they will eventually join their Heavenly Father in Heaven. If there is no life after death the logical conclusion is to not have children and just party. If you think the landfills are clogged with disposable diapers now wait until Medicare starts handing them out to the Boomers. Did you know that Los Angeles pumps their "treated" sewage water out of a five-mile long pipe into the Pacific Ocean? That happens all over Earth. Our oceans are now just septic tanks for 6 billion people. That pretty orange sunset we see at night is actually polution. We breath that shit.

:smokin: You think the Amish are "balancing" this out? You really think we can personally?

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Derek Jensen

Seems to me this guy would have never made a good Spartan

Seems to me this guy hates himself and everyone around him

Seems to me this guy hates everyone above him

Seems to me this guy is only in this life for himself

Seems to me this guy has no spiritual connections with anything

Seems to me this guy should just suck the end of his revolver while pulling the trigger - all HIS problems would be resolved

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Your premise 3 I am not sure of, but the others are near 100% WRONG!

I expect you were not able to think outside the box (our current form of consume the world civlization).

I expect your uninformed outburst comes from damage to YOUR denial when reading this.
:bear:

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Hmm... I think he takes things is a whole nother direction than I would. Perhaps most importantly I don't believe that civilization can never be sustainable. I don't even believe that a high tech, high energy civilization can never be sustainable. What I do believe is that most of the technology we currently use as well as the prevailing culture can never be sustainable. I also agree that it is madness to not live sustainably.

You can at the very least live sustainably yourself. It has many economic and quality of life advantages, not to mention the satisfaction of claiming your power. With luck and preparation you and your family will outlast the collapse of the larger civilization around you. The more people who choose this path, the better the world gets. Given a chance and enough time the ecosystems can very often heal themselves.

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

And the responses you are getting here are from the people at the leading edge of the curve.

Can you imagine what the average middle class zek really thinks?..

I got a brother-in-law that escaped service in Vietnam by joining the national guard and serving his 6 months active state-side.

If he were joining the national guard now, he would be looking at a for-sure tour in the thick of the shit in Iraq.

And he thinks these wars are valid US responses to the axis of evil that confronts us today. He didn't go to war for his country, but he sees no problem with sending other people's kids (both of his kids are girls and have families and are pregnant).

The only thing good that has come from this war is that the "America will Prevail" and the lousy Islamic jihad cartoons are coming down.

Civilization creates its own insanity.

Excito-toxins, caffeine, alcohol, etc. and other perception modifiers are just methods civilization uses to ensure the intensity of the madness will accelerate.

I watch grand-parents giving toddlers candy in order to get the youngsters to "spin like a top," only to hand them back to over-stressed parents, who will spend the night screaming at the kids because nobody in the house is getting any sleep.

The average person is so strung out they cannot even consider looking at their lives from afar in order to get a view of the box they are in.

My wife had type two diabetes a couple of years ago. Cured it with diet.

She still insists that there is nothing wrong with the excito-toxins, candy, cakes, pies, etc. that she continues to consume. According to her, it's just a matter of moderation.

And weighing in at 350 or so pounds doesn't contribute either.

If everybody is doing it, can it be wrong?

What kind of a nut-case would try to swim against the tide?

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Cooked food is the beginning of the nightmare.

Prior to cooked food, no healers (witch doctors, nurses, etc.) were needed.

Cooked food is seen by the body as enzyme deficient.

The enzymes necessary for processing cooked food must be manufactured in the pancreas by pulling enzymes from critical functions in other parts of the body and then reconfiguring them into "digestive" enzymes.

This robs other organs of some of the inputs they need and dumbs down the overall organism's responses to normal environmental challenges.

I am constantly amazed at the survival tactics presented here.

First, secure food. Food being items whose preparation depends on heat. Beans, grains, meat, etc. Canned (already processed and cooked to death) is preferable.

Second, secure energy for cooking above food. Do not let yourself get caught eating raw.

Third, secure domesticated foods (lettuce, seeds to grow commercially acceptable fruits and vegetables). Above all, do not let yourself get caught eating wild.

Think about it a second. What wild animal desires cooked food? What wild animal would dream about eating from a can? What wild animal would expect domesticated food?

Commercially acceptable fruits and vegetables are encouraged because they "travel well". In other words, they look good on store shelves after being shipped thousands of miles.

Commercial choices for acceptance of food products has nothing to do with nutritional quality.

The products we ingest to provide fuel and ingredients necessary to maintain and repair our organisms are of the very poorest quality. Nature provides an extremely high quality diet that is anti-civilizational and adequately abundant.

The shoes we wear only serve to insulate us from the earth which has given us birth.

The clothing we wear only serves to imprison us and warp our minds.

I realize ants and bees domesticate food sources and process food.

But I ain't no ant and I don't wanna' bee.

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

This guy is a whacko along the likes of Jim Jones or the unibomber.


This guy is a whacko who is filled with hate and hates the world.

I've read enough of this shiite.

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

My point exactly!

In reality, all we need to do is "tweak" the system a little bit and we will have paradise on earth.

Just impeach Bush or call American Idol to send some money to put shoes on some kid in Africa or Louisiana or something.

Maybe pay a little extra special attention to the sermon next Sunday at church?

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Yep, 'just look away and turn on the TeeVee to displace these thoughts':
http://goldismoney.info/forums/showt...439#post592439


Please post again if your thoughts on this topic ever get past your emotional barriers.

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Just look at premise 9 again. This lunatic is advocating genocide.

I won't get past my emotional barrier over genocide.

:Sorry:

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

In premise 9 I see only talk of die-off http://goldismoney.info/forums/showt...hlight=die-off and taking a position it is inevitable - not talking about wanting or not wanting it. Such a position is common to those who study the issues facing us today (with any half open belief system). Not advocating gernocide. Since you are making such a negative statement against another person, could you provide your reasons for seeing writing of genocide, not 'just' die-off talk?

And the question should really be why is your subconscious seeing genocide where it does not really exist?

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

I quoted it in message 10.

The man is filled with hate and writes about actively achieving population reduction.

loser.

end of story.

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Damm Jerry! Very prescience comment you made earlier! :bear_cry:

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Sorry it took so long to get back to you, but I run at 14.4 KBS and I am downloading a bunch of stuff.

I get knocked off the net a lot, too, as I live at the end of a Verizon phone line wayyy out in the country.

Wireless signals are hard to get here 'cause the trees get in the way of signals.

Anyway, thank you for your feed-back.

I was afraid that I might have offended you with my comments.

I have come across many of your offerings and find that your overall attitude is much like mine.

I have come to realize that what I am really looking for on this board are people who are a lot like me but may be a little more advanced in some areas.

I can learn from that. By way of payment, I am willing to share my experiences.

I do not expect to please some people on this board, as they are way too into their particular prejudices for me.

Since I left childhood (about 12 years old) I never believed that government held answers to any concerns I was interested in and consequently I am more open to new ideas and more radical thoughts.

I am 66 years old and am still waiting for the conservative attitude that is supposed to accompany old age.

But I don't have any problem in dealing with other humans and nature toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye without any police, military, or other "big brother" interference.

Two years ago I was thrown to the ground, cuffed and taken to jail for refusing to leave a grocery store because of my barefoot stance.

So much for relying on "police protection." I could hold my own with the store manager and his minion; but the deadly force brigade is a little different.

Physically going barefoot has been such a god-send to me that I cannot even imagine having shoes on for any reason.

Anyway, I like your attitude and I just wanted to share something about me.

I know that many people look at my stuff and never provide feed-back.

I have had some private messages tell me as much.

And I know that I read, copy and print much here without ever telling the person who posted it that I appreciated the gift.

Thank you, and here is my gift.

PS. I didn't know about this Derrick Jensen, but I am going to research him and get his book.

PPS. And I tried and tried to get into what Halophyte was saying about 9/11; but after awhile I began to realize that he is just being belligerent. That was very hard for me to accept as I have learned so much from his offerings. It took me a long time to accept that he just wasn't who I hoped he was. There were some things that made me wonder before he got off on that 9/11 trip; but I always overlooked them; since I thought so highly of him but ...

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

Thanks for the feedback Jerry. I always look forward to some new insight in your comments.

Handcuffed by authority for not wearing shoes! Damm good background colour. I expect if I keep up my Airport carry-on contraband front door cache burials the same will happen to me one day! Good thing I'm trying live my life without flying anymore!

Derrick's last book is written with similar growing-up perspectives. Although realistically the non-distilled (as opposed to the 20 premises) book may cover much of the information and ideas one would have already from the environmental delusions of our culture and BUL rulers talked about on sites like this. But he does offer a good does of conviction.

As for myself I 'knew' instinctively from a young age things were not right. Altough intially precocous (as my third grade teacher remembers), eventually young trama (emotional) made me a reserved kid and it took 'stereotypical' success for me to finally start ignoring the games fully wake-up and leave the TV and MSM behind me (and George and Cheney also helped).

My big hobby is control of invasive plants for restoration of native plant eco-system in parks. Besides great exercise and time in beautiful surroundings one gets to actively kill earth destroyers and make a better world minute by minute!

As for the bulk of our humanity it saddens me that nothing will change until the TV's go off the air or they consistently drum the same message for 6 months for a desired effect. Much of my family is in this same group.

Helping my communities, when appropriate, seems the best use of my energy. For now I am still learning much and realize I can only help those who are already looking. The biggest problem is so many in our societies are not looking. Learning and keeping up takes much time. As an article posted in the Delusion Thread points out-new information always pushes out some old (from active memory) and will I always have the time, will, and opportunity to keep up with non-controller censored information?

I also realize that 'catapulting' the information to others would necessitate using the tools of manipulation (NLP etc.) for 'good.' But besides my lack of desire to act like this, is using manipulation to prevent manipulation that worthwhile?

I guess I just keep learning in a way that one can also share in each other's discoveries and insights (such as GIM). Even closed minded posts also offer insight to me as most reflect the perspective or diseases of our dominant culture. I take some heart in the fact that my more rural and my future 'weekend' community appears more questioning of our culture and open to my thoughts on things than the repressed minds I seem to face in the 'successful' big city.
[Do I just represent big city authority to them?!?]

Re: Derrick Jensen: Endgame Vol.II Resistance, 20 Premises
 

http://www.eclectart.com/edra.html

H I S T O R I C A L O V E R V I E W

The designer of The Garden of Eden moved to 184 Forsyth Street in New York City in February 1972. From his rear window (looking to the East) his "view" was of high-fenced back "yards," piles of garbage thrown from windows of "neighbors," and rear walls and rusting fire escapes of four six-story, walk-up tenements fronting on Eldridge Street in what is known as Block 421 of Manhattan. Children could be seen playing in rubbish in basement-level pits behind the Eldridge Street buildings. Virtually no sunlight entered this abyss of human and environmental degradation.

In the latter half of 1973, two Eldridge Street tenements immediately to the east of the designer's apartment were razed by the City of New York to dovetail with "The Master Plan" of the City Planning Commission (see map entitled "Development Opportunities 5," dated May 1970), which oversees the systematic destruction through deliberate neglect of buildings and vacant lots to create "Major Action (Urban Renewal) Areas" for non-local real estate developers....

Suddenly, full morning sunlight flooded an abused area of bulldozed brick rubble measuring about 50 by 100 feet.

Realizing that "the longest journey starts with a single step" (ancient folk saying), the designer began sorting the rubble into piles of whole bricks, brick "bats," and foundation and window (lintel) stones; and sifting the remaining rubble into salvaged wood (to burn for potash), gravel measuring one-half and one-quarter inches in diameter, and "brick sand" produced by repeated crushing by bulldozer tracks during demolition operations. All of these by-products of demolition (called "parent material" by National Geographic), plus sheets of galvanized iron and porcelainized "tub tops," ordinarily go to waste as "land fill" because City planners are not yet enlightened as to the real value of what appears to them to be nearly worthless debris. From Central Park's tourist carriage routes, the designer carted bags of horse manure by bicycle a distance of 3 1/2 miles to mix with the salvaged "brick sand" and potash to create virgin topsoil (Zenger, 1979)....

By the time the designer had converted the original 5,000 square feet of tenement rubble (to an average depth of about a foot) into arable land, the City demolished a tenement to the north of The Garden. About a year later the City demolished another tenement to the south of The Garden, which then received eastern and southern half-day sunlight.

Comprehensive media coverage of the resulting inner-urban Earthwork ("Nature is God's art."--Dante) began with the August 1979 publication of an article in New York magazine (Green, 1979). Because this article resulted almost immediately in the first international press reportage (Schnitt, 1979), because it contained a number of journalistic "sleepers," and because The Garden's obvious ecological orientation might be assumed to question status-quo inertia among bureaucrats, it seems appropriate to Green's article, as follows:

Another communique proclaims the purpose of [The Garden]: "Without waiting another 2,000 years for institutionalized Christianity or Judaism to build or rebuild theGarden of Eden (Paradise of Pleasures), we have taken psychic inspiration from General Zenlightenme(a)nt to 'plug into' organic communication from Uranus, to wit: 'Speciesurvival is more and more a race 'twixt Zenlightenme(a)nt and extinction....' (Green, 1979). [The Garden of Eden] is one aspect of Biocybernetic Fun & Games to L.E.A.R.N. (Let's Erase And Reprogram Now) for Speciesurvival bye 1984 --from the Seventh Planet, Uranus. And if you do not know where your anus is, you are definitely part of the Problem" (Green, 1979).

The Problem, from Adam's point of view, is our civilization's gross incontinence. We're fouling ourselves. He calls the leaders of government "ignoranuses." Ignorance of the anus is a grand metaphor for the cavalier poisoning of the air, earth, and water with smoke and aerosols, radiocative refuse, deadly chemicals, and sewage.

So Adam renounced the flush toilet "because it's counterrevolutionary to pollute the ocean." Each week he digs a hole a foot wide and a foot deep and fills it with...sifted sand, kitchen vegetable scraps, weed prunings, and Purple excrement [see Deuteronomy 34:12-14]. The Chinese have used this method of topsoil production for millennia: they call it making night soil....

[The Garden of Eden]...is...a mirror-image fire storm. It's cool and beneficial. And it's always expanding. The area of [The Garden] increases exponentially because the area of a circle increases with the square of its radius.

...We have this expression, "Your red-shift universe is on the psychic slips." That's a critique on the theory of a expanding universe propounded by some astronomers and cosmologists. They "see": an eternal chase of an ever more rapidly receding "carrot." The light from an expanding universe moves toward the red end of the spectrum: a red shift.

You know what slips are. They're the slightly inclined greased runners that go under a newly built ship ready for launching. Kick out the blocks--and once that ship starts to slide there's no stopping it! Fooosh! Look out!

Now, what if the universe were actually contracting, and the scientists didn't or couldn't know about it? The New York Times doesn't have headline type large enough for that story. The light from a contracting universe would be ultraviolet, toward the purple end of the spectrum. We call it the purple-shift unireverse. And there's more on the psychic slips than the red-shift universe, obviously!" (emphasis added, Green, 1979).

It was not until after The Garden was reported in Stern magazine in Germany (Schnitt, 1979) that the City came forward with a housing project which included the entire area of The Garden in a "pre-selected" site or why. The fact that the City has, subsequently, shown a total lack of interest if not "zenthusiam" in including The Garden into its plans for houding calls into serious question the real motives of City planners.....

The Garden's designer was certified as an artist/environmental sculptor on 1 March 1982 by New York City's Department of Cultural Affairs and was recertified on 4 March 1985. Reference is made below to philosophical views included in his "application for certification" (Purple, 1982 & 1985).

Since early 1982, environmental/ecological supporters of The Garden, including those quoted below, have been involved in a running battle with City officials. The City's "stonewall" position has been the "divide-and-conquer" tactic of pitting "housing" advocates against "greenspacers," as if unwilling or incapable of blending the two "opposites" together.

A sampling of philosophical observations of professional persons about The Garden [to page 119] of Eden (as submitted in letters to theCity Planning Commission on 6 and 20 October 1982 and to the Board of Estimate on 16 December 1982) read as follows:

For a decade Adam Purple has been working with his neighbors to create ...a space [that help(s) to keep us human] for the people in his community. But instead of help forthcoming from the City there has been harassment and, now, the threat of extinction. In a community where almost nothing else is sacred this space has been virtually vandal-free. What more proof is needed that [The Garden] and the people who tend it have gained the respect of their neighbors? What city-run park can boast such a record (Stoney, 1982)?

Adam Purple's "Garden of Eden"...is a work of art. It should be preserved, not made a monument, in absentia, to planning stupidity.... It is an urban "earthwork," in the tradition of the great Japanese and European gardens, and all the more important because itwas done by an artist, independently, without patronage, from love of place... (Lippard, 1982).

The first time I met Adam Purple in The Garden of Eden I had, in my care, 20 Black, Santo Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Chinese children from the neighborhood. The children and I were thrilled: growing around us were more beautiful flowere, fruit trees, black raspberry bushes, and vegetables than we'd ever seen in one place on the Lower East Side.... I have heard claims that The Garden of Eden must be razed to make space for low-income housing.... But nobody has once explained why this housing must be here and no place else.... why must a beautiful work of art, a noble lesson in urban renewal...be destroyed Why? (Green, 1982).

[The Garden of Eden] is a place of magic, and, because of its uniqueness, it is a place of science.... [The Garden] is also a living laboratory of organic gardening. It is small scale unban polyculture, a burgeoning and relatively untested but promising form of agriculture. As a plant pathologist, I view [The Garden] as an experimental station.... (McPartland, 1982).

All attempts to address such issues as "due process," First Amendment rights of free speech (artistic expression), natural (common-law) rights, or what the designer calls "huwomanimal" rights to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," have fallen on the deaf ears and blind eyes of governmental officials.

At the same time that The Garden was appearing as a two-page photographic report in the September 1984 issue of National Geographic (pp. 384-5), the Storefront for Art and Architecture [in New York City] was showing an exhibition entitled "Adam's House in Paradise."

The exhibition reverses tradition in the artist/architect relation by presenting architecture created to the demands of art.... Thirty internationally acclaimed and emerging architects from [the United States, Europe, and Asia] have designed two city blocks of public housing around The Garden of Eden.... Adam Purple's legendary persistence and imagination have brought international stature to this garden: a work of public art which hjas been critically compared with great French and Japanese gardens and with environmental artists like [the late] Robert Smithson. The Garden of Eden is always on view. The impetus for this exhibition comes from New York City Housing Authority's plan to construct a public housing project on the site of The Garden of Eden. The current plans call for the destruction of [The Garden] by [30 September] 1985. Rather than ignore this valuable anomaly to existing urban plans, the architects...have accepted the challenge of Purple's earthwork to create architecture of equal vision. The catalogue, published by Storefront, presents reflection upon the urban values surrounding public art, neighborhood gardens, housing and the myth of neutrality in professional architectural activities.... (Park, Weiss, 1984).

On 15 October 1984, James Stewart Polshek, dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, wrote to New York City Mayor Edward Koch as follows: " I am writing you to support the continued existence of [The Garden of Eden]. It is this kind of humane initiative that has made and kept New York a place for people. The idea of replacing it with housing is, to me, as serious an urban crime as the Saint Bartholomew's tower. Please use the power of your office to see that this much-needed housing gets built elsewhere." Dean Polshek was referring to controversial plans of a Park Avenue church to cash-in on real-estate values in midtown by selling and razing its parish house to allow a devel- [to page 120] oper to erect a tower. It is unknown at this writing (April 1985) if or how Mayor Koch replied. Therefore, it seems appropriate here to update The Garden of Eden's ongoing saga....

C U R R E N T S T A T U S R E P O R T

The view from the designer's rear window is dramically different now from what it was in 1972: one sees blooming flowers, bearing fruit and nut trees, butterflies, and children with their parents or teachers enjoying a variety of living and growing plants, birds, and garden insects (to appreciate the truth of what Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden: "One cannot have too much nature.").

The interdisciplinary processes in which The Garden of Eden is rooted are not readily obvious to a casual visitor or hurried reader/viewer of media reports of its development since it began in 1973 to metamorphose local environmental "parent material" (National Geographic 1984) into a world-recognized inner-urban Earthwork. Since its first press appearance in 1976, The Garden has attracted continued national and international journalistic reportage: Stern, Panorama, and Swissotel magazines in Europe; national TV coverage in Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States; news/feature accounts by New York City newspapers, magazines, and television/radio stations; two pages in the September 1984 issue of National Geographic, etc.

The Garden's "generalist" aspect may be seen easily in the interrelatedness of the following quotations about environment:

Probably the first manurial technique discovered by the Andeans [of the pre-Spanish Inca Empire of South America's Western Andes] was that arising from the "Law of Return".... Human excrement was early used as manure (p. 222).... In the fertile coastal valleys...no building was ever done upon soil which might bear a crop, houses being confined to such sites as were naked rock" (Hyams, 1976, p. 225).

...the pleasure gardens [of ancient India] were full of flowering trees, ponds and little pavilions.... the texts are emphatic that there were beautiful public pleasure groves and gardens provided by the rulers, where men and women resorted in the evening to enjoy all the pleasures life had to offer, including love. Literature is full of descriptions of the joyful, riotous noise that filled the air at dusk in the city parks. It was in such surroundings that the Buddha often preached" (Rawson, 1968, p. 84).

...I wish the landscape to predominate--the Architecture, history, etc., to be various and subservient or mainly to enrich a very bold and richly various landscape" (Lipman & Franc, 1976, p. 70, quoting Ithiel Town, a co-partner in the leading architectural firm in New York, which pioneered in revival styles, and among the founders in 1826 of the National Academy of Design, commenting on Thomas Cole's 1840 painting, The Architect's Dream.)

...The corner window [innovation] is indicative of an idea conceived early in my work, that the box is a Fascist symbol, and [that] the architecture of freedom and democracy needed something basically better than the box. So I started out to destroy the box as a building.... The corner window as a feature went round the world. But the idea... I intended never followed it. The liberation of space became merely a window instead of the release of an entire sense of structure, a radical change in the idea of a building (emphasis added, Wright, 1963, p. 29).

The above philosophical insights form the transcultural foundation of The Garden of Eden, located on Eldridge Street between Stanton and Rivington Streets in the Lowere East Side of Manhattan, New York City. From The Garden's center, a double pr exponential Yin-Yang symbol, one can see the World Trade Center, a contrasting symbol of a culture alienated and parasitic upon its "soil community" (Hyams, 1976).

It was the idea of "radical transformation" (Krishnamurti, 1963, p. 7) that inspired the following "art form description" in the designer-sculptor's "application for certification" made to the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs:

...a dynamic organic sculpture...described partly as a non-linear, minimum-technology, urban agricultural art project designed to demonstrate how abandoned bulldozed lots (in even the most "depressed" ghetto) can be converted into abundantly fruitful and beautiful open-space without necessitating any government or private funding....conceived as ultimately expanding through contiguous area to a "Great Circle" hemispheric sculpture...its aesthetic [to page 121] orientation continues to be as a non-verbal "teaching machine" alternative to the unwise, uncritical, unhealthy, and unchecked exploitation of the Earth's surface, etc.... even though such exploitation risks species extinction (Purple, 1982& 1985).

Succintly put, The Garden hopes for speciesurvival through transcendent r(apid)evolution, augmented with future-faith and corporate charity.

If other adencies of the same New York City government can be prevented through enlightenment from obliterating or lethally "boxing-in" The Garden, its next aesthetic phase of applied Taoism/Buddhism can easily, economically, and "prophetably" show how New York City's approximately 50,000 abandoned lots can be converted into underground and/or earth-bermed de-densified housing to serve promptly all dishoused and homeless citizens in their immediate neighborhoods without the current practice of wholesale population displacement and its concomitant rending of the warp and woof of community life.

Such a "marriage of convenience" of egalitarian housing and oxygen-producing landscape would, inevitably, also show the self-perpetuating and self-parodying absurdity of spending $70.000+ per unit to build "low-income" housing! Such institutions as the University of Minnosota's Underground Space Center have researched and built sane and energy-efficient solar/geothermal, etc., shelter; for a decade, virgin topsoil has been created in The Garden of Eden from local "parent material." In the words
of architect I.C. Tinus II [Ictinus II, Ha!], "Let's get on with the wedding!"

For graphics, see Figures 1 through 8 of this EDRA-16 (1985) paper via:
"Amanda D. Bostwick" edra1@telepath.com
or see pages 122-129 of
LIFE with les(s) ego
via: http://www.geocities.com/rev-les-ego/
For related data, see:
http://www.eclectart.com/gardenofeden.html
http://www.eclectart.com/newgarden.html
http://phenomenon.org/intense/zentences/flash4.html
speciesurvivalibrary-subscribe@yahoogroups.com


R E F E R E N C E S

Green, Norman. The Purple People, New York magazine,
27 August 1979, pp. 64-72

_______, Statement to the New York City Board of Estimate,
16 December 1982.

Hyams, Edward. Soil & Civilization, New York: Harper & Row,
1976, 312 pp. [Sadly, out of print.]

Krishnamurti, J[iddu]. Life Ahead. Wheaton, IL: Quest Book,
Theosophical Publishing House, 1963, 191 pp.

Lipman, Jean, and Franc, Helen M. Bright Stars, American
Painting and Sculpture Since 1776. New York: E.P. Dutton
& Co., Inc., 1976, 208 pp.

Lippard, Lucy. Statement to New York City Planning
Commission, 13 October 1982.

McPartland, John. Statement to New York City Board of
Estimate, 10 December, 1982.

National Geographic magazine. Washington, D.C.: September
1984, pp. 384-85.

Panorama magazine. Haarlem, The Netherlands: 14 May 1982,
pp.42-3, 45.

Park, Kyong, & Weiss, Glenn. Press release from Storefront
for Art and Architecture, [now, in 2002, 97 Kenmare at
Mulberry,] New York, N.Y. 10012, 7 September 1984.

Purple, Adam. Application for Certification to Department of
Cultural Affairs, New York City, 1982 & 1985.

Rawson, Philip. Erotic Art of the East, New York: G.P.
Putnam's Sons, 1968, 380 pp.

Schnitt, Petra. Gruner Traumer in den Slums (Ecological
Dreamer in the Slums), Stern magazine, Hamburg,
Germany: 6 Dezember 1979, pp. 214-16.

Stoney, George. Statement to New York City Planning
Commission, 6 October 1982.

Sunday News, New York: 5 June 1976, p. M24.

Swissotel magazine. Zurich, Switzerland: Undated, but
early 1983. No page number.

Wright, Frank Lloyd. The Future of Architecture. New York:
New American Library, 1963, 352 pp.

Zenger, John Peter, II. Rubble Reclamation, Garden magazine.
New York Horticultural Society: July-August 1979, New
York regional edition, pp. 5-8.

http://cityrag.blogs.com/main/2004/week28/index.html

the purple guy
if you live in the EV or LES you've probably seen Adam Purple around, but unless you moved here about 20 years ago you might not know who he is... (this pic was taken a few weeks ago when we stopped to chat with Adam about the progress of the Surface Hotel "monstrosity", as Adam calls it :-)

Adam Purple has been a beloved activist, artist and icon on the Lower East Side for several decades. he's most known for The Garden of Eden - a huge circular garden he developed and nurtured on Forsythe in the 70's-80's (that was bulldozed in 1986 for low income housing). the garden was a glorious and massive work of art that was made using all kinds of abandoned debris that Adam found around the city and recycled, including horse manure. Adam not only brought a great work of beauty, peace and enjoyment to the people of the neighborhood, but he was known for passing around the harvest. since the garden was destroyed, he's moved to the East Village and continues his activism and recycling work throughout the neighborhood.

if you're new to the EV or LES take a minute to read a little about one of the area's true homesteaders, it was a different world just a decade ago. and if you see the "purple guy" in the hood, please treat him with the honor and respect he deserves, anarchist heroes come in all shapes and sizes.

Posted on July 07, 2004 in NY Profiles | Permalink

http://www.harveywang.com/podcast.html

Adam Purple talks about his life, work, and the future of huWOmankind (species survival) in this 40-minute interview. By the early 1970�s, much of Manhattans�s Lower East Side had become a desolate, crime-ridden place. In the midst of this, Adam Purple started a garden in the backyard of his tenement building at 184 Forsyth Street. In time, the surrounding tenements were torn down and Purple�s world-famous eARThWORK, The Garden of Eden, grew to 15,000 square feet and included 45 fruit and nut trees. He carted off tons of refuse and created virgin topsoil with horse manure from Central Park as well as his own �night soil.� To create the Garden, he used simple tools and raw muscle power. Adam �zenvisioned� the Garden expanding until it replaced the asphalt and skyscrapers of New York. Though the city was presented with numerous alternatives that would have spared it or incorporated it into the new structure, The Garden of Eden was bulldozed in 1986 to make way for a federally funded housing project, which did not include an apartment for Adam or space for a new garden. To view a gallery of photographs of the Garden, visit: http://www.eclectart.com/gardenofeden.html.