Premise one: Civilization is not and
can never be sustainable
文明不是也永遠不可能是永續的
翻譯：李秀蓮 / 潤稿：李秀蓮、Corey sanderson
來源：Derrick Jensen, Deep Green Resistance,
英文原版影片：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0IT4e4gMCA
中文字幕版本影片：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxX3LmobdjM
文明不是也永遠不可能是永續的。文明是一種需要藉由無休止剝削人們及土地才能維續的一種，對不永續生活方式無益沉溺的文化類型。 文明是一種被定義為軍國主義、擴張及征服的文化。 文明的字根來自拉丁文的“civitatas”，意指國家或城市。一直以來我都將城市定義為居住規模大到需要輸入資源的狀態，也就是說我現在所居住的托洛瓦島的島民因為未居住於城市中所以是不文明的。他們不需任何島外資源挹注，已在這個島嶼自給自足地生活了至少10,500年。
Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization. Civilization is a type of culture fueled by the perpetual exploitation of peoples and lands in a futile addiction to an unsustainable lifestyle. Civilization is a culture that’s defined by militarism, by expansion, by conquest. Civilization comes from the root civitatas which means state of or city. A city I’ve defined as people living in numbers large enough to require the importation of resources. What that means is that the Tolowa on whose land I now live weren’t civilized because they weren’t living in cities. They didn’t require the importation of resources. They lived on what the land was able to supply and they were living here for at least 10,500 years.
所以如果沒有農業，文明不可能存在。這是最重要的。粗略來說，農業就是取得一塊土地並清除土地上所有的生物，包括土壤裡的細菌，然後為人類栽種作物。這是大滅絕，且當今每天我們都失去200個物種。所有的大草原、森林，還有任何能夠栽種作物的地方都被人類佔領，想到有99%森林跟原始草原因此消失是非常可怕的，他們被移除盡淨。另一個問題是每當你在進行移除工作時，你就是在破壞土壤。土壤是充滿生命力的，每一茶匙的土壤中就有超過十億的生物，堪稱地球上最稠密的棲息地，但我們一直在毀滅他們。
So civilization can only exist because of agriculture. That’s what comes first. What agriculture is, I mean just really bluntly, you take a piece of land, you clear every living thing off it and I mean down to the bacteria and then you just plant it for humans. It’s mass extinction and right now we are losing 200 species every single day. So all the prairies, all the forests, any place that you could grow those crops has been taken over and it’s quite grim when you think about it. 99% of forests are gone and 99% of the original prairies are gone. They have been cleared away. Another problem is that every time you do this, you’re destroying the soil. Soil is alive. One table spoon of soil can contain over a billion living creatures. It is the most dense habitat on the planet and we’ve blown through it all.
如果你剝削周遭的環境，你終將因資源耗盡而死亡。長遠來說，要活下去唯一的方式就是復原的速率要大於奪取。文明一個明確特色就是對周遭農村資源的依賴，這意指：第一，不曾也不會有任何城市能夠僅依靠城市本身而能永續存續；第二，為了城市不間斷地繼續擴張就勢必有一些不間斷擴張的區域資源被高度剝削。土地資源被搾取、人們被奴役、許多物種走向滅絕，這些在城市裡轉換成金錢與廢料。我們很難找到一座不是勞力密集的城市，也很難找到一座不是土地貧瘠的城市。
If you exploit your surroundings, you will deplete them and die. The only way to survive in the long run is to give back more than you take. A defining feature of civilization is its reliance on the taking of these resources from the surrounding countryside. Meaning first, that no city has ever been or even will be sustainable on its own and second, that in order to continue this ceaseless expansion of cities, there must be ceaseless expansion areas that are hyperexploited. There’s the place that’s extracted from, the people that are enslaved, the species driven to extinction and then brought to the city turned into money and waste products. It’s hard to find a city that isn’t a labor camp, that isn’t a producer of barren landscapes.
城市充滿水泥、玻璃、金屬和電燈是我見過最支離破碎、缺乏生命力的現象。城市因沒有足夠的資源無法支持生活其上的人們，故無可避免地導致種族滅絕、暴力及擴張主義。恐懼永無止盡，我們正處在引發第六次大滅絕的浪潮裡，物種正以史上前所未見的速度消亡，而完整的自然群落也已所剩無幾。
Cities are concrete and glass and metal and electric lights, and they are the most disconnected devoid of anything life giving that I’ve come across. The land base can’t support the people who live there. There can’t be enough resources, so it inevitably leads to genocide and violence and imperialism. The horrors are neverending, really we are in the midst of causing the sixth mass extinction and species are dying at a rate at which there’s no previous historical account for. There is so little left of intact natural communities.
我想對於處在文明之中的大多數人而言，去揣度世界真正的樣貌跟世界是如何豐饒是很困難的。舊金山第一批探險家曾說海灣看起來就像被海獅鋪滿了般；新英格蘭海岸邊曾有數量龐大的鯨魚，他們的氣息(呼吸)讓海面總是霧茫茫一片；鱈魚群曾多到試圖穿越他們的船隻必須減速；曾有旅鴿群連續多日遮蔽天空。文明以降，人類已摧毀了80%野生哺乳類動物、50%植物、90%大型魚類、50%珊瑚礁以及40%浮游生物。地球上現存的哺乳類動物96%是家畜與人類，只有4%是野生動物。這是一場零和遊戲，我們的得益皆是從他者奪取而來。也許有人會說：「哎呀！有一天我們會打造出永續城市的啦！」 然而，不會！我們不可能打造出永續城市，這是不可能的！
I think it would be difficult for a lot of people within civilization to even fathom how plentiful the world really was and really should be. The first explorer of San Francisco said that it looked like the bay was paved with sea lions. There were so many whales off the coast of New England that was pretty much perpetually foggy their breath. The schools of cod were so thick, they would literally slow down the ships that tried to sail through them. There were flocks of passenger pigeons that would darken the sky for days at a time. Since the dawn of civilization, humanity has caused the loss of 80% of wild mammals and 50% of plants, 90% of large fish, 50% of coral reefs, and 40% of plankton have been wiped out. Of all the mammals now on earth, 96% are livestock and humans, only 4% are wild mammals. It’s a zero sum game what we have, we have because we took it, from someone else. Some people might say：「Well, one day we’ll make sustainable cities.」and we won’t. You can’t make sustainable cities. It’s impossible.
作為個人，無論居住在民主國家或極權國家，我們並不真的有權利在這個系統裡說不。你沒有投票給文明；你沒有投票給工業化。在這社會裡，這不容置喙，而這就是我們需要改變的，我們需要直探問題的根源。文明不是─絕對不是唯一的生存之路。
As individuals, we don’t really have the right to say no in this system, whether you live in a democracy or an authoritarian regime. You don’t vote on civilization. You don’t vote on industrialization. That’s not up for debate in this society and that’ s what we need to change. We need to get to the root of these problems. Civilization is not─is definitely not the only way to live.
我們是否已對文明上癮？是的！我們對文明的癮頭越來越高，但我們可以戒除對文明的沉迷，並為了讓其他人類─特別是掌權者，也戒除對文明的癮而奮戰。我們需要去探問：自然想要的是什麼？我們靈魂深處想要的是什麼？我們原始野性的呼喚想要的是什麼？為我們自己及後代展望一個美好的生活有賴於此。
Are we addicted to it？ Yes！We’ve been raised addicted but we can come clean and we can fight to force the rest of the human race and particularly those in power to do so, too. We need to ask questions like what does nature want？ What does the depths of our soul want？ What does the wild animal of our heart and body want？ And envision a life for ourselves and for future generations based on that.