Comrade Black

Green anarcho-feminist queer-edge spoken word artist and community organizer.


There Is No Environment
by Comrade Black



Maybe we've got to start at the start?

Maybe this began when the first womyn or man put their hand on the cave wall to leave a painted hand print?

The first act of humans imprinting their will upon mother nature?

And maybe it continues when we said this beast and that beast is two. And this tree plus that tree, plus that tree is 3.

And so began the process of turning nature into symbology?

And abstractions leading to technology, leading to abstractions, leading further, and further away from nature, until we don't even remember that we are animals...

Who once were feral and wild, but now through the process of domesticating plants and animals we have domesticated ourselves.

Because domestication and domination share the same root.

Cause when we put up fences to keep the livestock in, we put a fence around ourselves too.

And to keep ourselves out of the reach of her soily skin we put on a boot

Cause we just can't handle the touch of the truth that reminds us that We are animals too.

Because too much is at stake in accepting this truth.

I mean everything... Every-Thing we know is at stake...

And this time it matter, for Earth's sake!

So we go on committed to our denial of who and what we are, convinced that if we have come this far, there is no going back.

So we use science, art, and philosophy, to convince ourselves that reality, is abstract.

Because imagine what would be required if we were to allow ourselves to believe that the entire world is alive, every rock, lake, ocean, and blade of grass, every being a potential friend we can enter into a relationship with.

Imagine the politics of that. Imagine the consequences.

If we saw the world as alive could we allow anyone to destroy it?

I hate the word environment, because it is an abstraction that allows us a distance, a way to be separate from the world we live in.

Environment makes it sound like something else, somewhere else, something outside of us, not part of us us us as part of it.

There is no environment

Just living beings, plants, animals, and other friends

A community, a web, a complexity of life that never ends.