A Language older than Words Read online

  Or take plutonium. How do we explain the fabrication of plutonium? Plutonium is fundamentally a man-made element. Although traces occur naturally in uranium, its use in nuclear weapons and power have caused it to be "produced in extensive quantities," as my staid CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics puts it. Extensive quantities, in this case, means about 260 metric tons of plutonium-239, in addition to nearly a thousand tons of plutoniums fifteen other isotopes. Two hundred and sixty metric tons is two hundred and sixty thousand kilograms is two hundred and sixty million grams is two hundred and sixty billion milligrams. The inhalation of a few of these milligrams—a barely visible speck—causes death by internal asphyxiation in a few months as lung tissues scar up from a bombardment of alpha radiation and choke off oxygen supply to the blood. Two hundred and sixty billion milligrams is two hundred and sixty trillion micrograms. The inhalation of a few of these micrograms—by far invisible to the naked eye, as well as undetectable by human taste or smell—likely causes fatal lung cancer in ten or twenty years, as cells damaged by alpha radiation multiply uncontrollably; the incidence of lung cancer among beagles forced to inhale comparable amounts of plutonium was 100 percent. Two hundred and sixty trillion micrograms is two hundred and sixty quadrillion nanograms. The best estimate for plutoniums LD-50, or the dosage at which 50 percent of the victims die, is around ten nanograms.

  The intentional fabrication of thirteen quadrillion lethal doses of plutonium seemed nonsensical to me until I was able to begin drawing lines of connecting thought and understanding from point to destructive point of our culture's behavior. The greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet. Ubiquitous genocide leading to the deaths of scores or hundreds of millions of people. Race-based slavery, leading to the deaths of scores or hundreds of millions more. Class-based slavery. Child slavery. Mass rapes. Vivisection. Factory farms. Irrational, deadly, and suicidal military budgets and policies. What picture emerges when you see all these together?

  The deforestation of the Middle East, Europe, North America, the Amazon, now Siberia. The depletion of fishery after fishery. Just yesterday I read that scientists now predict that bluefin tuna will go extinct within the coming generation. The elimination of passenger pigeons, Eskimo curlews.

  There can be only one end to this, of course. Apocalypse. Götterdämmerung. The destruction of the world in the final war of the gods, gods we have first, as I mentioned before, projected, and then reintrojected. Stasis. Death. The end of all life, if the dominant culture has its way. It's where we've been headed from the beginning of this several-thousand year journey. It is the only possible end for a culture of linear—as opposed to cyclical— progress. Beginning, middle, end. Self-extinguishment. The only solace and escape from separation: from ourselves, from each other, from the rest of the planet. Plutonium. DDT. Dioxin. Why else would we poison ourselves? No other explanation makes comprehensive sense. Apocalypse. "The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up." American Chestnut. American Elm. Idaho White Pine. Redwood. Tallgrass Prairie. Shortgrass Prairie. "And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died." Blue Whales. Right Whales. Cod. Halibut. Tuna. "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." Salmon. Bull trout. Western Cutthroat. Alabama Sturgeon. Western Sturgeon. Snail Darter. Arizona Pupfish. Each of these and so many more, individually, communally, and as species, destroyed not by angels nor by God, but by a culture aspiring toward the conclusion set forth from the beginning.

  For me, at least, it was a relief to finally acknowledge and articulate this understanding I long had held in my bones, that underlying all this otherwise incomprehensible behavior is a desire to destroy other and self. The culture's terminus: the destruction of all. It's primary intellectual task: to simultaneously rationalize, justify, and obfuscate the actions leading to this goal. Clarity. No longer did I have to ignore smoke from next door's burning synagogue, nor try to take at face value the myriad self-contradictory claims to virtue that daily front for destructive behavior, nor find myself befuddled by the false choices that bind us to the annihilation of our planet. Clarity.

  Examples abound. They are as near as many children's bedrooms and as far away as the stars the Vatican hopes bring light and warmth to beings who like ourselves have experienced original sin and the murder of the sinless.

  Last week I read in the newspaper that the largest white pine in Idaho is dying. Nearly four hundred years old, its time has come, and beetles have arrived to finish it off. The tree stands on Forest Service ground, and the district forester does not want to allow the beetles, nor the tree, their way. Of course he's not talking about saving the tree's life; he wants to cut it down, pulp it, and turn the stump into a display. The reporter noted that despite the size of the tree, it may very well take more paper to justify implementation of the forester's plan than the tree would provide as pulp. A citizen has penned on the marker in front of the old one: "This tree is dying, too bad they cut all the rest." The tree shall not stand alone for long.

  Last week I also read, in a different newspaper, that the Forest Service has begun injecting heart rot fungus into healthy trees in order to kill them. Here is the rationale: Logging has damaged forests. In order to justify continued deforestation, the Forest Service and timber industry fabricated the previously mentioned claim to virtue that additional logging is needed to repair the logging-induced damage. Thus, as I alluded to before, dead trees, dying trees, and trees that may someday die—this definition has been intentionally created to encompass all trees—must be cut so that they do not someday become sick. Now, evidently, at least some National Forests are beginning to suffer a shortage of dead, standing trees. Because in a healthy, functioning forest, dead trees remain for decades or centuries to house and feed other members of the community, those other members are suffering. The solution proposed by the Forest Service is of course not to stop cutting trees, which would mean an end, or at least a slowing, of deforestation, but instead to kill more trees. To inject poison into their hearts. Presumably once enough trees have been injected, the Forest Service will declare another forest health crisis and cut down all merchantable timber within a few-mile radius. The only way I can make sense of all this is to invoke our culture's belief in Armageddon—and its associated death urge.

  Yet another example. On October 13, 1997, Columbus Day plus one, NASA launched the Cassini Space Probe. The ostensible purpose was to explore Saturn. We could discuss the arrogance, stupidity, and inhumanity of spending $3.4 billion to explore another planet while $285 million would save the lives of 2.5 million children annually on the planet we already occupy. But the death urge is made even more clear by another factor. Because Cassini's propulsion source didn't have the power to send it straight to Saturn, NASA sent it first to Venus, and then, after two swings around that planet, the probe returned home, approaching within 312 miles of Earth's surface. It used the acceleration caused by our gravity to slingshot the probe out to Saturn. Here's the danger: in order to power its instruments, the probe contains 72.3 pounds of plutonium, mainly plutonium-238, which is about two hundred times more deadly than plutonium-239. Seventy-two and three-tenths pounds of plutonium is al most thirty-three thousand grams, or almost thirty-three million milligrams, or almost thirty-three billion micrograms, or almost thirty-three trillion nanograms.

  There are two ways the plutonium could have been delivered to human victims. The first is that the Titan IV rocket carrying the probe could have exploded on launc
h. NASA estimated the danger of this at one in four hundred and fifty-six, which is bad enough, considering the consequences, but the truth is that a Titan IV rocket has already exploded. Nongovernmental estimates of failure were "between one in ten and one in twenty."

  The other way the plutonium could have killed people would have been if on the flyby the probe suffered what NASA scientists dryly called "an inadvertent reentry." If NASA calculations would have been imprecise (a mission to Mars crashed because scientists failed to convert English to metric measurements in their calculations), or if the probe had malfunctioned, it could have fallen into Earth's atmosphere and burned up. As the scientists put it: "If an accident or failure resulted in loss of control of the spacecraft prior to Earth swingby, the spacecraft could conceivably be placed on a Earth-impacting trajectory." If the craft were to "be placed on a Earth-impacting trajectory," the scientists said that "the potential health effects [of plutonium poisoning] could occur in two distinct populations, the population within and near the reentry footprint and most of the world population within broad north to south latitude bands." In other words, the plutonium would have poisoned those near the crash, and everyone else. The scientists stated that "approximately 5 billion of the estimated 7 to 8 billion world population at the time of the swingbys could receive 99 percent or more of the radioactive exposure." These quotes are from NASA's Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Cassini Probe, one of the documents used to justify the launch.

  The Cassini Probe was not the first to carry plutonium. It will not be the last. In 2002 the Comet Nucleus Mission will lift off carrying 25.5 kilograms of plutonium. In 2003 the Pluto Flyby will carry the same amount. Five launches to Mars will carry a total of seventeen kilograms, and four launches to the moon will carry another 42.5 kilograms.

  Plutonium. Death. We inject phenol into the hearts of Jews and fungus into the hearts of trees. We send plutonium on rockets known to explode. Before members of our culture exploded the first atomic bomb, scientists were not certain that the explosion would not set off a chain reaction that would consume the entire atmosphere. Yet they proceeded. They believed their calculations were correct, they gambled, and they won. Or lost, depending on your perspective. And, as any gambler knows, the roulette ball eventually must land on double-zero. It is simply a matter of playing enough times.

  All too often—every moment of every day, really—the intent of our culture becomes blazingly clear in action. In rare moments of often unintentional honesty it comes clear in speech. The detonation of the first atomic bomb was one such moment. Standing stunned before the awesome power he had helped to bring about, Robert J. Oppenheimer, one of the lead scientists of the Manhattan Project, gave voice to words that sum up in one sentence the essence of our culture: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." Staring into a blast brighter than the sun, hotter, less useful—useful only to destroy—Oppenheimer was not alone. He had for company not just Descartes, Chivington, and all the rest, but also in this case those of us who see the culture for what it is, and who stand with him, staring into this power, uncomprehending, afraid, and trying desperately to stop the long and binding chain of action and reaction we see unfolding before us.

  Every morning now the rumbling of explosions penetrates my dreams. They—those who would destroy the forest to the east— are getting closer, and they've begun to blast. In my dreams I hear explosions, and the sounds of bulldozers that become the clanking of tank treads. Every dream ends with me running away. I awaken to the barking of dogs, and see Amaru staring at the coyote, who sits not thirty feet from him and returns his stare. I open the window, and Amaru, Narcissus, and the coyote all look at me for one frozen moment before Amaru and Narcissus give chase. The rumbling and explosions continue. I arise, shower, and walk to the coyote tree, carrying, as I have been doing lately, an offering of bread. I don't know whether I am feeding coyotes or deer, porcupines or skunks, magpies or chipmunks. But I know that each day the bread is gone. I see at the coyote tree that they— those who are neither developers nor speculators but killers— have returned, and brought with them more stakes, and more ribbons. They have painted the ground, so even pulling up the long wood and metal stakes no longer will slow them. As I stand there, frustrated, exasperated, horrified, the ground shakes beneath my feet from another blast. I feel it in my bones, up my legs and along my spine, and I see it in the swaying of trees, both little and big. I'm at a loss—I don't know what to do.

  What do we do with our anger? Pretending not to feel it doesn't help, nor do the inappropriate manifestations that necessarily follow this pretense. Damming the flow merely forces the fury to find side channels for expression, and as with the poisoned water I mentioned earlier, an outlet will always be found.

  Here's what has me thinking about this: after too many years of being too sedentary, I'm trying to rekindle my love of basketball. All through high school and early college I used to play several times per week, only leaving the sport when high jumping swept me away. But as I've gotten older—I'm in my thirties now—my springs aren't so taut, and I no longer float over the bar. I no longer jump fences barely breaking stride, as I did in my late teens, nor do I jump them after serious consideration, as I did in my late twenties. Now I look for a gate, or, failing that, crawl under.

  So far basketball hasn't been as much fun as I remember. I'm unwelcome on the courts, not because of age or inability (I haven't lost that much), but because I'm white.

  Spokane's population is as purely white as any I've seen, and most of the local people of color I've spoken with tell stories of hatred and outrage, ranging from pointed looks in public to beatings by police. Nearly every African-American male I've taught at Eastern Washington University had either been struck or cursed by members of the Spokane Police Department. Last year I read that a white teenager attacked a black teenager in a parking lot; the white teen's mother ran to her car to grab mace and a knife. Returning to the fight, she maced the teen her son was attacking, then repeatedly stabbed him in the groin. Police refused to press charges. The receipt of hate mail by nonwhite students at Gonzaga Law School, here in town, has become something of a yearly tradition. Just across the border in Idaho squats the Aryan Nation's compound, a beacon for racists nationwide. It is against this backdrop that I took my sweats and basketball, my tattered shoes and rusty twenty-foot jumper, to a community gym.

  I was one of the few whites in the building. Most of the players refused to acknowledge my presence, and even when I was playing they responded to my "Nice shot," or "Good pull" by looking away. As a teen I played basketball in the downtowns of many cities I visited: Chicago, New York, Watts. Never before had I been treated this way.

  I sat out a game, atop a short row of stowed bleachers. The quality of play was good. The team running left to right, consisting of four black men and one white, scored nearly every time down the court. Although the white guy was nowhere near the best on the team, I knew from covering him that he was good— sag on defense and he'll sink a twenty-five footer: move out to guard and he'll glide by for an easy bucket. From the bleachers I watched him take the ball to the hoop and miss a contested layup. Two black men sitting on my left began to shout, "White fuckers ruin everything. Don't give him the ball. He'll just miss." As they were shouting, the white guy made a nice steal and pass to a black teammate, who missed an open layup. The men on my left didn't pause in their shouting, nor presumably perceive the contradiction between what they witnessed and what they said.

  I wrote this in a letter to a friend, who wrote back, "Racism is tied intimately to power and class, don't you think? If you feel the world is against you, and you notice that the white man has power and money—which in our culture amounts to the same thing—I believe it would be tough for a person of color not to be racist."

  I wasn't happy with this answer. I'd just wanted him to validate my feelings of not having been welcomed, and for him to tell me that of course those comments had been rude.

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p; I wrote him back, and he wrote me again, "Surely you can see why a white man is going to get scrutinized, and any miss is going to be held against him. They probably don't want you there—nothing personal, here, Derrick—because you, or rather what you stand for, which in this case is whiteness, control every other place in town except the basketball court. Whites control the government, the economy, the newspapers, plus the police and the rest of the legal system. And now we want the damn basketball court, too! It's no wonder they want whites to miss." All I'd wanted is some exercise. But I knew he was right. It's no more possible to remove these basketball players from the racist society that engenders their anger than it is to remove our political leaders from the culture that creates their drive for power. My friend John Keeble has said he likes to study members of the Aryan Nations and other hate groups because "at least they admit they're racist, and that they're afraid. The whole culture is racist and afraid, but most of us don't talk about it."

  I know all this. And it makes what happened at the gym comprehensible. But I also know it's not okay to displace anger. Nothing excuses rude or violent behavior toward random or semi-random people. My father stealing my childhood is no reason for me to steal someone else's, just as his own parents destroying his was no reason for him to steal mine. The psychological wounds that drive CEOs and politicians do not excuse their genocidal and ecocidal policies. The wounds that drive our culture to these same ends are similarly no excuse.