Excerpt from Endgame

Who Are You? (p. 757)

From chapter "Get There First with the Most"

What do we want? How will we accomplish it? I return to the salmon (you can of course return instead to what you love). As I already mentioned, for salmon to survive, dams, industrial logging, industrial fishing, industrial agriculture must go, the oceans must survive, and global warming must cease. Choose one of these, say, dams. What do we need to do to remove dams? (And notice the difference in implication even between using the verb “would” and “do,” as in “What would we need to do to remove dams?” Would implies theory, which means we’re not really going to do it, while do implies reality; the choice has been made, and now we’re asking how.) What battlefields do we choose?

Try for a moment to think for yourself. I’m not being snide, condescending, or sarcastic. Thinking for yourself is one of the most difficult things to do, especially within a culture where we’re inculcated into irresponsibility. How do you know if you’re thinking your own thoughts, or if you’re thinking the thoughts of the people who produce television programs, or thinking the thoughts of your teachers and preachers in junior high, or thinking the thoughts of some guy who writes books about taking down civilization?But try, really try. If you follow your own thoughts, if you follow your own morals, if you choose to protect those you love most, and to protect your landbase (presuming that you love your landbase, but if you do not then you can choose something else), if you choose your own battlefields, what battles do you choose? What do you do? How do you act? Who are you?