And it is a central defining characteristic of sociopathology. Blindness to suffering is one of this culture’s central defining characteristics. How deeply do most members of this culture mourn passenger pigeons? Salmon? Oceans? This culture as a whole, and most of its members, gives no more consideration to the victims of this way of life than David Parker Ray gave to his victims. When the profiler said this, my first thought was passenger pigeons. And that was how Ray perceived – or rather didn’t perceive – his victims: simply as something to use and throw away.
In the documentary, an FBI profiler compared Ray’s attitudes toward his victims to those most people have toward tissues: Once you use them, are you concerned about what happens to them? Of course not, she said. He turned an entire tractor-trailer into a well-stocked torture chamber, where he videotaped what he did to them. He kidnapped women and held them as rape slaves. Everything and everyone must be sacrificed to economic production, to economic growth, to the continuation of this culture.Ī few months ago I was watching a documentary on David Parker Ray, a serial killer from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, who is suspected of killing up to sixty women. If people develop new ways to live on their land more sustainably, and those in power decide that land is needed for roads and shopping malls and parking lots, those in power will seize that land. Why is this important? Because those in power destroy sustainable communities – and not just sustainable indigenous communities. It’s that no one, and I mean no one, ever mentions psychopathology. It’s not the inevitable talk about farmers (re)discovering organic farming about plastic forks made from cornstarch about solar photovoltaics about relocalizing about the joys of simple living about grieving the murder of the planet about “changing our stories” and most especially about maintaining a positive attitude that gets me down. I DON’T KNOW about you, but whenever I attend some “green” conference, I know I’m supposed to leave feeling inspired and energized, but instead I feel heartbroken, discouraged, defeated, and lied to.
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