One day, we shall stand up and our backsides will remain attached to our seats.
Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories
A recent picture from the front lines of the Standing Rock Sioux camp shows us what is at stake in our world where some groups have embraced the inhuman aspect of technology to dominate, control and destroy human lives.
The picture shows a native American on a horse facing down armed police officers and military vehicles.
The oil company has hired private security firms that have attack dogs on the ready.
The line here is not blurry.
It is clear.
The line of power is enforced through the use of force.
Power is reinforced through the bullets that silence our speech.
The line has been marked on human bodies.
The pipeline is destructive.
It only generates greed and poison.
The corporations have found a way to take dinosaur remains to lubricate Ford’s machinery.
Oil.
Leave it in the ground
Leave it in the earth where it belongs so that the sky will thank you.
The line initiates the subtraction of bodies as it adds them to its fields.
The line treats bodies as already inexistent.
The line denies the will to life in the form of water as it props up the will to death through oil.
The protectors of the land have kindled a light for us.
It shines brightly in the cold of the North Dakota winter.
It is a light that counters the fire of the corporations who scorch the earth in the name of ownership.
The viscosity of oil is nothing compared to the viciousness of those who defend their stash with water canons, stun grenades, lead filled bean-bags, rubber bullets and acoustic weapons.
They use sound waves to silence those who stand.
Can you hear what is happening?
Sound used to level off persons.
And your free speech will be met with devices that silence your tongue and destroy your ear-drums.
Remains to be seen what will be done.
Remains to be seen;
Everywhere a wasteland and a capitalistic garbage dump.
Remains to be dug out.
Refined into the lubricants of
Civil- Lie- Zation.
Reason flows glacial onto the oil fields
Onto the slick fields
That have swallowed so many.
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Mark Zlomislic is Professor of Philosophy at Conestoga College in Kitchener, Canada. His research and writing focus on the questions of ethics in our time. His latest book, Zizek: Paper Revolutionary, will be published by Wipf and Stock in 2017. He is currently writing a book titled Franciscan Postmodernity.