Raucous Summer - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 6

had been expelled from their own lands in the north-east of Brazil by
businessmen and corrupt officials, were driven to the mines by pov-
erty and desperation. But those who had organized it, who had the
capital to build the airstrips and buy the machinery, were driven to
kill and destroy by greed. Had the government of Brazil not changed,
had the miners not, after several more months of procrastination,
been expelled from the Yanomami's land, the tribe would have gone
the same way as most of those in the Americas: to extinction. The old
government knew this. Genocide was not its intention: simply an
unavoidable, and unregretted, consequence of its policy.
And yet, even while I stayed in the goldmines and experienced the
horrors of the invasion, I was drawn to what I hated. The mines
exploded the metaphors by which we live. In the rich nations we trade
in ciphers for gold, and seek them through specializations so extreme
that we are in danger of losing many of our faculties. In the mines
gold was gold, and the men got their hands dirty in all respects. Con-
flicts were resolved not through legal instruments or on the sofas of
television studios, but by shoot-outs in the forest. It was rawer, wilder,
more engaging than the life I had led; and the life I would lead
thereafter.
J. G. Ballard reminded us that 'the suburbs dream of violence.
Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls,
they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a
more passionate world.' 1 We still possess the fear, the courage, the
aggression which evolved to see us through our quests and crises, and
we still feel the need to exercise them. But our sublimated lives oblige
us to invent challenges to replace the horrors of which we have been
deprived. We find ourselves hedged by the consequences of our nature,
living meekly for fear of provoking or damaging others. 'Thus con-
science does make cowards of us all.' 2
Much of the social history of the past two centuries consists of the
discovery, often grudging, that other people, whatever their language,
colour, religion or culture, have similar needs and desires to ours. As
mass communication has enabled those whose rights we formerly dis-
regarded to speak for themselves, to explain the impacts on their lives
of the decisions we make, we become increasingly constrained by a
necessary regard for others. Just as potently, we now know that little