If the world is presented as resources to be exploited, then, more than likely, you're going to exploit the world.
From Derrick Jensen
The stories we are told shape the way we see the world, which shapes the way we experience the world.
For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.
I want you to begin keeping a calendar of who you see and when: the first day each year you see buttercups, the first day frogs start singing, the last day you see robins in the fall, the first day for grasshoppers. In short, I want you to pay attention.
My great-grandmother grew up in a sod house in Nebraska. When she was a tiny girl - in other words, only four human generations ago - there were still enough wild bison on the Plains that she was afraid lightning storms would spook them and they would trample her home.
People say 'what do you mean' when you talk about 'bringing down civilization.' What I really mean is depriving the rich of the ability to steal from the poor and depriving the powerful of the ability to destroy the planet. That's what I really mean.
Writing is really very easy. Tap a vein and bleed onto the page. Everything else is just technical.
No matter what we call it, poison is still poison, death is still death, and industrial civilization is still causing the greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet.
Maud Gonne was - excuse me, Maud Gonne was central to the Gaelic literature revival. She wrote plays, and she sang.
Part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it, and it's very difficult physically for us to live outside of it.
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1 perspectives