In the Web of Life

“The lamps are different, but the light is the same. “ –Rumi

Category Archives: Quote

Morality

Another world is on its way

If we were taught empathy…

Gandhi’s 7 dangers to human virtue

1. Wealth without work

2. Pleasure without conscience

3. Knowledge without character

4. Business without ethics

5. Science without humanity

6. Religion without sacrifice

7. Politics without principle
Gandhi

The war on terrorism is…idiotic

Giving up hope frees you to solve the problems yourself

Derrick Jensen in his lectures and books advocates decolonizing yourself so that you are free to stop the destruction caused by this culture. Here is an excerpt from his book Endgame.

A wonderful thing happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place. You realize that giving up on hope didn’t kill you, nor did it make you less effective. In fact it made you more effective, because you ceased relying on someone or something else to solve your problems—you ceased hoping your problems somehow get solved, through the magical assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant tree-sitters, brave salmon, or even the Earth itself—and you just began doing what’s necessary to solve your problems yourself.
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When you give up on hope, something even better happens than it not killing you, which is that it kills you. You die. And there’s a wonderful thing about being dead, which is that once you’re dead they—those in power—cannot really touch you anymore. Not through promises, not through threats, not through violence itself. Once you’re dead in this way, you can still sing, you can still dance, you can still make love, you can still fight like hell—you can still live because you are still alive, in fact more alive than ever before—but those in power no longer have a hold on you. You come to realize that when hope died, the you who died with the hope was not you, but was the you who depended on those who exploit you, the you who believed that those who exploit you will somehow stop on their own, the you who depended on and believed in the mythologies propagated by those who exploit you to facilitate that exploitation. The socially constructed you died. The civilized you died. The manufactured, fabricated, stamped, molded you died. The victim died.
And who is left when that you dies? You are left. Animal you. Naked you. Vulnerable (and invulnerable) you. Mortal you. Survivor you. The you who thinks not what the culture taught you to think, but what you think. The you who feels not what the culture taught you to feel but what you feel. The you who is not who the culture taught you to be but who you are. The you who can say yes, the you who can say no. The you who is a part of the land where you live. The you who will fight (or won’t) to defend your family. The you who will fight (or won’t) to defend the others you love. The you who will fight (or won’t) to defend the land upon which your life and the lives of those you love depend. The you whose morality is not based on what you have been taught by the culture that is killing the planet, killing you, but on your own animal feelings of love and connection to your family, your friends, your landbase. Not to your family as self-identified civilized beings but as animals who require a landbase, animals who are being killed by chemicals, animals who have been formed and deformed to fit the needs of the culture.
– pp. 332-333 of chapter entitled Hope from “Endgame,
Volume I: The Problem of Civilization”

The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man

Lend a hand

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I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Edward Everett Hale, 1902

Life is going to change.

“We’ve been saying this would happen for a long time, that oil prices would drop as demand falls on a move into economic depression. A temporary supply glut opens up, price support evaporates, prices fall to those of the lowest cost producer and all the expensive and complex production goes out of business. No one invests in exploration or drilling or production, or probably even maintenance, for years, meaning that supply will follow demand to the downside over time. Any kind of economic recovery way down the line will then be energy supply-constrained. First financial crisis buys you time in terms of peak oil, because you burn through remaining high energy profit ratio energy sources less quickly, but then it aggravates the situation later, but collapsing supply more quickly. We are headed into a much lower energy future, and that means life is going to change.” ~ Nicole Foss from theautomaticearth.com

GMOs are not safe

“Any politician or scientist who tells you these products are safe is either very stupid or lying. The hazards of these foods are uncertain. In view of our enormous ignorance, the premature application of biotechnology is downright dangerous.”

~ David Suzuki, CC, OBC, Ph.D LLD, Geneticist