“No settled family or community has ever called its home place an 'environment.' None has ever called its feeling for its home place 'biocentric' or 'anthropocentric.' None has ever thought of its connection to its home place as 'ecological,' deep or shallow. The concepts and insights of the ecologists are of great usefulness in our predicament, and we can hardly escape the need to speak of 'ecology' and 'ecosystems.' But the terms themselves are culturally sterile. They come from the juiceless, abstract intellectuality of the universities which was invented to disconnect, displace, and disembody the mind. The real names of the environment are the names of rivers and river valleys; creeks, ridges, and mountains; towns and cities; lakes, woodlands, lanes roads, creatures, and people. And the real name of our connection to this everywhere different and differently named earth is 'work.' We are connected by work even to the places where we don't work, for all places are connected; it is clear by now that we cannot exempt one place from our ruin of another. The name of our proper connection to the earth is 'good work,' for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing. Good work is always modestly scaled, for it cannot ignore either the nature of individual places or the differences between places, and it always involves a sort of religious humility, for not everything is known. Good work can be defined only in particularity, for it must be defined a little differently for every one of the places and every one of the workers on the earth. The name of our present society's connection to the earth is 'bad work' – work that is only generally and crudely defined, that enacts a dependence that is ill understood, that enacts no affection and gives no honor. Every one of us is to some extent guilty of this bad work. This guilt does not mean that we must indulge in a lot of breast-beating and confession; it means only that there is much good work to be done by every one of us and that we must begin to do it.†~Wendell Berry~
Don't be part of culture. Blaze your own trails. Don't let the conformity fit you into the systems niche if mindless consumerists producing the same old ways of thinking by not being unique and having ideas and thoughts that may threaten someone's way if living.
One of my all time favourites. "Men learn from their mistakes, wise men learn from other peoples mistakes."
Wendell Berry is a genius. He's could be a bridge between very different people. He's environmental enough to see that simple living can save the world, but he's not fanatical about it. And he's spiritual enough, hell even religious enough, that he doesn't alienate conservative people. I know I'm being naive, but I swear if he could catch the ear of enough people running the U.S. we might have hope.
Good words.. If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.~William Blake I think I posted it before-but that's how I feel right now.
"People of religious faith know that the world is maintained everyday by the same force that created it. It's an article of my faith and belief that all creatures live by breathing God's breath and participating in his spirit, and this means that the whole thing's holy...the whole shootin' match. There are no sacred and unsacred places , there are only sacred and desecrated places. So finally, I see those gauges in the surface mine country as desecrations, not just land abuse, not just as human oppression, but as desecration, as blasphemy." - Wendell Barry
"There is an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry." -- Socrates on the qurrel between true knowledge and rhetoric/sophistry.
"The highest virtue is to act without a sense of self The highest kindness is to give without a condition The highest justice is to see without a preference When Tao is lost one must learn the rules of virtue When virtue is lost, the rules of kindness When kindness is lost, the rules of justice When justice is lost, the rules of conduct"
If you can't single me out for all the good that I have done, but only see me as a druggie,I may just be able to sleep at night cause I'd probably be stoned
If you can't single me out for all the good that I have done, but only see me as a druggie,I may just be able to sleep at night cause I'd probably be stoned
We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy. ~W. Anderson Life's a bitch- ~me ....today
Wow, the same the exact thing can be said about the self. "The self cannot be found because the self cannot be lost."