Living In A Unified Field
“Scientists – now familiar with field theory, ecological dynamics and the transactional nature of perception – can no longer see man as the independent observer of an alien and rigidly mechanical world of separate objects. The clearly mystical sensation of self-and-universe, or organism-and-environment, as a unified field or process seems to fit the facts.”
–Alan W. Watts (English-born American Philosopher, Writer, Speaker and Expert in Comparative Religion, 1915-1973)
“Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion” (Alan W. Watts)
Taking Responsibility
“Being human signifies, for each one of us, belonging to a class, a society, a country, a continent and a civilization; and for us European earth-dwellers, the adventure played out in the heart of the New World signifies in the first place that it was not our world and that we bear responsibility for the crime of its destruction.”
–Claude Lévi-Strauss (Belgian-born French Social Anthropologist, 1908-2009)
Nature Has a Vote!
“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”
–Wendell Berry (American Poet, Novelist and Essayist, 1934-)
Water
“And having thoughtlessly polluted our streams and rivers, we have seen in recent years a rapidly growing market for bottled drinking water. I am sure that some will say that a rapidly growing market for water is “good for the economy,” and most of us are still affluent enough to pay the cost. Nevertheless, it is a considerable cost that we are now paying for drinkable water, which we once had in plentiful supply at little cost or none at all. And the increasing of the cost suggests that the time may come when the cost will be unaffordable.”
–Wendell Berry (American Poet, Novelist and Essayist, 1934-)
{Commencement Address, Lindsey Wilson College, 14 May 2005}
The Poetry of the Sea
“If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.”
–Rachel Carson (American Biologist and Writer, 1907-1964)
(While accepting the National Book Award for The Sea Around Us in 1952)
