I Am Still Alive

“I do not hope coho salmon survive. I will do whatever it takes to make sure the dominant culture doesn’t drive them extinct. If coho want to leave us because they don’t like how they’re being treated – and who could blame them? – I will say goodbye, and I will miss them, but if they do not want to leave, I will not allow civilization to kill them off.

When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to ‘hope’ at all. We simply do the work. We make sure salmon survive. We do whatever it takes.
Derrick Jensen, from ‘Beyond Hope’

“What has happened is that most people in our country, and apparently most people in the ‘developed’ world, have given proxies to the corporations to produce and provide all of their food, clothing, and shelter. Moreover, they are rapidly giving proxies to corporations or governments to provide entertainment, education, child care, care of the sick and the elderly, and many other kinds of ‘service’ that once were carried on informally and inexpensively by individuals or households or communities. Our major economic practice, in short, is to delegate the practice to others.

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“The ‘environmental crisis’ is no such thing; it is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens.”
Wendel Berry, from ’ The Idea of a Local Economy’

The Future of Nature is an anthology of writing from Orion Magazine and edited by Barry Lopez. Thrilling ideas throughout. The book was a bit of an impulse buy (will generally pickup anything by Wendell Berry). I am glad I bought it and really surprised that I had never heard of Orion previously.