[PREV - JUGGLING] [TOP]
STEADY
From the essay
"Unnatural Writing",
"A Space in Place"
by Gary Snyder:
"There is some truly dangerous language in a term
heard in some business and government circles:
'sustainable development.' Development is not
compatible with sustainability and biodiversity.
We must drop talking about development and
concentrate on how to achieve a steady state
condition of real sustainability. Much of what
passes for economic development is simply the
further extension of the destabilizing, entropic,
and disorderly functions of industrial
civilization." -- p. 167
Freeman Dyson, from his Edge talk:
"Naturalists believe that nature knows best. For them
the highest value is to respect the natural order of
things. Any gross human disruption of the natural
environment is evil. Excessive burning of fossil fuels
is evil. Changing nature's desert, either the Sahara
desert or the ocean desert, into a managed ecosystem
where giraffes or tunafish may flourish, is likewise
evil. Nature knows best, and anything we do to improve
upon Nature will only bring trouble.
"The humanist ethic begins with the belief that humans
are an essential part of nature. Through human minds
the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its
own evolution, and now we are in charge. Humans have
the right and the duty to reconstruct nature so that
humans and biosphere can both survive and prosper. For
humanists, the highest value is harmonious coexistence
between humans and nature. The greatest evils are
poverty, underdevelopment, unemployment, disease and
hunger, all the conditions that deprive people of
opportunities and limit their freedoms."
--------
[NEXT - WHOLE_IN_ONE]