There Is Always Money To

Premise Eight: The Needs Of The Natural World Are More Important Than The Needs Of The Economic System.

I Thought That, Given The System Of Rewards Central To Our Economic System, In Which Profit Maximization Is Valued Above All Else And Specifically Above Life, It Is Probably Just As Irresistible To The Owners Of Capital (human Or Otherwise) To Exploit Workers (and The Land): "nothing Personal," They Say As They Load Their Property Onto The Ship Bound For The Middle Passage, "but A Man's Gotta Turn A Dime."

There Is A Language Older By Far And Deeper Than Words. It Is The Language Of Bodies, Of Body On Body, Wind On Snow, Rain On Trees, Wave On Stone. It Is The Language Of Dream, Gesture, Symbol, Memory. We Have Forgotten This Language. We Do Not Even Remember That It Exists.

For Us To Maintain Our Way Of Living, We Must Tell Lies To Each Other And Especially To Ourselves. The Lies Are Necessary Because, Without Them, Many Deplorable Acts Would Become Impossibilities.

To Reverse The Effects Of Civilization Would Destroy The Dreams Of A Lot Of People. There's No Way Around It. We Can Talk All We Want About Sustainability, But There's A Sense In Which It Doesn't Matter That These People's Dreams Are Based On, Embedded In, Intertwined With, And Formed By An Inherently Destructive Economic And Social System. Their Dreams Are Still Their Dreams. What Right Do I -- Or Does Anyone Else -- Have To Destroy Them. At The Same Time, What Right Do They Have To Destroy The World?