LOS LOTÓFAGOS DE NUESTRA ERA (DEVORADORES DEL BOE)

THINK LITTLE : SOLO ESCRIBE EL INDIVIDUO https://t.co/AKSDb1Gdx8 @WendellDaily
The lotus eaters of this era are in Washington, D.C., Thinking Big ...The result, mostly, has been the persistence of the problem and the enlargement and enrichment of the government pic.twitter.com/8eeLqjh3Y4

— Guillermo Ruiz Zapatero (@ruiz_zapatero) July 2, 2022

 

THINK LITTLE (WENDELL BERRY (EXTRACTS FROM ESSAYS 1969-1990))

For the environmental crisis should made it dramatically clear, as perhaps it has not always been before, that there is no public crisis that is not also private.

(…)

In this crisis it is certain that every one of us has a public responsibility.

(…)

I believe in American political principles, and will not sit idly by and see those principles destroyed by sorry practice. I am ashamed that American government should have become the chief cause of disillusionment with American principles.

(…)

We don’t live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living.

What we are up against in this country, in our attempt to invoke private responsibility, is that we have nearly destroyed private life. Our people have given up their independence in return for the cheap seductions and the shoddy merchandise of so-called “affluence”.We have delegated all our vital functions and responsibilities to salesman and agents and bureaus and experts of all sorts.

(…)

Individualism is going around these days in uniform, handing out the party line on individualism.

(…)

A man who understands the weather only in terms of golf is participating in a public insanity that either he or his descendants will be bond to realize as suffering. I believe that the death of the world is breeding in such minds much more certainly and much faster than in any political capital or atomic arsenal.

For an index of our loss of contact with the earth we need only to look at the condition of the American farmer-who must enact our society’s dependence on the land.

(…)

We are going to hereto rebuild the substance and the integrity of private life in this country.

(…)

For most of the history of this country our motto, implied or spoken, has been Think Big. A better motto, an essential one now, is Think Little.

(…)

The lotus eaters of this era are in Washington, D.C., Thinking Big. Somebody perceives a problem, and somebody in the government comes up with a plan or a law. The result, mostly, has been the persistence of the problem and the enlargement and enrichment of the government.

But the discipline of thought is not generalization; it is detail, and it is personal behavior.

(…)

Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of environment that that of gardening.

(…)

Amid the outcries for the liberation of this group or that, we will know that no person is free except in the freedom of other persons, and that our only real freedom is to know and faithfully occupy our place-a much humbler place that we have taught to think- in the order of creation.

(…)

The principles of ecology, if we will take them to heart, should keep us aware that our lives depend upon other lives and upon processes and energies in an interlocking system that, though we can destroy it, we can neither fully understand nor fully control. And our great dangerousness is that, locked in our selfish and myopic economy, we have been willing to change or destroy far beyond our power to understand. We are not humble enough or reverent enough.

(…)

Sometime ago , I heard a representative of a paper company refer to conservation as a “no-return investment”.

(…)

Consider in contrast, the profound ecological intelligence of Black Elk, “a holy man of the Oglala Sioux”, who in telling his story said that it was not his own life that was important to him, but what he shared with all life:

“It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things…”

(…)

“And I saw that it was holy”

(A continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural (1972))

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alce_Negro

Si el pensamiento no estuviera en el detalle y en el individuo, ni HDT, ni WB podrían haber escrito lo que escribieron. WB dijo hace 50 años -y BLACK ELK antes- lo que hoy es evidente, pero todavía se esconde y desconoce.

Thoreau dijo:

"I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual"

EL ORDEN DEL AGRADECIMIENTO SIGUE AL DEL SER:

ESTOY COMPLETAMENTE AGREDECIDO DE LO QUE HE RECIBIDO, DE LO QUE SOY, DE LO QUE TENGO, DE LO QUE COMPARTO Y, FINALMENTE, COMPARTIRÉ

I am grateful for what I received, for what I am, have and share