Quotes About Environment

I]nsikten om genetikens betydelse, och om hur slumpmässiga de miljöbetingade influenserna är, kan göra det lättare för oss att acceptera och till och med njuta av att vi är som vi är, rent genetiskt. I stället för att sträva efter att vara någon som vi placerar på en befängt hög piedestal, kan det vara värt att pröva att söka efter sitt genetiska jag och försöka trivas med sig själv.

Soul and habitat--we are finally in a position to know this--are correlates of one another.

And nothing . . . disquiets a rationalist more than a forest.

I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?

Doing what comes naturally was (and is) no longer the appropriate response in many circumstances that arose in what had become an unnatural environment. It became the major social role of religion to bridge the gap between a human nature developed for one environment and the altered environment in which that nature now had to operate. People had to be persuaded to act unnaturally, as Jesus and other religious prophets would preach.

Eve's Fall symbolizes women's invention of agriculture, which came to be seen as the Original Sin that caused the loss of Paradise. The revolutionary changes in the human environment to which agriculture led required the introduction of the unnatural values Jesus (and other religious prophets) taught to "save" humanity from the disconnect between human nature and the environment that resulted from what is represented by Eve's eating from the Tree of Knowledge.

We are constantly being shaped by seemingly irrelevant stimuli, subliminal information, and internal forces we don't know a thing about.

This is our struggle: to re-bury the coal and slow the flow of petroleum from the earth," she counted them off from pinky to thumb on one hand, "To teach the farming way that cleans the soil and enriches the land. To bring the lore of machines run by energy of grass and waters and sun and wind. To place the love of silence and darkness again beside the love of noise and light. And to cause humans to greatly slow their breeding and breeding and breeding and breeding. This is our struggle.

The human brain is wired to see relationships, not detached elements. The artist Heinz Kusel, who taught color theory for twenty years, explained: "Color by itself doesn't exist. All that we see as color is created by relationships-what the color is next to, what surrounds it. A name for a color is absurd, because its appearance is constantly changing as a result of its environment. There are no fixed colors. In a different context it's changed completely."2

Fantasies act to "nourish" the ego in the form of a partial gratification and thus can contribute to psychological equilibrium when security or satisfaction from the real environment is lacking.

Natural selection cannot directly 'see' an individual organism in a specific situation and cause behavior to be adaptively tailored.

Todos los organismos, incluidos los seres humanos, han sido diseñados por la selección natural para reaccionar a su entorno en modos que conduzcan a una «mejora» (según los criterios de la propia selección natural) de las cosas, lo cual significa que, en mayor o menor medida, casi siempre estamos escudriñando el horizonte en busca de cosas que nos hagan infelices, que nos incomoden o que no nos satisfagan

what we call the "self" is in such constant causal interaction with its environment, is so pervasively influenced by the world out there

Modern environments seem more likely than some previous environments to lead to this sort of malfunctioning. They permit, for example, a degree of social isolation that was unknown to our ancestors.

Not prepared to recognize where, when, or what he is living, the Australian consciously and subconsciously directs his artificial environment to be uncommitted, tentative, temporary, a nondescript economic-functionalist background on which he can hang the features which for the moment appeal to his wandering, restless eye.

Name it as you will, claim it as you will, the world does not belong to men. Men belong to the world.

The world had to change and for some reason the prosperity of men always results in them taking ever more from wild creatures and places.

The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness.

It's not just land that is broken, but more importantly, our relationship to land.

Weep! Weep!" calls a toad from the water's edge. And I do. If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.

The word ecology is derived from the Greek oikos , the word for home.

Ruined land was accepted as the collateral damage of progress.

I wonder if much that ails our society stems from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be cut off from that love of, and from, the land. It is medicine for broken land and empty hearts.

Imagine that while our neighbors were holding a giveaway, someone broke into their home to take whatever he wanted. We would be outraged at the moral trespass. So it should be for the earth. The earth gives away for free the power of wind and sun and water, but instead we break open the earth to take fossil fuels. Had we taken only that which is given to us, had we reciprocated the gift, we would not have to fear our own atmosphere today.