"Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents. Without a prison, there can be no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society."
-John (Fire) Lame Deer, Sioux Lakota - 1903-1976."We go through life believing we are experiencing the world when actually our experiences are confined within entirely human conceptions...Our environment itself is the manifestation of the mental processes of other humans...Our environment itself becomes editor, filter and medium between ourselves and an alternative non-human, unedited organic planetary reality...
Living within artifical reconstructed arbitrary environments that are strictly the products of human conception, we have no way to be sure that we know what is true and what is not. We have lost context and perspective."
-Jerry Mander
"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."
-Lilly Tomlin
“As a group, authentic nature-based people are not neurotic, repressed, or burdened by psychopathology as we know it; rather, they tend to be integrated in thought, feeling, and spirit. Most pointedly, nature-based people manifest the very qualities that contemporary psychotherapy, the recovery movement, and spiritual practices continually aim for: a visible sense of inner peace, unselfconscious humility, an urge to communal cooperation, and heartfelt appreciation for the world around them.”
–Chellis Glendinning
"It is no sign of health to be well adjusted to a fundamentally sick society."
-J. Krishnamurti |
