Browse Topics
Sustainable Living
What I’d Most Like To Change
The constant nagging desire to change things; my fear of death; my inner victim into a happier, healthier being
November 1985Scott and Helen Nearing: A Tribute
Self-reliance has been linked with democracy in the American mind since Thomas Jefferson extolled the small farmer as the cornerstone of a free society. Thoreau sang of similar values. In our day, Scott and Helen Nearing have epitomized the best of that tradition.
July 1984Sunbeams
January 1984Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.
People, Land, And Community
During the last eighteen years, for example, I have been working at the restoration of a once exhausted hillside. Its scars are now healed over, though still visible, and this year it has provided abundant pasture, more than in any year since we have owned it. But to make it as good as it is now has taken eighteen years. If I had been a millionaire or if my family had been starving, it would still have taken eighteen years.
December 1983The Pipe Or The Tomahawk
An Interview With Sun Bear
We’re trying to put our philosophy on a working level. This is important. People espouse different philosophies, but if it doesn’t work with flesh and blood on an everyday basis then it’s not real. You don’t have sovereignty until you control your own livelihood.
April 1983The New Age
There are only two goats. The big one’s got horns and a beard under its chin and I’m sure he’s male until the little one reaches under and butts her udders, fat with milk, and starts sucking. My oldest kid and I stroke her greasy hide. She seems gentle enough.
September 1982New Age Politics: Healing Self And Society
Social action that is not based on a firm sense of self can only be based on guilt or rage — and guilt or rage do not allow us to see clearly; they render us, in fact, extremely susceptible to manipulation by demagogues.
April 1981The End Of The Modern World?
Looking Over The Edge Of History With William Irwin Thompson
A new world order is going to require a new way of thinking. Just as our American revolution was preceded by a philosophical revolution, and the heritage of the Enlightenment, in the same way you can look out in the world now, you begin to see the ideological origins of the new world order revolution. We’re still in the stage where it’s for the most part myth, art, religion and philosophy, and we haven’t yet moved into the stage of politics, economics, organization, implementation. Everything, it’s been said, begins in mysticism and ends in politics.
April 1980Nuclear Energy — I’m Against The Stuff
Pretend that this is a movie. You are seeing two men create a curl of dust as they drive in a pick-up down a dirt road. The one driving is old, his features molded like leather, worn and stretched by a hard working foot.
August 1979No More Chores
I’m gouging (laboriously) in a drainage pipe to avoid paying $20 an hour to somebody who knows how to do it right with proper tools.
March 1979
