When We Realize The Degree Of Agency

The Process Of Schooling Does Not Give Birth To Human Beings - As Education Should But Never Will So Long As It Springs From The Collective Consciousness Of Our Culture - But Instead It Teaches Us To Value Abstract Rewards At The Expense Of Our Autonomy, Curiosity, Interior Lives, And Time.

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."

Many Indians Have Told Me That The Most Basic Difference Between Western And Indigenous Ways Of Being Is That Westerners View The World As Dead, And Not As Filled With Speaking, Thinking, Feeling Subjects As Worthy And Valuable As Themselves.

The Pretense That Humans Are Superior To Nonhumans Is Entirely Unsupportable. I Have Seen No Compelling Evidence That Humans Are Particularly More "intelligent" Than Any Other Creature. I Have Had Long And Fruitful Relationshis With Many Nonhuman Animals, Both Domesticated And Wild, And Have Reveled In The Bouquet Of Radically Different Intelligences - Different Forms, Not Different "quantities" That They Have Introduced To Me, Each In His Or Her Own Time, In His Or Her Own Way.

All We Want, Whether We Are Honeybees, Salmon, Trash-collecting Ants, Ponderosa Pines, Coyotes, Human Beings, Or Stars, Is To Love And Be Loved, To Be Accepted, Cherished, And Celebrated Simply For Being Who We Are. Is That So Very Difficult?