Alas, in 2020, one story about our collective future that’s becoming increasingly ubiquitous— and maybe even appealing to those inclined to resignation— starts with the opening line “we’re doomed” (or, in the vernacular, that we’re “fucked” or “screwed”). I hear this kind of declaration from a substantial and rapidly growing proportion of the students I teach. I respond to these young people by saying, as I say to Ben and Kate, that humanity is in fact doomed only if we collectively choose to be doomed.
--Thomas Homer-Dixon
For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.
John F. Kennedy
Oddly enough, I notice that since things got really bad, everyone I meet is less dismayed.
--C.S. Lewis (around the time of the Dunkirk evacuation)
To regain our full humanity we have to regain our experience of connectedness with the entire web of life.
--Fritjof Capra
