Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Aldo Leopold

“…The land is too complex for the simple processes of the “mass mind’ armed with modern tools.  To live in real harmony with such a country seems to require a degree of public regulation we will not tolerate, or a degree of public enlightenment we do not possess.

But of course we must continue to live with it according to our lights.  Two things hold promise of improving those lights. One is to apply science to land-use.  The other is to cultivate a love of country a little less spangled with stars, and a little more imbued with that respect for mother-earth - the lack of which is, to me, the outstanding attribute of the machine-age.”
Aldo Leopold, "The Virgin Southwest", 179 in The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays.

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