There's so much lost in the move towards urbanization of so many people. They become inured to the products and trivia of a civilisation which rips and tears at the loving Gaia, leaving her in rags where once a tapestry of rich ecological richness was embroidered all across her plains, mountains, and even seas which we are presently sweeping clean and empty. I write this as I just came across a photograph of 3 boys in the 1930s out in the snow in shorts with the Glens of Antrim rising in the distance behind them. It was an inspiring photograph for me. No doubt they had hardships but it was such a healthy lifestyle living out in the fresh air with just honest pastimes to while away the hours spent in the fields, streams and hedges. The modern wise ape is so much distracted from the simple pleasures of life. Good food, good company and interesting conversation are so undervalued in modern mass culture. In this culture a big house is a reason to be proud while you gorge on deep fried foods. It makes no sense. And most people have no idea that it makes no sense because they are sleep walking or as Thich Nhat Hanh says, the living dead. Sleep walking in their old habits, doing whatever comes easiest, doing whatever everyone else is doing until the spark of originality that can be seen in every child has been extinguished by a tyrannical culture which sees fit to cast us as mere consumers of mass produced products, on a scale that leaves innocent creatures, landscapes and peoples destroyed from total heartless exploitation. The marketing is insidious. It offers so much for so little. But the price is everything you hold dear culturally and in the natural world.
