Friday, August 11, 2017

Man the Conquerer is Doomed

Ozymandias
Aldo Leopold on human population density and the American land ethic:

In all of these cleavages, we see repeated the same basic paradoxes: man the conqueror versus man the biotic citizen; science the sharpener of his sword versus science the search-light on his universe; land the slave and servant versus land the collective organism.

[The poet E.A. ] Robinson's injunction to Tristram may well be applied, at this juncture, to Homo sapiens as species in geological time:

Whether you will or not
You are a King, Tristram, for you are one
Of the time-tested few that leave the world,
When they are gone, not the same place it was.

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