Words of wisdom and
philosophical thoughts
When people are born they are supple, and when they die they are stiff.When trees are born they are tender, and when they die they are brittle.
Stiffness is thus a cohort of death, flexibility is a cohort of life.
-- Tao-Te Ching
There is nothing nobler than to put up with a few inconveniences
like snakes and dust for the sake of absolute freedom.
-- Jack Kerouac
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I ... I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.
-- Robert Frost
He not busy being born is busy dying.
-- Bob Dylan
If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.
-- Henry David Thoreau
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
-- Samuel Clemens
"To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!"
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
-- Jack London
Return to The Tribal Future
The white man, the Wazungu, has buggered the environment. His suicidal rape of the
planet continues unabated as the ferruginous high priests of technology demand more oil
and blood from Nature. These Machiavellian demands are not counterbalanced. Earth,
the miniscule precious twirling ball that we live on is being sucked dry and it’s valence in
the Universe jiggered with impunity.
We must return to our Tribal Future. Slow down to go faster. Become more dreamy to
create a greater reality. Reunite with Earth our blessed Mother and Original Nature and
pull the machete from her throat.
"Oh what trash is Rome," spoke Cassius. He could as well have been gazing at 20th
Century America. Yes, we have our aerobics, space ships, and gleaming plastic toys. But
beneath the chrome surface lies a nation of trash, riddled with greed, obsessed in a mad
race for consummation of artificial power and simulated pleasure. We have bankrupted
our souls and true natures to stack fiat, wealth by proxy, buried deep in steel-plated
vaults. We are the self-chained prisoners of Babylon.
We have deluded ourselves that we are virtually immortal. And we are not. We have, at
best, 80 short years and then we turn to dust. And vanish. Once time has flown, it is
irretrievable. In her dying breath Queen Elizabeth I murmured, "All my possessions for a
moment of time." Time is the priceless treasure of king and pauper alike.
We have embalmed ourselves. Become Greek slaves to our own glittering products.
Become practitioners of the disposable life. And boxed ourselves into a maddening and
monstrous structure. Let us return to a natural way of living without sacrificing the vital
achievements that our civilization has rendered.
Yes, we can still vindicate the greatest living experiment in the history of mankind. Yes,
we can count among us the hidden talent to give us new Washingtons, Jeffersons,
Lincolns, and Adams, new Betsy Rosses, and Daniel Boones. New heroes, statesmen,
and pioneers, to snatch back the past and produce the courageous future.
Following our putative Manifest Destiny, we have done our best to destroy the Apache,
the Eskimo, the Nez Perce and the Masai. Now we are destroying ourselves. The time is
now to return to the Tribal Future. To dissolve false images. To make everything sacred.
Make every second holy. To become again the clean, noble animal we lost at childhood.
To become the Tribal Future. To become one with the Sky, the Sun, the Grass, and the
Water. The very elements that graced us with our magical gift of life.
-- P.S. Ferry
This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water
but the blood of our ancestors. If we
sell you land, you must remember that
it is sacred, and you must teach your
children that it is sacred and that
each ghostly reflection in the clear
water of the lakes tells of events and
memories in the life on my people. The
water's murmur is the voice of my
father's father.
The rivers are our brothers, they
quench our thirst. The rivers carry our
canoes, and feed our children. If we
sell you our land, you must remember,
and teach your children, that the
rivers are our brothers, and yours, and
you must henceforth give the rivers the
kindness you would give any brother.
We know that the white man does not
understand our ways. One portion of
land is the same to him as the next,
for he is a stranger who comes in the
night and takes from the land whatever
he needs. The earth is not his brother,
but his enemy, and when he has
conquered it, he moves on. He leaves
his father's graves behind, and he does
not care. He kidnaps the earth from his
children, and he does not care. His
father's grave, and his children's
birthright are forgotten. He treats his
mother, the earth and his brother, the
sky, as things to be bought, plundered,
sold like sheep or bright beads. His
appetite will devour the earth and
leave behind only a desert.
The air is precious to the red man, for
all things share the same breath: the
beast, the tree, the man, they all
share the same breath.
The white man does not seem to notice
the air he breathes. Like a man dying
for many days, he is numb to the
stench. But if we sell you our land,
you must remember that the air is
precious to us, that the air shares its
spirit with all the life it supports.
The wind that gave our grandfather his
first breath also receives his last
sigh. And if we sell you our land, you
must keep it apart and sacred, as a
place where even the white man can go
to taste the wind that is sweetened by
the meadow's flowers.
So we will consider your offer to buy
our land. If we decide to accept, I
will make one condition: the white man
must treat the beasts of this land as
his brothers. What is man without the
beasts? If all the beasts were gone,
man would die from a great loneliness
of spirit. For whatever happens to the
beasts, soon happens to man.
All things are connected. You must
teach your children that the ground
beneath their feet is the ashes of our
grandfathers. So that they will respect
the land, tell your children that the
earth is rich with the lives of our
kin. Teach your children what we have
taught our children, that the earth is
our mother. Whatever befalls the earth
befalls the sons of the earth. If men
spit upon the ground, they spit upon
themsleves. This we know: the earth
does not belong to man; man belongs to
the earth. This we know. All things are
connected like the blood which unites
one family. All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the
sons of the earth. Man did not weave
the web of life: he is merely a strand
in it. Whatever he does to the web he
does to himself.
-- Chief Seattle (1854)
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