Corn And Bean People, I'm Afraid, Have

Invest In The Millennium. Plant Sequoias. Say That Your Main Crop Is The Forest That You Did Not Plant, That You Will Not Live To Harvest. Say That The Leaves Are Harvested When They Have Rotted Into The Mold. Call That Profit. Prophesy Such Returns. Put Your Faith In The Two Inches Of Humus That Will Build Under The Trees Every Thousand Years.

It Would Not Do For The Consumer To Know That The Hamburger She Is Eating Came From A Steer Who Spent Much Of His Life Standing Deep In His Own Excrement In A Feedlot, Helping To Pollute The Local Streams. Or That The Calf That Yielded The Veal Cutlet On Her Plate Spent Its Life In A Box In Which It Did Not Have Room To Turn Around.

Eating With The Fullest Pleasure - Pleasure, That Is, That Does Not Depend On Ignorance - Is Perhaps The Profoundest Enactment Of Our Connection With The World. In This Pleasure We Experience Our Dependence And Our Gratitude, For We Are Living In A Mystery, From Creatures We Did Not Make And Powers We Cannot Comprehend.

You've Got To Reach Towards A Better Language, And You're Not Going To Make It Up From Scratch; You've Got To Reach Back Into The Tradition. Western Tradition Is Not As Impoverished As A Lot Of People Would Like To Think, But You'd Have To Go Back Before The Industrial Revolution; You May Have To Go Back Farther Than That. Of Course, The Bible Has A Perfectly Adequate Language, But It's Suffered A Lot Of Thoughtless Wear.

I Think Of The Old Slavery, And Of The Way The Economy Has Now Improved Upon It. The New Slavery Has Improved Upon The Old By Giving The New Slaves The Illusion That They Are Free. The Economy Does Not Take People's Freedom By Force, Which Would Be Against Its Principles, For It Is Very Humane. It Buys Their Freedom, Pays For It, And Then Persuades Its Money Back Again With Shoddy Goods And The Promise Of Freedom. "buy A Car," It Says, "and Be Free. Buy A Boat And Be Free." Is This Not The Raw Material Of Bad Dreams? Or Is It Maybe The Very Nightmare Itself?