October 11, 2014

Imagine the Problem...

From Charles Bowden's book Blood Orchid:

"Imagine the problem is not physical. Imagine the problem has never been physical, that it is not biodiversity, it is not the ozone layer, it is not the green house effect, the whales, the old-growth forest, the loss of jobs, the crack in the ghetto, the abortions, the tongue in the mouth, the diseases stalking everywhere as love goes on unconcerned. Imagine the problem is not some syndrome of our society that can be solved by commissions or laws or a redistribution of what we call wealth. Imagine that it goes deeper, right to the core of what we call our civilization and that no one outside of ourselves can affect real change, that our civilization, our governments are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead and that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness... then what are we to do?"

I took this quote from the High Country News article on Charles Bowden entitled "Charles Bowden's Fury: How a desert writer chased his own white whale", October 13, 2014, Vol. 46 No. 17