The chief lesson is that the world displays a lovely order, an order comforting in its intricacy. And the most appealing part of this harmony, perhaps, is it permanence---the sense that we are part of something with roots stretching back nearly forever, and branches reaching forward just as far. Purely human life provides only a partial fulfillment of this desire for a kind of immortality. As individuals we feel desperately alone: we may not have children, or we may not care much how they have turned out; we may not care to trace ourselves back through our parents; some of us may even be misanthropes, or feel that our lives are unimportant, brief, and hurried rushes towards a final emptiness. But the earth and all its processes---the sun growing plants, flesh feeding on these plants, flesh decaying to nourish more plants, to name just one cycle---gives us some sense of a more enduring role. The poet Robinson Jeffers. a deeply pessimistic man with regard to the human condition, once wrote, "The parts change and pass, or die, people and races, rocks and stars; none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole.... It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of a deeper sort of love; and that there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation...."
The End Of Nature by Bill McKibben
art by Melelel
programming by DPC
