Afterword: Places Where the Wind Carries the Ashes of the Ancestors
October 31, 2012
There is a collective voice gathering force, wisdom forged out of the connection between humans and the particular paces they inhabit and know to be sacred; a wisdom in contradiction with the economic forces of our time. It is necessary to find a way to let this wisdom challenge our present economic arrangements. The real question of progress is whether we can construct an economy that doesn’t defile the sacred; the resting places of the ashes and memories of our ancestors. This isn’t a question of economic value. Instead it is a question of the value of embedding ourselves in the all-sustaining and resonant magic of the Earth. It is a question of the value of greater purpose and less human hubris. It is a question of the value of appreciating that it isn’t all about us. Our energy challenge should be the catalyst to step back from the bring of this abyss before the waning hours of the fossil fuel economy alters our sense of place so irrevocably that we no longer see ourselves as Earthlings.
This is a chapter from The ENERGY Reader: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth (2012).