#jules pretty

[notes-slowroots]

[Q]uestions about identity and meaning are relevant for all of us. We're all trying to make sense, to find the right stories to tell about ourselves.

Jules Pretty, The Edge of Extinction: Travels with Enduring People in Vanishing Lands (2014, p. 174)

[notes-slowroots]

Material progress is not a good substitute for all this. The comments of long-gone visitors are revealing: *magic* is the most common word. The deep desire for the simple life. The escape. Nothing to do. It is like being on the beach—it legitimizes doing nothing. Somehow, people find it hard to do nothing at home, where other demands invade. Yet here deep in the marshes is that potential. It is being somewhere, not exactly doing nothing, that matters.

Jules Pretty, The Edge of Extinction: Travels with Enduring People in Vanishing Lands (2014, p. 101)

[notes-slowroots]

Here's [an answer]: let people live on their land, where the organizing matrix of identity, knowledge, respect, and action can keep both people and land healthy, and above all give meaning. But industrial governments don't seem to believe it. Their civilization is so good, they say, why should anyone want to live differently? But living like us, you'd like to remind them, probably means the end of the world as we know it.

Jules Pretty, The Edge of Extinction: Travels with Enduring People in Vanishing Lands (2014, p. 27)