Animism is not a belief system, but a worldview: The world is a sacred place and we are part of it. The factuality of this statement is not the issue. To say that the world is a sacred place is to make a statement about values, not facts. It’s a statement about what you mean by ‘sacred,’ just as ‘Money can’t buy happiness’ is a statement about what you mean by ‘happiness.’ To put it all very simply, animism isn’t a belief system, it’s a value system.

The sign stopped me-- or rather, this text stopped me. Words are my profession; I seized these and demanded that they explain themselves, that they cease to be ambiguous.

Many of the biggest and most far-reaching investments we make in our lives are investments that have little or nothing to do with money.

If the world was made for us, then it BELONGS to us and we can do what we damn well please with it.

Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he's done.. almost. He hasn't quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man's conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world.. or to repair the devastation we've already wrought.

We are all captives of a story.

If you alone found out what the lie was, then you're probably right—it would make no great difference. But if you ALL found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed.