We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.

When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to "hope" at all. We simply do the work.

To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation.

A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of green paper.

The pretense that humans are superior to nonhumans is entirely unsupportable. I have seen no compelling evidence that humans are particularly more "intelligent" than any other creature. I have had long and fruitful relationshis with many nonhuman animals, both domesticated and wild, and have reveled in the bouquet of radically different intelligences - different forms, not different "quantities" that they have introduced to me, each in his or her own time, in his or her own way.

A wonderful thing happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place. You realize that giving up on hope doesn't kill you, nor did it make you less effective. In fact it made you more effective, because you ceased relying on someone or something else to solve your problems - you ceased hoping your problems somehow get solved, through the magical assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant tree-sitters, brave salmon, or even the Earth itself - and you just began doing what's necessary to solve your problems yourself.

If we hope to stem the mass destruction that inevitably attends our economic system (and to alter the sense of entitlement - the sense of contempt, the hatred - on which it is based), fundamental historical, social, economic, and technological forces need to be pondered, understood, and redirected. Behavior won't change much without a fundamental change in consciousness. The question becomes: How do we change consciousness?