Commodification of Nature

Mushroom Sunset        Jean Stimmell©2011

"Still, the current commodification of 'nature' by civilization tell us little or nothing of the perceptual shift that made possible this reduction of the animal (and the earth) to an object...

"But can we even hope to catch a glimpse of this process, which has given rise to so many of the habits and linquistic prejudices that now structure our very thinking? Certainly not if we gaze toward that origin from within the midst of the very civilizaiton it engendered...

"But perhaps we may make our stand along the edge of that civilization, like a magician, or like a person who, having lived among another tribe, can no longer wholly return to his own.*

* Quote from page 28 of
The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

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