Derrick Jensen: We Must Learn How To Think Like the Planet

Photo by Molly: Columbia River Gorge

We Must Learn How To Think 

Like the Planet

So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.

A culture that values production over life values the wrong things, because it will produce things at the expense of living beings, human or otherwise.
 
All we want, whether we are honeybees, salmon, trash-collecting ants, ponderosa pines, coyotes, human beings, or stars, is to love and be loved, to be accepted, cherished, and celebrated simply for being who we are. Is that so very difficult?
 
We must learn how to think like the planet.

— Derrick Jensen