“I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant’s brilliant non-fiction about humankind’s tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar’s Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it.” WorldShouldHumansChildrenLongRealCultureNaturalHuman BeingsAnimalFictionMoralNovelBraveBrilliantTreatedStorytellingPreservesComplexityHumankindNatural WorldNon FictionLamentVisceralDebutAmbivalentJaguars Author:John Burnham Schwartz
“It is not just contemporary industrial society that is dysfunctional; it is civilization itself. We humans are born to be creatures of the land and the sea and the stars; we are relations to the animals, cohorts to the plants. Our well being, and the well-being of the very planet depend on our pursuance of our given place within the natural world.” WorldHumansWellsGivenStarsBornNaturalAnimalSeaLandPlanetsDependsCivilizationCreaturesRelationPlantContemporaryWell BeingNatural World Author:Chellis Glendinning
“Whatever the advantages of the machine may be - and they are many - the very ease of its use is bound to make away with intimacy - the intercourse of human beings, of animals, or of that which we still think of as the natural world.” ThinkingWorldHumansMayStillsUseNaturalHuman BeingsAnimalTechnologyAdvantageMachinesBoundsIntimacyEaseNatural WorldIntercourse Book:the zodiac arch Source: the zodiac arch
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all species are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” IfsWorldShouldYearsRunningPurposeSufferingUniverseEvilNaturalAnimalAliveMinutesDyingDesignEvolutionAmountDiseasePropertySpeciesBottomSentencesIndifferenceContemplationDecentTake MeThirstNatural WorldStarvationParasitesGod Delusion Author:Richard Dawkins
“I'm extremely interested in science as the mythos within which I live. Science tells me what kind of animal I am, what kind of a universe I live in. It's always deepening my understanding of the natural world.” WorldKindUniverseUnderstandingNaturalAnimalNatural World Author:Alison Hawthorne Deming
“I think every pet lover has an appreciation for nature - I've never met an animal lover who didn't have some kind of connection to the natural world.” ThinkingWorldKindNaturalAnimalLoversMetsConnectionsAppreciationPetNatural WorldAnimal LoveAnimal Lover Author:Glenn Close
“The natural world operates by its own set of rules. The animal world, all the places that are feral and ungovernable, that's where I find a lot of inspiration. There is just as much beauty there, but there is also decay and violence.” WorldInspirationNaturalAnimalViolenceDecayNatural WorldAnimal World Author:Carrie Brownstein
“The romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things, but they still kill the animals and uproot the plants in order to eat, to live. If they don't, they will die.” PeopleIfsWorldMayStillsSpiritualOrderDiesBeliefNaturalAnimalViewsAll ThingsPlantUnityNatural WorldEdenSpiritual Beliefs Author:Michael Crichton
“In a way, human beings have never been part of the natural order; we're not biological in the normal sense. Normal biological animals stop eating when they're not hungry and stop breeding when there is no sense in breeding. By contrast, human beings are what I think of as "biomythic" animals: we're controlled largely by the stories we tell. When we get the story wrong, we get out of harmony with the rest of the natural order. For a long time, our unnatural beahvior didn't threaten the natural world, but now it does.” ThinkingWorldWayHumansLongDoeStoriesOrderNaturalHuman BeingsAnimalNormalEatingLong TimeHarmonyHungryControlledContrastNatural WorldUnnaturalBreedingNatural Order Author:Sam Keen
“When it's one animal, you really do have a tougher time because you've gotta commit to story structures that maybe are difficult to find the range in the animal to tell those stories. There are only so many things they do, if they're living in the natural world, that we can appreciate. There are plenty of things that they do that we don't appreciate.” IfsWorldStoriesDifficultNaturalAnimalAppreciateStructureCommitPlentyRangeNatural World Author:David Douglas