29 Nov

nature of our seeking

I was, as I had kept discovering, too soft his life. I could not quite keep up physically. More importantly, I could not cope up with the uncertainty: with the dislocation of not knowing whether I would eat today or eat tomorrow, or still possess a living – or a life – in a month’s time. The Maasai accepted wild fluctuations in their fortunes with equanimity. In one season, their cattle would darken the plains; in the next, drought struck and they had nothing. To know what comes next has been perhaps the dominant aim of materially complex societies. Yet, having achieved it, or almost achieved it, we have been rewarded with a new collection of unmet needs. We have privileged safety over experience; gained much in doing so, and lost much.

~ George Monbiot in Feral