"Portal to the Past", original oil painting
-- by Horatio Algeranon
We're in a "Progress Trap"
A snare of our own making
An Eco-humility gap
"The Earth is for our taking"
With locomotive fast in motion
And pedal to the floor
We can't accept at last the notion
That less is sometimes more
"There is a pattern in the past of civilization after civilization wearing out its welcome from nature, overexploiting its environment, overexpanding, overpopulating...This is what I called in ‘A Short History of Progress’ the ‘progress trap.’ We have set in motion an industrial machine of such complexity and such dependence on expansion that we do not know how to make do with less or move to a steady state in terms of our demands on nature." -- Ronald Wright (quoted by Chris Hedges inThe Myth of Human Progress)
