we don't need to change how we do conservation, we need to change why we do it

Tag: Human nature

Yes, I still have questions. Do you?

In case you’re wondering why I haven’t posted lately, it’s not because I’ve lost interest in species conservation, rewilding, or looking at any other issues through the lens of Natural History. I just don’t have anything to say lately that I haven’t already said in these pages. Please read any one of my past posts …

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ONCE YOU SEE IT YOU CAN’T UN-SEE IT

“The devil of complacency is in the ignorance of detail.” This is another post that I’ve resurrected, and updated, from four years back, because it places the Extremophile Choice hypothesis in the context of the broader, and not the currently fashionable, ecological discussion. The original has earned more attention from ecological nerdom than many of my other blogposts, so …

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Young Buddha’s Dreamscape, Part-3: Our Relation to Each Other

A short selection from Essay Fifty — one of the longer essays, and THE LAST — in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice The Great Way is not difficult; just avoid picking and choosing. —from the Hsin Hsin Ming [1] A Buddhist monk commits to pay attention to whatever “arises” in his or her daily life and, when it’s clearly helpful, …

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Young Buddha’s Dreamscape, Part-2: Relation to Tools and other ‘Behaviour Extensions’

A short selection from Essay Forty-nine — one of the longer essays, and the second last — in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice There is something in this [experimental path] which reminds us of the obstinate adherence of Columbus to his notion of the necessary existence of the New World; and … may serve to teach us reliance on those …

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Young Buddha’s Dreamscape, Part-1: Relation to the Living World

A short selection from Essay Forty-eight — one of the longer essays, and third from the end — in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice Everyone has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of a dry leaf of an old table …

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Young Buddha Meets Old Buddha, Part-3: Do Buddha’s have Bodies with Dreamscapes to Fill?

A short selection from Essay Forty-seven in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. When you see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body-and-mind, you intuit dharmas intimately. Unlike things and their reflections in the mirror, and unlike the moon and its reflection in the water, when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. …

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Young Buddha Meets Old Buddha, Part-2: What the Tree of Knowledge can Learn from the Tree of Life

A short selection from Essay Forty-six in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] 9 … God caused to spring up … the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the …

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Young Buddha Meets Old Buddha, Part-1: Realizing that Humans are Naturally Compromised

A short selection from Essay Forty-five in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. Do not depart from deceptions and errors; for they of themselves are the nature of True Reality. When all things are illumined by wisdom and there is neither grasping nor throwing away, then you can see into your own nature and gain …

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Young Buddha leaves Home, Part-5: Trouble with ‘Visionary’ Philosophies

A short selection from Essay Forty-four in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] The subtle source is clear and bright; the branching streams flow in the dark. To attach to things is primordial illusion; to encounter the absolute is not …

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Young Buddha leaves Home, Part-4: Facing a New Conceptual Field

A short selection from Essay Forty-three in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] Direct your eye inward, and you will find a thousand regions in your mind yet undiscovered. Travel them and be expert in home-cosmography. —Thoreau [1] From personal …

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