QUOTE: RELATIONSHIP WITH THE EARTH, CONNECTION TO NATURE - #7

“History forgets. It forgets the truth of mankind’s embeddedness in this earthy planet: it forgets that there is no interesting or sane account of mankind apart from this larger narrative… History also forgets that the so-called underdeveloped countries were made that way by the magic wand of the civilization that now pretends to be their benefactor. The inroads of disease and colonialism… and the resulting cultural and social unraveling brought these people to their knees, to the pitiful, resentful, and rebellious state in which we, in the West, have regarded these ungrateful wretches over the past five centuries. They were feeding themselves just fine, and managing their relatively few indigenous diseases, and all in all were demographically stable before the Columbuses, Cortéses, Cartiers, Drakes, Magellans, and James Cooks dropped anchor, with their swarms of pathogens, rats and imperial mandates.”

- In the Spirit of the Earth: Rethinking History and Time, Calvin Luther Martin