Believe It If You Need It Or Need It If You Dare

Grateful Dead: Box of Rain

Seth Boyden: An Object at Rest

Civilization is an experiment,
a very recent way of life
in the human career, and it
has a habit of walking into
what I am calling progress traps.
A small village on good land
beside a river is a good idea;
but when the village
grows into a city and
paves over the good land,
it becomes a bad idea.
While prevention
might have been easy,
a cure may be impossible:
a city isn't easily moved.
This human inability to foresee
-- or to watch out for --
long-range consequences
may be inherent to our kind,
shaped by the millions of years
when we lived
from hand to mouth
by hunting and gathering.
It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed, and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer.
--Ronald Wright
A Short History of Progress