Since I am on a quotation spree, here is another, this one from Wendell Berry, who died two days ago at 92.

At a Vietnam war protest in 1968 he said that as a member of the human race he was “in the worst possible company: communists, fascists and totalitarians of all sorts, militarists and tyrants, exploiters, vandals, gluttons, ignoramuses, murderers.” But he was given hope by people “who through all the sad destructive centuries of our history have kept alive the vision of peace and kindness and generosity and humility and freedom.”

He also said that “Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy” and that “Nearly every one of us, nearly every day of his life, is contributing directly to the ruin of this planet.”

In  her essay “Wendell Berry’s Advice for a Cataclysmic Age” published in the New Yorker (February 21, 2022), Dorothy Wickenden notes that he wrote her that he belongs to “a tiny side but no party.” This is how I would like to describe my politics from now on — on the side of the living planet, of cooperation and compassion, of justice and truth.