I remember staring at the computer screen--light green letters on dark--then at the clock, and finally at my outstretched fingers held a foot in fron… - Derrick Jensen

So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.

We can talk all we want about conservation biology and about the use of science to measure biodiversity,45 but in the real, physical world the real, physical effects of science on real, living nonhumans has been nothing short of atrocious.

Violence, and evil, doesn't always come dressed in black, and it doesn't always look like Charles Manson. Nor does it always come to us as obvious and arrogant[...]. Often it comes to us with the simple plea to be reasonable.