It's easy for people in an air-conditioned room to continue with the policies of destruction of Mother Earth. We need instead to put ourselves in the shoes of families in Bolivia and worldwide that lack water and food and suffer misery and hunger.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the disconnect between those who are comfortable and the suffering of those affected by environmental destruction.
Evo Morales highlights the issue of environmental neglect by contrasting the comfortable living conditions of people in wealthy, air-conditioned spaces with the dire circumstances faced by families in impoverished regions like Bolivia. He calls for empathy and a recognition of our responsibility towards those suffering from the consequences of our policies, urging a shift in perspective to foster greater awareness and action against environmental degradation.
In practice
In a speech on climate awareness, use this quote to illustrate the disparity between privilege and suffering.
Bolivia's majority Indian population was always excluded, politically oppressed and culturally alienated. Our national wealth, our raw materials, was plundered. Indios were once treated like animals here. In the 1930s and 40s, they were sprayed with DDT to kill the vermin on their skin and in their hair whenever they came into the city.
The peoples of the Andes believe in the concept of 'living well' instead of wanting to 'live better' by consuming more, regardless of the cost to our neighbors and our environment.
We are telling our kids that nature is in the past and it probably doesn't count anymore, the future is in electronics, the boogeyman is in the woods, and playing outdoors is probably illicit and possibly illegal.
Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.
October is nature's funeral month. Nature glories in death more than in life. The month of departure is more beautiful than the month of coming - October than May. Every green thin loves to die in bright colors.
Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.
O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou build thy dark, Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs, Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.
Since I was a boy, from this house, I was out rescuing crocodiles and snakes. My mum and dad were very passionate about that and, I was lucky enough to go along.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.