All definitions of wilderness that exclude people seem to me to be false. African 'wilderness' areas are racist because indigenous people are being cleared out of them so white people can go on holiday there.
Jay GriffithsRead
The silencing of the rainforests is a double deforestation, not only of trees but a deforestation of the mind's music, medicine and knowledge.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the loss of biodiversity and cultural knowledge caused by deforestation and its impact on human consciousness.
Jay Griffiths' quote emphasizes that the destruction of rainforests represents a profound loss beyond just the physical trees; it signifies the erasure of the rich cultural and ecological knowledge that these environments embody. When rainforests are silenced, we lose not only their natural beauty and resources but also the wisdom and creativity that has been inspired by them throughout human history.
Themes
DeforestationRainforestsKnowledgeMindCulture
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a speech on environmental conservation to emphasize the importance of protecting both nature and culture.
More from Jay Griffiths
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The wooing of the Earth thus implies much more than converting the wilderness into humanized environments. It means also preserving natural environments in which to experience mysteries transcending daily life and from which to recapture, in a Proustian kind of remembrance, the awareness of the cosmic forces that have shaped humankind.
Rene DubosRead
I feel like the earth, astonished at fragrance borne in the air, made pregnant with mystery from a drop of rain.
RumiRead
We are all born bonded to nature; that's why we put depictions of flowers and forests, rather than bulldozers or log piles, on our walls.
Bob BrownRead
High horns, low horns, silence, and finally a pandemonium of trumpets, rattles, croaks, and cries that almost shakes the bog with its nearness ... A new day has begun on the crane marsh. A sense of time lies thick and heavy on such a place ... Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.
Aldo LeopoldRead
Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without.
John Stuart MillRead
We've poisoned the air, the water, and the land. In our passion to control nature, things have gone out of control. Progress from now on has to mean something different. We're running out of resources and we are running out of time.
Robert RedfordRead