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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I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.
Henry David ThoreauRead
Coral reefs, the rain forest of the ocean, are home for one-third of the species of the sea. Coral reefs are under stress for several reasons, including warming of the ocean, but especially because of ocean acidification, a direct effect of added carbon dioxide. Ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid.
James HansenRead
Tree sitting is a last resort. When you see someone sitting in a tree trying to protect it, you know that every level of our society has failed.
Julia HillRead
So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.
Mark TwainRead
When I speak My lips feel cold - The autumn wind.
Matsuo BashoRead
Love is a powerful tool, and maybe, just maybe, before the last little town is corrupted and the last of the unroaded and undeveloped wildness is given over to dreams of profit, maybe it will be love, finally, love for the land for its own sake and for what it holds of beauty and joy and spiritual redemption that will make [wilderness] not a battlefield but a revelation.
T. H. WatkinsRead