A collection of online references
Étienne de La Boétie
Where has [the tyrant] acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you?
~oo0oo~
Ken Jones
Dogen elaborated and enlarged the contention of predecessors like Hui Neng that all beings have (or rather, are) the Buddha Nature. That is to say, we all are intrinsically inwardly at peace and outwardly compassionate but are characteristically too fearful and deluded to be aware that this is so. And yet the world around us is constantly seeking to en-lighten us, like the sun trying to break through a cloudy sky. Hence Dogen’s dictum “When the self advances, the ten thousand things retreat; but when the self withdraws the ten thousand things advance”. Thus even sticks and stones and the rest of inanimate nature are there to wake us up, and hence are themselves “enlightened” and possessed of the Buddha Nature. There is here the essence of a dynamic and mutually transformative Dharmic ecology.
Zen Master Dogen’s “Active Compassion”
__________
Especially in modernity, individual achievement and acquisitiveness, as well as the more traditional belongingness, are endeavours for achieving ‘this’. These, however, are precarious never enough and always threatened by ‘that’ – which is to say everything that threatens to undo the well fortified sense of self that may have been achieved. In Hubert Benoit’s metaphor, this is our long and ultimately unwinnable lawsuit with reality, a lawsuit, incidentally, which is now becoming evident on an historical and global scale.
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Leopold Kohr
Not only history but also our own experience has taught us that true democracy in Europe can only be achieved in little states. Only there the individual can retain his place and dignity. And if democracy is a worthwhile idea, we have to create again the conditions for its development, the small state, and give the glory of sovereignty (instead of curtailing an institution from which no one wants to depart) to the smallest community and to as many people as possible. It will be easy to unite small states under one continental federal system and thus also satisfy, secondarily, those who want to live on universal terms. Such a Europe is like a fertile inspiration and a grandiose picture, although not a modern one which you paint in one dull line. It will be like a mosaic with fascinating variations and diversity, but also with the harmony of the organic and living whole.
~oo0oo~
Peter Kropotkin
A careful observation of those primitive societies still remaining at the level of the Stone Age shows to what a great extent the members of the same community practice solidarity among themselves. This is the reason why practical solidarity never ceases; not even during the worst periods of history. Even when temporary circumstances of domination, servitude, exploitation cause the principle to be disowned, it still lives deep in the thoughts of the many, ready to bring about a strong recoil against evil institutions, a revolution. If it were otherwise society would perish. For the vast majority of animals and men this feeling remains, and must remain an acquired habit, a principle always present to the mind even when it is continually ignored in action.
~oo0oo~
Gustav Landauer
The state is a social relationship; a certain way of people relating to one another. It can be destroyed by creating new social relationships; i.e., by people relating to one another differently.
Weak Statesmen, Weaker People!
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Aldo Leopold
We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain.
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Thomas Paine
And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation, from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that inseparable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor therefore of cultivated land, owes to the community a ground-rent; for I know no better term to express the idea by, for the land which he holds: and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue.
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Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
But none of these titles confer upon me the right of property. For, if I attempt to base it upon occupancy, society can reply, “I am the original occupant.” If I appeal to my labor, it will say, “It is only on that condition that you possess.” If I speak of agreements, it will respond, “These agreements establish only your right of use.” Such, however, are the only titles which proprietors advance. They never have been able to discover any others. Indeed, every right … supposes a producing cause in the person who enjoys it; but in man who lives and dies, in this son of earth who passes away like a shadow, there exists, with respect to external things, only titles of possession, not one title of property. Why, then, has society recognized a right injurious to itself, where there is no producing cause? Why, in according possession, has it also conceded property? Why has the law sanctioned this abuse of power?
Elinor Ostrom
Cooperation is maintained by the interaction of reciprocity, reputation, and trust and not by altruism. It follows that we live in “a world of possibility rather than of necessity. We are neither trapped in inexorable tragedies nor free of moral responsibility for creating and sustaining incentives that facilitate our own achievement of mutually productive outcomes.”
Eight Rules for Managing the Commons
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Gary Snyder
The joyous and voluntary poverty of Buddhism becomes a positive force. The traditional harmlessness and refusal to take life in any form has nation-shaking implications. The practice of meditation, for which one needs only “the ground beneath one’s feet,” wipes out mountains of junk being pumped into the mind by the mass media and supermarket universities.
Buddhism and the Coming Revolution
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Leo Tolstoy
“And what will be the price?” asked Pahom.
“Our price is always the same: one thousand roubles a day.”
Pahom did not understand.
“A day? What measure is that? How many acres would that be?”
“We do not know how to reckon it out,” said the Chief. “We sell it by the day. As much as you can go round on your feet in a day is yours, and the price is one thousand roubles a day.”
How Much Land Does a Man Need?
__________
To use violence is impossible; it would only cause reaction. To join the ranks of the Government is also impossible — one would only become its instrument. One course therefore remains — to fight the Government by means of thought, speech, actions, life, neither yielding to Government nor joining its ranks and thereby increasing its power.
This alone is needed, will certainly be successful.
__________
I sit on a man’s neck, I weigh him down, and I demand that he shall carry me; and without descending from his shoulders I assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him, and that I desire to ameliorate his condition by all possible means, only not by getting off of him.
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George Woodcock
There will still be the need for theoreticians to carry on the work which Kropotkin and Geddes and Mumford began in the past, of demonstrating the ultimately self-destructive character of political and industrial centralism, and showing how society as a whole, and not merely the lost corners of it, can be brought back to health and peace by breaking down the pyramids of authority, so that men can be given to eat the bread of brotherly love, and not the stones of power – of any power.
~oo0oo~
John Woolman
Were all superfluities and the desire of outward greatness laid aside and the right use of things universally attended to, such a number of people might be employed in things useful that moderate labour with the blessing of heaven would answer all good purposes relating to people and their animals, and a sufficient number have leisure to attend on proper affairs of civil society.
~oo0oo~
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