I think that thing about the destruction of the world is there all the time, it's there every day when we look out the window.
Evolution is what it is. The upper classes have always died out; it's one of the most charming things about them.
Twelve years ago, when I was on the Pine Ridge Reservation for 'Thunderheart,' I was dong research into Native American horses that had come into extinction. I was tracing certain Lakota bloodlines, and it became an obsession.
The end of commercial fishing is predicted long before the middle of the 21st century.
In a few generations more, there will probably be no room at all allowed for animals on the earth: no need of them, no toleration of them. An immense agony will have then ceased, but with it there will also have passed away the last smile of the world's youth.
I'm not talking about losing [agricultural] diversity in the same way that you lose your car keys. I'm talking about losing it in the same way that we lost the dinosaurs: actually losing it, never to be seen again.
In harmony with the Tao, the sky is clear and spacious, the earth is solid and full, all creature flourish together, content with the way they are, endlessly repeating themselves, endlessly renewed. When man interferes with the Tao, the sky becomes filthy, the earth becomes depleted, the equilibrium crumbles, creatures become extinct. The Master views the parts with compassion, because he understands the whole. His constant practice is humility. He doesn't glitter like a jewel but lets himself be shaped by the Tao, as rugged and common as stone.
Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish. There's no doubt in my heart.
The overpopulation of the earth The destruction of our natural habitat The rat race of humanity against itself The disappearance of all strong emotions and passions through pampering Genetic deterioration through deficient selection pressure on development and the lack of preservation of the norms of social behavior The breakdown of tradition; and The increasing susceptibility of humans to indoctrination
When I consider that the noble animals have been exterminated here - the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc, etc - I cannot but feel as I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.
The buffaloes are gone. And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.