Who is to say how much richness I rob myself of by interacting only economically with those around me? And, worse, how much does it hurt me to take my pleasure from one who is unwilling, or who is hurt, or degraded, in that pleasuring? How does it hurt me to redefine myself as one who feels no connection, who chains myself to one definition of myself while denying emphatically and in action those chains of relatedness that in all reality bind each of us to every other? How much does it impoverish me to live in a society where, by mutual and unsound agreement, we all seem to value something as intangible and unreal as money more than we value something so tangible, so real, so necessary as a beating heart, a willing body, and a contended and happy and self-assured and self-possessed person? How can we value money more than relationships, more than life?
Derrick Jensen
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