Nathan Van cooten

“Consider this thought experiment: if Portugal has higher levels of human welfare than the United States with $38,000 less GDP per capita, then we can conclude that $38,000 of America’s per capita income is effectively ‘wasted’. That adds up to $13 trillion per year for the US economy as a whole. That’s $13 trillion worth of extraction and production and consumption each year, and $13 trillion worth of ecological pressure, that adds nothing, in and of itself, to the fundamentals of human welfare. It is damage without gain. This means that the US economy could in theory be scaled down by a staggering 65% from its present size while at the same time improving the lives of ordinary Americans, if income was distributed more fairly and invested in public goods.”
― Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

“Every day you have choices. You can do things that wound your soul, like being dominated by the work ethic or compulsively seeking more money and possessions, or you can be around people who give you pleasure and do things that satisfy a desire deep inside you. Make this soul care a way of life, and you may discover what the Greeks called eudaimonia—a good spirit, or, in the deepest sense, happiness.”
― Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

“Look at the sun. The sun is shining. Nobody polishes the sun. The sun just shines. Look at the moon, the sky, the world at its best. Unfortunately, we human beings try to fit everything into conditionality. We try to make something out of nothing. We have messed everything up. That’s our problem. We have to go back to the sun and the moon, to dragons, tigers, lions, garudas (mythical birds). We can be like the blue sky, sweethearts, and the clouds so clean, so beautiful. We don’t have to try too hard to find ourselves. We haven’t really lost anything; we just have to tune in. The majesty of the world is always there.”
― Chögyam Trungpa, Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala

“How will we make space to hold the memory of the collective? There are times when belonging is not cemented in the lived moment of an experience but in the lively or sombre retelling of the moment afterward. Which means we can transfer belonging to the next generation by welcoming them into memories that they (or we) have not lived but choose to steward. In many spaces, to foster collective memory well, we must habitually ask ourselves, Whose story gets told, whose story is believed, and who gets to tell it? If we surrender our individual egos, these questions can function as a pruning process, as we contend with accounts that don’t line up quite flush. This interrogation may reveal false memories.”
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us