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Gardening lion (25 Dec. 2008)

It's too bad that in order to be Progressive you've apparently got to love Nature too. Myself, I don't much like swamps. I'm not sure if I'm all that big on fir-trees, either. I guess when it comes to nature I'm mostly in the Annie Dillard camp -- you know, amongst those that see quite a bit of amazing beauty in nature, but a good hunk of absolutely horrifying muck as well.

It'd be cool to be allowed to be progressive and really prefer cities, urban landscapes--wo/man-made stuff. It'd be nice to be able to count oneself as progressive and mostly be focused on all the amazing particularities and beautiful variances in high-end designer goods, rather than those in nature.

It'd be nice to know that no one could say of progressives -- "You've seen one progressive, you've seen them all"--and readily be believed.

And I still think that progressives ought to be those who, when they see some poor starving lion snacking on some poor baby antelope, would find themselves drawn to think, "you know, we've really got to stop all that needless suffering. " Who'd hear talk of the beauty of ecosystems and the horrors of human intervention, and still find themselves thinking, "you know, I'd still prefer it if those starving lions stopped munching on those baby antelopes . . . Maybe we could encourage them to garden . . ."

Link: The Tyee

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