More and more, we take for granted that work must be destitute of pleasure. More and more, we assume that if we want to be pleased we must wait until evening, or the weekend, or vacation, or retirement. More and more, our farms and forests resemble our factories and offices, which in turn more and more resemble prisons–why else should we be so eager to escape them? We recognize defeated landscapes by the absence of pleasure from them. We are defeated at work because our work gives us no pleasure. We are defeated at home because we have no pleasant work there. We turn to the pleasure industries for relief from our defeat, and are again defeated, for the pleasure industries can thrive and grow only upon our dissatisfaction with them. Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?.Wendell Berry
About This Quote
Henry David Thoreau said, “There is too much civilization. It makes for a chaotic mind.” He was referring to the fact that man is becoming more and more removed from nature, which he felt was the source of his pleasure. He looked for that pleasure in the natural world, in the wild, in nature itself. If one wanted to find pleasure in nature, then one should go out into it and get away from civilization.
Source: What Are People For?
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