The
life I touch for good or ill will touch another life,
and that in turn another, until who knows where the
trembling stops or in what far place my touch will
be felt.
-- Frederick Buechner
A
diverse ecosystem will also be resilient, because
it contains many species with overlapping ecological
functions that can partially replace one another.
When a particular species is destroyed by a severe
disturbance so that a link in the network is broken,
a diverse community will be able to survive and reorganize
itself... In other words, the more complex the network
is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections,
the more resilient it will be.
-- Fritjof Capra
No
part of the human community can live entirely on its
own planet, with its own laws of motion and cut off
from the rest of humanity.
-- Hugo Chavez
The
reality today is that we are all interdependent
and have to co-exist on this small planet. Therefore,
the only sensible and intelligent way of resolving
differences and clashes of interests, whether
between individuals or nations, is through dialogue.
- The
Dalai Lama |
|
 |
A
human being is a part of the whole, called by
us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings
as something separated from the rest -- a kind
of optical delusion of his consciousness. This
delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting
us to our personal desires and to affection
for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must
be to free ourselves from this prison by widening
our circle of compassion to embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but
the striving for such achievement is in itself
a part of the liberation and a foundation for
inner security
-- Albert
Einstein
|
Today
the network of relationships linking the human race
to itself and to the rest of the biosphere is so complex
that all aspects affect all others to an extraordinary
degree. Someone should be studying the whole system,
however crudely that has to be done, because no gluing
together of partial studies of a complex nonlinear
system can give a good idea of the behavior of the
whole.
-- Murray Gell-Mann
|
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
I can never be what I ought to be until you
are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated
structure of reality.
--
Martin
Luther King, Jr
|
 |
We
are all connected to everyone and everything in the
universe. Therefore, everything one does as an individual
affects the whole. All thoughts, words, images, prayers,
blessings, and deeds are listened to by all that is.
-- Serge Kahili King
|
|
"Our
vision of interconnectedness resonates with
new networks of world citizens in nongovernmental
organizations linking from numberless centers
of energy, expressing the emergence of a new
organic whole, seeking unity within and across
national lines... If governments and their leaders,
bound by hierarchy and patriarchy, wedded to
military might for legitimacy, fail to grasp
the implications of an emerging world consciousness
for cooperation, for peace and for sustainability,
they may become irrelevant."
~ Dennis
Kucinich
|
If
you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always
beautiful. Planets, lives.... But close up a world's
all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard
job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
We
cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected
by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic
fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us
as results.
Herman Melville
|
|
When
one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds
it attached to the rest of the world.
~ John
Muir
|
We
don't accomplish anything in this world alone ...
and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry
of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads
from one to another that creates something.
-- Sandra Day O'Connor
Isn't
everyone a part of everyone else?
-- Budd Schulberg
|
|
All
things are connected like the blood that unites
us, We did not weave the web of life. We are
merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the
web, we do to ourselves.
~ Chief
Seattle
"Whatever
befalls the earth, befalls the people of the
earth."
~ Chief
Seattle
What
is man without the beasts? If all the beasts
were gone, man would die from a great loneliness
of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts,
soon happens to man. All things are connected.
~ Chief
Seattle
|
Systems
thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is
a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than
things, for seeing patterns of change rather than
static "snapshots." It is a set of general principles
-- distilled over the course of the twentieth century,
spanning fields as diverse as the physical and social
sciences, engineering, and management.... During the
last thirty years, these tools have been applied to
understand a wide range of corporate, urban, regional,
economic, political, ecological, and even psychological
systems. And systems thinking is a sensibility --
for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living
systems their unique character.
-- Peter Senge
|
"Independence"...
middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent
on one another, every soul of us on earth.
-- George
Bernard Shaw
|
|
The
same stream of life that runs through my veins night
and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic
measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through
the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle
of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel
my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world
of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages
dancing in my blood this moment.
-- Rabindranath Tagore
I
am a part of all that I have met.
-- Lord Tennyson
"We
are faced with having to learn again about interdependency
and the need for rootedness after several centuries
of having systematically—and proudly—dismantled our
roots, ties, and traditions. We had grown so tall
we thought we could afford to cut the roots that held
us down, only to discover that the tallest trees need
the most elaborate roots of all."
-- Paul L. Wachtel
