We have it within our deepest powers not only to change ourselves
but to change our culture.
— Gary Snyder
Fifty years ago, San Francisco Beat poet Gary Snyder published Four Changes, a hippy-dippy broadside that fast became environmentalism's manifesto.
Who'd ever have guessed fifty years later that not men, but microbes, would trigger the "total transformation" he envisioned.
Snyder conjured a world blessed with a healthy and diverse global population which is governed not by national leaders but a "world tribal council." A world blessed with a "technology of communication, education, and quiet transportation." A world blessed with societies that inhibit power and greed and encourage instead "music, meditation, mathematics, mountaineering, magic, and all other ways of authentic being-in-the-world." And a world where women are "totally free and equal."
Listen to Gary Snyder read his remarkable statement.
Because there's something in the air.
