Commodity and Service
July 12th, 2007 by Doug Schnitzspahn
While I was playing with my daughter at the park yesterday, a group of Mennonite teenagers on a “discovery project” from Virginia came up to me and asked me what I thought a land ethic was. (Only in Boulder.) I immediately thought of Aldo Leopold, which made them happy since Leopold was the impetus for their project. But I thought too of this quote from Montaigne:
Who have persuaded [man] that this admirable moving of heavens vaults, that the eternal light of these lampes so fiercely rowling over his head, that the horror-moving and continuall motion of this infinite vaste ocean were established, and contine so many ages for his commoditie and service? Is it possible to imagine so ridiculous as this miserable and wretched creature, which is not so much as master of himselfe, exposed and subject to offences of all things, and yet dareth call himself Master and Emperor.
I would hesitate to use it as some type of green or environmental rallying cry, instead it is a reminder both to be humble and look within to understand the world. I see very little humanism in our world and even less humility—everyone, from greens to fundamentalists, believes that they are absolutely and unequivocally right.