There are those problems that Mother Nature simply
“throws at us,” like the ever-present need for water,
food, shelter, and clothing, together with those
sure-to-come calamities of flood and drought.
But there are also those problems which, taken
together, seem to form a radically different species
of difficulty. These are the problems which are
essentially self-made or man-made, and are clearly
far more difficult to resolve, far more potentially
disastrous and deadly. These are the problems of war,
of waste, of pollution, and of the cultures of self-serving
ignorance that sustain them. They are more difficult
to resolve only because it requires that we deal with
the problems at their source, which, because they
are entirely self-generated, is a way of thinking or
perception, ways of thinking or perception which
in a highly confused manner block the very serious
self-reflection needed for real change.