"Paradoxically, the science and technology that allow us to view our planet from space, to recognize the interdependence of life on Earth, and to comprehend the universe as a unified dance of energy, have also enabled us to enclose ourselves in a world of our own construction. The realm of artifacts, for all its ingenuity and convenience, becomes pathological if that is the only world we know. While enabling us to withdraw from the living Earth, technology also enables us to wreak damage on an unprecedented scale. The more powerful the technology, the greater the potential for harm. The runoff from industrial agriculture creating dead zones where rivers empty into the ocean, the dropping of bombs from drones in the Middle East, the clear-cutting of equatorial forests, the scouring of the ocean floor by industrial trawlers, the introduction of genetically modified organisms into the environment — all result from decisions made in boardrooms and office towers far away from the scenes of destruction, beyond sight of anything not made by humans, except perhaps the sun or sky blurred by smog.

"If all we know of Earth is what comes to us through earbuds and screens, or through windows and books, we may grasp the unity of life as a concept, but we are unlikely to feel kinship with other animals and plants, let alone with mountains and rivers and stones. The feeling of kinship is the source of kindness; we treat with respect and care those people, creatures, and places we regard as kin. By contrast, whatever we regard as alien, unrelated to ourselves, we treat at best with indifference and at worst with cruelty. Unlike most of his contemporaries, [Quaker preacher and abolitionist] John Woolman recognized his kinship with slaves, Indians, and coach horses, and therefore sought to alleviate their suffering. [Naturalist] John Muir recognized his kinship with redwoods and alpine flowers and ice-sculpted valleys, and sought to protect them. "The ideal of universal benevolence arises from a sense of universal kinship. The impulse to care for all of our fellow beings and to protect the land is an evolutionary inheritance as fundamental, if not yet as powerful, as our selfishness and tribalism. Science has confirmed that the unity of life proclaimed by the world's spiritual traditions is a fact of nature. Art can help us to perceive this unity — this holiness — and to feel it as a fact of the heart. But to know it in our depths, with the certainty of Pascal envisioning fire or Woolman sensing the motions of love, we need to open ourselves to wildness, the shaping energy that permeates all being. We need to seek the soul's true home, either inwardly, through contemplation, or outwardly, in the woods and fields, on the blue waters, under the stars."