Can't Get Enough Ed Abbey

Ed Abbey is rapidly becoming my favorite philosopher.  These two clips are taken from Jack Loeffler's interview of Abbey in 1983, when he had become the old man, to which he refers in the first clip.  One would think that having dabbled in Environmental Studies at UVM, I would have been able to recite Abbey chapter and verse, but the truth is I am just now coming to him in my sedate middle age, so that perhaps when I'm in the final stages I'll have something to teach (ed. watch the video...he's rambling again).

Some of my favorite spots when he theorizes that no one is worthy of eternal life and that the desire for immortality comes from having lived a lifeless life.  I also like that he likes the world just as it is, that it is just a roiling human comedy full of strife and conflict, but that is what makes it so great...and when you're gone you're gone and that there's no use getting all sentimental about it.  Finally, I like that he says that we as humans have as much of a right to life as any other life, but that we don't have the right to exploit that right, and that we should have reverence for life in all of its forms.

Annotations:

1. Shakespeare's "The Seven Ages of Man" the famous poem that begins with "All the world's a stage..."
2. A somnambulist's favorite, Joyce's "Ulysses" "History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake"