I'm reading one of my favorite books again, "Beauty" by Sheri S Tepper. The whole book is a unique retelling of some of our common fairytales leading upto a death and redemption of the earth and all its beauty. I've just come to one of the crucial passages and was struck, as I am each time I read it, by the gravity it lends to the situation of the world today. So, if Ms. Tepper does not mind, I will repeat the passage, in which our heroine is attempting to save the earth via an environmental group, here:

We have been thwarted at every turn by god. Not the real God. A false one which has been set up by man to expedite his destruction of the earth. He is the gobble-god who bids fair to swallow everything in the name of a totally selfish humanity. His ten commandments are me first (let me live as I please), humans first (let all other living things die for my benefit), sperm first (no birth control), birth first (no abortions), males first (no women's rights), my culture/tribe/language first (no human rights), my politics first (lousy liberals/rotten reactionaries), my country first (wave the flag, the flag, the flag), and, above all, profit first.

We worship the gobble-god. We burn forests in his name. We kill whales and dolphins in his name. We pave prairies in his name. We have retarded babies in his name. We sell drugs in his name. We set bombs in his name. We worship him everywhere. We call him by different titles and commit blasphemies in the name of worship.

I've never read this blog before today, but Waldo Jaquith makes a couple of excellent points in this post and the one that proceeds it. With approx. $8000 in time and equipment he'll save his town millions and turn a downtown street into a mecca for tech and business types.