““I was relieved not to find yet another crabby and wounded ex-environmentalist, and I asked her how she was managing to live in a world that she found so discouraging. The answer wasn't reassuring. She told me about the Taoists in ancient China. "They looked around and saw they were facing the same situation, a world that was disintegrating around them. And they realized the best thing to do is do as little as possible. Don't feed any new energy into a system that's falling apart, because you don't know what that energy will wind up being spit back as." Rather than try to change society, it's better to retreat.””
![“Representative Broussard had dispatched a field agent on a fact-finding mission. The man, a native of southern Africa, found the Louisiana swamps “wildly dismal and forbidding.” (The “silence strike[s] one with an almost unforgettable horror,” he wrote in his report, titled “Why and How to Place…” quote by Jon Mooallem](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/fd8/jon-mooallem-42343_goals_representative-broussard-had-dispatched_2701445.jpg)
![“This animal, homely as a steam-roller, [is] the embodiment of salvation,” it wrote. “Peace, plenty, and contentment lie before us; and a new life, with new experiences, new opportunities, new vigor, new romance, folded in that golden future when the meadows and the bayous of our Southern lands…” quote by Jon Mooallem](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/29d/jon-mooallem-42343_animals_this-animal-homely-as-a-steam-roller-is_2957184.jpg)
