modernity?

I am terrified by some people: the people who seem more like robots than humans; they have put their minds to technological advances and turned their vitals to steel and their veins to wires. Where are their hearts? - they must be in there somewhere. I do not understand how some people can look at the pristine Arctic and see a place to drill for oil, when I look at the same place and see heaven.

But am I a hypocrite? Do I not drive a car fueled by fossil fuels that were drilled from the ground in some other region? It is scary to trace the things that you use every day, thoughtlessly, back to their origins. (That's why I'm a vegetarian, for one thing.) All I want is for humans to remember their innocence, and the innocence of the world. I look at some people and am frightened by them: I wonder, when, where, why did they lose their innocence? Or did they ever have it at all? If not, why?

It is strange to think that New York City - crazy, massive, intimidating, concrete, sharp glass - was once forest-land, as peaceful as any present-day forest. I am sometimes torn between how things used to be and how they are. How they used to be sometimes seems more innocent, but sometimes not. One cannot look at the 1800s as only winding dirt paths through pastoral countryside, but must also remember things like bloody coughing tuberculosis ripping loved ones away incessantly - some progress is good, like cures for diseases - and if the internet didn't exist then I wouldn't have met a number of good friends from faraway places... Which way is it?

But I do believe sincerely that humanity is good at heart, and that everyone has a heart, when it comes down to it. I do believe that everyone will save the world over and over again. I do not think that the world has lost its innocence. One simply needs to hear wind-chimes to feel it.