From the Preface

For millions of years, humans have lived as anarchists. That is, as autonomous individuals without the existence of coercive power, work, and institutions; without mediation. The "state of nature" may more appropriately be called the natural anti-state.... Anarchy is in our bones. It's the way we act; it's the way millions of years of evolution have shaped us....

Politicians and profiteers know that they are destroying the planet and poisoning all life, they just see money as more important.... Powermongers will act in their own interest, but their power relies on our complacency....

From the Foreward

I have long suspected that it is not just contemporary industrial society that is dysfunctional; it is civilization itself. That we humans are born to be creatures of the land and the sea and the stars; that we are relations to the animals, cohorts to the plants. And that our well-being, and the well-being of the very planet, depend on our pursuance of our given place within the natural world.
--Chellis Glendinning