No one today can afford to be innocent, or indulge himself in ignorance of the nature of contemporary governments, politics and social orders.

The national polities of the modern world maintain their existence by deliberately fostered craving and fear: monstrous protection rackets.

The “free world” has become economically dependent on a fantastic system of stimulation of greed which cannot be fulfilled, sexual desire which cannot be satiated and hatred which has no outlet except against oneself, the persons one is supposed to love, or the revolutionary aspirations of pitiful, poverty-stricken marginal societies like Cuba or Vietnam.

The conditions of the Cold War have turned all modern societies — Communist included — into vicious distorters of man’s true potential. They create populations of preta–hungry ghosts, with giant appetites and throats no bigger than needles.

The soil, the forests and all animal life are being consumed by these cancerous collectivities; the air and water of the planet is being fouled by them.

There is nothing in human nature or the requirements of human social organization which intrinsically requires that a culture be contradictory, repressive and productive of violent and frustrated personalities.

–Gary Snyder, Journal for the Protection of All Beings #1 (City Lights, 1961, rev. 1969)