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Renting The Earth

I was listening to a story by Kevin Kling on NPR about weaving the land into stories and history. Talking of his home in Minnesota, he says "I love my home but I often feel like I am more of a renter than a part of the earth". Kevin Kelly makes a similar point in his blog. He challenges our knowledge of the piece of land we live on and how it interoperates with the rest of the earth with a set of 30 questions.

Except for three, I could not answer any other. I guess I must be in the majority - very few people seem to have got 25 or more right judging from the small number of comments. I found all the questions thought provoking and my complete ignorance all the more so. I fared only marginally better when I took the quiz in the context of the town in India where I grew up. Kling is absolutely right - we do have the attitude of a renter and not an owner.

To think that after years of learning about the wars waged by Ghenghis Khan and the Harappan civilization I could not answer a question as fundamental as:

Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?

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