When I came upon this scene while hiking a few weeks ago, I thought it appeared too perfect as if it were a film set: a canoe called "Joy" sitting on the shore of a clear glacial lake amidst the mountains with no one around!

Yet, it was very much authentic. This kind of cognitive dissonance--despite my living in this beautiful and low-populated area for the past two years--was the sign that the very structure of my thinking had been formed by (Post-)Modernity.

In Can Life Prevail?, Finland's radical deep ecologist Pentti Linkola writes, ''At the heart of any viable and enduring society will always be agriculture, including all secondary sources of livelihood like gardening, cultivation, gathering, fishing and hunting. Any society that has severed the link between the majority of the population and the basic foundations of life--green leaves, soil, earth and water--is destined to collapse.''