" The ontogenesis of our conscious self and the concinnity of our shadow spring directly from our seedlings saturated in the rich milieu of our nation’s external and internal conflicts and our personalized social, political, and cultural interactions. We either actively or passively participate in the explosion of culturally significant experiences. We exist in a fish bowl where the aquatic pool of collective experiences influences us. We are each bystanders in the present chapter of history’s bloodbath, standing either as willing or unwilling witnesses to the vertiginous acceleration in violence that rocks the cradle of civilization. We cannot witness blood spilling in the streets and be present in an age of rampant desecration of forest, seas, rivers, tundra, and deserts of this world without holding ourselves accountable for either our activism or passivity. Our acceptance or resistance to the pervasive cultural chauvinism of our age frames us. "

― , Dead Toad Scrolls