We can understand a great deal of our history – from Cortés’s destruction of Tenochtitlán in 1521 to the bulldozer attack on the coalfields four-and-a-half centuries later – by thinking of ourselves as divided into conquerors and victims. In order to understand our own time and predicament and the work that is to be done, we would do well to shift the terms and say that we are divided between exploitation and nurture. The first set of terms is too simple for the purpose because, in any given situation, it proposes to divide people into two mutually exclusive groups; it becomes complicated only
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