All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth
Befalls the sons of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life,
He is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web,
He does to himself.
―Chief Seattle
A Google search for “all things are connected” produces quite a few that cite this supposed poem by a real American Indian chief whose name was probably Si’ahl, but English-Speakers made Seattle from it—and then named a city after him. I saw, I read, I doubted. The flavor of that verse is too, too, too twentieth century. Took a moment’s digging to confirm it. American enterprise all the way. First, the three sentences that make up this verse were written by a television writer called Ted Perry as part of the script for a film called
Home. Next, another enterprising writer lifted them from here and there and put them together as a poem. And since then all sorts of people have quoted Chief Seattle aka Perry, among them Al Gore. Snopes.com provides the evidence (
link)—confirmed by Wikiquote (
here). Snopes? Wikiquote? Well, you have to believe
somebody.
