Life on this Planet
The object of discussion is life on this planet.
The subject is "the way humans produce the things they need and desire".
The issues are:
1) declining habitats
2) increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
3) the inability to supply every human being with what they need to live/thrive
4) humans doing violence to other humans
Life on this planet is a "system". It is a pattern of interactions among individual actors each pursuing their genetic and memetic instructions. Every choice has consequences through out the system and at all scales. Issues 1 through 4 result from the way humans produce the things they need and desire.
We humans tend to think of the interactions among ourselves, and in particular those interactions that involve the exchange of money, as the most important. Keep in mind that human interactions are not possible without the participation of all the other living things around us. The interactions among the living things on this planet produce the oxygen we breath, much of the water that falls as rain, all of the food we eat, the goods and services we buy and the information we use to navigate the world.
The most important single factor in sustaining life on earth is the conversion of sunlight into organic molecules.
The interactions that involve the exchange of money are merely a subset of all interactions among living things on this planet. That is what I mean when I write that the economy is a part of the ecosystem.
The ecosystem is fractal. At the scale of a hand full of soil the ecosystem is the interactions among the living things within that handful of soil. Within a neighborhood the ecosystem is the interactions among the living things in the neighborhood . . . and so on . . .
Life on this planet is the interactions among the living things on this planet.
Following this idea requires a shift in thinking from the economy being something separate from the ecosystem to the economy being just one part of the ecosystem. We see these relationships:
a) Individual humans participate in organizations in order to obtain something that they need or desire,
b) All the individual organisms and their organizations within a place create an ecosystem composed of all the interactions among all the participants.
c) Organisms and organizations exist because the ecosystem delivers what they need to survive, and the corollary, no organism or organization can exist unless it receives what it needs from its ecosystem.
d) This pattern of relationships exists at the scale of soil and at the scale of planet and at all scales in between.
This is the critical point for understanding our individual role in creating the ecosystem. Every individual finds themselves in a pattern of interactions created by all individual organisms seeking out what they need and desire. These interactions create a flow of things the actors need. The flows through the pattern are fueled by the conversion of sunlight into organic molecules.
Our choices can increase the capacity of life to convert sunlight into organic molecules or we can continue to decrease that capacity.
The only thing any of us really controls is the choice of how we will seek out what we need and desire. That is the only way we can change "the way humans produce the things they need and desire".
When a volcano makes new ground, the potential for life to convert sunlight into organic molecules on that new ground is near zero. The dirt and seeds that blow in will support a few hardy plants in the beginning. The decomposing bodies of this year's plants support the growth of more plants the next cycle. Cycle over cycle life will approach what is known as a climax community of organisms. We can think of this process as approaching the potential for life to convert sunlight into organic molecules.
The way humans produce the things they need and desire can diminish the potential of life to convert sunlight into organic molecules. We do that by interfering with the cycling of molecules. Let's look at how increasing the production of organic molecules addresses issues 1 through 4.
1) declining habitats
To increase the capacity of life to convert sunlight means that we are rebuilding complex patterns of interactions among plants, animals, fungi and bacteria. That is rebuilding habitats.
2) increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
As we increase the capacity of life to convert sunlight we increase the carbon tied up in living organisms. As those molecules cycle they will be stored in the soil as the basis for the fertility that supports plant life. This is how we will abate climate change.
3) the inability to supply every human being with what they need to live/thrive
A thriving polyculture in the spaces on earth that are now barren can produce the food and fiber humans need to survive. We can engage those humans without a job in creating this food and fiber. That will create a place in the system for every human. Together we can create the food, clothing, shelter, learning, health, belonging and purpose that will allow every human being to thrive.
4) humans doing violence to other humans
As we create a place in the system for those humans that do not fit in the market, we remove the justification for those without to do violence as a way to obtain what they need.
Imagine being in the middle of an industrial corn field after harvest.
If the farmer is using best practices they will have their terraces in and the ground will be littered with chopped corn stalks from the combine.
Now imagine all the organisms that could be living in that space but are not. Next year's soy beans don't count. All of the things necessary for next year's crop still have to be imported. Without those imports the only thing that will grow next year are a few glyphosate resistant weeds. Producing crops for sale in the market has diminished the capacity of life to convert sunlight into organic molecules in this space.
We can think of the difference between the capacity of life to convert sunlight in that corn field compared to its capacity if it had a full range of species participating as unrealized biological potential. The unrealized biological potential of this planet is immeasurable.
Activists concerned with resource depletion often speak of "excessive consumption" as the cause. However, the manufacture of big screen TVs, for example, has a nominal impact on the capacity of life to convert sunlight into organic molecules. The impact of many "consumer goods" is related to toxins in the waste stream.
The bigger impact is from the way we produce food, clothing and shelter. It is these activities that reduce the complexity of interactions within the space taken up by the activity. Industrial farming for food and fiber, the resulting desertification and the construction of barren work and housing spaces diminish the capacity of life to convert sunlight much more than the things people buy to fit inside their homes.
There is nothing we can demand of the 1%, or change we can make to finance or banking that will realize the potential of life to convert sunlight into organic molecules.
It will take individual human beings building new habitats for themselves and sharing how to do it with their friends and neighbors. All the other claims about what must be done to create a sustainable system is sound and fury signifying nothing,
It is common for people to believe that "the market can solve all our problems". That means that the answer is always more market activity.
1) Money does not flow except in the exchange of market value.
2) A thing that is abundant has no market value.
3) The things we want to be abundant are food, clothing, shelter, learning, health, belonging and purpose.
4) Increasing market activity cannot produce an abundance of those things.
The market, exchange, and specialization is how we see things. But doing more of that only gets us more of issues 1 through 4.
The market only allows the production of things that are scarce for people with the money to pay for them. This is the law of supply and demand and we cannot wish it away. The law says that we cannot produce abundance. Because we rely almost exclusively on the market to produce what we need and desire we have created the issues 1 through 4.
There is an alternative that we can pursue in addition to market transactions.
For most of human existence small groups of people produced everything they needed for themselves in cooperation with the living organisms that shared their ecosystem. That process is still available to us if we are not blind to it.
The diagram shows a bounded network of organisms cycling carbon internally. It is floating in a sea of market interactions. In "Embedded in Nature" I called this a cell of sustainability. When Chris and Pat start CP Foods they will be creating a cell of sustainability.
Just as an aid to shift your focus . . . consider that cycling resources and exchanging resources are two different and incompatible things. But we can be doing some of each.
In this crowd sourced narrative, Chris the cook and Pat the gardener form CP Foods. The partnership's goal is to become vertically and horizontally integrated in the production of food, shelter, learning, health, belonging and purpose (the things humans need to thrive).
They will need to engage in market transactions in order to obtain funds to invest in the capacity to produce the things they will consume internally.
The basic transaction is a further partnership with individual homeowners in the community. The homeowner will put up the money and Pat will build a greenhouse and chicken coop that will produce protein and fresh vegetables year round . . . for ever . . .
CP Foods and the homeowner co-own and divide among themselves everything that is produced. It is the cycling of organic molecules within CP Foods and its partnerships that increases the capacity of life to convert sunlight. CP Foods benefits through the increase in the production of organic molecules. There is no need for a medium of exchange for these "internal" interactions.
This is how we avoid the market limitation on the production of abundance.
Communities coming together to create a place for all their residents is how we realize the potential for life to convert sunlight into organic molecules and build a sustainable culture.
Further reading:
Growing Your Own - More than a Life Style Choice
Healthy or Sterile - Stop Using Poisons
Seed Saving and Line Breeding - Maintaining Genetic Diversity
Deep Mulch Gardening - Creating a Habitat for Whole Ecosystems
To become an Agent for your habitat
Join the Conversation and help us write the narrative.
The subject is "the way humans produce the things they need and desire".
The issues are:
1) declining habitats
2) increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
3) the inability to supply every human being with what they need to live/thrive
4) humans doing violence to other humans
Life on this planet is a "system". It is a pattern of interactions among individual actors each pursuing their genetic and memetic instructions. Every choice has consequences through out the system and at all scales. Issues 1 through 4 result from the way humans produce the things they need and desire.
We humans tend to think of the interactions among ourselves, and in particular those interactions that involve the exchange of money, as the most important. Keep in mind that human interactions are not possible without the participation of all the other living things around us. The interactions among the living things on this planet produce the oxygen we breath, much of the water that falls as rain, all of the food we eat, the goods and services we buy and the information we use to navigate the world.
The most important single factor in sustaining life on earth is the conversion of sunlight into organic molecules.
The interactions that involve the exchange of money are merely a subset of all interactions among living things on this planet. That is what I mean when I write that the economy is a part of the ecosystem.
The ecosystem is fractal. At the scale of a hand full of soil the ecosystem is the interactions among the living things within that handful of soil. Within a neighborhood the ecosystem is the interactions among the living things in the neighborhood . . . and so on . . .
Life on this planet is the interactions among the living things on this planet.
Following this idea requires a shift in thinking from the economy being something separate from the ecosystem to the economy being just one part of the ecosystem. We see these relationships:
a) Individual humans participate in organizations in order to obtain something that they need or desire,
b) All the individual organisms and their organizations within a place create an ecosystem composed of all the interactions among all the participants.
c) Organisms and organizations exist because the ecosystem delivers what they need to survive, and the corollary, no organism or organization can exist unless it receives what it needs from its ecosystem.
d) This pattern of relationships exists at the scale of soil and at the scale of planet and at all scales in between.
This is the critical point for understanding our individual role in creating the ecosystem. Every individual finds themselves in a pattern of interactions created by all individual organisms seeking out what they need and desire. These interactions create a flow of things the actors need. The flows through the pattern are fueled by the conversion of sunlight into organic molecules.
Our choices can increase the capacity of life to convert sunlight into organic molecules or we can continue to decrease that capacity.
The only thing any of us really controls is the choice of how we will seek out what we need and desire. That is the only way we can change "the way humans produce the things they need and desire".
When a volcano makes new ground, the potential for life to convert sunlight into organic molecules on that new ground is near zero. The dirt and seeds that blow in will support a few hardy plants in the beginning. The decomposing bodies of this year's plants support the growth of more plants the next cycle. Cycle over cycle life will approach what is known as a climax community of organisms. We can think of this process as approaching the potential for life to convert sunlight into organic molecules.
The cycling of the molecules support an increase in capacity cycle over cycle. It is this build up of fertility that allows life to grow more plants that convert more sunlight over time.
The way humans produce the things they need and desire can diminish the potential of life to convert sunlight into organic molecules. We do that by interfering with the cycling of molecules. Let's look at how increasing the production of organic molecules addresses issues 1 through 4.
1) declining habitats
To increase the capacity of life to convert sunlight means that we are rebuilding complex patterns of interactions among plants, animals, fungi and bacteria. That is rebuilding habitats.
2) increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
As we increase the capacity of life to convert sunlight we increase the carbon tied up in living organisms. As those molecules cycle they will be stored in the soil as the basis for the fertility that supports plant life. This is how we will abate climate change.
3) the inability to supply every human being with what they need to live/thrive
A thriving polyculture in the spaces on earth that are now barren can produce the food and fiber humans need to survive. We can engage those humans without a job in creating this food and fiber. That will create a place in the system for every human. Together we can create the food, clothing, shelter, learning, health, belonging and purpose that will allow every human being to thrive.
4) humans doing violence to other humans
As we create a place in the system for those humans that do not fit in the market, we remove the justification for those without to do violence as a way to obtain what they need.
Imagine being in the middle of an industrial corn field after harvest.
If the farmer is using best practices they will have their terraces in and the ground will be littered with chopped corn stalks from the combine.
Now imagine all the organisms that could be living in that space but are not. Next year's soy beans don't count. All of the things necessary for next year's crop still have to be imported. Without those imports the only thing that will grow next year are a few glyphosate resistant weeds. Producing crops for sale in the market has diminished the capacity of life to convert sunlight into organic molecules in this space.
We can think of the difference between the capacity of life to convert sunlight in that corn field compared to its capacity if it had a full range of species participating as unrealized biological potential. The unrealized biological potential of this planet is immeasurable.
There is one set of ecological limits if we rely exclusively on the market to produce what humans need and desire. There is a different set of ecological limits if we begin to tap into the unrealized biological potential of the planet to produce the things humans need to thrive.
Activists concerned with resource depletion often speak of "excessive consumption" as the cause. However, the manufacture of big screen TVs, for example, has a nominal impact on the capacity of life to convert sunlight into organic molecules. The impact of many "consumer goods" is related to toxins in the waste stream.
The bigger impact is from the way we produce food, clothing and shelter. It is these activities that reduce the complexity of interactions within the space taken up by the activity. Industrial farming for food and fiber, the resulting desertification and the construction of barren work and housing spaces diminish the capacity of life to convert sunlight much more than the things people buy to fit inside their homes.
The things humans need to thrive (food, clothing, shelter, learning, health, belonging and purpose) can be produced within a complex pattern of interactions that retains the capacity to convert sunlight at a high level. But not through a process that harvests products for sale in the market.The point of this blog is that increasing the capacity of life to convert sunlight is the only way to create a sustainable ecosystem that includes humans. As with the new ground from the volcano, it takes the organic molecules cycling through the ecosystem. We can begin to reclaim the capacity of life to convert sunlight in all those spaces where it has been diminished. It will take individuals investing their discretionary time and money in a pattern of interactions that builds up organic molecules.
All the other things that humans might desire are suited for production and sale through the market.
There is nothing we can demand of the 1%, or change we can make to finance or banking that will realize the potential of life to convert sunlight into organic molecules.
It will take individual human beings building new habitats for themselves and sharing how to do it with their friends and neighbors. All the other claims about what must be done to create a sustainable system is sound and fury signifying nothing,
It is common for people to believe that "the market can solve all our problems". That means that the answer is always more market activity.
1) Money does not flow except in the exchange of market value.
2) A thing that is abundant has no market value.
3) The things we want to be abundant are food, clothing, shelter, learning, health, belonging and purpose.
4) Increasing market activity cannot produce an abundance of those things.
The market, exchange, and specialization is how we see things. But doing more of that only gets us more of issues 1 through 4.
The market only allows the production of things that are scarce for people with the money to pay for them. This is the law of supply and demand and we cannot wish it away. The law says that we cannot produce abundance. Because we rely almost exclusively on the market to produce what we need and desire we have created the issues 1 through 4.
The market is not the only way to produce things.
There is an alternative that we can pursue in addition to market transactions.
For most of human existence small groups of people produced everything they needed for themselves in cooperation with the living organisms that shared their ecosystem. That process is still available to us if we are not blind to it.
The diagram shows a bounded network of organisms cycling carbon internally. It is floating in a sea of market interactions. In "Embedded in Nature" I called this a cell of sustainability. When Chris and Pat start CP Foods they will be creating a cell of sustainability.
Just as an aid to shift your focus . . . consider that cycling resources and exchanging resources are two different and incompatible things. But we can be doing some of each.
In this crowd sourced narrative, Chris the cook and Pat the gardener form CP Foods. The partnership's goal is to become vertically and horizontally integrated in the production of food, shelter, learning, health, belonging and purpose (the things humans need to thrive).
They will need to engage in market transactions in order to obtain funds to invest in the capacity to produce the things they will consume internally.
The basic transaction is a further partnership with individual homeowners in the community. The homeowner will put up the money and Pat will build a greenhouse and chicken coop that will produce protein and fresh vegetables year round . . . for ever . . .
CP Foods and the homeowner co-own and divide among themselves everything that is produced. It is the cycling of organic molecules within CP Foods and its partnerships that increases the capacity of life to convert sunlight. CP Foods benefits through the increase in the production of organic molecules. There is no need for a medium of exchange for these "internal" interactions.
This is how we avoid the market limitation on the production of abundance.
Communities coming together to create a place for all their residents is how we realize the potential for life to convert sunlight into organic molecules and build a sustainable culture.
Further reading:
Growing Your Own - More than a Life Style Choice
Healthy or Sterile - Stop Using Poisons
Seed Saving and Line Breeding - Maintaining Genetic Diversity
Deep Mulch Gardening - Creating a Habitat for Whole Ecosystems
To become an Agent for your habitat
Join the Conversation and help us write the narrative.
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