Profound Thought for the Day: Now there are some things in the world we can`t change — gravity, entropy, the speed of light, the first and second Laws of Thermodynamics, and our biological nature that requires clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and biodiversity for our health and well being. Protecting the biosphere should be our highest priority or else we sicken and die. Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them. It makes no sense to elevate economics above the biosphere, for example. Economists think the critical part of our economy is us. We are so clever, creative and productive. And since there is no limit to human imagination and creativity, economists believe the economy can and must grow forever which is an impossibility. Growth is not an end or goal, its just a description of a state of a system. Yet if you ask a politician or business executive how well they did last year, they will point to growth in market share, profit or GDP. If we think growth is progress, well no one wants to impede progress, so we fail to ask the important questions like What is an economy for? Are we happier with all this stuff? How much is enough? Why does a global economy act as if a Mongolian horseman, a farmer on the Andes and a Papua New Guinean highlander have the same aspirations and needs? If we continue to set human borders and the economy as our highest priorities, we will never come to grips with the destructiveness of our activities and institutions. When our species was born, we looked out at a chaotic world and the human brain imposed order and meaning in myriad ways, looking ahead and imagining the world into being. That was our great gift. So now the challenge is to imagine a different world where our wealth is in human relations and the things we do together, and we learn to live in balance with the rest of nature. By imagining a future, we know where we want to go and then we can marshall our creative abilities to make it happen as we always have. ~David Suzuki
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 22:46:30 +0000
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