Given that the world is realistically facing economic instability and ecological destruction, it’s easy to get scared.
Writer Wendell Berry writes that, as ecological destruction mounts and conventional energy resources are drawn down, we need to be prepared to make do with less.
But just try selling that message to the several billion inhabitants of the Third World, who want nothing more than to enjoy the standard of living the First World has been enjoying for so long.
It seems immoral (or at least morally suspect) to ask the currently-impoverished to embrace a lowered standard of living just because humanity faces an existential threat from the profligate energy wasting carried out by the lucky fraction of the world’s population, who happened to get to the fossil fuels first.
Yet the mainstream economic paradigm amounts to “extend and pretend,” putting off our confrontation with the economics of a limited planet. Certainly, looking around the planet, our resources seem limited — only so much platinum and gold and uranium to be mined, only so much fresh water in the massive aquifers – but the technologists and the Capitalists assure us that this is just an illusion. “There are more resources in space!” say the founders of off-planet mining companies such as Planetary Resources.
And there are, indeed, massive, mind-boggling quantities of minerals, raw materials, and even fresh water in space, just waiting for us entrepreneurial humans to arrive with our mechanized or manned robot miners and shoot those resources back down to Earth.
As an Earthian I can’t help but feel like the whole thing is a bad dream. The technologists want to chase wasteful decisions with ever more wasteful decisions, exporting the trash and filth from Earth and spreading it around the solar system. Humans just can’t seem to learn to clean up after ourselves. When will we learn?
In the same article I quoted above, Wendell Berry does make a point about how the Earth could be made to be limitless:
For example, an ecosystem, even that of a working forest or farm, so long as it remains ecologically intact, is inexhaustible. A small place, as I know from my own experience, can provide opportunities of work and learning, and a fund of beauty, solace, and pleasure—in addition to its difficulties—that cannot be exhausted in a lifetime or in generations.
Faustian Economics: Hell hath no limits by Wendell Berry
It’s in harmony, not exploitation, that we can manage our ecosystem to sustain & support us — indefinitely.
The Economics of Limitlessness
As experiments in extensive ecological management from fisheries to farms show us, if we’re facing massive waste lagoons, carcinogenic office buildings and global warming, it’s only because we’re doing it wrong.
The economics of scarcity proceeds from the notion that there is not enough to go around – and therefore the only rational path is to “get mine” (taking it from others) before others “take theirs” (from me.)
The economics of limitlessness realizes that there is absolutely enough to go around — so long as we share generously all that we have with all who need it.
The ego accuses this of being “impractical” or “idealistic.” The reality is that it’s visionary and prophetic: humanity will eventually come to embrace this perspective, even if it goes through a lot of pain in the process.
Let’s explore this from a Buddhist perspective:
The amount of wealth around is not a fixed thing, and never has been. It fluctuates. This throws suspicion on the entire concept that there is only so much wealth, only so many resources, in the world; and that we just have to work out a good system of sharing what limited amount we have available. Maybe there’s another possibility. Maybe if we figured out the real cause of wealth, then we could increase the entire amount of wealth in the world; that is to say, maybe everyone could have enough, or more than enough.
(emphasis mine)
The Diamond Cutter by Geshe Michael Roach
Buckminster Fuller believed this was possible back in 1979. Undoubtedly it is even more possible today, given advances in technology.
Unfortunately, our scientific and technological advances seem to have been countered by moral, ethical, and spiritual backsliding; despite massive lifting of people out of poverty, the United States is the most unequal country in the world, much more today than it was in 1979. Developed nations seem to have committed to a path of endless war; Western presidents can murder in cold blood; we are not feeding or sheltering the hungry or poor; and about 40% of the global population does not even known of the catastrophic effects of global warming that are bearing down on us.
Humanity is not in need of a technological revolution that will make abundant energy available to all (in fact, the owners of the oil companies have a vested financial interest in stopping any such thing from happening, given that they still have at least $150 trillion worth of product to sell).
Humanity is instead in need of a metaphysical revolution that will make abundant generosity available to all. Basically, we all need to wake up and realize that more for you is more for me, too, and so it makes rational metaphysical and economic sense for me to buy up your debt and cancel it (as the Rolling Jubilee is doing) or to commit 100% of our personal fortunes to freeing the Third World from the bonds of poverty (as Bill Gates & others have done with the Giving Pledge.)
To be scared of economic privation is to invest the economic system with the power of our belief. From a metaphysical perspective, it’s up to us to shape the world and our experiences in it as we see fit, via a thorough understanding of cause-and-effect.
People become wealthy through all sorts of scenarios. People become impoverished through all sorts of scenarios. What is the common thread? Cause and effect, not macro-economic policy, and not hard-edged resource limitations. Buckminster Fuller was fond of saying that humanity was indeed on a path to “do so much more with ever fewer pounds and volumes of material, ergs of energy, and seconds or time per given technological function that it is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a ‘higher standard of living than any have ever known.’ ”
Consider this one fact. Currently global society ‘struggles’ to provide adequate food for 7 billion humans. Scientists and technocrats worry about the project 9 billion that will arrive by 2050.
Yet the global food system grossly wastes (conservative estimate) 30% of its output. Eliminate this waste, and global food production of today would suffice to feed 11 billion humans.[1] [2]
There is more than enough food to go around. We just need to stop putting it into landfills.
There is no reason for every human being on Earth not to have all their needs satisfied — and that includes you. If you are worrying about economic scarcity or “your fair share,” your mindset is the only thing that needs an upgrade.
Not only is there enough to go around, there is more than enough — but to truly appreciate this, you must embrace an attitude of generosity, and begin seeking to positively advantage all others, not just yourself.
More from Michael and The Diamond Cutter:
Those who succeed get to see themselves making money only because, at some point in the past, they planted in their own minds an imprint to see themselves making money. And this particular imprint can be planted only by watching yourself giving all you can to others. . . At its peak then generosity reaches a place where you are seriously investing all your personal financial, emotional, and professional resources and abilities, and those of your company, in a well-thought-out plan to bring happiness to your entire family, company, community, and even world — because you have consciously readjusted the borders of “me” to include all of “them,” and you are, basically, just taking care of a (much) bigger “me” now.
To embrace the economics of limitlessness, then, you must not only understand how things actually work (described briefly in my article “How Understanding Cause & Effect Can Change Your Life“) — you must also embrace a lifetime of generosity, spontaneously giving all you can give to advantage others.
As Bucky said, “You don’t know how much you have to give until you start trying to give. The more you try to give effectively to advantage others, the more you will possess to give, and vice versa.”