A Search for Unity

Here's a very well expressed thought that I think is so important for us to understand and to act upon.

As the current global financial crisis unfolds there are a lot of words being thrown around on the subject of recession. I'm no economist, but the concept that any economy of any scale can healthily and sustainably experience continued growth seems absurd. There is no system in nature that does that, and to think that man can create one seems to me either an arrogant or an ignorant overlooking of her laws.

What is even more absurd, as No Impact Man says so well, is that the way in which we measure this growth is using economic metrics that have little, if any, relationship to those things which indicate true prosperity: health, happiness, security, stability and freedom. Indeed most of these things have been on the decline the world over for a long time, and yet the world's greatest economies have been growing.

How has it happened that the manner in which we measure the success of society as a whole has become so far removed from what it means to be human? We have created whole industries — today's financial industry is I think the prime example — whose primary purpose is not to supply the things we need to stay alive, happy, and develop as human beings. Instead they exist to generate financial returns.

This "free marketism" has created such a strain on our planet that we are running headlong towards environmental crises of unprecedented proportion: energy shortages, climate change, clean water and food shortages. And yet we and our governments still want that any solutions to these problems are "economically viable" in the short term before we support them. It shows how reactive we are as a society.

The warnings are there already: the crises the planet faces are not financial and economic, but far more fundamental, far more difficult ones. Perhaps we will heed the signs and take more significant and meaningful action now — that will be the less painful route — and there is reason to be optimistic that more and more people are becoming aware of this; but if we don't, then I can't help but feel that the change of consciousness will be forced upon us by an enormous upheaval of nature.

In the words of John Ruskin, "there is no wealth but life."