Our Challenge: Grow Into The Biosphere
Bob Komives
::
When we admit that parts of the biosphere
lie beyond our wealth estate
we receive no license to destroy,
but, rather, a challenge
--rather our challenge to integrate.
lie beyond our wealth estate
we receive no license to destroy,
but, rather, a challenge
--rather our challenge to integrate.
||
Exploration can lead down unexpected and unsought paths. I found it helpful to divide wealth into classes. However when I distinguished class-W (biospheric wealth) from class-whuman (human wealth), I worried that I was about to conclude that we could do without much of the biosphere --that we can afford to destroy any of the biosphere that is not classified as human wealth. I sketched a series of diagrams that helped me to another conclusion.
When we have the power to eliminate a form of life from the biosphere, a form that we do not know as wealth, we must face a truth; we have the power to eliminate a source of future wealth.
Humankind has no sympathy for smallpox, but smallpox is some of what the biosphere knows. We must ask, "What does smallpox know that we do not know?" From the point of view of the smallpox virus, its sphere of wealth (class-wsmallpox) shrank from a large portion of the biosphere, where it devastated human populations, to its imprisonment in a few isolation units. Our concern has shifted. Once we feared for our survival. Now we must fear loss of biospheric knowledge into which we might one day grow.
Humankind is of the biosphere.
Biosphere is of the universe.
Life's challenge to the biosphere:
. become one with your universe.
Life's challenge to humankind:
. become one with your biosphere.
Meeting --or failing-- our challenge
we will change:
. change in form
. change in method
. change in abundance.
When we have the power to eliminate a form of life from the biosphere, a form that we do not know as wealth, we must face a truth; we have the power to eliminate a source of future wealth.
Humankind has no sympathy for smallpox, but smallpox is some of what the biosphere knows. We must ask, "What does smallpox know that we do not know?" From the point of view of the smallpox virus, its sphere of wealth (class-wsmallpox) shrank from a large portion of the biosphere, where it devastated human populations, to its imprisonment in a few isolation units. Our concern has shifted. Once we feared for our survival. Now we must fear loss of biospheric knowledge into which we might one day grow.
Humankind is of the biosphere.
Biosphere is of the universe.
Life's challenge to the biosphere:
. become one with your universe.
Life's challenge to humankind:
. become one with your biosphere.
Meeting --or failing-- our challenge
we will change:
. change in form
. change in method
. change in abundance.
||
:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 12. Our Challenge: Grow Into The Biosphere ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent
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