37. Organize For Economic Development.

Organize For Economic Development
Bob Komives
::

Economist, please try to define
why our wealth (1) can grow and (2) decline.

Please Try To Define

Life had to learn how to work for itself. It had to learn to sustain and expand itself in its home, the biosphere. It now knows how to organize itself to capture and expend energy with purpose, and to produce results that function. As life expands, it learns more ways to organize. Life's library of workable knowledge sustains it during tranquillity and changes it during crisis. The library grows larger and more diverse, even as it loses some works --species and ecosystems that have disappeared.

Knowledge is the wealth of the biosphere, the product of good work and good fortune. It organizes biospheric development, human development, human culture. Biological knowledge encoded in genetic libraries sustains the complex processes that mold inanimate energy into animate energy and animate energy into complex patterns. Brain knowledge adds real-time, real-life learning to the library. Artifacts, artifactual knowledge, organize and maintain energy in ways that genes and minds cannot.

In ancient Egypt, farmers who knew little of engineering drew upon the greater engineering knowledge stored in irrigation structures, systems, and administration to increase food and fiber production from their work. As they learned which plants did best, they stored their improving knowledge in each generation of seeds --selecting seed from superior plants. The improved varieties were their living artifacts, storing knowledge for children who used that knowledge without relearning it. They simply planted seeds of the improved varieties. Brain knowledge also passed from one generation to the next through written and spoken words and diagrams. And, of course, this knowledgeable culture could not have survived if men and women had not known to reproduce themselves and nurture their offspring into adulthood. Complex biological, brain, and artifactual knowledge were both essence and cause of a productive culture --not perfect knowledge, not perfect culture, but alive and long-lived.

Economics should explain how our species organizes itself for work that produces and sustains well-being. It should explain why "prosperity" is not "well-being" unless it works to promote likelihood of survival in our species and our biosphere. In short, the economist should describe the rules of organization for economic development.

Wealth is our preoccupation--
it is not our invention.

Economic development is an organized invasion--
life invades the universe.

Do not try to create economic development.
Be, instead, a knowledgeable partner.
Practice stewardship and equity.
Learn more.
Share knowledge.
Know to organize to foster the biosphere.

Know that wealth can disappear--
species, ecosystems, and cultures become extinct.
Guard against
the natural disaster,
nuclear war,
and revolution
that can destroy knowledge--
leaving machines that no one can use,
books no one can read,
science no one can remember.

Guard against the disappearance of life,
for the biosphere knows how to become wealthier.

Prevent the destruction of our species,
for we can learn to partake of that increasing wealth.

Stop exploiting one another,
for then we can partake of more wealth more quickly.

Bring our understanding of the world into harmony
with the knowledge embedded in the universe.

Thus,
we shall act as consistent development partners--
in our human sphere
in our biosphere.

A More Knowledgeable Partner

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 37. Organize For Economic Development. ::
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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