Sarah Frias-Torres wrote: > Brian and all,People talk about economy as if it was a living entity. > "the economy is fragile"... " we must revive the economy", etc. It is > all a mirage.Economy, economics, economic growth, is artificial.
Economy and ecology are concepts on the same footing. The etymology betrays the connection. One of our primary traits as a species is tool use; concepts themselves are just an interesting form of tool. For a while now, many of us have been very excited about our hammers. Everything looked like a nail, and in many cases that's still true.
Now we need to learn restoration techniques. Unfortunately, restoration is always more difficult than building something a better way in the first place.
All of us, connected to others, are part of both an economy and an ecology. We need to make sure both concepts are as close to reality as we can make them - if for no other reason than that many of us tend to think more about the concepts (often from *within* the concepts) than we do about the reality. The reality is difficult because so much of it is beyond any one of us, but it is crucial that we remind ourselves that the reality is the only truth we have. The convenience of these ways of thinking, these tools, should be made to work *for* us rather than against us.
Be well, Jon
