2.5 Healing Our Economy

Because metabolism is the process by which living beings change the form of energy for the purpose of maintaining their dynamic equilibrium, metabolism is intertwined with the use of resources. This is because energy can be neither physically created nor physically destroyed, whereas forms of energy (such as living beings and other natural resources) can be both created as well as destroyed.

How we manage our surplus resources is known as our economy. Since having a surplus is having an amount leftover, a resource is only available to give, take, or exchange when it is in surplus1. Money is thus a medium for the exchange of surplus resources.

The human economy is the way that we, the human species, manage surplus resources.

In the same way that your body creates surplus resources and distributes them throughout your body, humanity creates surplus resources and distributes them throughout its body. In the same way that parts of your body are less able to function when deprived of needed resources, parts of humanity are also less able to function when deprived of needed resources. In the same way that excess concentrations of surplus resources (i.e., body fat) harm the ability of your body to function, excess concentrations of surplus resources (i.e., wealth) harm the ability of humanity to function.

This is not to claim that wealth is bad, anymore than body fat is bad. Rather, what is relevant is whether our fat and our wealth are being used in a healthy way (creating wellness) or in an unhealthy way (creating illness). As acting from love creates wellness while acting from fear creates illness, the human economy is well to the degree that it lovingly increases people’s ability to function and ill to the degree that it fearfully decreases people’s ability to function. As to why anyone would fearfully cause the human economy to be ill, the answer is greed.

Greed is the desire to have more than one needs at the expense of others having less than they need.

Greed results from a fear of lacking enough surplus resources to fulfill one’s wants. The more one is wanting, the more one is operating from a sense of lack, no matter how much one has. Since it is natural for us to stop wanting what we already have, regardless of how much we enjoy what we have, unlimited wants enable unlimited fears of lack which enable unlimited greed.

When people act on the basis of greed, by prioritizing fulfilling their wants over the fulfillment of others’ needs, those in need have even more justification for their own fears of lack. This can then result in a sort of fearful scramble for surplus resources that leads to a few individuals atop a large pile of people attempting to reach heightened levels of surplus, with many left in a state of crushing need at the base of the heap. Meanwhile, the rest must claw their way through the middle as part of their “struggle to get ahead”. Clearly, this approach is entirely unhealthy.

In order to heal the human economy, it is essential that we cure ourselves of the disease of greed. And, greed is indeed a disease, a blinding one at that. By creating conflict and scarcity out of a vast abundance of surplus resources, greed decreases our ability to function, both individually and collectively. As a disease, greed is contagious. Wherever a fear of lack is spread, the disease of greed is spread along with it. This is because fear acts as a mental virus.

Curing viral diseases requires increasing the immunity of the host, which is what vaccines and healthy immune systems do. So, to heal the human economy, we must eliminate greed by immunizing ourselves from the fear of lack. We must release our fears, so as to be generous with others and trust that others will be generous with us.

To release a fear, simply stop believing its excuses.

Once fears are released, what’s left is love. It is by enabling overflowing surpluses of love that we enable overflowing surplus resources for all. Enabling overflowing surplus resources for all then enables us to lovingly allocate those surplus resources not only to facilitate global restabilization and the healing of our world but also to create wellness, happiness, and prosperity for all.

→ 2.6 Curing Our Overconsumption