Post by garyriccio on May 12, 2020 12:20:43 GMT
The book is a botanical garden. Forget the formula of beginning, middle, and end. Experience growth that reveals intent without predestination and that simply accepts the convergence in mosaic self-organization that coexists with forces of divergence outside the control of any organism or ecosystem. The existential conversion reflected in and stimulated by this book is about much more than an appreciation of trees. It's about the connectedness of everything.
Beyond its content, the book implies that fundamental change in humanity's stewardship of its environment would be no more complex than the public-private collaboration over mere centuries that gave us our current unsustainable (human) reality. There is a thread in the story lines that suggests the need and potential for a consumer movement of a kind and at the sociopolitical scale of the labor movement a century ago. On this view, supply and demand requires a new partnership with a new raison d'être that frees markets from the hegemony of immediate gratification.
Absent a transformation in supply and demand, we must except the essential insignificance of humanity's ephemeral moment in the story of life of Earth (the fraction of a second before the dawn of a new day). That finally seems to be the most important point of this wonderful book.
See also Gary & Stephen's playful conversation about the book.
Beyond its content, the book implies that fundamental change in humanity's stewardship of its environment would be no more complex than the public-private collaboration over mere centuries that gave us our current unsustainable (human) reality. There is a thread in the story lines that suggests the need and potential for a consumer movement of a kind and at the sociopolitical scale of the labor movement a century ago. On this view, supply and demand requires a new partnership with a new raison d'être that frees markets from the hegemony of immediate gratification.
Absent a transformation in supply and demand, we must except the essential insignificance of humanity's ephemeral moment in the story of life of Earth (the fraction of a second before the dawn of a new day). That finally seems to be the most important point of this wonderful book.
See also Gary & Stephen's playful conversation about the book.