The Two Worlds - Glomart and Gaia

 What is the essential difference between a number line and a sphere?

This should not be difficult. A number line is defined as infinite in both directions, with zero in the middle. This is the essence of arithmetic: if you add 1 + 1 + 1...and keep on going, you will never stop; no matter how large the number becomes, there will always be one bigger.

Conversely, a sphere is a finite surface, which can be measured exactly as A (area) = 4 pi R squared.  If you enter any number at all into R--the radius of a great circle bisecting the sphere--the result will be a finite number--not infinity.

So what?

Quite simply, this basic distinction between a number line and a sphere may well spell our doom as a global civilization--or even as a species. Because we all live, simultaneously, in two worlds; one governed by an abstract (and infinite) number line; the other governed by the realities of a finite sphere. And these two worlds are fundamentally incompatible.

A "world" can be defined as a self-organizing complex adaptive system; a system that evolves spontaneously according to its own intrinsic and recursive production rules. So let's look at these two worlds more carefully.

The first world--based on the production rules of arithmetic--is the only one that most of us, and  certainly most policymakers, ever think about. For most, this is "the world"--that is, the global market economy. To distinguish it from the other world we inhabit, I have coined the portmanteau word Glomart. It is the Order of Money--the world governed by the laws of arithmetic, for money itself is only arithmetic--an abstract numerical transform of the marginal (and ultimately arbitrary) value of commodities on the market.

And so Glomart refers to the world of commerce, meaning the extraction, production, distribution, buying and selling, consumption, and disposal of commodities. And all these are measured by money--that is, by arithmetic. And in the infinite sequence of arithmetic, the cardinal production rule is quite simply that more is always better.

The other world we simultaneously inhabit is the one we take for granted, and mostly don't think about at all: our life-sustaining biosphere, which many of us now honor with the name of Gaia--the ancient Greek name for the primordial Earth Goddess, more recently recycled into a kind of shorthand for our current understanding of the biosphere as a self-organizing, self-maintaining, far-from-equilibrium complex adaptive system, which inhabits a finite sphere, and is therefore not growing any bigger.

Glomart provides our livelihood, our material needs, our technological innovations. Gaia gives us the very oxygenated air we breathe, the fresh water we drink, the topsoil that grows our food, and the photosynthesis that drives the whole process with energy from the sun.  We need Glomart to make a living and buy the things we want and need.  We need Gaia to live.

And yet, the maximizing logic of Glomart--the money game--is fundamentally incompatible with the optimizing logic of Gaia--the game of life. Here is a simple way of stating the difference between the two worlds:  In Glomart, more is always better. In Gaia, enough is enough. 

Glomart depends for its survival on the endless expansion of production and consumption of commodities; Gaia isn't growing any bigger, and runs according to an optimizing logic where too much or too little of any given value is toxic to the system. (Think, for example, of personal values like blood pressure, weight, or body temperature, or ecosystemic values like population, precipitation, or predator-prey ratio). 

From these diametrically opposed cardinal production rules--the maximizing logic of money and the optimizing logic of nature--we may derive others as well. Here are a few other examples:

1. Glomart:  You are what you own.  Gaia: You are what you do.

A culture rooted in money--in financial transactions--inexorably becomes a culture of consumerism, where people are judged by how much they can buy.  In the natural world, there is no such thing as ownership--predators compete for prey, just as plants compete for available sunlight and nutrients. And  the species that does things right--develops the best survival skills for any particular niche--is the one that survives. But when conditions change, symbiotic relationships often prevail.  Both competition and cooperation in the living world are based on doing, not owning.

2. Glomart: Nothing has value until it has a price.  Gaia: Value is incalculable because it inheres in systemic relationships.

In our commercial (money-based) civilization, value is equated with market price.  For example a tree in the forest has no value at all in Glomart until it is chopped down and rendered into board feet or consumer products.  Conversely, the Gaian value of a tree is inherent in all of the myriad ways it benefits (and in turn is benefited by) other life: topsoil building, evapotranspiration to create cloud cover, habitat for a wide range of species, oxygenation of the air, symbiotic relationships with fungi, etc. When it is cut down as a commodity with market value, all of those other values to the rest of life vanish.

3. Glomart: The Bottom Line is the bottom line. Gaia: Life itself and its perpetuation are all that matters.

This basic rule of Glomart--the supremacy of the Bottom Line (i.e. the profit margin) over all other values, is the major premise of every corporate board room on the planet. It follows inevitably from the cardinal rule of arithmetic (or money): that "more is always better." Thus the short-term profitability of any corporate decision is their mandatory criterion, regardless of any long-term damage to our society or to the biosphere (especially if they can buy out legislators so they will roll back environmental and other regulations). 

So this is our plight: we need Glomart to make a living, but we need Gaia to live.  And Glomart, with its arithmetical logic of maximization, has become a cancer on Gaia, parasitizing our biological support system to sustain its infinite expansion, just as a tumor does to our bodies.  And Cancer has only two possible outcomes: death (systemic collapse) or spontaneous remission.  The first is most likely; the latter, rare but possible--if conditions are sufficient.

So how, in these twilight days, with Glomart inexorably consuming Gaia, can we become agents of (possible) spontaneous remission? I wish I knew.  I don't, but I have a general suggestion.

We can all strive to live according to the production rules of Gaia, rather than those of Glomart, whenever possible. Those production rules, again, are as follows: 

1. Enough is enough: before you buy anything, ask yourself two questions: (1) do I really need this? (2) if so, is this the most responsible use of resources for this purpose? 

 2. You are what you do: shift your focus from how many toys you have to what skills you can cultivate and apply to making your community and planet a better place for all.

3. Value lies in mutually beneficial relationships more than in commodities or possessions.

4. Life itself is what matters, now and for future generations.  Evaluate all your choices accordingly.

 If enough of us start prioritizing the values of Gaia over the values of Glomart, we may yet, in some unpredictable way, trigger a "butterfly effect" that enables and encourages others, everywhere, to shift their own values accordingly.  We may yet become agents of spontaneous remission of the terminal Cancer of the Earth. In my own autumnal years, this is my one remaining goal in life--and will be until my last breath: to grow gardens, grow community, and grow Gaian awareness.