Contemplating this fact, even for a moment, is just too painful for most people and it's certainly not politically expedient. Just one lone voice in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Maryland), speaks about it regularly and only has the luxury of doing so because he is in a safe seat. As a result, Americans either curtly turn up their noses in the fashion of Scarlett O'Hara's "I'll think about that tomorrow" or they go on optimistically believing that technology will save us.
LaConte points out that neither our economy nor our technology should be the focus of our attention. Rather, we should concentrate on changing our hearts and minds about the way we live and work on this planet--and more importantly, we must come to a practical understanding about how we are subject to Life's rules such as:
- Life is not wasteful. It does not make things it isn't going to use.
- Resources are finite and if a species lives beyond its means, it eventually dies.
- Life's economies employ several methods of accessing solar energy. The food web is one of them.
- Life treats resources as a common wealth and Earth as a common inheritance. No one "owns" or "commodifies" them to sell to others. Instead, every species prospers in a common trust where all needs are satisfied.
- Life's basic unit of economic activity is the community and not the individual.
- Communities are made up of a diversity of species each with specialized tasks that all work in concert to support and sustain the community in a self-reliant way in a particular place, through partnership and with purpose.
- Communication goes on throughout the community and every species participates in the decision-making process. This is not a pyramidal, hierarchical structure where only the leaders are privy to information and make the decisions. Rather, this community is democratic and collegial with decisions made at the lowest levels.
Not a bad system for creepy things like bacteria, which LaConte points out have successfully adapted to Life's rules and survived longer than any other species on Earth. So, our best bet for human survival is to follow the example of bacteria.
Some people may claim that Life's rules are "socialism," but LaConte stoically assures readers that Life is not an ideological or a political enterprise. Life is real and you either live by its rules or you die. It's that simple.
This environmentally-oriented book is written by a woman who has been studying, living and writing on the subject for decades. Life Rules is one more depressing reminder that we are in deep trouble--and LaConte recognizes that. So, early on in the book as she digs into the immensity and scope of the problem, she beckons readers to jump to Chapter 14 so they don't lose hope. In fact, the entire third section of the book illustrates what can be done to stop the Earth's "bleeding" and what various groups are already doing.
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