We live in two “worlds” simultaneously, which I call Glomart and Gaia. By “worlds” I refer to immense, self-organizing complex adaptive systems within which we have our lives and livelihoods. The big problem is that Glomart is a cancer on Gaia, and that cancer is now terminal. “Glomart” is shorthand for the Global Market Economy—the order of money. “Gaia” refers to the living Earth itself as a self-organizing complex adaptive system—the order of nature. These two orders are fundamentally incompatible because Glomart depends entirely on the infinite growth of production and consumption—transforming resources into commodities until the resources are exhausted, while Gaia is finite and not growing any bigger. Furthermore, money is a zero-sum game—if one person has it , the other does not. As a result, money ALWAYS is concentrated in ever fewer hands—the rich always get richer and the poor get poorer. So what can we do about living on a planet with terminal cancer, in which we are complicit?

Collectively, nothing. Individually, we have some options. Above all, anything we can do to reduce our dependence on money —on Glomart—all to the good. Hence my go-to slogan, whenever anyone asks me “what can we do?”

1. Grow gardens.
2. Grow community.
3. Grow awareness.

How?

By learning, teaching, healing, and creating.