We live in two worlds of thought, Glomart and Gaia. Glomart is a special word coined to represent the Global Market Economy---the order mediated by money. Resemblance of the name to that of corporate behemoths like Walmart and K-Mart is intentional. Gaia is, of course, the living Earth---the order of nature.

Each of these two worlds appear as complex adaptive systems: each with its own value scheme. The Glomart system is a virtual reality which is incompatible with, and necessarily parasitic on, the real world---the Gaia system. The fundamental reason for this incompatibility is that Glomart is a "maximizing" system whilst Gaia is an "optimizing" system.

The Glomart system is based entirely on the logic of money, and money itself is an abstraction---an arithmetical transform of information about the relative price of commodities. In the abstract world of arithmetic, 1+1=2, it follows that in the world mediated by arithmetic (i.e. Glomart) "more is always better". A central principle of the money system is value=price. Nothing in the natural world may have any value at all until it is transformed into commodities.

Nature is therefore reinterpreted as "natural resources," and a "resource" is nothing more than something waiting to be transformed into a commodity. The higher the price paid for the commodity, the better. Higher prices cause a scarcity of resources (e.g. topsoil or tropical hardwoods or endangered fur-bearing species or ocean fisheries). The higher prices are a measure of the increases demand, and---without effective regulation---guarantees a "feeding frenzy" on such resources until they are exhausted.

The intrinsic logic of the money system---that more is always better---also guarantees annother consequence. In a world of finite "resources", whoever has more, gets more. The global market economy is little more than a giant monopoly game. Those who have played monopoly know there is only one possible outcome: one person owns everything and the life (fun) of the game ends.

The Glomart system, to continue to grow (a structural necessity), generates its own culture---the culture of consumerism (you are what you own), which is propagated through the most effective of social control mechanisms, advertising. The endlessly repeated message of every TV ad, every print ad, and now, the ads proliferating on the internet is quite simple. BUY MORE--- you are what you own. Glomart also has a vested interest in suppressing bad news about our global environment or news of humans needing less things---such consciousness is bad for Glomart.

The Gaia system, by contrast, operates by the principle of optimization: too much or too little of anything is toxic to living organisms. In Gaia, you are what you do: an organism's survival is entirely determined by its success in sustaining, not destroying, the ecosystem that sustains it. No organism "owns" anything; they use what they need of ambient resources, and in turn provide for other organisms as well.

In contrast to Glomart (Value=Price), in Gaia, the value of any part of an ecosystem is incalculable. Each inheres the patterns that connect each organism with every other. A culture based on Gaian principles is therefore one that emphasizes "enough" rather than more; doing, rather than owning, and life itself---our own, that of our community, and that of our planet.

The above is abridged from an essay by Dr. Tom Ellis. (tiellis@aol.com) Optimizing is integral to human efficiency and enough limits.

(Directory)  March 20, 2000