ecological consciousness

More and more people are by far most familiar with the logic of the built environment, which is everything designed and made, including systems of all sorts (not just stuff). The biosphere contains the built environment and goes on nurturing us in spite of it.

The logic of the biosphere is...

- Capture, embody and utilize solar energy, which arrives continuously, in abundance
- Utilizing readily available materials - solid, liquid and gaseous - develop and field test many varieties of creatures
- Generate an enormous web of relationships among the various creatures to facilitate and exploit flows of energy and matter
- Just about everything is recyclable; one's waste is another's resource
- Involve the living and the dead in processes to make the planet increasingly habitable (but no less vulnerable and destructible)
- The well integrated have the best chances
- Nothing lasts forever; change is certain

Unlike the built environment, the biosphere is comprehensive and a given that requires neither capital investment, fossil fuels nor marketing/advertising, except perhaps for accelerated restoration. Note that the biosphere is distinct from the lithosphere (the mineral material from the planetary core to the various interfaces with the biosphere and built environment).

Consciousness of the logic of the biosphere - or ecological consciousness - means...

- Knowing we belong and need not exist in opposition
- Not being in absolute thrall to things designed or made, but instead primarily fascinated with the beauty and complexity of the biosphere and its components
- Acknowledging we don't know if any of the web of life is superfluous, much less which types of entities are disposable or how many individuals of those types
- Wanting to prevent extinctions and other significant or permanent destruction of ecosystems
- Planning and designing to nondestructively harmonize and cooperate with the biosphere
- Accepting that long-lasting substances we utilize or otherwise put into play, particularly synthetic ones, demand long-term, full-cycle management and perhaps permanent containment
- Making and valuing efforts to remove wedges and build bridges among people for purposes of renewing, cultivating and strengthening interdependence and community.

"Anything we can destroy but are unable to make is, in a sense, sacred."

E. F. Schumacher

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