To:    The New York Times <oped@nytimes.com>
Re:    The relationship between the natural and our artificial socio-economic environment
Date:  Wednesday 8 February 06

 
Officially, it is the job of anthropologists to recognise and urgently convey to an imperilled world that an artificial socio-economic environment has effectively replaced the natural environment as the focus of man's behavioural programming, thus blinding us to the catastrophe towards which we are heading. Why haven't they done so? Because they too are blinded by their dependency on the socio-economic environment.

We all strive (because programmed) to maintain - the more energetic and entrepreneurial among us, to expand - the (socio-economic) environment and the niches we are best able to exploit, which results in the creation of ever more niches (ecotopes and subecotopes, i.e. industries, such as advertising, film, TV, aviation, the automobile industry, etc. etc).

This expansion of the socio-economic environment is driven by forces (behavioural programming), rooted in our animal nature, which free-market capitalism developed and has been honed to take advantage of (thus, it's apparent success), but which are blind to the limits inherent in the natural environment, upon which ultimately the socio-economic environment depends, along with all the niches and individuals it supports.

The huge size, capacity and resilience of our planet's natural environment has led us to believe that we can rely on it to bear everything the socio-economic environment demands of it, but we are in for a very rude awakening – an awakening that has already begun (e.g. global warming).

www.spaceship-earth.org