69
sense the profound varieties of changeability. We can take in microcosm that 1 day,
call it a sample, and by nightfall have attempted to divine those diurnal spans of
time that were more predictable than others. But by the following morning, everything within and without descends upon consciousness with a novelty that has no
clear claim to the previous day.
In the midst of our lives, enmeshed in various sorts of numbers and ecologies, we
can only read the status reports. There is no certainty. To believe otherwise is to
become part of a fallacy which, by turns, guarantees a paradox. The Self.
8.2 Ecosystem-Scaled Paradox
Take the case of “the Netherlands Fallacy,” a proposition regarding alleged sustainability and ecological independence in the sense of viable isolationism, which in
reality is anything but the case. The delusion at the eleventh hour, eutropically
speaking, hinges on the presumption that the Netherlands, or any country, is capable
of sustaining itself without any external inputs. Hundreds of billions of dollars are
equally a non-starter, totally unstable, a doomed stasis without a future, unless that
money has a latitude of expenditures that contract with other parties. All that money
cannot survive in solitude. Its language is the degree to which it can be expended,
dispersed. Currency requires exchange. In that sense it is genetic and evolutionary;
a mathematical plurality to the degree that instability, and the summations of chaos
most accurately represent the natural state of affairs. Prior to the invention of money,
there were other currencies. Indeed, not until January 15, 1520 in the Kingdom of
Bohemia did the silver mining at Joachimsthal (Joachim’s Valley) produce the first
thaler, or dollar. But the history of the exchange of goods, pre-minting, involved a
slew of other tradeable objects: “Amber, beads, cowries, drums, eggs, feathers,
gongs, hoes, ivory, jade, kettles, leather, mats, nails, oxen, pigs, quartz, rice, salt,
thimbles, umiacs, vodka, wampum, yarns, and zappozats (decorated axes)”
(Fig. 8.2).
7
7 See Ehrlich, P. R.; Holdren, J. P. (1971). ”Impact of Population Growth” (PDF). Science. 171
(3977): 1212–1217. doi:https://doi.org/10.1126/science.171.3977.1212. For history of money list,
see, “Origins of Money and of Banking,” by Roy Davies, July 23, 2019, and based upon A History
of Money from ancient times to the present day, 3
rd edition, , by Glyn Davies, University of Wales
Press, Cardiff, UK, 2002, http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/origins.html, Accessed June
5, 2020; see also, “Key Challenges To Ecological Modernization Theory: Institutional Efficacy,
Case Study Evidence, Units of Analysis, and the Pace of Eco-Efficiency, by Richard York and
Eugene A. Rosa, Organization & Environment, Vol. 16, No. 3, September 2003, pp. 273–288, Sage
Publications, Inc., https://www.jstor.org/stable/26162475, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/
stable/26162475?seq=1, Accessed June 5, 2020. See also, “Scaling down the ‘Netherlands
Fallacy’: a local-level quantitative study of the effect of affluence on the carbon footprint across the
United States,” by Matthew Thomas Clement, Andrew Pattison and Robby Habans, Environmental
Science & Policy, Volume 78, December 2017, pp. 1–8, Elsevier, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
envsci.2017.09.001,
ScienceDirect,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/
S1462901117304379, Accessed June 5, 2020.
8.2 Ecosystem-Scaled Paradox
sense the profound varieties of changeability. We can take in microcosm that 1 day,
call it a sample, and by nightfall have attempted to divine those diurnal spans of
time that were more predictable than others. But by the following morning, everything within and without descends upon consciousness with a novelty that has no
clear claim to the previous day.
In the midst of our lives, enmeshed in various sorts of numbers and ecologies, we
can only read the status reports. There is no certainty. To believe otherwise is to
become part of a fallacy which, by turns, guarantees a paradox. The Self.
8.2 Ecosystem-Scaled Paradox
Take the case of “the Netherlands Fallacy,” a proposition regarding alleged sustainability and ecological independence in the sense of viable isolationism, which in
reality is anything but the case. The delusion at the eleventh hour, eutropically
speaking, hinges on the presumption that the Netherlands, or any country, is capable
of sustaining itself without any external inputs. Hundreds of billions of dollars are
equally a non-starter, totally unstable, a doomed stasis without a future, unless that
money has a latitude of expenditures that contract with other parties. All that money
cannot survive in solitude. Its language is the degree to which it can be expended,
dispersed. Currency requires exchange. In that sense it is genetic and evolutionary;
a mathematical plurality to the degree that instability, and the summations of chaos
most accurately represent the natural state of affairs. Prior to the invention of money,
there were other currencies. Indeed, not until January 15, 1520 in the Kingdom of
Bohemia did the silver mining at Joachimsthal (Joachim’s Valley) produce the first
thaler, or dollar. But the history of the exchange of goods, pre-minting, involved a
slew of other tradeable objects: “Amber, beads, cowries, drums, eggs, feathers,
gongs, hoes, ivory, jade, kettles, leather, mats, nails, oxen, pigs, quartz, rice, salt,
thimbles, umiacs, vodka, wampum, yarns, and zappozats (decorated axes)”
(Fig. 8.2).
7
7 See Ehrlich, P. R.; Holdren, J. P. (1971). ”Impact of Population Growth” (PDF). Science. 171
(3977): 1212–1217. doi:https://doi.org/10.1126/science.171.3977.1212. For history of money list,
see, “Origins of Money and of Banking,” by Roy Davies, July 23, 2019, and based upon A History
of Money from ancient times to the present day, 3
rd edition, , by Glyn Davies, University of Wales
Press, Cardiff, UK, 2002, http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/origins.html, Accessed June
5, 2020; see also, “Key Challenges To Ecological Modernization Theory: Institutional Efficacy,
Case Study Evidence, Units of Analysis, and the Pace of Eco-Efficiency, by Richard York and
Eugene A. Rosa, Organization & Environment, Vol. 16, No. 3, September 2003, pp. 273–288, Sage
Publications, Inc., https://www.jstor.org/stable/26162475, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/
stable/26162475?seq=1, Accessed June 5, 2020. See also, “Scaling down the ‘Netherlands
Fallacy’: a local-level quantitative study of the effect of affluence on the carbon footprint across the
United States,” by Matthew Thomas Clement, Andrew Pattison and Robby Habans, Environmental
Science & Policy, Volume 78, December 2017, pp. 1–8, Elsevier, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
envsci.2017.09.001,
ScienceDirect,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/
S1462901117304379, Accessed June 5, 2020.
8.2 Ecosystem-Scaled Paradox