Less is More by Jason Hickel – I referred to it in an earlier post. This morning I finished reading it, at least for the first time. It is one of those books so packed with powerful ideas and inter-woven relationships that, as you approach the end, with ever-increasing appreciation for the thinking it provokes, you slow down. Not wanting to get to the end.

If I haven’t already said it – you need to get this book, study it, share it.

The book gives a whole lot more than I was expecting. As a professional forester I studied forest ecology and felt like I had a good sense of how things in the forest are connected, interdependent. I’m struck by how much more there is to it than I knew. Jason pulls in references both historical – drawing on ancient wisdom of native populations around the world – and currently evolving science. The term he uses ‘ecology economy’ and those who study it ‘ecological economists’ resonates with me – it kind of sums up the notion of sustainability beyond our superficial human take on it. Unsurprisingly the current science corroborates the wisdom we can gather from the ancestors of the land. When we pay attention.

Today I’ll share one takeaway from my first read of the book.

Ecosystem Connectivity. Interconnectedness. Reciprocity. Symbiosis. The notion that in nature what keeps things in balance, what sustains things is Reciprocity. Human civilizations that have sustained over thousands of years without depleting resources below sustainable levels do so by giving at least as much as they are taking. By maintaining the complex plant-insect-animal-water-air ecosystems in balance.

I’ve tended to think of this balance on a small scale – a section of forest – a lake – a river. In reality of course this balance exists on a global scale and the fundamental challenge of our times is to bring this balance back – to scale back extraction from nature and the land – to scale back emissions into air, land and water – to bring these back into balance with what humans and all other creatures and features (“things” like rivers, lakes, mountains, plains) need for survival.

Not just what humans need to live.

What it ALL needs to live.