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> we're culturally conditioned to define wealth and status in terms of how much one has hoarded more than other people. Do you have an alternative to this? Th

> we're culturally conditioned to define wealth and status in terms of how much one has hoarded more than other people. Do you have an alternative to this? This is basically animal behaviour, it's not unique to humans. Most of that hoarding is out of an effort to get a mate, too.

hosh 6y ago
I wrote the alternative: seeing wealth as being stewards of regenerative processes. I'll elaborate. Plants are generally more cooperative than they are competitive, and groups of plants that cooperate will do better together than by themselves. Trees will establish a network of roots, and shunt nutrients to trees within the grove that are not doing so well. Just because some plant species will engage in chemical warfare with some species doesn't mean it won't cooperate with others, and there are many examples of such cooperation. This idea that nature is based on competitive pressure is not wholly true; there is a whole aspect of cooperative processes that occur in ecology. Animals (an insects), if you actually observe them, can also be more cooperative than competitive. It depends on how you set it up. Some examples: chickens are micrograzers, and sheep are grazers. They don't compete for the same niche. Due to the size of their mouth, sheep cannot eat plants past a certain height. Chickens will also eat bugs. That includes eating the bugs off of the sheep, if you let them. Yeah, my chickens get into my tomatoes sometimes. They scratch at the green mulch I put down in the garden. They will fly over the small fence to get to it. But a different perspective: I let them out into the main yard, and they like the forage there more than they like it in my garden. They help keep the cricket population down (which helps keep the black widow spider population down. The fertilize my backyard (which has poor soil fertility from the previous owner). Their scratching to get at things help aerates the soil, and bring in more fertility. So I don't have to compete with my chickens. I can shape the circumstances such that their natural instincts further the overall health of the system.
clawedjird 6y ago
I mean, just look at the massive variety of human cultures that have existed since the dawn of civilization.

hosh 6y ago

I wrote the alternative: seeing wealth as being stewards of regenerative processes. I'll elaborate. Plants are generally more cooperative than they are competitive, and groups of plants that cooperate will do better together than by themselves. Trees will establish a network of roots, and shunt nutrients to trees within the grove that are not doing so well. Just because some plant species will engage in chemical warfare with some species doesn't mean it won't cooperate with others, and there are many examples of such cooperation. This idea that nature is based on competitive pressure is not wholly true; there is a whole aspect of cooperative processes that occur in ecology. Animals (an insects), if you actually observe them, can also be more cooperative than competitive. It depends on how you set it up. Some examples: chickens are micrograzers, and sheep are grazers. They don't compete for the same niche. Due to the size of their mouth, sheep cannot eat plants past a certain height. Chickens will also eat bugs. That includes eating the bugs off of the sheep, if you let them. Yeah, my chickens get into my tomatoes sometimes. They scratch at the green mulch I put down in the garden. They will fly over the small fence to get to it. But a different perspective: I let them out into the main yard, and they like the forage there more than they like it in my garden. They help keep the cricket population down (which helps keep the black widow spider population down. The fertilize my backyard (which has poor soil fertility from the previous owner). Their scratching to get at things help aerates the soil, and bring in more fertility. So I don't have to compete with my chickens. I can shape the circumstances such that their natural instincts further the overall health of the system.

clawedjird 6y ago

I mean, just look at the massive variety of human cultures that have existed since the dawn of civilization.