A better word for externalities

The dumped poison upstream from our drinking water might be external to the production of fertiliser and the profit margins of the fertiliser company, but it is internal to us and all the life that depends on drinking that water.

We might find a better name for this act of violence.

For the act itself is a declaration of separation from life. The consequences will not affect me, as if I can do anything that doesn’t have an effect on me. 

Like throwing rubbish on the street. Not my problem. But is it? To clean the streets – my problem, because we all pay. To clean the water, where the rubbish might end up, my problem. I pay, as do you.

Our refusal to consider all consequences, the precessional effect of our words, actions and enterprises, is to refuse to recognise that our well-being is dependent on the well-being of our home planet.

This worldview is a consequence of the myth of the rugged atomised individual. The capitalistic, patriarchal, colonising dominator. We are seeing the last gasp power grab by those who love this myth, or perhaps know the flaws of the myth and its consequences but believe they can buy their way to safety.

Only when we compost the dominating, separate from a living Universe myth, will we create a new operating system that has us consider all consequences, all accounting, the short and long-term effects, and the precession. This is Syntropic World.

Indigenous wisdom knew our intimate interdependence on Earth and all her creatures. The North West Pacific tribes called the coloniser’s destruction disease Wetico. 

Wetico might be a better word for externalities. A disease that believes humans have dominion over everything and there are no consequences for all-out destruction and terraforming of the land, minds and hearts.

Photo February 3rd, Article written February 4th 2025.