Sustainability, Resilience, Reciprocity

I continue to read Braiding Sweetgrass.  Very much a lovely story strong on gratitude.  Take only what is offered, what you need.  Leave something in gratitude.  

Not sure how that applies to Percy, now on Mars.  Here's a photo of Perseverance on the way down. 

So, back to today's theme:  reciprocity and related concepts.  Sustainability as in sustainable agriculture sounds great on the face of it.  But is that really the case?  A sustainable system merely means that levels of output can be maintained over time.  That implies that we can continue to abuse our land and water for agricultural production at the current levels indefinitely.  

Resilience as in resilient cities sound great on the fact of it.  But is that really the case?  A resilient system merely means that it can return to a previous level after perturbation.  That implies that we can design cities that can absorb shocks and insults indefinitely.  

The year of the pandemic and its disruption to our way of life is revealing.  The Great Texas Power Failure is another example.  Social systems, production systems, energy systems, and educational systems were found to be neither sustainable nor resilient.  

Are these types of agricultural systems and means of living failing at a more fundamental level?  Are increasing crop areas and enlarging cities necessarily a good thing?  Is infinite growth (a theoretically impossible thing) even worth pursuing in a on-going manner?  Surely we will start hitting boundary conditions on various resources, some sooner than others.  Here's the donut diagram.

The concept of reciprocity enters in when we give back something to the systems that sustain us.  Entire cycles of matter and energy have to be completed in a way that allows us to live in harmony with our environment, the only one we have, the one that sustains us.