To Grow or To De-grow? Or What Is the Meaning Of Life?

This week I have been thinking about an assignment I was giving to ponder what should be the goal of an economic system in my day and age – should it be growth, or de-growth? 

In order to answer that question, I need to remind myself to keep the focus on an economic system that I can influence.  Namely it is my own, the one that determines how I make it through another day.  The one where I get up and try to figure out how to meet my needs, so if all goes well, I can wake up tomorrow, and try it again, at least for today.  Although the big global economic system designed and controlled by well educated: bankers, economists, politicians, entrepreneurs, and other qualified specialists definitely influence how my day might turn out; my experience has taught me that dwelling in their complex world and trying to rationalize if it is better to grow or degrow it all, will more than likely lead me to more insanity, then it will to having a good day – which seems like a good goal in incentivizing me to wanting to try it all over again tomorrow.  So, I will avoid exploring the expert’s world further, at least for the moment. 

When I close the books, and stop staring at electrically charged screens, and lookup through my front window, I am greeted by a pileated wood pecker perched at the base of one of the old cedar trees that lines the boulevard dividing my yard from the buried utilities right of way and highway running west and out of town.  The bird is busy, hammering away at the old bark, I assume in pursuit of a bite of bug to help him or her make it through the day, to maybe have enough energy, to work on hollowing out a spot in some nearby tree, where it can build a nest, where after finding a mate, they might work together to raise a clutch of some new pileated wood peckers to someday take their place.   The birds’ choices on whether to grow their consumption of bugs, or to drill bigger cavities for their nests seem to be guided much more by what is practical or what is necessary, than do the choices I seem to be given by our human “economists”.  The birds seem to stick with the tried-and-true more humane methods of eating what they need, and building a cavity just big enough, and not to get too carried away with “growth” as a meaning of life. 

With that lesson in mind, I think I will keep this assignment short, and put away the books, turn off the computer, grab a bite to eat, shut off my brain, and as my wise high school and worldly educated home economist mother used to tell me “Go outside and play” - which when I did, never failed to give me some motivation, to try it all over again the next day.