From the Economy to the Sumbonomy*
On a foundation of Symbiocene life law based on ghehds, we need to develop a replacement concept for economics, one immersed in symbiosis. As was argued in chapter 4, the term ‘economy’ is based on ‘oikos,’ or the Greek word for the household. The general meaning relates to the (male) management of the household. The new term, ‘sumbonomy’ (sum-bon-o-mee), in addition to the ‘sumbios’ (living together) and ‘nomia’ (to manage), has echoes of the ‘summum bonum,’ a Latin expression for the highest or ultimate good. The French word ‘bon’ also means good. The ‘economy’ of the Anthropocene is replaced by the sumbonomy of the Symbiocene.
As such a social structure does not yet exist, I can only offer speculative thoughts on what form it might take. The sumbonomy is the highest form of practical living humans can undertake for a good life. The sumbonomy is the material foundation for humans living in nature, and we can now create the new conceptual domain of sumbonomics. It has a transdisciplinary partner in sumbiology, or the study of humans living together with each other and other forms of life.
Contrary to the degrowth movement, this conceptual domain can align human enterprise with the symbiotically generated growth that can be found in life. To generate this type of growth, we will need new, creative forms of design and technology based on symbioactive production and benign symbiomimicry. It is from the microcosm—the fungi, algae, bacteria, and archaea, the building blocks of complex life—that the human sumbonomy can be created.
The sumbonomy will be the result of sumbiocentric thinking and, because of the potential for mersis in the Anthropocene, will require the most intense period of genuine growth since the Industrial Revolution. I wish to see the pro-parasitic or terraphthoric (earth destroying) ‘economy’ of the Anthropocene totally replaced by the terranascient (earth-creating) ‘sumbonomy’ of the Symbiocene.
Fossil fuels are finite reserves of energy that can be used only once and are not able to be regenerated in meaningful geological time frames, and similar considerations apply to an insane economy that becomes dependent on “rare” earth elements and compounds. Fossil fuels, because of their finitude, can be owned and traded for wealth maximization. Rare earths are like diamonds. While the current technologies we use to generate renewable energy can be privately owned, the source of that energy, the sun, cannot.[i]
In switching from private property ownership and extraction rights to symbiotically produced resources respectful of the ghehds (intersecting life interests) of free-living microorganisms, we metamorphose from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene. In doing this, we give microorganisms the space and resources to do what they would want to do anyway, such as reproduce and grow. That is how we shift from the scarcity of fossil fuel energy and materials to the abundance of life forms powered by the sun, plants, and microorganisms, from morbid dead carbon to vital living carbon.
[i] Ralph Nader is supposed to have said “The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.” The other way of putting this quote would be to argue that if the oil industry owned the sun, we would have had sun powered renewable energy for everything by now. The good news is that nobody can own the sun as it is an inviolable common with an inviolable ghehd that is more powerful by quantum leaps than all the corporations and despots of the world combined.
*Draft material from The Symbiocene: Our Only Future (2027), Cornell University Press.
AI generated image of a solar shrine where humans once again pay homage to our energy common, the Sun.
