Facing Our Waste With Grace Is Our Salvation

Accept the reality of our situation, embrace the infinite game, become beloved gardeners of Eden made real.

Walk With Me In The Modern World

Let's go for a stroll in the city streets of San Diego. The fresh salt air, gulls far overhead. The gorgeous coastal sun, bathing us in light as a breeze cools our skin. Looking at street level, what do we see? Plastic wrappers, styrofoam, metal shards, old gum. Abandoned junk and overflowing public garbage bins. Glinting sunlight reflects off surfaces haphazardly, none used for energy. What do we hear? Leaves blown with giant hairdryers, cars honking, a helicopter rattling atop our heads. A dog pisses on a pole, the urine pooling unevenly on the concrete next to an old shit stain. No plants here, only the stain will remain in this paved world. If we see trees they’re likely only male, littering the streets with leaves and pollen, never to fruit. We walk past an unhoused man making his nightly shelter from boxes and umbrellas, police having taken his tent. They will visit him again until he's gone. Why does such a fine location host such unkempt details?

How about the suburbs. Nice and calm here, if boring without anyone around, and could be anywhere. Just an open street, lots of parked cars, trash bins out today for garbage collection. Flies gather attempting to assist in the decomposition of brimming black bins filled with soiled plastic bags containing haphazard biotic and abiotic waste from every single household. Minimal green waste mingles with this toxic detritus negating any well intentioned mulching campaign. We notice multiple lawns overflowing with water, grass drowning in a pool never needed from a taken river. No rain water is captured. Meanwhile a scattering of homes proudly sport astroturf, off-gassing petroleum fumes melting and degrading into microplastics in the sun. A coyote crosses the street with someone's cat in its mouth. Only a few animals can live here, those often called ‘pests’ are the ones that thrive. If we see a Monarch butterfly we wonder where the milkweed is, and is it the endemic kind fueling monarchs in their 3000 mile migration, or imitation tropical exotics of no help at all? The rattle of air conditioning means that if the power went out these coolers of houses would become ovens of non-naturalized design. Their walls are plastic-sealed, their orientations unaligned with the sun, totally unable to protect their inhabitants without electricity, and yet only a few solar panels.

This is getting depressing, let's try somewhere else, how about the beach. Forget the human world, get some nature. The waves lapping the shore, the gentle crash, the feel of sand in your toes. Bliss. But what is that? Styrofoam pellets in the shoreline. A plastic tarp buried under sand. Ripped candy wrappers. A few lighters. A seagull shreds a chip bag into ever smaller pieces. Bubblegum flavored vaporizers with lithium batteries, some drops left, all water logged. Pill bottles, their contents long since dissolved. We hear a boat roaring in the distance, laughter. We see a dolphin spout, we smile, then frown. In the horizon a Navy ship reminds us of bombs and spent rounds left in the oceans, the byproduct of war and peace. We consider the plight of dolphins and whales, tangled and deafened by noise and waste.

Let's go somewhere more remote then, how about a mule ride in the desert of Mexico. Now this is better, nothing but desert plants and the chirps of birds... and plastic wrappers on cactus needles. Old broken plastic buckets and chairs and their trillions of smaller invisible pieces. Oil drips from a vehicle. Tumbleweeds of polyester string mixed with animal hair and styrofoam, rolling forever.

How can we escape the constant specter of waste? 

Maybe we can pull out a microscope, and go small. But there they are, plastic particles in our blood.

Let's get a telescope and look up. Perhaps the heavens will offer some relief, but the sky is too bright and what's that? Satellites littering low earth orbit. So many satellites, a whole train of them! We see the ISS and remember that even NASA can’t escape trash and must shift its position sometimes to avoid space debris. We wonder how many more objects are invisibly careening kinetic liabilities waiting to shred apart cell phone calls, television feeds and spying games?

How can the heavens and the beach look the same? The busy city streets and the remote desert have the same landmarks. Once you have eyes to see, this modern human technological world reveals itself as a fractal of externalized liabilities. All these products our civilization makes carry the suffering of a fundamental error in thinking there is a nature and un-nature, a within and without, an us and a them. The world that 'won' with its ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’ has blossomed into its expression: waste.

Every day I look and see the waste of my existence. Daily interaction with products generates a trail of litter. Even expressions of love from candy to colorful flower bouquets generate seconds of joy and two hundred years of wrappers. As I walk along the beach, picking up trash I can see, I know only how much is smaller than I can even see, let alone touch.

You cannot escape your life. You cannot escape your civilization's true product: waste.

Waste Is Our Legacy

No despair! Human civilization only recently adopted plastic bags and disposable cups. We are not doomed to any behavior even deadly ones.

For a long while, our matter streams were part of the world. We still had dumps but they were full of clay pottery and the like. The oceans had flotsam from our wrecked ships of wood and metal. Yet even metal can be poisonous. The Romans poisoned areas with lead. It is not enough to have things be ‘natural’ we must still manage the byproducts when we create technologies. There are ways to function cyclically, only a few decades ago soda and milk were delivered as reusable bottles.

But as clever people started making clever compounds, and clever capitalists found it more profitable to waste, we found our civilization too clever for nature herself. Now our dumps are compressed death, containing trillions of hazards, with new kinds of extreme bacteria emerging. The toxic dumps of old can hold no candle to our modern explosive situation. Now Nature's ruthlessness is getting to our waste, and the organisms emerging are not so easily sterilized like the prior ones.

I wondered how I could explain this quickly, James Carse encapsulates it as a section in his book Finite Games and Infinite Games: 

"Waste is not the result of what we have made. Waste itself is what we have made. Waste plutonium is not an indirect consequence of the nuclear industry. It is a product of that industry.

Because waste is unveiling, it is not only placed out of sight, it is declared a kind of anti property. No one owns it.

Treating nature as though it belongs to us we must soon treat nature as though it belongs to no one.

Not only does no one own waste, no one wants it. Instead of competing to possess these particular products, we compete to dispossess them. We force it on others less able to rid themselves of it. 

Trash accumulates in slums, sewage runs downstream, airborne acid and microplastic particles drift hundreds of miles settling on the lands of those powerless to halt its ‘disposal’ into the atmosphere.

Thousands of square miles of farm lands have been laid waste by the construction of multilane highways, or submerged by dams whose water is used to flush waste from distant cities.

Waste is the anti property that becomes the possession of losers. It is the emblem of the untitled.

Waste is a reminder that society is a species of culture.

The more waste a society produces, the more unveiling that waste is, and thus the more vigorously must a society deny that it produces any waste at all; the more it must dispose, or hide, or ignore, its detritus." 

The primary product of our civilization is waste. And waste is infused with human suffering. For it to be cheap there must be someone’s exploitation. Slavery did not vanish, it evolved into market forces and inequality of regional power. The technology of the refrigerator age and fast fashion is still powered by deep inequality.

The consumer market is a 'triadic closure' between desire, resources and labor. Enforced with systemic violence, both financial and literal, all working in perfect harmony to enable some to ‘change the world’ while others are chained to mining the world and assembling the products. Designed in freedom by winners, made in bondage by losers.

Chaos has no real counter in this civilization, we can only build liabilities dressed up as products. Plastic, lithium batteries, satellites, industrial refuse, every action of civilization runs in one direction, the production of waste. It can only be wasteful, with no plan for waste mitigation, let alone regeneration.

Even the new ‘green energy revolution’ is full of exotic material dependencies, shipping dependencies, all new forms of dependencies. Oil is replaced with lithium and we are told it's better, while threatening to strip-mine the bottom of the ocean for disposable vapes and car batteries.

Your material existence in 'modern' civilization is waste. Hiding it in a dump neither cleans nor removes it, and we don’t know what it truly means for our health. Even stopping our trash output today cannot mitigate the immensity of waste already made, from plastic, to chemical, to radioactive, information to impersonation. Even our computers are part of it, spewing heat every time a bit is flipped from 1 to 0, and now AI looms and will consume more water than farming to keep cool.

The finite games in capitalism are destroying the infinite game of a regenerative civilization and livable biosphere. Even the space colonization desired by rich men to escape our planet's pending demise is threatened by the growth in low earth orbit material with no plan for recovery and order.

We have set up a peasantry collecting cans, and the unhoused making DIY shelters. And yet, these are the nobility of the future, the ones who have been forced to manifest solutions to entropy and living directly, while others can buy them and have free time.

We are offered product after product to fix consumption, without ever changing the fundamental perspective error we are operating under. The luxuries of consumer capitalism are debt, the creditor is our shared world. The data keeps coming in and spells doom for us, assuming we will remain as we are.

Even our political squabbles are themselves wasteful. I see your signs, fresh flags and cheap clothing made of plastic shipped from across the ocean and imagine polyester microfibers shedding off in the dryer. I imagine polyfluoroalkyl (PFA) molecules shedding from tires of vehicles rolling towards protestors and acknowledge the ironic truth that the bodies on any side share an abundance of plastic still unable to bind us. 

Growth for its own sake is an algal bloom, terribly destabilizing and utterly brainless, an emergent phenomena of run-away factors. As the top minds publish endless papers about pollution in every corner of our bodies and planet, the mindless operators of the machinery continue us down the path to destruction. 

In order to play our capitalist games, we have to fold them into the infinite game of Regeneration.

Certainty of Death Brings Clear Thinking

At 16 until my ‘retirement’ at 21, I was an Ocean Lifeguard. Every summer, I kept folks safe at the beach and often despite themselves. I've encountered my fair share of rescues and medical aid, yet one rescue in my first year stuck with me forever.

It was a cold gray day with a huge swell. A very large man got sucked out off the inshore, toward that eleven foot swell. I went in after him. I hit the cold water, unfolding my rescue buoy and swam to him. I secured him to the buoy and began to swim in, but with every crashing wave I lost ground and was pushed to the sea floor. Tumbling without direction and losing my breath, I experienced a flash of realization: I can die, I am mortal, and this could be my moment. A calm enveloped. I accepted this, I am mortal, and my death could be under the ocean doing the job of saving a life. At least I tried. And then I felt the bottom, pushed up, saw the man, rescued him and with a surge of strength brought us in.

From that day on, I have known that the certainty of doom is actually a saving grace, for if you choose to live even though you know you will die then you are truly free.

As a lifeguard, I was trained to pay attention to danger, I worked from a tower stepping in when harm or death seemed imminent. They say once you are a lifeguard, you can’t turn the perspective off. Indeed mine expanded to the civilization itself. As a social lifeguard, I see harm happening and death is imminent.

Congratulations, we made it to our greatest crisis. We must become our own God, our own nature. Able to metabolize our worst impulses, not just profit and hide. Many will not heed this call, yet perhaps enough will…

Perspective Shift

I was raised in the 1990s and 2000s view that neoliberal capitalism is the 'end of history' and the finest system available. I was shown gadgets wondrous from the iPod to the iPhone. Great Men who wanted to 'make a dent in the universe' and 'move fast and break things' were all around. I patterned, I bought in; becoming fluent in computers, fluent in business, fluent in capitalism the great driver of growth. 

I have worked in High Technology for my career, most recently a Spatial Computing designer for a software to help scientists visualize molecular structures. I am part of the technological matrix of the modern era, building The New. I use wondrous technologies like XR headsets that create the illusion of holograms before your eyes. I enjoy the privilege of hot showers, a washing machine, and frozen food. Electricity is almost always on and I have many wondrous gadgets to improve my life. 

Now billions of us have hot showers and air conditioning, but no plan for continuance. We have infinite fast food and dying soil. Although many of you pretend not to care, we are all suffering inside from the truth. We are living in a demo of a civilization, a sales pitch of a good life, but it can’t last. 

The newest fears over AI ending the world are in many ways already the lived history of colonized peoples and the modern reality for many billions of people who are considered resources for use. The current era is already a ‘paperclip maximizer’, it throws away over-produced food and can’t build homes while office supplies luxuriate in huge buildings waiting for their moment of purchase.

This so-called powerful civilization is frail and old, brittle and unyielding in the face of nature’s endless spontaneity. One stuck tanker ship teeters the world. One Pandemic stole both life from ‘essential workers’ and wealth from even the middle class. The response to homelessness is to make it illegal, ignore the prison system that profits off that increasing supply of free labor. 

We effectively have an auto-immune disease as a planet. For hundreds of years, a culture of people tricked themselves into seeing ‘nature’ as an ‘other’ they could harm for benefit. A body at war with itself will perish. We are a cancer on ourselves. With every new therapeutic drug, more cancerous waste is let loose into our global body. Our immune system as a super organism is kicking in as shared fear about our future, with prophecies of doom coming from many contradictory perspectives. 

From new complexity science to ancient tribal perspectives, we are converging, seeing the truth of our existence as a superorganism. We are energy and minerals in action. Civilizational activity is a force of nature which believes itself separate from nature.

As I realize with certainty that we are doomed, a new lease on life rushes forward, visions appear, wisdom is recovered and braided with new possibilities. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the industrial revolution has necessitated a whole new kind of creativity. 

If you are uncomfortable, or angry or want to dismiss me, yet are still here, good. Now the journey will really begin. 

Waste is Our Salvation

"There Are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play." (Carse)

In the modern polarized political landscape we share a common bond. We all know the black bin, the deference of wish-cycling into the blue bin. No matter where our politics reside, we all drink from soda cans, use toilet paper, and eat chips out of convenience. We all have to throw away trash, whether one is a conscientious bin sorter or just drops it where they stand, the waste of our lives casts a shadow longer than we will live.

Waste is our salvation, because it is our shared experience. Even if you disagree about the climate, you have microplastic in your blood. And it does not go away, it accumulates. Every day this problem worsens. Red vs blue? Thin line vs rainbow? All those waving signs will go to landfill or litter streets just the same. What they say means less than what they are: waste.

Waste is our salvation because cleaning it up is harder than anything we've ever done. Spaceflight? Computers? Trivial compared to the scope and design challenge of cleaning up our trash. For example The Pacific Garbage Patch is the landmass of Texas, and a delicate ecosystem for invertebrates. We can't just vacuum it up, life has claimed it as their home. 

Waste is our salvation because it is natural. “Nature has no outside, it has no inside. It is not divided within itself and cannot therefore be used for or against itself.” (Carse) 

What if we could clean our waste and keep our material world harmonious with existence? How might we do that? Could we form a new Infinite Game focusing all our love and power upon solving waste rallying a new endeavor larger than any war could ever be. Do we love war, or do we love unified courageous acts? Mobilizing the cleanup of the world is the engine of our prosperity.

Don't give up, grow up: shift your perspective from consumption to regeneration. Truly face the task of cleaning up planet earth transitioning from the waste product output of the industrial revolution to a technology of continuous regeneration.

To follow the tendrils of 'Waste' is to see the world again as the psychic trash of madness, to follow the tendrils of 'Waste' is to meet the current slaves and downtrodden. To follow the tendrils of 'Waste' is to journey within the body and set sail among the stars.

Whether plastic doom comes for us in this life or the next of kins’, it will come. If we can only make trash then we will drown. This has happened to life-forms before, when iron-based creatures made waste oxygen and rusted to death. Are we mere single celled organisms, doomed to drown in our outputs? Or can we be an ecosystem, ready to adapt and continue? 

Accepting death is the paradox of enabling life. When we cower from the truth we become a finite game: a ‘me’ that lives with a ‘them’ that dies. When we bake bread daily, update the electrical system yearly and garden continuously, we are free to live forever. 

Call to Action Embrace A New-Old Ethos

As I looked for ideas on how to ‘save our world’ I discovered that much of what I was after already existed. ‘Saving the world’ is not one act, or some brand new solution we need to invent, rather a renewed perspective to carry forward. 

In The Time of the Black Jaguar: An Offering of Indigenous Wisdom for the Continuity of Life on Earth, Arkan Lushwala explains the situation simply. "In this modern society, there isn't any consistent practice or tradition used for compensating the Earth for all that is taken from Her. No social habits directed to returning energy and beauty to the big 'holes' that are left after resources are cut, gathered and consumed." 

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmer shows us how her perspective intersects with modern science. “From the very beginning of the world, the other species were a lifeboat for the people. Now, we must be theirs.”

Finding ourselves out of balance, Carse explains, "our freedom in relation to nature is not the freedom to change nature; it is not the possession of power over natural phenomena. It is the freedom to change ourselves." 

The era we are in is a birthing, and that is painful. We are trapped between the waste that we make today and the possibility of a coherent tomorrow. How do we navigate there? It starts with perspective, it starts with daily actions . 

As I watch seedlings grow, they do it quietly and relentlessly. So too we can grow through the cracks in civilization, reclaiming our environment for our scale. 

Transition From Liability to Regeneration - Naturalize Where You Are

“People often ask me what one thing I would recommend to restore the relationship between land and people. My answer is almost always, ‘Plant a garden.’” (Kimmer)

“When a system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to lift the entire system to a higher order.” (Illya Prigogine, Chemist and Nobel Laureate)

There’s a whole world waiting adjacent to the current paradigm, you just have to accept the gifts of choice and perspective. Many little things become a cascade, your water drop of action is an ocean of change that can wash over a weary world.

Some general ways you can play: 

Use money deliberately and locally

You are a money router, see how you’re used, consider switching your packet rules. Imagine your transactions as thread pulling in different directions. Using a credit card at a mega store sucks the thread of money to a few central points. Using cash at the farmers’ market you see the thread go in a more direct way. Your money is supporting a farm continuing a direct connection. Now you have food, remove wasteful intermediaries, and support a resilient community.

Valuing durability and repairability

Stop accepting the directive to throw everything away. Start valuing reducing your matter stream and reusing your property. Widen your awareness, is the item powered by so-called “disposable” AA batteries, or can it be recharged? Start valuing heritage, repairability, legacy. Understand that all waste from ‘convenience’ is not convenient. Hold yourself and other companies to that standard and deny built in obsolescence. 

I get most of my food from the local farmers' market and use a low-waste grocery store that lets me bring my own containers to refill. My matter stream is trending more primary product, less secondary waste. Minimizing my personal waste enhances my ‘productivity’. When I buy groceries at a zero waste grocery, I reuse the container. I use my part and give my garden the other to compost.This is not radical, it is luxurious and normal. Whether you yearn for the future, or are nostalgic for the past you deserve a life without waste.

I cannot entirely escape. I use credit cards, I get single use takeout, I have to buy gas. But I will not do so forever. I make it my life’s goal to transform my relationship to waste through low tech remembrance (bring a container) and more awareness in my choices (how long will this last, can it be repaired, what wastes will it make, does it fund devastation? etc).

It's an infinite game to reduce my waste, becoming more empowering as I go. It is possible to change your daily life. My wife and I have been playing this game for years and we’ll be playing it for the rest of our lives. We know ourselves as gardeners in Carse’s conception:

“‘Garden’ does not refer to the bounded plot at the edge of the house or the margin of the city. This is not a garden one lives beside, but a garden one lives within. It is a place of growth, of maximized spontaneity. To garden is not to engage in a hobby or an amusement; it is to design a culture capable of adjusting to the widest possible range of surprise in nature.”

Many of the issues of our world order are not in our direct hands. The impeccability of your actions is for yourself. Do your best, knowing that the responsibility is shared, and the true share is on the corporations and entities causing the issues.

We will need new tools if the individual is to directly mitigate environmental issues in their community. Some of us will advance fundamental research, applied market activities and governmental power to make up for what our local hands and hearts alone cannot do.

Repair Relationship to Existence

Overall the goal is to naturalize to the place one is making their home. Any animal or plant can become naturalized even if it is not native. For human people this takes on special meanings which are our burden and gifts.

“Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.” (Kimmer)

"The paradox in our relation to nature is that the more deeply a culture respects the indifference of nature, the more creatively it will call upon its own spontaneity in response.” (Carse)

Not all of 'humanity' is in dissonance with the rhythms of the world, just some cultures. Culture is practice, its players are its expression. So while many so-called 'conscious' people bemoan human devastation of the planet, you can take solace knowing that not all humans are this way. Botanist Robin Wall Kimmer offers citizenship of the species in the world– we must all fall together under each others’ influence towards, “reciprocity, of regeneration, of mutual flourishing.”

As science has advanced, the edge of its very knowability appears. The Complexity Science pioneer Stuart Kauffman argues that science has empirically demonstrated the need to recover the notion of ‘the Sacred’ in the face of the unknowability of the future, and unpredictable creativity inherent in the universe.

"We are beyond reductionism: life, agency, meaning, value, and even consciousness and morality almost certainly arose naturally, and the evolution of the biosphere, economy, and human culture are stunningly creative often in ways that cannot be foretold, indeed in ways that appear to be partially lawless. [...] The new view of emergence and ceaseless creativity partially beyond natural law is truly a new scientific worldview in which science itself has limits. [...] In this partial lawlessness is not an abyss, but unparalleled freedom, unparalleled creativity. We can only understand the biosphere, economic evolution, and culture retroactively, from a historical perspective. Yet we must live our lives forward, into that which is only partially knowable. Then since reason truly is an insufficient guide, we truly must reunite our humanity." 

Remember the full human perspective, think thoughts wider than the dominant languages. Naming our world is not enough, we must perceive it, remembering how to pay attention as we once did this time with new tools.

"A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa—to be a bay—releases the water from bondage and lets it live.[...]this is the language that lets us speak of what wells up all around us. This is the grammar of animacy." (Kimmer)

The way we view the world shapes how we care for it. If we keep seeing only products and transactions we stay blind to the flows and actions. If we again practice multi-generational thinking, and move beyond short term gain at long term cost, we are back to tradition in a totally new paradigm. As Lushwala articulates in Time of the Black Jaguar, we have enough energy emitted from the sun to meet our energetic needs 15,000 times, we are rich beyond measure. Are we culturally wise if we cannot reach for what is being handed to us?

These are the converging factors of awareness that have the power to reshape our relationship to scarcity. How will they be distributed? Will some cling to this modern way of needing others dependent on a feed for wealth to flow up? Or can we each have the seed of our liberation in a garden of mutual thriving made manifest where wealth abounds?

Harness Phenomena Wisely

If you are part of my fellow privileged ‘high technology’ career folks, in business or academia, please embrace the truth: whatever you make, it must fit into an ecosystem, it must manage its wastes, it must not oppress anyone even secretly.

As explained in The Nature Of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves by Brian Arthur, "Technology builds from harnessing phenomena largely uncovered by science. And equally science builds [and forms] from technology." We must build truly compliant to the world, in the knowledge that we are not ‘inventing’ as much as harnessing phenomena, and must steward the resulting effects.

Compliant with the world means using materials available where you want to build. It means minimizing the harm done. Many materials we use today are illogical and wasteful. For example, using glass requires sand, a nonrenewable resource at human timescales. 

However, Carbon and all its forms, from life to diamond to graphene, is a renewable and constantly usable baseline resource. 

“In Maple [Tree] Nation, the currency is carbon. It is traded, exchanged, bartered among community members from atmosphere to tree to beetle to woodpecker to fungus to log to firewood to atmosphere and back to tree. No waste, shared wealth, balance, and reciprocity. What better model for a sustainable economy do we need?” (Kimmer)

Beyond as a model, I think carbon should be the bedrock material of our future. Scarcity thinking and manipulated pricing keeps diamonds from being a commodity item. With manufactured diamonds we see carbon forms are not rare. We can get carbon from the air! Trees and fungi already have a carbon economy. 

The foundation of our abundance can be the same old world, with the new twist of atomic precision. If you build a skyscraper, why not diamond windows grown from the air and land, save the sand for the beach.

Special Consideration - Computers Are Matter & Energy

Digital computers are perfect distillations of the error and salvation at the heart of modern civilization. The computer is a miracle technology. It is the first place where we have a zero additional cost for duplicating something once digitized. 

Yet there is still a cost. Computers are very real objects, ‘the virtual’ is derived directly from a physical state of the computer systems’ use of energy at a given moment. Every computer, from devices to datacenters, generates two products: virtual content and heat. When a better design comes along, once state of the art computers become unsalvaged waste.

Computation still occupies volume, and even land itself. ‘The Cloud’ is a collection of buildings that must be cooled. The larger we scale, the more energy they use and the more heat they emit. Computation as we know it today is at a crux due to thermodynamic constraints, inviting us to surmount our ignorance. As Michael P. Frank, former senior member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories (now at Vaire Computing) explains:

"[Computers] have operated in a way that causes the intentional loss of some information in the process [radiated as heat]. But it’s possible to carry out any desired computation without losing information. This idea of Reversible Computing goes to the very heart of thermo­dynamics and information theory. It is the only possible way within the laws of physics that we might be able to keep improving the cost and energy efficiency of general-purpose computing." (Michael P. Frank) 

We can have computation without unnecessary waste. There will still be costs, yet of a whole lower order, ready to scale up our future ambitions of science and engineering. Innovation in Reversible Computing and the intersection of emerging quantum computation can reshape our relationship to reality itself. The quantum computer scientist Seth Lloyd of MIT puts it, “quantum computers represent a way of processing information that is closer to the way that nature processes information.” 

This is part of the legacy of the future: beyond the binary as the fundamental technology, and toward the quantum continuum. Beyond what we know as a ‘computer’ we are invited to learn the meaning of Quantum Physics and energy transformation. 

For now quantum computing uses energy intensive approaches of supercooling. Yet awareness of room-temperature coherent systems like chloroplasts should drive research into room temperature quantum coherent systems. 

Recently research confirmed the incredible efficiency of photosynthesis, finding that “a single photon can upon absorption drive the subsequent energy transfer and [...] the primary charge separation of photosynthesis.” (Li, Q., Orcutt, K., Cook, R.L. et al.)

Biology already utilizes the atomic scale with resonant quantum effects at high temperatures. Understanding how biology works beyond sets of facts, but unified with quantum theory as a system for creating molecular scale energy transformations in action. 

Focusing on waste gives us a pull to nanotechnology, after all that is where much of the problem resides. All deeptech possibilities for ordering material are on the table. Fusion is part of this, but not as massive facilities, try miniaturized on a chip.

Imagine what we could create with the clean-line precision of digital technology once again centering its lineage as weaving analog material, like the first punch card computer of Jacquard’s Loom weaving atoms right where you need them out of what is available. 

Goal directed matter programming will enable much finer creations that use much less material through precision.

The Market - Braiding Capitalism With Life 

We need a balance between the desires of humanity and the continuity of all existence on this planet. Currently the incentive is to produce waste, ensuing endless suffering, a dissonance in mind and spirit.

On the consumer side, new trends are emerging. Boycott lists, automated bar code scanners enabling customers to see which companies are worth their money. People will be demanding more and more accountability. Entrepreneurs and mega companies can be motivated into a more harmonious existence out of pure desire to stay in business. 

If you want capitalism to succeed, we practitioners need to prove that it can sustain itself and disrupt itself. If you want to 'change the world' look beyond products, look to waste. 

Disrupt the wastemaking world with ruthless abundant solutions. Whatever your perspective or profession already, there is a way to weave together with the world rather than fight externalities later. This playing field is infinite and uses a unique resource. "Because waste is unveiling, it is not only placed out of sight, it is declared a kind of antiproperty. No one owns it." (Carse) This means you can ‘own’ the value of it, if you can neutralize the issue.

Go out, find waste issues, find a solution, then sell it back to all the relevant participants. There are so many niches to explore in renewable and cyclical materials/wasteflow management. Waste product reclamation. Recycling made real.

Repairability of tools and gadgets is a growth market, especially as ‘planned obsolescence’ becomes ever more burdensome. In computer science there is a concept called ‘adversarial interoperability’, where a protocol or file structure is made to work with other things not because it was meant to but rather because it was forced to. Applied to the physical world is Adversarial Repairability. 

Companies like iFixit offer knowledge of repair, tools for the work and assessment of products. Micro-soldering has emerged as a way to fix issues on circuit boards which before were only thrown away.

Instead of another coffeeshop, every neighborhood needs at least one proper makerspace with enough local power and capability to fabricate things on demand, from hand tools to 3D printing. A space for local and global creators to give ideas and form life, and skills to get passed on.

Tools for Infinite Play

I want tools to truly clean and heal the world around us. There are others like me, a growing niche in the market that you could consider building for. Buckminster Fuller termed it, ‘Livingry’ could become the hottest game in town, displacing ‘weaponry’ as the cool and powerful tech item of our era.

We need powerful seeing tools, knowing tools, building tools and protection tools. Artificial intelligence to ride along with us as Intelligence Augmentation. Bioregional awareness for what to plant, harvest, and how to build. 

The tricorder (of Star Trek fame) is still a north star design for local knowledge tooling.

Intelligence augmentation glasses, able to scan content you have and give suggestions and direct instructions on possible ways to create any given solution. Connecting you directly with other wearers, a global network of real time hands on knowledge. 

Matter reclamation and reconsolidation at point of use, cleanup and upcycling tools. ‘Magic trash bags’ are micro shredders able to start metabolizing the plastic and other trash. Direct ordering of material through nested sets of interacting robotics.

Kinetic weapons are wasting lives and spent ammunition. Personal sovereignty technology aims to counteract the threat of weapons by blocking or otherwise disrupting the trajectory of ballistics. Using drone swarms as physical shielding elements could function as a defense system for a person or group. The design goal is the character Neo saying ‘no’ from The Matrix, the specific forms will evolve and are currently deeply under-served in the market. 

Earthsuits and exoskeletons along with telerobotics and other reach extension platforms. The earth is in space, we need to remember and embrace it. More extreme weather phenomena, anomalous solar and cosmic ray activity, and our own radioactive and toxic wastes necessitate the transfer of space suit and scuba gear technology into a general suit that can adapt to dangerous situations. 

Disrupt Waste with Sovereign Power

Where the market acts shortsightedly, or brings forth complexity catastrophes, or never enters due to upfront cost, sovereign power can step in. 

This era, centered in the United States has seen a pendulum swing to power leveraged through capital over sovereign power. Yet if more people remember that money is only given power by the sovereignty of all our collective use, we might yet remember the will to create a New-New Deal.

For too many decades the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra has shifted the burden on consumers to drag corporations to the light at our higher cost. Now it's for the game-makers of the finite game of capitalist consumption to pay. 

This is dream legislative action, my yearning for justice through law as was promised by the social contract of the West. 

Create The Waste Reclamation Fund (WRF)

The WRF Supports a focused triangle of subsidized market activity, conservation research and action, and pure science. We need a constant awareness and appraisal of how civilizations' outputs and inputs are interacting with the real world. All materials and food companies held to pharmaceutical levels of diligence.

Any waste-generating companies pay for all this through a per item tax that goes back to the first sale date of any non-recyclable or toxic item. Profits made from poisoning our home are not real profits. 

The WRF reclaims from corporations the externalities of corporate activity as debt that must be repaid, and a tax on continuing any non-renewable practices. Further, the waste-reclamation-fund investigators get large payouts for the fund if they discover any willful ‘planned obsolescence’ from companies.

WRF funds can be used by anyone who is in business. The mega companies paying into the fund can use funds to retrofit themselves, or new players can use it to disrupt existing. 

Seeing the success of solar subsidies, we can widen our ambitions, funding new paradigms of local production at the site of consumption with compliant materials. Directly subsidize local resources to compete with trade and mass production.

The WRF funds are also a research grant system with a comprehensive and updating survey of the kinds of wastes being emitted, their secondary effects and how to mitigate and reclaim them. Funds subsidize university research around central themes like ‘Extreme Waste Reclamation’ and ‘Applied Matter Alignment’ that are open sourced for communities and businesses to utilize as core technologies.

WRF directly subsidizes the job of ‘Earth Steward’ with emergent ranking mechanics for all participants based on effectiveness. A shared mission across different bioregional specialists, convergent support, generating infinite solutions. An alternative to military service, a clear path into a ‘job’ for people at the edges of society, and a way to put science into practice as action and not just warnings.

The Stewards oversee the local retrofit of all public areas for food/water/energy production reliance, to give every community a baseline of survivability even in hard times. Providing jobs in the transition from dependence to independence for each community.

Lastly, a ban on importing new materials, coupled with a ban on exporting waste. Time to use what's here. The world has suffered enough for garments and gadgets, it is time the promise of 'Development' pays us all back. 

Overall, it is possible to use sovereign power and the law to push us in a more sustainable and regenerative direction. As I’m writing, the current Supreme Court has overruled the precedent that allowed agencies like FDA to protect consumers.Those who want to enable hidden costs and secret harm have won this finite game. 

Perhaps such a certainty of doom could be the push needed to truly evolve our relationship to industry as citizen consumers with an upfront right to clean life, not later harm payouts when we find out we’ve been poisoned.

A new kind of governance mediated by a new kind of AI

Democracy is a powerful system for enhancing the agency of a citizenry, yet we are seeing the ability to hack democracy, perhaps beyond recovery. Governance itself seems intent on always generating waste. Much of the activity of politics is in conceit and lies. Governance and sovereign power itself needs a refresh.

We are invited to consider what governance and the economy are really for. Many futuristic proposals for new organization on blockchains still boil down to existing methods: ideas ‘winning or losing’ finite games of ‘voting’.

A different proposal comes from John Ash, who is exploring a framework beyond ownership and win/loss scenarios, toward synthesis and continuation.

"Iris models are AI systems that facilitate collaborative learning and decision-making by aggregating and synthesizing the community's collective wisdom. They ingest thoughts and metadata, employing specialized attention mechanisms like Ŧrust to prioritize contributions based on expertise, consistency, and positive impact. Iris models directly reflect and serve the community's will by aggregating and synthesizing collective wisdom with a focus on the evolution of beliefs, intentions, and outcomes over time." (Ash quoting the Iris AI system)

This system attempts reconciliation of differing perspectives on the planet into scalable governance that wants to adapt with time, and accurately reflect true leadership. Centering inter-relation and problem solving capability as the primary form of value.

Many think being governed through AI could be monstrous, yet what is it learning from? What are we asking our systems to do? We rightly fear AI when its job today is to dominate. It seems inevitable that someday we too will be dominated, losing the finite game of power.

But what if AI was Authentically Intelligent and augmented our compassion? What if AI absorbed the way of infinite play and not just finite games? Could we gain a perspective wide enough to fit the warrior and the dove into the same planet with maximum freedom for all? The world's greatest infinite player, a way for us to reconcile the paradoxes of planetary governance. 

Embrace The One True Job: Infinite Player

“What is the duty of humans? If gifts and responsibilities are one, then asking 'What is our responsibility?' is the same as asking 'What is our gift?' It is said that only humans have the capacity for gratitude. This is among our gifts.” (Kimmer)

There’s only one real job on the whole planet, known by many names: regenerator, infinite game player, Earth Steward. The one job of relentless bravery in finding all forms of waste and devastation and purely, specifically, deliberately, unceasingly cleaning it all up.

Have you ever gardened? Have you ever cleaned up after a party? Now combine them. Congratulations, this is our new job for the next forever. Whole new specialties and tools will emerge. 

Just as the Industrial Revolution led to a flourishing of new forms and opportunities, a new emergent Regeneration Revolution can change the landscape of what is possible. Known as the “New Tribal Revolution” in the book My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, is available for any of us who wish to play the game:

1. The revolution won't take place all at once. It's not going to be any sort of coup d'état like the French or Russian revolutions.

2. It will be achieved incrementally, by people working off each other's ideas. This is the great driving innovation of the Industrial Revolution.

3. It will be led by no one. Like the Industrial Revolution, it will need no shepherd, no organizer, no spearhead, no pacesetter, no mastermind at the top; it will be too much for anyone to lead.

4. It will not be the initiative of any political, governmental, or religious body. 

5. It has no targeted end point. Why should it have an end point?

6. It will proceed according to no plan. How on earth could there be a plan?

7. It will reward those who further the revolution with the coin of the revolution. In the Industrial Revolution, those who contributed much in the way of product wealth received much in the way of product wealth; in the New Tribal Revolution, those who contribute much in the way of support will receive much in the way of support.

We will all be the richest, because there’s no ‘great single person’ ever able to solve this. We are in a complexity catastrophe, at a new scale of agency. A super organism that keeps looking for one of its cells to be the leader. Instead rise up, network of perspectives. Rise up into actions guided by a refreshed perspective. 

Kauffman concludes Reinventing the Sacred with an attempt to focus our powers of knowledge in service of a planetary scale thriving. 

"Principles for a New Eden: Emerging from ethical imagination, drawing Humanity toward a world whole and open, where life flourishes. We require justice, respect and humility, embrace change, embody stewardship, transform waste and excess, affirm differences, reconcile with nature, champion the common-wealth and community, and our actions are energized by a progressing dialogue, grounded in neutral language feedback, dignity, wisdom and multiple centers." (Kauffman)

Make All This Worth It - Capitalism Evolves

"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art." (Ursula Le Guin)

I have been thinking about this since 2014 when Le Guin said it. History matters, as the historian Fernand Braudel summarizes in The Structures of Everyday Life chronicling the emergence of Capitalism. The unequal feudal system that capitalism emerged from powerfully shaped its character while opening a new flexibility and expanding wealth into a much larger privileged class.

“Where other structures were inflexible, capitalism could choose the areas where it wished and was able to intervene, and the areas where it would leave to their fate, rebuilding as it went its own structures from these components, and gradually in the process transforming the structures of others.” (Braudel)

Yet Capitalism could not fall so far from the Feudal apple tree. 

“Disparities of strength or situation which meant that there has always been on a national scale or on a world scale, one stronghold waiting to be captured, one sector more profitable to exploit than others. The choice may have been a limited one sometimes, but what an immense privilege to be able to choose!” (Braudel)

For one man to dent the universe, millions of others are used in an exploitative system.

Facing the shadow of our civilization and all the wonders and horrors it produces, I am left with a mantra: make it worth it.

“If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.” (Kimmer)

Some people will still have huge power in the world, pushing against the possible and changing everything. Instead of winner-take-all, can success become a fun choice, not a requirement to survive? Can the world be abundant and safe enough that entrepreneurship becomes possible to anyone? 

I still want inventions. People can do business. I think private ownership must remain as it is important for sovereignty. Yet we must weave with the infinite game of life. 

"If you want them to lose interest in toys, then you must give them something even better than toys. not voluntary poverty, but rather voluntary wealth. But real wealth this time. Not toys, not gadgets, not 'amenities’. Not stuff you can put in bank vaults. Real wealth of the kind that humans were born with. It's wealth that is entirely the product of your own energy.” (Quinn)

There are rumblings of Universal Basic Income and that could help, but this assumes the society of money can continue providing its services. You can’t drink money, or eat it. Money has no energy without the external hand of acceptance and giving our own to it. 

More deeply, we need Universal Basic Capability to Live. The Food, Water, Energy and Shelter nexus should be our unalienable right. Through technologies and knowledge practices, each person can purify enough water to live, is supported with gardening, foraging and farming knowledge, and has enough literal energy at point of need to run all their technological lifestyle dependencies.

"Tribal economy, the natural economy of the children of the Earth and the Sun, is born from our natural talents; it is our birthright. [It] requires the sharpening of our intelligence to become capable of balancing the forces of Nature that we affect with our actions. [It] also requires heart, so with generosity and reciprocity we continuously look for the well-being of all life.

The tribal way is based on the generous circulation of goods and a deep caring for the health of the natural sources of life. It allows the human economy to be part of the most successful economy ever known: the universal economy.” (Lushwala)

Regeneration of the biosphere will purify the money and make it wealth again. Money can turn into support, love and abundance for all through new technologies and human effort. If you have lots of money, consider folding it back into the sacred rhythm with our world. If you have lots of genius, consider bringing it into service as part of the complete overhaul and upgrade of technological civilization.

Whatever you have now, consider transmuting it into your highest expression, as if the Earth loved you and you loved her, because it is true.

Toward A New Old World Stewardship 

In the book Nature’s Keepers: The New Science of Nature Management, Stephan Budiansky highlights how idealized views of any location being ‘untouched wilderness’ continues to obstruct the requirements of conservation. "The hope of the future lies not in curbing the influence of human occupancy–it is already too late for that–but in creating a better understanding of the extent of that influence and a new ethic for its governance."

As Kimmer explains whether from the perspective of science or spirit, you can choose your relationship to Earth. “Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond." 

There is no one right way for people to live, but some are more likely to continue. "A war fought to end all wars, in the strategy of finite play, only results in universal warfare." (Carse)

Encouraging spontaneity in others by being spontaneous and showing respect for source, while refusing to convert source into resource. Harmonious long term vitality is more efficient than mere exploitation.

For so long we have advanced tools of war, now we can birth tools of abundance and restoration. 

I’m asking you to join me in being ruthlessly in love with what we could become in our epic enriching quest to be the stewards of a shared world.

A New Nature From Technology

Through the convergence of scientific knowledge of phenomena, technological capabilities and the design requirements of cleaning up waste and ensuring the continuation of human techno-capital activity, a new force could emerge. 

“The most elemental difference between the machine and the garden is that one is driven by a force which must be introduced from without, the other grown by an energy which originates from within itself.” (Carse)

When my wife and I ask ourselves, how would we clean up this beach, seeing the innumerable visible particles, imagining the nanoscale, we find ourselves imagining a new kind of Technological Being. 

Our only conclusion to the scope of the problem is multiscale nano to macro robots that exist as their own life force. Able to metabolize the various outputs of humanity and aggregate them up and out of the ecosystem, or otherwise neutralize them into their bodies.

A new life type, forged from fungus, bacteria, technology and necessity. One that has in its DNA an infinite drive to adapt to reality and a deep sense of love for the world and all our plant, fungal and creature forms. At all fractal scales they can evolve to exist, an ecosystem of solutions to the prior world’s problem, ranging from the scale of proteins to kilometers. 

The Gomens we call them. They will help anyone build anything they desire one atom at a time, as long as what you desire minimizes harm to the Earth. 

We imagine people will protest when they just start fixing things. That’s where they get their name, from their most used phrase: “gomen'nasai.” I’m sorry, they say, in Japanese for some mysterious reason. Whether being polite on a street corner, or ruthlessly cleaning up industry sites, ‘gomen’nasai’. They say it partially for us who might feel inconvenienced or threatened, but mostly for the Earth.

We imagine all of us supported directly in meeting basic needs. Some serve as the infinite players and stewards, the human touch and representation in the Gaia consciousness. If you actively regenerate, get in with the Gomens and help them, you will have their powerful respect and support. 

A web of mutualism amongst existing life and new synthetic life. A force outside of business, law, outside of humanity, outside of every animal and plant, enveloping it all. A way to give a voice to the voiceless. 

Binding all in service, protecting all in play, freeing all from the old constraints of what was known as nature or society and to a garden on earth for real. Not in the next life, here and now, Seven Generations and beyond. Never again can business interfere with existence.

Here I have touched on everything that should go right to free us from waste and enter a new diamond age. If our civilization can no longer utilize its law to protect itself, then other solutions will still be realized. No matter what, we will play the infinite game of being alive as a planet in space. Are you in?

Let’s take our walk again in New Nature

We are walking in the city. The textures of buildings diffuse heat or capture it into usable forms for its occupants. Diamond windows are resilient. The medians and sidewalks are lush food systems cared for by the people who live here. The once disenfranchised houseless people are tending to Gomens that break up the materials from the wasteful era, turning material into usable forms for the neighborhood repair/makers-shop. There are old city garbage bins that no longer contain anything, vestiges from the past.

Let’s go back to the suburbs. The houses are retrofitted to capture energy, neighbors are assisting each other to make functional improvements and create their own community power grid. The coyote holds a rabbit in its maw. Butterflies by the thousands take rest in their great migration. There are no more black bins or blue bins. There are compost mounds, and there too are the Gomens, returning materials into their usable forms and taking them to the neighbors constructing their community grid. It’s a food forest where every house can provide for its occupants. 

Now, we return to the beach. We see lines of matter along the sand moving like leaves on ants. We pick up some larger wastes and hold them, we don’t have a matter reclaimer on us right now. A small crab in iridescent pink and yellow sides up to us and extends its claw. We hand it our plastic, into its mouth it goes and it lets out a cheery beep. Peacefulness settles when we see the dolphins crest offshore. There are much quieter hydrofoil ships belonging to the Earth Steward Navy in the distance now. 

When we revisit the Rancheros we find elegant multi story earthen structures, statues of animals made from old car parts and skulls. The mules stay the same, but the glinting in the sunlight is just mirage on an open patch, no longer plastic wrappers. A few Gomens munch on an old can as we plod along the ever cleaner desert.

Checking on our bodies with our portable scanners we can see that a fresh wave of polymer strands is being cleared out by the specially designed antibodies. Looking up to space with our augmented reality glasses we can see the ID tags of the low earth orbit Gomens on their endless patrol to consolidate space debris. Zooming in further we see the twinkle of fusion spaceship engines in the outer solar system, construction in space now safe and clean.

We have faced our demons and become our angels, and our reward is living as enlightened animals in the Garden of Earth with our non-human relatives. Now we cannot escape our life, we know we are in space, and have the tools to clean up all our waste. 

John Hanacek © 2024

Originally written for the Berggruen prize essay contest July 08 2024, see the winners. It was a great constraint to write this which was brewing in my heart for years. Their essays are part of the story of our new era discovering the need to remember and cultivate anew.

Acknowledgements

Deep gratitude to my wife Kyra who is my infinite partner, who helps me live life as an artistic practice of doing our best. Special thanks to my mom Amy who made me go to Junior Lifeguards as a kid, and who’s editing skills have been helping me for years along this journey of expressing myself in writing. Thanks to my Dad David for teaching me how to build and fix things. Finally thanks to all the authors I have cited whose work helped me see the path through the fog of this era.

Sources

Arthur, W. B. (2014). The nature of technology: What it is and how it evolves. Free Press. 

Braudel, F. (1981). The structures of everyday life. Harper & Row. 

Budiansky, S. (1996). Nature’s keepers: The new science of nature management. Phoenix Giant. 

Carse, J. (2012). Finite and infinite games. Free Press. 

Frank, M. P. (2024, February 13). The future of computing depends on making it reversible. IEEE Spectrum. https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-future-of-computing-depends-on-making-it-reversible 

Kauffman, S. A. (2010). Reinventing the sacred: A new view of Science, Reason, and religion. Perseus Books Group. 

Kimmer, R. W. (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed Editions. 

Li, Q., Orcutt, K., Cook, R. L., Sabines-Chesterking, J., Tong, A. L., Schlau-Cohen, G. S., Zhang, X., Fleming, G. R., & Whaley, K. B. (2023). Single-photon absorption and emission from a natural photosynthetic complex. Nature, 619(7969), 300–304. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06121-5 

Lloyd, S. (2012). The universe as Quantum Computer. A Computable Universe, 567–581. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789814374309_0029 

Lushwala, A. (2013). The time of the Black Jaguar. Createspace. 

Quinn, D. (1998). My Ishmael: A sequel. Bantam Books.