Fossilised Economies

It is ironic that a species so obsessed with the future would base its entire civilisation on the fossilised remains of plants and animals that lived millions of years ago. Our daily existence relies upon the burning of ancient corpses that died hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans even appeared, and this serves as a reminder of just how small and self-contained this planet is. Everything is recycled and reused, even if it takes millions of years. What was a living plant then, is a fossil now. What is a civilisation now, might be a fossil later to be used by a future life form. Humans may have invented capitalism and consumption, but Earth is the ultimate consumer: it consumes and recycles everything, including entire civilisations.

The term “petrochemicals” itself comes from the Greek “petra”, which means stone. Ancient Greeks appear to have been obsessed with the fossilisation process, making up countless mythologies inspired by the anthropomorphic rocky terrain of their homeland. In these myths, petrification was used as a punishment by the gods for both mortals and immortals. One stare into the beautiful eyes of Medusa, the snake-haired goddess of temptation, and you would instantly turn into stone. Vanity was equally punishable, as in the myth of Lethaea, so was boasting about one’s children. Niobe did just that, and was turned into stone by Zeus. Then there is the story of Midas, the greedy king who wished nothing more than being able to turn everything into gold, simply by touching it. He died by eventually touching himself, becoming a gold fossil. 

As this self-destructive global economy breaks almost every rule in the book when it comes to greed, vanity, and then some, maybe the Greeks were up to some important insights after all. Their myths may be fictional, but they pay homage to a brutally poetic ecological justice: “everything changes” as they used to say, nothing ever stays the same, as nature transforms gods into stone and vice versa.

The theme of transformation in Greek mythology is not confined to petrification: Zeus turned into golden rain so that he can seep in quietly through the roof of his beloved Danae, while Daphne turned herself into a tree to avoid her stalker, Apollo. On countless occasions gods masqueraded as natural elements. This anthropomorphism of nature may be looked down upon today, but at least it sheds light into a time when humans actually respected nature: they were fearful of “her”. If only some of that sentiment remained today, this civilisation might have stood a chance of making itself sustainable.

Even petrification itself isn’t a myth, after all. Anything on this planet can turn into stone, through a process called “mineral displacement” which takes thousands of years. I’ve seen it with my own eyes when I visited the petrified forest of Sigri. As this civilisation becomes the future fossil fuel for whatever life form comes next, we had a good run. Before dying, Midas actually almost starved to death because all the food he touched turned to gold. Our economy has made the same mistake: it has monetised every resource on the planet, while at the same time destroying it. You can print money, and you can leverage money, but at the end of the day you can’t eat money.

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons

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