More on what people DO do

Even as a youth, I sometimes wondered about the thing called "the economy." How did it work. Seemed that the farmer grew corn to feed himself, his livestock, and to feed other folks. The cobbler made shoes not only for himself but for the rest of the townfolks. The baker made bread for himself and other townfolks too. And so forth. Somehow it all went round and round, and worked. Since a cow in the market was not easily immediately divided up into bread and shoes, each thing was first converted to a proportional equivalent, an abstract thing, called "money." Money from a big sale like a cow, could be saved in part and spent in part in other times, too.

Yet also I had learned that there was a bigger cycle involved, of inputs and outputs too, that was actually predecessor to that consumer producer market carousel. It was that solar energy came in, heat energy radiated out, and the whole of earth's living system got powered by what happened in between, to that energy. Solar energy evaporated water from lakes and ocean, to convectively rise up and heated air rose carrying the water, to be blown all over by unequal heating of the air, and deposited up higher, to flow down lower again, stirring things up along the way. Solar energy powered the plants that grew the farmer's corn and other crops. The land supplied essential nutrients to the crops, and the air supplied carbon dioxide from which the plants built themselves, expelling oxygen in the process that we animal life can live. All solar powered.

But people tended to see only the part of it all that was up close: the cobbler only seeing animal hide leather coming in, and hemp for sewing shoes strongly, his skill in making shoes; those resources seemed to appear out of thin air as handed over by trading for money that he got for making shoes.

The part that Mother Nature provided, was only seen as part of dividing up resources by men; the more natural resources one "owned" the more available for processing into money. A big frontier was expanded into, as claims on the local resources grabbed all that was nearby, so one moved out to where Nature was still abundant and free. Eventually nearly all the easily useful natural resources of land and water got claimed; after that it became a trading game of scarcity and hoarding, converting to easy money by those who had taken to that lifestyle, instead of making shoes or growing corn.

And there was another major sub-cycle of all this economy mechanism, and that was human motivation. Life has to reproduce or it vanishes. Women do the major part of this reproduction, gestating and raising family; she seeks to provide for her children, and having a dedicated man to help with that task, or getting included into a harem of a wealthy man, were the options over the millennia. The men, however, took on a different lifestyle, largely oriented to attracting a women or women to him for support, submitting to his reproduction in exchange. The male efforts involved both gaining skills and money and material resources to attract a woman to mate with him; but also the males sometimes squabbled with each other for opportunity to get women, which for some men was easier than gaining skills or resources: disable the other males and the woman have to accept the winner as mate. Groups of males would team up to wipe out individual males by overpowering and disabling them, thus the team of men gained more women and thus reproduced more that way.

And there was yet another major factor in this busy scene, and that was not so visible; but properly understood, could get events to be favorable for those knowledgeable about this factor. Religion would become a means for a team of men - often composed of sons of one dominant savvy man at the start - to have greater effect in their efforts to overwhelm individuals, but eventually teams would expand to border on each other, not so easy to wipe them out and take their women. Religion was a very real part of this busyness, and the mostly invisible mechanisms involving gaining special help from God were an easily kept secret, gaining reproductive advantage for those men. Thus religions became rallying flags for conflicts among the teams of men. The women did not much care which team won them; all they wanted was support in performing their responsibility of bringing forth the next generation, lest the candle of life snuff out - thus they competed amongst themselves to gain the special favor of males who appeared to be in control of resources, and that usually meant control of other men of their team.

[OK enough for now. Maybe more later on the DO do subject.]