What Humans Need to Live: 5 Resources For a Good Quality of Life
What is fundamental for quality lives on earth? What is it that we should all be doing to ensure the best lives, not just for humans, but for all the life here on planet Earth? It is a question that should be at the core of what we do and what decisions we make. Here is a structure to weigh what actions we should take, whether as individuals, groups, corporations, countries or the entire planet.
There are five resource groups that no humans can live without. Each one is important, we need all of them.
The first resource group is the natural resources, anything the Earth gives us: air, soil, minerals, water, oceans and most especially, the plants, animals and creatures in the sea.
The second resource group is our present labor: what each and every one of us on Earth is doing today. Who's growing our food, making things, designing, building, teaching, transporting, entertaining and organizing? We all count on the many endeavors of each other. What we do matters. Labor is a key resource.
The third resource group is the past results of human labor. Anything we now have that we can utilize; buildings, tools, transportation systems, computers, etc. It's the stuff, or capital- but physical capital, not money capital.
The fourth resource group is time. Because it takes time to grow things, whether it's food, trees, infrastructure, or kids; and our lifetimes are limited, time is a resource.
And the fifth resource group? It's knowledge. Specifically the knowledge of how we use the first four resource groups, the natural resources, labor, capital, and time to do whatever it is that human beings need done for their quality of life. Knowledge also includes understanding how what we do impacts the natural world and the other resource groups.
But by definition, the first four resource groups are limited. We only have one planet Earth, so how are we fostering the fish in the sea? How do we grow food, trees, and have places for people to live? How do we preserve whole wild places for animals and plants? Applying knowledge to the natural resources is absolutely critical. For example, we know global heating is already diminishing our biodiversity, accelerating the loss of land to sea level rise, and threatens to make uninhabitable whole areas of the Earth presently rich with life. We know we have to do all we can.
Applying knowledge to our labor is critical for two reasons, one, so we are efficient at what we do, and two, that we are doing the right things. Because the third resource group? The stuff, the capital? Throughout human history, humans have always been able to say "Well, we only have the stuff that the humans who went before us were smart enough to leave us.” So what are we making? How is it useful not just for us, but for all those who come after us? A major example: We know that all the human generations who come after us will want electricity for powering all the wonderful things it does, just like us. It is critical that all electrical generation systems we make from now on don't hurt the natural resources. No fossil fuels for electricity sources. They cause global heating. Nuclear reactors don’t cause global heating but there is still the important question: can nuclear waste be made safe for the long term? Let’s leave the best physical capital possible for those that come after us, whether that is buildings, electrical systems, transportation systems or anything else we build.
What I love about this five resource way of looking at things is this. Whatever your religion, your politics, or the age in which you were born into, we need those resources to live. This brings up "What is a quality life?" At the end of your life, what are you going to want to be able to say that you did? For some people their first answer might be "Oh I got to travel here,” or “I got to play with this.”, or some other self-centered response. But with our present situation on Earth, with so many of the five resources everyone needs under threat, all of us humans need from each other a much better answer. We need to be honestly able to say at the end of our lives; “I was a helper”. And how do you know you are helping, leaving a legacy you can be proud of? It's how you helped the five resources that we all need to live. It’s an ideal, possibly achievable: think about if everyone had this goal of being a helper. Wouldn’t it be really great if you could reliably know that every stranger you meet was someone you could trust was a helper? Helping the resources that we all need to live? Let’s strive for that.
The five resources is a clear framework enabling us to weigh whether our endeavors, large or small, individual, corporate or governmental, are good or bad. It gives us a way to call out when individual or corporate economic interest tramples over what is best for the resources we all need on Earth. It is a real problem with our present system that once somebody comes up with a way to make money, so many will do anything and everything they can to keep that source of money, no matter how detrimental it is to all of us. We can and should rationally call out what is detrimental to the five resources we all need to live.
With knowledge being so critical for the four other resources. It is important to know both what knowledge is, and what can damage or destroy it. For everything we do we count on reliable knowledge. Here is a great definition of science from Jared Diamond. "Science is a process. It is the acquisition of reliable knowledge." As soon as you lie about something it is no longer science. A primary example of this is fossil fuel corporations lying to suppress the science of climate. The continued pushing of fossil fuel usage while we know it is the primary cause of our overheating Earth is a crime against the resources all need to live. There are many other examples of individual economic interests trampling over what is best for all, by lying about what the real science is. We have to call out and stop any such detrimental actions.
The best way to protect knowledge is to both ask of ourselves and others “What do you teach?” What knowledge do we pass to all generations that come after us? I submit that the most important thing to teach is the five resources we all need to live. It is universal. Let’s teach that to everyone.