68 / Limits To Growth

Human beings are "different" from all other creatures, since our activities are not limited by any "natural" constraint. Though we are part of the natural world, and dependent on it, we can create our own world. And do.

Given this, and our radical freedom to choose what we will do, and how we will do it, it would be nice to establish some principles upon which our actions should be based.

This concept, simple enough logically, but completely contrary to what has been called "human desire" (the desire to get and take whatever we want, whenever we want it, damn the torpedoes full speed ahead), is a focus of the work of the Club of Rome.

Their most famous book is probably "The Limits To Growth," published in 1972. The idea that there are limits to growth, and that we should bind ourselves to them (since nature does not bind us), remains a "good idea."