Economists have nothing without Society;
Society has nothing without Environment
I was once told that any project depended, like a 3-legged stool, on environment, people and money. While that may be true, when you zoom out you see that people depend on the environment - the air, water, nutrient cycles, insects and microbes, trees, plankton and so on, that renew oxygen and provide food and energy. And money depends on society, the workers.
Before the Industrial Revolution, people were pretty well enmeshed in the environment. That stopped with The Enclosures: they moved to the towns. Then, like the Jenga, they and the environment suffered - bricks moved to make the economy. Since then, while things might have improved for the workers in the developed world - bricks have been added to the 'Society' layers - they've come from the environment, and from other Jenga towers in poorer countries.
We need to return our society, and economy, back to being enmeshed in the environment. We need to learn about the environment, learn to love it, stay local or move at human speed, lose our reliance on powerful machinery, listen to birdsong and feel the breeze.
