It is not possible to have an enduring presence without cycling. Cycling allows inflow and egress of energy and the maintenance of what essentially becomes a standing wave form from the perspective of physics. This is what gives the sensation of continuity and some permanence, even though it is based on change, with that change being the entrance and exit of energy. When there is the steady state where loss is equal to intake, then it seems that the product of the cycle is always there.

This applies to everything that appears to be permanent or long lasting. If this is not maintained the object, a collection of energy, eventually erodes away following what we perceive as the second law of thermodynamics. This is the law that tells us the entropy or state of disorder in a system is always increasing. This cycling is the only way to mitigate this second law. Primitive peoples do this, for this is one of the first things they learn socially, as they endeavor to establish a long-lasting presence. It is this recognition that enables them to have a relationship of gratitude to everything around them, that which leads western culture to believe that they are worshipping nature, when they actually recognize the basic laws of nature in their lives.

Western culture has seen things in terms of consumption. For them when you eat you consume and it is not that eating is a part of a cyclic process that returns what you eat to the earth so it may become a natural part of the cycle of rebirth. There is a problem with looking at attempts in terms of consumption, as what you consume you do not replace and this inevitably leads to exhaustion of supply as without replacement this is the only possibility.

This is what happens when you inoculate or streak an agar bacterial plate with a sample of bacteria. They grow into colonies and these colonies increase until the supply of nutrients is exhausted in the agar plates and thus the colonies all die. The act of closing the system by placing the top cover to the agar plate allows no bacteria to survive. In essence we also have a closed system on the planet but what allows it to perpetuate itself is cycling. This allows for a return to the beginning. Our society has forgotten that and is now close to the point of the bacteria on the agar plate, where the resources that enable us to create our living experience are now in the unsustainable phase which occurs prior to exhaustion. If exhaustion is reached then our society will cease to exist, much as the bacterial colony on the agar plate. This is the lesson that is in front of us as a society. The society must shift into a sustainable mode. This can only be done by cycling. The first rule of cycling is that what is utilized must be generated and what is generated must be returned to supply. With the things that we do within the society we must recognize that input and output have to be equal and whereas growth can occur, in a closed system growth of one thing is always at the expense of another and proper balance has to be maintained in order to have an enduring presence of the living cycle.

This applies to any individual community as well as the entire eco-system. It is, therefore, important to realize that each decision you make to drive a gasoline vehicle whose power source is not recyclable versus an electric vehicle whose power source is you are contributing to a problem. Each time you fail to use a recyclable piece of equipment you are moving toward a point of exhaustion of supply. Without attention to sustainability we will grind to a halt. It is a decision we are making each time we consume rather than particpate in the cycle of living.