Human activity is no longer directly shaped by the global ecosystem, although it must ultimately harmonize with it, and our abilities to anticipate and manipulate have grown to the point where the evolutionary mandate of adaptive fit is far less evident than our spectacular ability to adapt the environment to fit our purposes. It is indeed this state of affairs that generates our sense that the name of the game is who is the fittest. The fittest humans are often understood be those who best manipulate their contexts to suit their purposes, and we have extrapolated this perception to declare that evolution is all about such dynamics of power.

This disconnect between our perception of how things work and how things actually work is generating countless planetary and existential crises. We have specialized and elaborated our rapid temporal framework and achieved unprecedented mastery over our immediate circumstances, in the process detaching our responses from groundings in the slower processes of nature. We have become the fastest-living creature on earth, producing more than the earth can absorb or sustain, changing entire ecosystems and environments faster than lifeforms can adjust, and straining our own capacity to deal with our ever more dense, eventful, experience-packed lives in which the dominant feeling is that we never have enough time.

What do we value the most? That which is scarce. Time is surely scarce. When I inhabited the corporate world I had time for no one.

One terrible evening, Robin told me how unhappy she was. My response was that I was so busy working to provide all these things. I asked her what more did she and the children want. She replied "You".

It took years to rearrange my life. We live on a fraction of the money we used to have. But we have time - lots of it.

Living in the country helps as did moving to PEI.

All is surely not lost?