The value of a tree

A beautiful tree, its roots running deep and wide, making a thousand connections to earth, other roots, and all the creatures that have made their homes in its infrastructure.

The trunk, a living record of time and wisdom. Often supporting other creatures, like humans, through its medicinal qualities.

The sap that runs through the veins, provisions for more than the tree, a little like human blood can provision for other humans.

Leaves, sun-seeking leaves, turning light into energy into food. Fallen leaves, turning captured light into compost into food for other creatures. Or, in the span of time, into condensed energy.

A tree is home to many creatures. Birds, ants, fungi, bacteria.

We sit under a tree, allowing its shade to soothe us. We get married or buried under a tree. We etch our names into the bark to be remembered and remember.

When we consider the value of a tree, not through the lens of price in dollars, but through its all everything of giving and receiving, we begin to understand humanity’s broken relationship to value.

When we chop a tree down and turn it into lumber to produce things and make a profit, this entire value ecosystem is wiped out. Just like that.

Yet this is never recorded on any balance sheet of human design.

The lumbar has lost the incredible complexity of the tree, the multidimensional collaboration and competitive nature of life and natures systems. We might consider it to be more valuable in its simplified and denatured state, but this can only happen when we fail to consider the massive living value we ignored or discounted in the process.

This is an unsustainable model.

Replace the tree with a human, and we can see the extent of the problem of our current accounting system.

If we want a world with a future for Earth and all her creatures, we need a better accounting system. Synergistic Accounting is Syntropic World’s response to be sure we account for the whole value of everything.

Photo Taken April 7th 2023

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