First proposed in my book The Dynamics of Humankind, econology lays out new fundamental concepts and natural principles in a space where biology and anthropology have remained largely disconnected. We already know how life survives, changes then dies; just as we know the origins of economy, civilisation and the cultural whims of humanity; yet, what remains to be seen is the field which actively consolidates them together. Hence, the basis of my work is engendered from the econological view, which approaches civilised worlds as artificial ecosystems existing independently of natural laws. Existing sciences highlight how destructive humans are and reveal our damaging impact on the environment, but, they expressly focus on the effects rather than the causes, which is of limited use. 

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In name, econology is a portmanteau of economics and ecology; so named to conflate their origin with their covariance as an exclusive property of human manipulation. The most general assumptions in econology are that ecologies cannot be substituted for economies because: (1) the physical inflexibility of civilisation, (2) the strain placed on natural resources for nonessential purposes, and (3) the absence of an equilibrium. Economies are synthetic ecosystems which are not adapted to fit the environment, but retrofitted as a modification to enhance an output beyond a natural maximum. This renders civilisation incompatible with the biosphere it occupies because it relies on a constant trajectory of amplified supplies from a finite planet subject to the variance and nonlinearity of nature.

 

Life is something which grows, disperses then adapts, but, civilisation does the complete opposite: it builds, accumulates then solidifies itself into a fixed position so it can continue the economic process which makes it function. Being at total opposites with the forces of nature is of course not a survival strategy which will be favoured by natural selection. As a result, the future of civilised humankind is predestined to fail from the outset because the trajectory dictates the fate, but econology specifies the compatibility issues of the maladaptation. No existing field of science has claimed this very important role, which justifies and legitimises econology’s introduction as a new academic field.

 

As increased public attention now draws to environmental issues and pertinences like mass extinction, we require the adequate science which directly corresponds the problem. The elephant in the room we shall have to face boils down to a fundamental compatibility issue between civilisation and the environment, which econology lays out categorically. Given the specificity of econology to centre directly on the root causes of the issues of concern, it may just prove to be one of the most useful scientific fields in our pursuit to find a new route into the future by possessing the relative knowledge which other fields lack.

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Main characteristics and themes of Econology:

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• Functions as a specialised subfield between anthropology and biology, under the broad spectrum of behavioural sciences.

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• A technical focus on: (1) the relationship between ecology and economy; (2) human hypersociality; (3) complex synthesis and technological manipulation; (4) artificial selection for domestication; (5) nonnatural economic environments.

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• An emphasis on our primate biology which directly conflicts with the complex sociality and extended cooperation required by novel economic concepts and political ideologies.

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• Understanding of economic value, its exchange and creation as an evolutionary analogue of social competition, position and dominance.

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• A deconstructed view of the contractual enhancements which modulate human behaviour such as law, order, systems of government, political philosophies, customs and conventions which underpin civilisational social supercomplexity.

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Key concepts underwriting econology are complex sociality, dominance hierarchies, organisational structure, sedentism, subsistence, self-domestication, artificial selection, synthetic ecology, economics, nonnatural habitats and civilisation. The central theory of econology argues that civilisation is a maladaptation which is not a viable alternative to our previous ecology of subsistence and foraging, nor an evolutionary stable survival strategy within a Nash equilibrium. Econology proposes that three major transactional defects inherent to economic theory are the cause of the Anthropocene epoch which it predicts shall worsen over time at an accelerating rate. A capitulation to econology grants us the theoretical foundations necessary to define exactly where humans are going wrong, which by itself, achieves the largest part of the solution.

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When it comes to interpreting and understanding the behaviours of any living thing we apply biological sciences like ecology and ethology which apply to humans exactly the same way, yet do not rely on unscientific and abstract novel concepts like economic theory does. Most people are savvy enough to recognise there is an obvious difference between what is good for the economy versus what is good for humans, which prompts the need for an overdue shift in our thinking towards a new approach that revises the preconceptions we hold about our civilised way of life. If we are serious about our scientific pursuits to improve natural knowledge, then the primary value of science must remain in our capacity for understanding rather than our financial interests. 

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