ABSTRACT
A decade ago, the author wrote an account of world economic history that identified and tracked the role of various “ways of being” that have been influential in this historical process. Various “gods” from Greek mythology were used to represent ways of being, and other ways of being were also identified and named (Allen, 1997, reviewed in Ecological Economics, 1998). These “gods,” or “ways of being,” are found to be important components of the economic system. As per the human ecology approach to economics outlined in Chapter 1, the reader should note that the humanities – literature which is typically excluded from economic analysis – is thus formally included.
