Reading Bill McKibben's Deep Economy opens your eyes to the smallness of the world and the need to be more responsible in our global community.

While questioning whether money and material possessions help in our quest for happiness, he advocates returning to local economies and communities. The author argues for the need for communities to be more self-sufficient in a future world of energy and food crises as the populations of China and India grow.

It sort of reminds me of Thomas Jefferson advocating for the agricultural way of life. McKibben said a sense of connectedness to those around us would help us be more responsible in terms of energy efficiency, keeping the environment intact and even paying living wages to employees.

It may even solve the obesity problem, he says. If we eat locally and take the time to cherish and cook food from the local farmers' market, maybe we wouldn't consume so many empty calories. We would be filled with the satisfaction of belonging to something bigger than ourselves. He argues this would help with our happiness as well.

McKibben argues for a change in thinking about our consumer-driven economy. Less can be more.

While this manifesto seems a little idealistic, it discusses the issues that will affect our lives the most in the coming decades. 

A few years back I read Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy and I thought it was some of the most intelligent science fiction I've read.

Butler takes us through a world of colonization and slavery through Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago. Aliens come to Earth in search of resources and plan to mix with humans for genetic diversity.

The humans don't have much choice and have to hear how superior the aliens' genes are. But the aliens also criticize the humans' hierarchical way of thinking.

When the main character Lilith has a hybrid son with one of the aliens, he fights for humans to once again mate on their own and rekindle humanity.

Butler uses metaphor to criticize human nature and provides insight into the psychology of a race of people being dominated by another.

Her fiction also discusses how humans use up environmental resources and simply go to another place for more.

Since we're well into black history month, I'm going to recall and rehash my favorite black authors and books.

I'll start with Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. This book breaks readers' hearts as they learn about Pecola, who thinks herself ugly and wishes for blue eyes because she believes they are more beautiful than her brown ones.

Of course, this shows how she and all of us are socialized to believe in certain norms. She wants blue eyes because she reads the Dick and Jane books and she knows people are nicer to people that look like them. As a child, she doesn't yet truly understand prejudice or racism, but she feels the effects.

The book takes place in the Midwest during the Great Depression and delves into issues of neglectful parenting, sexual abuse of children and how a community fails to intervene.

We're left to question how the world is full of so much hate when most people yearn to be loved.