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Kekule dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, 'The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning,' is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that 'productivity' and 'earnings' keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity - most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to being with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.

Thomas Pynchon#42

EthicsEconomicsCycleEnvironmentSystem

About this quote

What does it mean?
The Ouroboros dream of a cyclical world is twisted by a system that exploits the cycle for profit, draining resources.
In plain terms
A system that turns the natural cycle into a profit‑driven loop harms the world.
What can you take from it?
Economic systems that ignore sustainability deplete resources.

Where it applies

  • environmental policy
  • business ethics

Putting it to work

  • circular economy
  • regulating profit motives

Questions to consider

  • Can profit be aligned with the cycle?
  • What alternatives exist?

Another view

Some argue growth can coexist with sustainability.

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  2. 'Who has sent this new serpent into our ruinous garden, already too fouled, too crowded to qualify as any locus of innocence - unless innocence be our age's ne…

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