To live, humans must consume other lives, an exchange central to the world’s working

Evidence

On a day like this, when the fiddleheads are unfurling and the air is petal soft, I am awash in longing. I know that “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s chloroplasts” is good advice and yet I must confess to fullblown chlorophyll envy. Sometimes I wish I could photosynthesize so that just by being, just by shimmering at the meadow’s edge or floating lazily on a pond, I could be doing the work of the world while standing silent in the sun. … But this generosity is beyond my realm, as I am a mere heterotroph, a feeder on the carbon transmuted by others. In order to live, I must consume. That’s the way the world works, the exchange of a life for a life, the endless cycling between my body and the body of the world. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 627

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the heterotroph role and frames eating as life-for-life exchange, the moral core of the chapter.
• XREF: Directly links to the reader’s Eco-Justice polyad thread on consumption and reciprocal land relationships.