Stupidy or Sustainability - Collapse of Systems
January 11, 2010 by Will Marre
Lately I’ve been teaching leaders about sustainability (see The Top 10 Things Every Leader Should Know About Sustainability). A good working definition of the term is “to act so that what you do today does not diminish others’ chances for achieving equal goals in their future.” Another way to say it is, “Don’t be a greedy jerk.” You see it’s really thoughtless greed that threatens our future. The oldest motive of mankind is, “I’ve got mine…tough luck for you.” Any way you say it, sustainability is a concept that is based on the ideal that everyone should have a chance for a decent life. Today that is a big issue.
But it’s actually possible that it’s going to be tough luck for all of us. Especially for our children. Of course I understand there are loud critical voices that say any warnings of climate change, water shortages, increasing range fires, and a northward movement of tropical pests and disease as overblown. They believe our current system of turning everything into money is the greatest ideal of humanity. They shout that any change to the status quo will cost us jobs, wealth and comfort. What they don’t account for is that the current banking crisis has cost us more jobs and wealth than any environmental regulations have. Polluting our air, wasting our water and living with reckless disregard for future consequences is just plain selfish. Stupid too.
What most of us don’t understand is the process that leads to collapse of systems. Conditions in nature, in the economy, and in our lives don’t just gradually get worse indefinitely. More often there is a tipping point when there is a general collapse. Our job might be bad, but then, boom, we’re fired. The economy might be fine on the surface, but when the rotting foundation collapses, crash. We may be feeling a growing distance in our marriage, and then suddenly, “I want a divorce.”
The model of human history and natural systems is that if we abuse people, nature or ourselves long enough something very bad will suddenly happen. All the big things have long-term warning signs usually ignored and then, wham! Pearl Harbor, 9/11, The Crash and Recession of 2008, and millions of famine refugees in Africa are all examples of hellacious consequences to ignoring real problems because they require change. The challenge before all of us is to create a sustainable future. Not one of vicious scarcity, but one of abundance. True abundance is one of those ideals none of us should be against. And sustainable abundance should be mankind’s greatest goal.
Sustainability has many faces. Environmental sustainability requires we don’t exploit nature’s resources so we don’t create a world that is a hunk of barbecue charcoal for our children.
Social sustainability means that we create a world that offers realistic hope, opportunity and education so that war, terrorism, and drug dealing are not better options than community building.
Economic sustainability means we create economic systems that don’t require insane levels of consumption or routine waves of mass job destruction to give everyone a shot at abundance.
Personal sustainability means that as individuals we live fulfilled lives without skin-wrinkling, brain-deadening stress, fractured relationships, drowning debt and self-destructive health habits.
As you can see, sustainability is holistic. Everything is connected to everything. Damn. It’s hard to think about all the moving parts, but we must. Our world is not the same as it was 50 years ago. We need to think differently and act differently now.
And we are. Change is happening. It’s happening everywhere. More people are choosing to buy more sustainable products. The recession has caused many to strengthen social ties with family and friends. Most of us are more engaged in at least psychologically hugging trees. We openly value the environment and criticize people and companies who don’t. And more of us are reconsidering our lifestyle and “life pace” so that our everyday lives are sustainable and fulfilling.
“First do no harm”. This should become as much a part of our mind set that guides our every action privately and professionally as the American bill of rights.
Thanks Will, I’m glad there are people in the world like you and your readers. I’m optimistic when I consider us all getting together and forwarding a positive, humane view of economics, to replace the vicious, adversarial version. Any such view as the latter, now that we have the capacity to destroy ourselves, cannot endure, and is not enduring, but is obviously ending, now. I don’t only mean “destroy ourselves” through war, but through environmentally catastrophic practices such as those that bring cancerous materials into our communities, or decimate our fish populations, as we’ve recently seen. If there are no more fish to eat, what will become of us? We must change our ways of life. I believe we can, and will. Thanks Will.
Have you seen the movie FOOD INC? Have you read the book For The New Intellectual by Ayn Rand. Have you seem the Zeitgeist movies and what they say about not joining the military (www.zietgiest.com). Why are all our leaders always telling us to sacrifice while they make people fat and unhealthy by subsidizing huge corporations then want to pass healthcare and make it mandatory for all small businesses to pay the price for the fat unhealthy people that they created? What more are individuals supposed to give at this point! Screw giving! What we need is to hold the greedy bankers and corporate Monopolies responsible for what they have created!
Here is a good idea; make the fast food industry, the tobacco industry, Monsanto, Dow Corning, and anyone else producing unhealth, liable for all of our Healthcare costs!
What we don’t know does hurt us especially when our government representatives continue to fill their pockets with back room deals with completely corrupt corporations and institutions!
Will since you are in the know, why don’t you make a list of the most profound up to date data from movies and books that is available so that we can support real integrity and deny those who want to make us slaves to their greed and control?
Kevin Hancock
Well it’s been awhile since I’ve commented as I’ve been selfishly enjoying the holidays with my family and after years of un- and under-employment, I’ve started a new job, making about as much as I did in 1984!
As always, your essays cause me to think differently as you often present rather original viewpoints and observations, not to mention your out-of-the-box solutions.
Your observation that things “don’t just gradually get worse indefinitely… More often there is a tipping point when there is a general collapse”…is brilliant. Yet this “radical, positive change to which you refer has always been happening. It’s called evolution. We here today, may treasure some of life’s simpler times, “the good old days” (as they were dubbed) for some of the clearer values, widespread civility, and safer communities. (Think post war America in the 50’s.) My in-laws recalled that you could walk in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn in the middle of the night without a care in the world. Now it’s one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in New York.
Those same more sanguine times were so good (compared to the decade earlier), we just couldn’t stand the prosperity as they gradually gave way to, and evolved into the 60’s, perhaps the greatest cultural about-face in American history. “Counter-culture” I think they called it. Post war peace, suburbia with it’s “American Dream” abundance, and the powerful “military industrial complex” of the cold war era gave birth to James Dean, rebels without causes and the hippie generation, who just wanted change, for its own sake, it seemed.
I would suggest that this same process is a trend that goes back as far as man. Even Adam and Eve, the embodiment of “first” humans, living in Eden, purported to be the perfect environment, couldn’t leave well enough alone. They wanted something different / more. Wasn’t that our “original sin?”
The problem of 21st century man is that this trend is accelerating so rapidly, we witness several “tipping points” in a single lifetime. My dad, born in pre-WWI Austro-Hungary (later Yugoslavia and now just plain old Slovenia) marveled that in his lifetime, he witnessed a world where a “horseless carriage” (viz. automobile) was inconceivable to a man walking on the moon.
Change used to take eons, millennia and now mere moments in time. How many centuries did those living under Roman rule, with all its technological advances, wait for deliverance? I can imagine that peasants in the middle ages were longing for positive change which never came in their lifetimes. How about those who lived during the so-called “mini-ice age” that lasted from the mid 1600’s to the mid 1800’s? Recent evidence suggests that Napoleon’s downfall was precipitated by the extraordinary cold of the time. In fact, beer became quite the thing as the warm grape growing wine regions of Northern Europe were frozen and a new beverage based on heartier grains evolved, proving once again that all change is not bad.
Nor is all change good. We often throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. We replace some shortcoming with something that brings other shortcomings. Cell phones are a marvel, but look at the impact on our young people. It ain’t all good. Nuclear power generation is again recognized as worthwhile….nuclear warheads, well not so much. (Think Alfred Nobel)
The uproar over the environment is really a reaction to the pace of change. How many environmental catastrophes occurred in the millions of years during the earth’s evolution? How many species have come and gone long before man walked among them? A visit to the Museum in San Diego’s Balboa Park will show fossils of sea creatures found on inland mountains hundred of miles east in what is now desert. Yes, man has had an impact on the earth, its atmosphere and its resources. But absent man, colossal change always took place.
One last thought….change almost always replaces the status quo with something new. That implies the death or disappearance of the old. Go to Pittsburgh. I know of no better demonstration of positive change. There is nary a sign of the old steel mills on which the city was built. That too took years, but it didn’t take all that long in geological or sociological time.
Dozens of movies not withstanding, man never walked among the dinosaurs. Perhaps if they stayed around, we would never have walked here at all.
So I don’t curse the change…only the neurotic acceleration of its pace. We are racing toward uncontrollable change. It’s the pace of change that is unsustainable.
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