B2,
I concur with everything you've expressed. Overconsumption and overpopulation are both huge drivers of humanity's race to biophysical depletion. The false religions of market capitalism and higher technology keep leading our captains of industry astray, and millions of us plebes as well. But I seen an antidote - beyond becoming conscious and living light as a feather on the land - which we all should do anyway: Rallying around regional community-based sustainable economic development (call it Regenerative Regionalism if you like). This would bring many of us back to our senses and restore meaning to millions of people's work lives. The primary goal of each region has to become providing for its people's basic needs: food, shelter, clothing, education, healthcare, etc. while simultaneously restoring space for other creatures. Everything else is frosting. Regions would be self-defined at scales so that they could internally meet the needs of a healthy industrial society. Meeting material and social needs regionally would reduce our inclination to engage in the more predatory forms of extraction and inequity, and would bring back around to home the one-way flows that unfettered global trade allows. By the way, I'm all for global peace, global cultural interaction, and even global trade - once regional needs are being met. So for example, we in the Chesapeake region should only qualify to be able to purchase equipment from Japan, or bananas from Honduras if we could demonstrate that we had substantially tackled homelessness, Central America demonstrates that everyone there has access to food, and Japan demonstrates that it is restoring its jungles. I remember meeting a Sikh religious leader, Sri Baba Ji, at my friend Andy's home in Takoma Park. He surprised everyone in the room by saying that having houses is nice - but far from essential!
-- Jim Schulman, AIA, BMRA
cell: 202/544-0069
Sustainable Community Initiatives, Founder
Community Forklift, LLC, Founder
On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 10:00 AM, William Updike <updikew@yahoo.com> wrote:
I have many jumbled and unclear thoughts about this conversation, so I'm not sure that what I say will be particularly insightful or helpful. One challenge as I see it is that even with the some thoughtful and intentional living, none of us are living anywhere close to what could be subscribed as true sustainability--both personally and because we live in a nation (and pay taxes to support it) that thrives on the extraction of natural capital. I find it difficult to see a way out of that quandary. We can build Living Buildings, which is certainly better than building brown things, but it is still construction and consumption. I think Hutchins said it best at one of the Living Future conferences--when everyone was going around the room talking about what sustainable building would look like, Bill raised his hand and said NOT building would be sustainable building. The architects and developers in the room lost a few heart beats that they'll never get back! Even a Living Building has a huge lifecycle cost that would take years if not decades to "pay" for (even as we continue to un-sustainably consume while living in the Living Building). This is why I will only ever call things green building and will never use the term sustainable building.
We don't need much complexity or technology to build a simple Living Building--the workers huts that Hutchins has been building in Nepal with the eco-foundation would certainly qualify--they have simple beauty, are made from waste and natural (and thus inherently non-toxic) materials. I appreciate the theory that people think we don't have to go back to a more simple lifestyle to live sustainably, but I'm not sure I agree. Those that live in the Nepali huts are certainly closer than I will ever get. Even folks living simply in this country, collecting all their own energy (and storing it in toxic batteries!) and water, and growing their own food, having no car, not using any animal products, never traveling by anything other than their feet (bikes need oil and grease and steel after all) are still not living sustainably (see note above regarding taxes). There probably aren't a lot of those folks around regardless. I wouldn't point back to Charles Mann's 1491--I would send people to Daniel Quinn's Ishmael instead. After all, many of the native civilizations failed due to overconsumption and not being able to adapt to the climate changes of the time.
The problem as I see it is not a spiritual one (though a deeper thinking about our place in the world certainly helps us live more "green" if not truly sustainable. We are a messy mix of frontal lobe and animal brain--lofty and selfish. We are co-creators (to borrow Sandy's term) but also destroyers. Even the best of us are flawed and are responsible for the loss of species. Because of this, I'm afraid that at this historical moment there is no getting around that there are just too damn many of us on the planet. Until we are all elevated to that higher spiritual place of balancing our beauty and our brutishness, we need to stop breeding. I can't see any way around that. That said, it may just be a lack of imagination on my part. I struggle with not being a glass half empty kind of guy.
So, random and perhaps unhelpful thoughts. Fascinating conversation though! It's because of folks like you all on this list that I can get up in the morning, dust myself off, and keep trying to figure out a path to living lighter on our little blue planet.
Best,
Bill Updike
thank you for the thoughtful responses!!! let me try this angle ~the image i use re: appropriate technology, which, some of you have heard - in our society, we tend to live in buildings as powerboats, unconsciously flipping switches, focused on a fixed point, independent of place. whereas, we can live as when sailing - paying attention to the world around us, the breezes, currents, clouds, know our vessel and work with it to respond to the always changing world. the vessels we live in can put us in more intimate relationships.i would not say that complexity has anything to do with these two ways of being. i would say it comes down to consciousness, and the level we seek engaging with the world around us (and our companions). which is what Sandy says about 1.8 cents into his notes below.re: another aspect of this conversation - we're a part of nature, w/ a twist - we alone have the capacity to negate our nature............ and more complex technologies are temptations, taking us further adrift........when we've become lost. we are born deeply united, and, then slowly become separated (reflect on your life; raise a child). our work as adults is to heal our separation(s). i think of healing as becoming reconnected with those parts of ourselves we've lost. our life's journey is finding home, which only has meaning as we begin the journey after the above mentioned separation occurs. the paradox - home can only be found spiritually, yet, it is in this dimension/reality/existence that we're offered doors back home........... through the natural world and our loved ones.what does that have to do with our conversation? i offer that the root of our world crisis is spiritual, as reflected in diminished consciousness. we need to re-awaken to our child's eyes and heart, where everything is alive and full of possibility, and play in the moss and grass (implicitly humble, as Alan suggested). the pot drips what's in it..........then we'll build and create places that nurture and heal all...............regardless of complexity.phew............ sorry if i got carried away! but, i now see the light! - the point is consciousness, not complexity.~ b
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