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Pathway :: Home
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Transforming Our Culture: Towards Sustainability |
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Contributed by Mike Nickerson
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Monday, 28 January 2008 |
Reprinted from Ottawa's Peace and Environment News
(January-February 2008)
Continuing with civilization requires more than fine tuning the present system. It requires metamorphosis.
Climate change, peak oil and all the other unfolding crises associated with pollution and resource depletion are all symptoms of one problem. There has been a fundamental change in the relationship between people and the Earth. We no longer have new frontiers to expand into when resources get scarce or our waste becomes intolerable. This change marks the maturity of the human species. Well-being now requires an equally fundamental change in how we manage our societies.
As long as the goal of expanding production and consumption is
considered legitimate, we are in danger of overshooting planetary
limits and collapsing. When sustainability gains legitimacy, as our
primary goal, the possibility will emerge for evolving a mature social
form, capable of long-term well-being. It is a Question of Direction.
"Enough" is the cue indicating physical maturity. A caterpillar spends
its entire life gathering natural resources and growing. When it is big
enough, it stops growing and undergoes a change of purpose. The
butterfly that emerges from its cocoon is beautiful, it lives very
lightly on the Earth, sipping the nectar of flowers, and its primary
purpose is to launch the next generation.
This image speaks to a sustainable future. If we were to gather our
satisfaction from the beauties of life and use the material world
primarily to provide nutritious food and energy efficient shelter, we
too could safely usher the next generations.
Going beyond "enough"
Unfortunately, as a society, we missed our cue.
Industrial civilization reached "enough" in the 1920s when human need
was vanquished. The industrial order went into crisis. What could they
do to keep monetary fortunes expanding when productivity had grown to
the point where everyone's needs could be met? On top of that, the
labour force was campaigning for a 30 hour work week.
The workweek had already shrunk, in recent decades, from 80 hours to
70, to 60, to 50, to 40 hours, on the premise that, due to high
productivity, work had to be shared for everyone to have jobs. Fewer
work hours would allow people to spend more time with their families,
to pursue friendships, the arts, sports, education, and to develop
parts of themselves that longed for expression. This was the cue that
civilization had come of age.
Rather than celebrating our maturity and exploring the many wonders of
being alive, the decision makers of that time launched a campaign
against shorter hours and turned to advertising to encourage people to
want more. After millennium of being content with the clothes,
furniture and other goods that people worked hard to produce, an
attitude of wastefulness was cultivated.
The fallacy of perpetual growth
By the 1950s this new "Gospel of Consumption" was well established. Retail analysts Victor Lebow described it thus:
"Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we
make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use
of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego
satisfaction, in consumption . . . We need things consumed, burned up,
worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate."
The critical evolutionary cue of "enough" was lost in the flurry of
wasteful production that has brought us to the edge of ecological
collapse. If we want to resolve climate change, or any of the other
problems arising because we are outgrowing our planet, we have to
acknowledge our changed circumstances and clearly adopt the goal of
sustainability; not as a new style, or add-on, but as the core
aspiration for decision making.
The illusion of our growth based economy is that disaster will strike
if we stop growing. This is only true because of the way that mutual
provision (the economy) is presently structured. Explaining why most of
the world uses this system, what the problems with it are, the
alternatives available and how to encourage the transformation, would
take an entire book. Such is the purpose of my book. I only want to
point out here that we have a fundamental choice to make, between
growing until we drop and aiming for sustainability.
Just think what human imagination and creativity would come up with if
we applied it to making goods durable, rather than engineering their
obsolescence; if our educational and persuasive abilities were used to
encourage the celebration of what life offers and to affirm each
individual's potential, rather than promoting materialism and sewing
the seeds of
doubt and fear, only to suggest purchases to make the discomfort go away.
We could reduce our collective ecological footprint to the point where
there certainly wouldn't be enough work to keep everyone busy all the
time. We would then have to share the work that remained, breathe
deeply, and learn how to enjoy our selves.
Deciding on direction
Legitimacy is the key to transformation. Imagine yourself, with a pack
sac full of tools going into the wilderness with the intent of staying
there, by yourself, for two years. How many of us would emerge after
two years, in good health? And that is with tools that somebody else
made and with a knowledge of how to use them obtained from our culture.
Even the words and concepts with which we think, we get from the people
around us. Without a society, a person is almost as useless as a
computer with no programs. With no social support, survival would be a
long shot.
Even in today's arms length economy, we are totally dependent on the
products of other people's labour. In earlier times it was very clear
that if our tribe or clan were to leave us behind, we would perish. We
want, very deeply, to belong. The price of membership is subscription
to the value system of one's society.
As long as our society ascribes legitimacy to the goal of producing and
consuming ever more, it will be an uphill struggle to avoid
over-exploiting natural resources and polluting beyond the limits of
tolerance. If the goal of sustainability were wholeheartedly adopted,
and was sincerely used as the foundation of decision making, we would,
within a decade, be moving so clearly toward a sustainable world that
we would no longer be worried for our children and grandchildren.
It is important to turn off unnecessary lights, compost and support
local producers. Each step slows the expansion of human impacts on the
Earth. More critically, your acts are testimony to the goal of
sustainability. When such testimony, reach critical mass, anyone
wishing to accelerate growth will feel like a smoker lighting up in a
public space. From that point, solutions will emerge everywhere and be
implemented in every corner of our world.
Mike Nickerson is the author of three books on sustainability,
including "Planning for Seven Generations" and "Life, Money &
Illusion."
For more information on the Question of Direction and how to stimulate
an appropriate choice, see "The Challenge and the Goal" at
http://www.SustainWellBeing.net
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