But how to change and what to change -- that is.
People who are concerned about sustainability in the world know that something has to be done to keep this world going; changes have to be made. But they don't agree on the nature of the changes: some call for far more drastic changes than others. Using the level of change they have in mind, the sustainability-concerned people fall roughly into two distinct and in some respects opposing camps: the "shifters" and the "stabilizers."
The shifters -- in the global context, "worldshifters" -- insist that only a fundamental transformation is of any use. The stabilizers fear such drastic changes: they are for maintaining the current system by making it stronger and more resilient. Who is right?
Perhaps they both are. Some things need to be shifted, and some things need to be stabilized. Let us see what, and why.
The future of our world will be decided in the interaction of two distinct systems: the biosphere --the system made up of the web of life on the planet -- and the system formed by the globally interacting communities of humans. One of these systems needs to be shifted, and the other stabilized.
The system of nature on this planet needs to be safeguarded, its dynamic equilibria maintained and made more resilient. It is not to be shifted to a tipping point, for the dynamic regime that would then come about is unlikely to be favorable to humanity. After all, the system of humanity was built within, and indeed into, the system of nature during the thousands of years that elapsed since the last Ice Age.
The human system could persist because it was in sync with the generative and regenerative capacities of the system of nature. This was a highly focused and delicate mesh; its disruption would be fatal to the human system, or to its out-of-sync parts. Many societies, entire civilizations have disappeared for lack of staying in tune with their environment.
Until the advent of the Neolithic, the human system maintained a functional mesh with nature. Humans lived in kinship, or territorially based tribes, they followed their supply of food and lived more or less "in the lap of nature." But at the dawn of the Neolithic some communities in the Levant began to grow beyond the lap of nature. They became sedentary villagers and shaped the world around them by domesticating plants and animals, and discarding their wastes into the local environment.
Some traditional people continued to maintain a high level of respect for nature and sought to live in harmony with it. But the Neolithic "revolution" spread in the Middle East and into Europe and Asia. Ever more communities went beyond the laws and rhythms of nature, deforesting, overexploiting, and polluting their environment.
The man-nature divorce became dramatic at the dawn of the Modern Age, when powerful technologies came into use, damaging natural processes in the attempt to fit human needs and demands. Today humanity is a vast system of seven billion, with enormous technological powers and unprecedented demands. Its divorce from nature is approaching a tipping point: in its present form the globally extended human system is critically unsustainable.
Our sync with nature has precious little tolerance for error. We are dependent on the planet for obtaining the most basic resources of our life: air, water, food, habitable space, and the diverse mineral and biological resources on which we have come to depend.
Let us be clear, therefore, what change we are talking about, and where. Do we mean change in the human system, or in the system of nature? And do we mean remedial, resilience and stability oriented change, or basic transformation?
The logical conclusion is that it is foolhardy to speak of change in regard to the natural system on which our very existence depends. Given the limitations of human knowledge, any change we would catalyze in this system is likely to be detrimental to the precariously out-if-sync system of humanity. Yet those who want to "engineer the environment" attempt to do just that. They modify plant life, the chemical composition of the soil, and even try to change patterns of rainfall. These are considered "local" interventions, yet in the highly interconnected web of life they have global consequences.
Trying to engineer nature could lead to literally programming ourselves out of existence. In regard to the biosphere, we should speak of safeguarding and maintaining, rebalancing, and making more resilient the system, and not of changing it. The keyword is stabilization, more exactly, re-stabilization.
Precisely the opposite is the case in regard to the human system on this planet. Here the keyword is fundamental change: transformation. The problem, after all, is long-standing and systemic. We have outgrown the lap of nature; we have entered on mistaken paths of development. But, instead of correcting these deviations, we have either ignored them, or sought to compensate for them by technological means.
Other species, if they became significantly out-of-sync with their environment, have disappeared, eliminated in the process of natural selection. But we have believed that we can dominate nature; making it serve our ends. This had worked for centuries; it was only toward the end of the last century that the unsustainability of the human world system had become evident. We could grow, and we called it "progress." We have chemically replenished the lost fertility of overused soils, tapped sources of energy beyond those that sustain life in the biosphere, and concentrated our populations in vast urban complexes that require the resources of vast hinterlands to keep alive their inhabitants. Success in these endeavors blinded us to the fact that we have exceeded the carrying capacity of the natural system on which our very existence depends.
The logical conclusion in this respect, then, is that in regard to the system of humanity, the change that is required is radical. Current attempts to "re-stabilize" or "revitalize" the dominant structures and processes of this system are a grievous mistake. Yet this mistake is the dominant feature of the aspirations of business as well as political leaders. Business people want to re-stabilize patterns of economic growth so it would ensure sustainable profits for their enterprises, and political leaders want to benefit from this growth to revitalize the institutions and structures of their states. They fail to realize that achieving these objectives would be self-defeating. Success would only be temporary, and would merely postpone the day of reckoning.
The processes that make the human system unsustainable cannot be stopped or reversed by the same methods that created them. This holds true of population growth, of resource exploitation and consumption, and of the progressive overload of natural cycles and equilibria. The longer we wait the more dramatic becomes our situation, and the more difficult to transform the system that drives it to a tipping point.
We had better be clear about what we want to change, and how we want to change it. We need to change the structures and processes of the human system, and this change must be fundamental: it needs to be a true "worldshift." At the same time change in the system that provides our basic life-support must be gradual, incremental, and respectful of the interdependence of its elements and processes. The "worldshifters" need to focus on transforming the human system, and the "stabilizers" on increasing the resilience in the natural system. Clarity on this issue may be a precondition of creating a sustainable future for humankind on the planet.
Follow Ervin Laszlo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ErvinLaszlo
Ecologically sustainable development - Wikipedia, the free ...
Sustainability - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
What is ecological sustainability? definition and meaning
Ecological sustainability - IFACCA, the International Federation ...
To quote a man with vision, "The mind-sets of a critical mass of people evolve in time, shifting the culture of society toward a better-adapted mode. As these changes take hold, the improved social order -- governed by more adapted values, world-views, and ethics -- establishes itself. Society stabilizes itself in its changed condition." Thank you for speaking this so well.
I invite you to read my article. The more we speak out for what is possible, more who recognize it as truth will move in that direction.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlise-karlin/game-changers-who-are-the_b_862957.html
In the grander scheme of things, we are insignificant, except in our own minds, believing we are somehow better than other living species.
In our absence, nature has millions of years to cleanse herself of our legacy, regenerate, create millions of new species, and perhaps evolve an improved human model that would treat nature with the respect she deserves.. One could also speculate that the demise of our current species would be a boon to every other living thing.
Even though we are somewhere between The Age of Stupid and The Age of Arrogance, perhaps some will see at the last minute that what is happening to us is the same thing that has happened to other societies that have exceeded the carrying capacity of their environment – extinction.
See for example:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/humans-will-be-extinct-100-years-fenner
Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com
A research organization
Unless someone is willing to kill or starve several billion people, nature is and will continue to be on a changed evolutionary path towards a man made garden of Eden. Even killing several billion won't take us back to "nature" before invasive species got moved around and many species shoved into extinction. All we can do that would be ethical and moral to existing humanity will be to design pleasing Japanese gardens for the world.
The other "balance" that is missing from the piece Kassandra alludes to: balancing masculine centric human society (i.e., patriarchy) with feminine decision making powers. Human society is dramatically out of balance, and it is important to say that it is the masculine centric worldview behind the idea of engineering nature with technology.
The issue (again) is BALANCE. How can we "engender" human flourishing in the biosphere with only one gender having the decision making, policy-making powers? WHAT has to change in society is the gross imbalance of gender. The only way that I can even begin to see THAT change is for the men in society who have transcended the limits of patriarchy and, in their own journey, found their way to the sacred feminine and/or a secular, systems understanding of the Gaian balance that must be stabilized, to DEMAND a worldshift in society to Engender human flourishing. We need MEN to organize across the world and demand a worldshift to a balanced society to Engender human flourishing in the biosphere.
I wish some of our so-called leaders could see as clearly.
At this point, I think it's going to take a miracle for the species to survive even another 100 years.
A spiritual transformation IS happening. But the status quo seems to be going TOWARD exacerbating the tipping point, than promoting a human fundamental transformation in tune with life.
Thanks, It gives me some hope that people like you are out there thinking, that may be the only thing we can do now, is start thinking outside the box the monsters have put us in.
First and foremost. Stop the endless 3000 years of patriarchal war. Pick up the pieces and see where we're at.
Impose criminal sentences for environmental damage/ destruction. And get rid of the current religions. Let women resume full participation in decisions and encourage a Gaea centric spirituality.
It's gotta be Gaea!