Sustainability & Political/Economic Systems

We've been having a lively debate in the sorely hijacked Baltimore thread, so flowerseverywhere suggested we redirect the conversation.

I think the fork in the road was probably kib's post on the meaning of and need for "tribes," back on page 25:


http://www.simplelivingforum.net/sho...timorei/page25

Take a look at that post, and then maybe the last two pages and then maybe we can continue the questions:

1) what is a relevant definition of a tribe, for modern use?
2) what economic/political system is most conducive to a) sustainability, b) the nature of human beings and c) a hopeful future?
3) what is the roadmap for a sustainable future? Should there be a roadmap at all? Is it Daniel Quinn's New Tribal Ventures? Is it the anarcho-primitivism of Derrick Jensen? Is it the Natural Step? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Natural_Step? Joanna Macy's The Great Turning?
4) what do you envision/imagine the future to be? Is it something we can try? What is keeping us from trying? Or do you have faith that we'll get there without a "revolution"?

Any other questions?

Discuss amongst yourselves. I have a report due today, and I'll catch up later.

Thank you for setting up a new thread, Catherine. I am still exploring The Natural Step in my free moments today, so not quite ready for a gab. Hopefully others will take the conversation over here. :)

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Originally Posted by catherine

Is it the Natural Step? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Natural_Step?

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I've always thought this is a superb approach. As an engineer/scientist/mathematician it has great appeal, as it lays out the system conditions that seem likely to allow a long-enduring culture to survive. You can of course argue about the particular conditions, but I think the overall approach of laying out the guidelines is very productive, and to me seems one of the few ways to avoid collapse, die-off, or some of the other bad paths.

You can't have honest conversations about these ideas these days with most people though - they rathole into flinging thought-terminating clichés back-and-forth, demonize each other, and make no progress. Meanwhile, time marches on....

Good luck back over there on the mainland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFCNCQleCuk

Marvelously simple 2 minute presentation on what The Natural Step is all about.

I think if you wait for the next video to load, it starts a several part presentation that's more in depth and also more practical. If it doesn't and you're interested, this is the next one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beidaN3SNdA

The natural step is a valiant effort towards a new perception of earth and our relationship to it.
Perhaps I am being too idealistic but until each person has a sense of his/her own genuine worth as an agent for change, it will be an uphill struggle. Not saying that efforts should not be made but a realistic assessment of the initial outcome indicates that it will be limited.

Tribalism, to refer back to the original thread, is possible in every community but the strong sense of individualism has to yield to some degree to the idea of a 'commons'.

There are many smart ideas on sustainability here, but the problem I see is that people, governments, and corporations will have to voluntarily make these dramatic changes.
I don't think that is a viable possibility.

How do tribes, or clans, differ from cliques?

I think that change is possible. Maybe not "overhauling the human psyche" as LDahl puts it, but incremental change that starts "at home". In my lifetime, or maybe that plus 20 years, the idea of two same sex people (or even two unmarried people of opposite sexes) sharing a life and a bed has gone from unspeakably shameful to a reasonably matter of fact topic of conversation. Maybe not acceptable to everyone, but for what seems to be the majority of the population. So it starts with reusable shopping bags and hybrid cars, and maybe the ball keeps rolling.

I like the natural step because it doesn't demonize business concerns, it just puts them into a larger framework of awareness. It tries to give people with different concerns a shared goal - backcasting from the idea that we all want a sustainable future.

One of the things I like about the Natural Step is that many of the system conditions are based on not allowing externalities to be foisted off on the commons, or on the future. If a government has any legitimate powers, regulating externalities seems like it should be one of them.

So, no indigo-children great spiritual awakening needed to get going, just start out seriously requiring externalities to be handled properly.

:+1:

Maybe things like arguing a great spiritual awakening is needed are appealing because the government seems out of our hands (among other reasons). I mean yes good government would do a lot of good, of course. We can't seem to get it. Of course I am not happy about that situation. So maybe there is an attempt to route around the dam, route around the damage, route around the fact our government sucks and seem unaccountable. The power of the people outside of formal power structures. And yes I know the extreme of the spiritual awakening stuff is extreme. Maybe just a change of thoughts and behavior in many people, and your back to mere psychology. Still might be better if we could get any type of formal movement, even if it was just strategic coordinated boycotts of corporations whose crimes to the environment are great.

I really do see things like Fast Track and the TPP as critical, it's the line in the sand. Having given up on government at higher levels (because it all seems bought and sold etc.), often people attempt to improve things by changing local laws, this might very well include requiring externalities to be handled properly. But now they want to take even that power away. The TPP can challenge local laws and national laws like the Clean Air Act by corporate tribunals, the very laws that provide some protection from externalities. Could things get any worse? Fight this thing to the death! Of course reality often pails in comparison to rhetoric and my "fighting to the death" is contacting both Senators and a Rep via their websites, and calling them all once as well about Fast Track (yes before it passed the Senate). I'll call the Rep again as it's not yet passed the House. And sure I'll do all that again for the TPP bill itself and other similar trade bills but it's just the minimum people should be doing really.

I was surprised - well ok, not really - to see that The Natural Step has chapters all over the world but none in the US. >8)

So ... are the repubs ironically against the TPP because Obama supports it? Funny world, if so.

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Originally Posted by kib

I was surprised - well ok, not really - to see that The Natural Step has chapters all over the world but none in the US. >8)

So ... are the repubs ironically against the TPP because Obama supports it? Funny world, if so.

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The GOP is generally in support.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/op...rtunately.html

I also like the Natural Step framework, and I like this quote by the founder:

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This is what a network should do — identify the people who would like to do something good. And they are everywhere. This is how the change will appear — you won't notice the difference. It won't be anyone winning over anyone. It will just spread. One day you don't need any more signs saying "Don't spit on the floor," or "Don't put substances in the lake which can't be processed." It will be so natural. It will be something that the intelligent people do, and nobody will say that it was due to The Natural Step or your magazine. It will just appear.[2]

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I guess you could say that this is organic change, rather than forced change. Paul Hawken addresses this in Blessed Unrest:

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It is axiomatic that we are at a threshold in human existence, a fundamental change in understanding about our relationship to nature and each other. We are moving from a world created by privilege to a world created by community. The current thrust of history is too supple to be labeled, but global themes are emerging in response to cascading ecological crises and human suffering. These ideas include the need for radical social change, the reinvention of market-based economics, the empowerment of women, activism on all levels, and the need for localized economic control. There are insistent calls for autonomy, appeals for a new resource ethic based on the tradition of the commons, demands for the reinstatement of cultural primacy over corporate hegemony, and a rising demand for radical transparency in politics and corporate decision making. It has been said that environmentalism failed as a movement, or worse yet, died. It is the other way around. Everyone on earth will be an environmentalist in the not too distant future, driven there by necessity and experience.[7]

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Source: Wikipedia--sorry for the reliance on Wikipedia for reference, but I'm still report-writing and don't have much time….

And another interesting related thought: Daniel Quinn believes that we can't necessarily predict how things will sort themselves out ultimately, but the way things change for good is by changing the memes. I've had a really hard time understanding the modern use of the term "meme" but I'm getting there.

If I can in just a few words sum up Quinn's thinking on the whole issue of moving toward sustainability, his basic tenets are:
1) Programs to make the world sustainable will not work. No programs ever work
2) Change is dependent upon an invisible source at work: this "invisible source" is vision which starts small and spreads
3) All spreading mechanisms have one thing in common: they confer benefits on those who do the spreading
4) Even though change takes vision, it is impossible for the current paradigm to imagine the next one--the pre-Renaissance people could NOT have described the Renaissance for instance
5) Therefore, change is achieved one meme at a time. Memes are to cultures as genes are to bodies.
6) We need to change the lethal memes ASAP. Richard Dawkins says a lethal GENE is one that kills its possessor: so a lethal MEME is also one that is killing its possessor.

Anyway, my point is, we may have an evolution rather than a revolution as more and more people change and spread those memes we've been stuck in that are killing us. That will take a while. But I don't think small revolutions hurt--activism against corporations that don't live by the Clean Air/Water act for instance.

I'm going to revisit this just because the idea pleases me, it's always been how I thought about my world, and knowing that it actually has a name and a following is heartening.

"Backcasting". Forecasting means predicting the future based on the knowledge you've gained from the past. Backcasting means identifying the future you want and then working toward it. Like a game of chess. You know your objective is checkmate. You don't know what the board will look like when you get there, and that's irrelevant. You make a move you think will help get you to checkmate, forecasting just a little bit. As the board changes, you reevaluate your position and adjust your strategy. Granted the better you are at forecasting the better your chances, but when faced with an unforeseen move that changes the board, a good chess player doesn't say damn, that doesn't work for me so I'll just forget about checkmate and go on playing the game I envisioned.

If everyone is working toward a sustainable future, there's lots of opportunity for different 'boards' and eventual scenarios, but there is an agreement that causes everyone to be working in tandem toward the outcome of sustainability. It seems to me if we could just change that one ... is it a meme? so that we have basic agreement that this is where we want to go, it could change everything.

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Originally Posted by kib

If everyone is working toward a sustainable future, there's lots of opportunity for different 'boards' and eventual scenarios, but there is an agreement that causes everyone to be working in tandem toward the outcome of sustainability. It seems to me if we could just change that one ... is it a meme? so that we have basic agreement that this is where we want to go, it could change everything.

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Yes, I like backcasting as well, but the actual manifestation of a sustainable future may be a lot different than the one we're thinking of. For instance, I remember when I was little, I assumed that by 2000, everyone would have video telephones--as shown in The Jetsons. Of course, we do have Skype and Webcam and FaceTime, but video calling does not have the ubiquity that I had originally envisioned, while at the same time I could not have known about the development of the internet and the change in the culture that it has caused--because we couldn't envision the internet (well, maybe bae was already envisioning it :).

A meme is more micro, I think. Again, think of a gene in a body/meme in a culture. So one meme is, agriculture is the way to feed the world. Maybe we reframe the meme to be: small scale production and perennial food forests are the way to feed the world. Or, another meme, who cares about the world? Eating locally produced food makes me feel good.

But that's just one small example Here's an article from Smithsonian that explains it:

My observation is there are two different streams of politics and economics developing. One is the powerful police-state, NSA-administered oligarchy, bringing with it complete transparency--unwanted or not--and increasing loss of freedoms. The other is a free-spirited, home-grown, locally-administered, small groups-driven, organic (in both meanings of the word) democracy. It may be that the two systems will merge, or that one will absorb the other.

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Originally Posted by catherine

Yes, I like backcasting as well, but the actual manifestation of a sustainable future may be a lot different than the one we're thinking of. For instance, I remember when I was little, I assumed that by 2000, everyone would have video telephones--as shown in The Jetsons. Of course, we do have Skype and Webcam and FaceTime, but video calling does not have the ubiquity that I had originally envisioned, while at the same time I could not have known about the development of the internet and the change in the culture that it has caused--because we couldn't envision the internet (well, maybe bae was already envisioning it :).

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The thing is, Video Phones or Skype aren't a backcasting checkmate. The ultimate aim is not a video phone, it's instantaneous connectivity that completely mimics having a real person standing in front of you that you can hear, see, touch, maybe even smell. Or maybe the ultimate goal goes even further, that we can (fill in the blank) because we are so connected. So the video phone is one "board" in the chessgame, it's not checkmate. By the same token, world sustainability IS a checkmate, an ultimate goal I think few would argue with. What that Looks like is an entirely different question.

I'm just delighted to see that my idea of identifying the vague but fixed checkmate first and then acting is somewhere other than my own head.

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Originally Posted by kib

The thing is, Video Phones or Skype aren't a backcasting checkmate. The ultimate aim is not a video phone, it's instantaneous connectivity that completely mimics having a real person standing in front of you that you can hear, see, touch, maybe even smell. So the video phone is one "board" in the chessgame, it's not checkmate. By the same token, world sustainability IS a checkmate, an ultimate goal I think few would argue with. What that Looks like is an entirely different question.

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I agree, and backcasting is a way to start spreading the memes it will take to get there for sure. I'm not disagreeing with you--I'm saying that we may envision sustainability, and we may get there, but the landscape in our mind is likely to be a LOT different from what actually happens. I agree sustainability is the checkmate. But maybe it's not sustainable agriculture, or cars that run via solar power.

I think we're saying the same thing, actually.

Thanks for the article, Catherine. So a meme is an idea adopted by society that mutates over time, but it appears to refer a single idea, not a systems theory or other complex concept.

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Originally Posted by kib

By the same token, world sustainability IS a checkmate, an ultimate goal I think few would argue with. What that Looks like is an entirely different question.

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Yes, I think it is a different question. If the ultimate goal is sustainability, is it necessary to first submit to domination by a central authority?

Yes, I think we are too. The thing I find so exasperating and baffling is that we don't seem designed for backcasting. Even if it were true that every human on the planet thinks sustainability is the end goal (and I'm not at all convinced that's true), we've evolved these amazingly complex systems that disregard it, and these complex individual existences that don't allow for fully acting on it even if we believe it.

Before we evolved civilization, we didn't need to consider an end goal because we were by definition just part of a sustainable system. I feel like the starting point for all of it is getting people on the same page about an end goal - NOT the configuration of the board, just an agreement about what checkmate means. What is the point of this game we're playing? To win. What does winning mean? "A world that is infinitely renewing itself in a way that allows for life including human life, in a word, sustainable."

Alan, I don't think it is. My dream is that if everyone were on the same page about the definition of checkmate - again, the definition of what it means, not what the board will look like - then we would all be acting toward it. Not necessarily in ways that we all agreed with, but with the same final result in mind. So in a way, a mutually agreed backcasting point would reduce the need for Authority, not increase it.

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Originally Posted by kib

Alan, I don't think it is. My dream is that if everyone were on the same page about the definition of checkmate - again, the definition of what it means, not what the board will look like - then we would all be acting toward it. Not necessarily in ways that we all agreed with, but with the same final result in mind. So in a way, a mutually agreed backcasting point would reduce the need for Authority, not increase it.

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But I can see Alan's point. We can't make everyone agree with our endgame. Backcasting works for us, but what about everyone else who is NOT on the sustainability page, as you said?

To use another Daniel Quinn analogy, Christians didn't start out in the second century with a grand plan to make the Western world Christian. It was one man/one woman at a time, one meme at a time, and then we wind up with Constantine and then we wind up with the Holy Roman Empire etc etc. Peter and Paul probably wanted to see the world follow the teachings of Jesus and they did what they could to make it happen, but they didn't go around enlisting people to agree on the endgame, without first attracting them individually with a promise of the benefits that would be conferred (i.e. heaven).

The benefits of sustainability vs. the benefits of mass consumerism are being tested slowly, but we have a long way to go.

However, getting small groups together who have the common goal of sustainability and THEN backcasting with an eye on the individual group's circle of influence can, over time, help to attract and spread the word. Eventually all these little habitats get connected with a web of common understanding--the dots are connected, and there is a cultural shift.

How about starting out simple: Who wants Planet Earth to be able to comfortably support human life in 200 years?

Anyone against that goal? Raise your hands....

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Originally Posted by bae

How about starting out simple: Who wants Planet Earth to be able to comfortably support human life in 200 years?

Anyone against that goal? Raise your hands....

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Precisely. Well put.


We don't have to argue out the details of how we're going to get there. At least we don't have to start with that argument. We have to start with a consensus on where we want to go.

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Originally Posted by catherine

However, getting small groups together who have the common goal of sustainability and THEN backcasting with an eye on the individual group's circle of influence can, over time, help to attract and spread the word. Eventually all these little habitats get connected with a web of common understanding--the dots are connected, and there is a cultural shift.

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I agree and then I don't. :) Part of the issue is wanting too much control over how the process unfolds. (guilty as charged.) It's going to take generations, and maybe we don't have that much time, but if I say "I will buy no plastic", and Alan says well that's nuts ... but I want to make sure my grandchildren have a nice park to play in, and Bae says he's going to buy plastic and build no parks, however, he's investing $3M in technology to improve energy conservation, and you say you care about those things, but what you really want is to organize a group that has spiritual awareness of the connectedness of life ... well we're all doing what we want, what we believe, based on a common ideology that says put long term survival first.

ETA: at some point we're going to have to hash out the details, but that's still down the road. Orienting our compasses in the same direction is a great start. Which is why I was so blown away at this group of people who don't believe everything is connected. how can you choose an action based on the concept of future sustainability if you don't think there's a link between then and when and now? so I guess my "thing", besides the plastic and garbage, is, as you said, trying to nudge people into contemplating the idea of sustainability and connectedness. Perhaps with a cattle prod. ;)

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Originally Posted by kib

Orienting our compasses in the same direction is a great start. Which is why I was so blown away at this group of people who don't believe everything is connected. how can you choose an action based on the concept of future sustainability

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Yeah, many people don't see the connection--they really don't. That "island unto myself" attitude manifests itself in racism, competition, and even in my DHs MADDENING habit of throwing his cigar wrappers out of the car window. (don't get me started). Never mind why we should care that our plastic is literally strangling wildlife. Or that the decline in bees is going to wind up affecting our food choices and food prices.

In terms of your cattle prod comment, I do think that there are catalysts along the way. While ideas are in the slow-cooker, some people are the sourdough starter: people like Rachel Carson, for instance. Al Gore/Bill McKibben might be considered catalysts for climate change, but maybe it will take catalysts in the form of extreme climate like the rain in Texas that will get us to the tipping point.

Another thought your comment brought to mind: I read once that behavior precedes action: not the other way around. That was a huge aha for me! I always thought it would be the other way around--you develop an attitude, and you change your behavior to fit your attitude. Actually, if you change your behavior, your attitude will change. I read about this in the context of seat belt laws. No one cared about the safety implications of seat belts much: until they were "encouraged" to wear them or else get a ticket. If all the seat belt ticketing laws went away tomorrow, I would still wear my seat belt, because my awareness and attitude has been raised.

That's where some legal intervention can help shape things. Not "nanny G" stuff: just a little shape shifting in the form of appropriate legislation.

I checked in with the Unitarian Jihad Name Generator. I am "Sister cat-o-nine-tails of Understanding." Yes, yes I am.:~)

http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/toys...5#.VWtK-1I8l6r

-deleted part of this, too unformed.

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Originally Posted by bae

How about starting out simple: Who wants Planet Earth to be able to comfortably support human life in 200 years?

Anyone against that goal? Raise your hands....

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Since you're taking the broad view, why limit your vision to Planet Earth?

The end is the childishly easy part. It's the means that present the difficulty. We do in fact need to argue over the details if we want to progress beyond the navel-gazing stage.

Survival is good: stipulated. "Everything is connected": stipulated. How do we go about persuading or forcing the world's population to accept the sort of resource and reproductive rationing people here seem to favor?

The reproductive aspect seems pretty easy. Just educate and emancipate women. The birth rate is in serious decline in most first-world countries--to the extent that governments (Germany, for example) are concerned with a projected lack of workers.

I guess I'm talking about a mental shift that is almost - sorry Jane - religious in nature. That people consider everything they do in terms of survival and connectedness, that it's the underlying motivation for their actions. Instead of "I want to go to heaven, is this a good idea", or "I want a billion dollars, is this a good idea", (or, as seems to be more and more the case, "I want whatever I want and I want it now, so I'm going to take it and not think about whether it's a good idea") that we think, "I want a sustainable future for humans, is this a good idea." I believe that if that kind of underlying motivator were the norm, the rest might, to some extent, sort itself out.

And I totally agree with Jane's ideas of education and empowerment.

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Originally Posted by JaneV2.0

The reproductive aspect seems pretty easy. Just educate and emancipate women. The birth rate is in serious decline in most first-world countries--to the extent that governments (Germany, for example) are concerned with a projected lack of workers.

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So if rich capitalist countries by and large have lower birth rates and stronger environmental laws, shouldn't we work toward having more rich capitalist countries?

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Originally Posted by LDAHL

Since you're taking the broad view, why limit your vision to Planet Earth?

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Because in the timespan I specified, I don't see the human species being able to deplete the resources of this solar system (though there are some Stupid Tricks we could do to mess up solar input o the planet we live on).

As far as I can tell, for the immediate present, most of our species has to live on this planet, so I was hoping we could agree we'd all like to keep it a pleasant place to be.

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The end is the childishly easy part. It's the means that present the difficulty. We do in fact need to argue over the details if we want to progress beyond the navel-gazing stage.

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If we can't get people to agree that they want the goal (Planet Earth isn't trashed), then it's a bit more difficult to discuss details. I've found it is good to get agreement on deliverables before boldly leaping into solutions/implementations, especially if resources/time are limited.

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How do we go about persuading or forcing the world's population to accept the sort of resource and reproductive rationing people here seem to favor?

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I'm not sure forced rationing is needed, or the best way. True cost accounting by requiring externalities to be handled by those who produce them would seem to produce a pretty quick course correction.

For instance, my farmland is currently being managed in a sustainable fashion. Our topsoil is accretive, and doesn't wash into the salmon stream behind the property. We don't have chemicals being discharged into that watershed either. It is more expensive in some ways to farm this way, and we charge a premium price for our products, because some local consumers share our values. Other producers do differently, and their watersheds are full of topsoil and chemicals, and their usable soil depth diminishes every year unless they truck in more material, which is itself not an ideal practice. If those producers were not allowed to foist the costs and impacts of their agricultural practices onto the nearby communities without any reckoning, perhaps they'd farm differently, or at least pay enough in fines to clean up the damage. My stream has salmon, the one the next valley over is dead. Go figure.

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Originally Posted by bae

True cost accounting by requiring externalities to be handled by those who produce them would seem to produce a pretty quick course correction.

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As an accountant I heartily agree with and support this assertion. However, accounting is a necessary but not sufficient condition for civilization, Other conditions required would be a respect for law and the technical ability to objectively calculate "externalities".

I could see this approach possibly working in Western Europe or North America, assuming we could come to some agreement on what the externalities were (which won't always be easy, with all the unintended consequences that will certainly crop up over the long term). But if we can't currently expect, say China to compensate Canada for damage done to Canada by China's coal-fired plants, doesn't it seem that this viewpoint won't prevail until we become Planet Canada?

There are plenty of nations or semi-nations out there flouting international rules in areas as diverse as intellectual property, immigration, freedom of the seas, debt repayment and even piracy and slavery. Even traditional allies have difficulty in areas like fisheries management or off-shore oil exploration.

I came across a youtube that talks about degrowth - the concept of basically slowing down the economy on purpose to slow resource use, without creating a recession. 5 minute discussion. Sounds nifty - what am I missing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXP2E09dJQ

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Originally Posted by kib

I came across a youtube that talks about degrowth - the concept of basically slowing down the economy on purpose to slow resource use, without creating a recession. 5 minute discussion. Sounds nifty - what am I missing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXP2E09dJQ

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Great little video, kib! One of my favorite transition activists at the moment, and I've referenced him here quite a lot, is Charles Eisenstein--and he addresses degrowth in his book Sacred Economics, which is a great book, and in the spirit of the gift economy, he offers online for free.

Here's his chapter on degrowth: http://sacred-economics.com/sacred-e...wth-economics/

Thank you, Catherine. I think he should be required reading, this is excellent.