Sustainability & Political/Economic Systems

[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.

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

[LDAHL]

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

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

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

[catherine]

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

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]

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

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]

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.

[kib]

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.

[catherine]

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.

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:

[JaneV2.0]

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.

[kib]

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 .

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.

[catherine]

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.

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.

[kib]

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.

[Alan]

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.

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?