Sustainability...
What does sustainability mean to you?
What sustainability means to me is everyone working together to create the whole. That is to say that everyone has a role, part, position that they need to play to create the masterpiece. If you step up a role or back someone needs to fill that position to re-create unity. As a whole its not replacement, its re-creation.
Thinking about pixels on a picture, one individual pixel is beautiful. It is individual, no two pixels are the same. They may be the same shape and color but each has an individual role in sustaining and maintaining the beauty of the entire picture.
If multiple pixels on the picture are fighting and stirring up the entire picture how can unity be accomplished to create the masterpiece? When the pixels settle down re-arraigning takes place we create a new masterpiece. Lets create a new masterpiece, its time for the pixels to settle down. In creating the new masterpiece i hope we will find that we have built a stronger, unified, un-broken masterpiece.
Who's with me? Take the pledge now...
If you are not against me, you are with me. If you are against me, please share your point of view as you are also a person and I recognize that. I will also share my point of view and we can find common ground to re-create the masterpiece.
Please post your replies!
What sustainability means to me is everyone working together to create the whole. That is to say that everyone has a role, part, position that they need to play to create the masterpiece. If you step up a role or back someone needs to fill that position to re-create unity. As a whole its not replacement, its re-creation.
Thinking about pixels on a picture, one individual pixel is beautiful. It is individual, no two pixels are the same. They may be the same shape and color but each has an individual role in sustaining and maintaining the beauty of the entire picture.
If multiple pixels on the picture are fighting and stirring up the entire picture how can unity be accomplished to create the masterpiece? When the pixels settle down re-arraigning takes place we create a new masterpiece. Lets create a new masterpiece, its time for the pixels to settle down. In creating the new masterpiece i hope we will find that we have built a stronger, unified, un-broken masterpiece.
Who's with me? Take the pledge now...
If you are not against me, you are with me. If you are against me, please share your point of view as you are also a person and I recognize that. I will also share my point of view and we can find common ground to re-create the masterpiece.
Please post your replies!
Tags: collegex
Views: 3
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jess on -
I really like the pixel-analogy. I believe sustainability needs to stem from a sense of organization and direction. Each piece or pixel must in a sense funnel to the position that is symbiotic to the pieces surrounding it.
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Permalink Reply by Gu4ch3L0c0 on -
well said. you're in the right place.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Boland on -
Everyone already does work together to create the whole, intentionally or not. You're fortunate to live in a world that's already sustainable. I realize this probably comes off a smug prick being too judgemental, but a metaphor is not a definition. It's also pretty hard to "Take a pledge" or "be with your or against you" when you really haven't explained anything you stand for.
My personal definition of sustainable would be "modeled after the negentropic systems found in nature."
No waste, only resources.
No problems, only opportunities.
Most importantly, no adherence to tradition or law -- merely That Which Works. Nature has never needed laws on paper, neither have we. Everything is in constant flux and strategies that worked a decade ago are obsolete now.
Humans have been engaged in a long struggle to control and partition nature, and it's been a spectacular failure. It's time to start embracing nature and having the humility to learn from it. All our laws are based on the delusion that we know the One Right Way to do things, and that's simply not the case.
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Permalink Reply by FightWithFood.ORG on -
I agree fully. Its more of a general statement. Not pointing to one issue or another. The pledge is really to acknowledge the fact that everyone has a point of view and opinion and that I accept that fact, and it will not start separation between us. Not on any topic specific, but all topics. Share your POV and i will share my POV is opening the lines of communication.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Boland on
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Here's a funny/thought-provoking angle on it from Mitchell Joachim -- a lot of you have probably seen his "tree house" designs for sculpting trees and gardens into human habitat and housing -- and he's not fond of "Sustainable" at all:
"I don't like the term," he says. "It's not evocative enough. You don't want your marriage to be sustainable. You want to be evolving, nurturing, learning." Efficiency doesn't cut it, either: "It just means less bad." Even zero emissions falls short. "This table does zero damage," he says, thumping the one in his office. "No VOCs, no carbons. Whatever. It doesn't do anything positive."
I think he makes a good point that too often, "sustainable" is only a neutral term. Granted, "sustainable" is a step up from "rampant psychotic global self-destruction," but it's still far, far short of the possibilities in front of us. We can (and should) be working with nature to create super-abundance situations.
Here's the WIRED interview the quote was from:
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/16-10/sl_joachim
And his personal websites:
http://terreform.blogspot.com/
http://archinode.blogspot.com/
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Permalink Reply by lowkey on -
You should be in sales. "Rampant psychotic global self-destruction" makes me want two of whatever you're selling. ;-)
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Permalink Reply by kristine on -
Thanks for posting the quote - that's an interesting way of thinking about "sustainablity", the term. Language (and how we perceive it) is so powerful... My initial reaction is that I like thinking in terms of "sustainability" because I, personally, associate "sustainablity" with "good health"...so on the marriage/relationship point (which I find thought-provoking) , I would say that a "sustainable, healthy relationship" would have to be "evolving, nurturing, learning"...or else, in the long run, it would not be "sustainable" - it would be "disfunctional". I get the point though, and agree that "sustainable" is not the word I would use to describe a loving personal relationship. I also find the term "sustainable" to be non-romantic, which, to me, means realistic - pros and cons, good, but difficult.
I'm wondering if you could explain what you mean by "super-abundance situations".
Have you read Wendell Berry or David James Duncan?
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Permalink Reply by Justin Boland on
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Life on earth is not even remotely sustainable -- it's constantly evolving, constantly getting more complex and miraculous. I love Berry but I also feel he's personally very attached to the agrarian lifestyle, and nature affords us endless other options. The reality is that more than half the human race currently lives in a city, so "Back to the Land" romanticism aside, we need to deal with the reality we live in. This involves radically re-thinking cities, and focusing on strategies for DIY movements to make changes to the existing infrastructure.
We're not going to re-design everything. People like Jacques Fresco are cool and all, but their plans (The Venus Project) are totally unrealistic -- there is no roadmap on how to get there from here.
What we DO have is success stories that demonstrate how to make positive changes in the communities we live in now.
By "super-abundance" I'm referring to people like John Todd (living machines), Paul Stamets (mycoremediation) and Joel Salatin (genius farmer). These guys aren't "carbon neutral" or "green" -- they're engineering
"Sustainable" just means we're breaking even. "Super-abundance" m...
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Permalink Reply by Justin Boland on
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No idea why the end of my reply got all mangled there. Basically, "sustainability" is just breaking even, holding steady -- super-abundance is radical improvements working in harmony with nature.
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Permalink Reply by kristine on
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Just a note to say that this focus on sustainability came out of the first ever FWT conference a month ago. I say "first ever" NOT to make it sound exciting, which, in a lot of ways it was...but to remind us that this group of people is very new - there are no/very few established processes - it's kind of learn as you go, right...so I think there's definitely room for constructive criticism - just thought I'd clarify that the words sent out, naming our goal or focus for this year, were not coming from "headquarters", but from a long, back and forth, interesting and imperfect process, which involved as many representatives of street teams from across the country as could make it. (I don't think that was really explained in the message - was it?)
I also think that we're always having to interpret each other's language. We have different word choice, based on our experience and study...don't you think? I think most people will agree with what you're saying, and what Justin's saying..it seems like ya'll have done a lot of reading/thinking around these issues/terminology, and when you do a lot of study, you see all kinds of problems that the average person doesn't necessarily disagree with, but we just haven't thought about it so much that we have really strongly developed opinions.
I'm not sure if that makes any sense. :)
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Permalink Reply by RJ Wizemann on -
There are words in the English language that are not translatable. People only understand a symbolic word or gesture because they have emotional backing behind said word. Take the most overblown example of this language ‘LOVE’. We use the term love for almost everything we enjoy or take joy out of. We could be friends and I tell you that, “I love you” and you smile and reply, “I love you too” because you take it as a complement toward our friendship. That complement is only an assumption on your part. As is any understanding of any symbolic word (all words in all languages are symbolic).
Many people are afraid of what love really means so if you have a new relationship and you say, “I love you” to your partner they might love you as well or they might run far away from you quite quickly. This is not because they hate you but they’re afraid of love, itself. Love has become a feared word because we, as humans, cannot properly put the emotion of love into words. It just so happens that things we cannot explain or understand we tend to hate and fear.
The only way to truly understand another individual is to have a long completely open frame of dialogue; a dialogue where you can both speak freely without fighting, judgment, or fear. Another issue we all have is that we enjoy talking and not truly listening. Anytime someone brings up a point that you may want to comment on or disagree with you mind starts to flutter and trail away from the conversation. It becomes difficult to listen and learn when you’re busy talking, whether you are talking out loud or in the back of your mind. Maybe our parents were right, “shut up and listen” maybe then we can truly learn.
Sorry that was more about language itself instead of sustainable.
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Permalink Reply by VeganJoshuar on -
I couldn't agree more that we need to go past just sustaining! For example, fast food and junk foods can sustain life, but why just stay alive, when you can eat nutritious foods, be in excellent health and get more out of life?
However, based on my own experiences, and from what I see of most people around me, going from the current state of things to a world where we actually can creat a abundance, is not feasible in one step. All the new government programs for 'green energy' are great and all, (and I of course fully support them) but we need to start with basic things. I still see trash all along the sides of the roads, people wasting food (I work in a restaurant, and our one restaurant throws away such an absurd amount of food and trash every single day) and other products all over the place, and people throwing cigarette butts wherever they please. There is SO MUCH that can be done to reduce pollution and Co2 emissions just from people being more conscious in their day to day decisions and actions. I'm sure most, if not all, of the people here know and do these things, but we need to get more people to act this way. And of course there is a different between being preachy, and trying to educate.
Once people actually put trash in trash cans, we can then start focusing on recycling trash, reusing items, and reducing waste. Not that we shouldn't be doing multiple things at once, but we need to concentrate at the bottom, and work our way up. I'm starting my spring cleaning, and I didn't start by pulling out my stove and organizing my closet. I started by doing the dishes, vacuming, sorting laundry, and such, then moved on to the bigger things.
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