Where are we going, how can we change?

an investigation into the motivations for human action
as applicable to a sustainable future

Copyright © 2006, John H Wilde. Reproduction with acknowledgment is permitted.

Personal Action

Too often writings, delving into the subject of sustainability, or the mis-management of the environment, leave one acknowledging the many problems facing the human species but with a feeling of utter helplessness, as no solution to affect change is offered.  Others may convey a doomsday scenario for the better part of their content and then, at their summary, suddenly turn their coloring to hopefulness and optimism for a magical change, without offering clear indication of how this could be accomplished.  Such attempts do not fully recognize human nature and the force of the global economy.  Neither one of these approaches is useful to the situation in which the human species now finds itself.  The purpose of this endeavor is to understand what change, if any, could be be undertaken, without coercion and with free individual choice, knowing the limitations of the nature of man to create a more sustainable livelihood.  The thoughtful citizen already understands many of the environmental dangers facing the Earth but feels powerless to exert any meaningful affect.  As well, good intentions being carried out are often only that.  With little focus on dealing with the dire need to create a truly sustainable existence, so-called ‘green’ action is often no more than a band-aid on a gaping wound. 

Hope is a useless emotion for dealing with problems.  A degree of hope always exists up to the point at which suicide is committed.  A man facing a firing squad may be hopeful that he will receive the governor’s pardon until the enactment of his capital punishment.  Hope only helps one to deal with a sentence by denial rather than in providing a useful tool to affect it.  One may hope to win the lottery or live to be 110, but few are successful.  Hope is not important to success.  One may even be critical, to the point of appearing pessimistic, and achieve success.  Many artists have this temperament.  According to the New York Times,  “Though Africa has the globe’s highest poverty rate and shortest life expectancy, Africans are the most optimistic people in the world, with 57 percent of those polled saying they expected this year to be better than the last. “The only thing keeping people going,” said Nigerian political scientist Kayode Fayemi, is hope.”¹

It is beyond the realm of lasting social change to expect the human to act, for long, in a way outside of her nature.  Much of what has been spoken of in this writing makes this point clear.  The hippy ideology of the 1960’s, of achieving universal love and peace merely through choice, is a good example.  This notion was too simplistic to always be within the bounds of human nature.  The predatory nature is required for success in a competitive environment which protects the right to property and possessions.  It is important to recognize what change can be expected and what can fall within the human’s natural proclivity.  John Lennon’s “Imagine” is a beautiful dream but unrealistic for useful application to the current situation.  It is only helpful to the extent of making the sympathetic nature recognizable, and in promoting a strengthening of this trait in opposition to the predatory nature.  Other examples of popular music have made clear the frustration of being subjected to the forces of the seemingly unstoppable global economic-machine.  Joni Mitchell sang, “They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum, and they charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see ‘em.  Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”²  Chrissie Hynde sang with the Pretenders, “I went back to Ohio, but my pretty countryside had been paved down the middle by a government that had no pride.  The farms of Ohio had been replaced by shopping malls...”³  These are sentiments that many feel.  But, the societal delusion of guaranteed progress has made it impossible to reconcile newness with an actual regression of cultural wisdom.

A system is being proposed here to provide human beings rules for acting.  Positive human action will be by conscious individual will and not prescribed by any centrally controlled plan or government mandate.  Globalism will provide a framework for incorporating scientific prediction but, it will also incorporates useful lessons handed down from mythology, as well as, importantly, a third aspect which we know as common-sense.  The chief aim of Globalism is sustainability. Sustainability is necessary to achieve the fundamental concern of the human condition: a lessening of suffering.

The concept of sustainability is one that is gaining more and more popular usage.  However, the manner in which it is being glibly assigned to various endeavors, most normally, manifests itself as that uncritical attitude which pervades our Western influenced societies.  The true concept of sustainability, which we are concerned with here, is the state in which resources are replaced at the same rate and at the same quality as they are consumed and in which the quality of life for human beings and all living creatures remains in relative stasis. 

We are of course, subject, to those forces, which have been called mother-nature, and over which we have no control.  It is doubtful if the human could exert any influence on a meteor hitting the Earth or the dying of the Sun.  However, much of mother-nature’s danger confronting the human species can be avoided.  For instance, it would make sense not to build: in low-lying areas known to flood, on top of a fault line, next to an active volcano, or on coastal land frequented by hurricanes.  This is not control over mother-nature but a sensible response to natural conditions recognized as being beyond our control.  If mother-nature’s force is not respected, suffering will be guaranteed.

Over many things, however, we do have control, (even more than many would like to admit).  The death of other species, weather events, and climate change can be shown to be not just the result of purely random natural occurrence, but are affected by human choice-action.  The belief that we are not able to positively affect future outcomes for ourselves, based on rational and good planning, is a fatalistic philosophy which Globalism directly opposes.  The fatalistic belief systems, supported chiefly by ignorance of science and by uncritical judgment, are among the forces which oppose a concept of Globalism.

Sustainability is the planning for all future generations.  This is long-range future planning.  The choice is now becoming clear.  Humans can choose sustainability and decide to have some input into their future existence or can rely simply on mother-nature’s force to bring the balance of species into equilibrium.

Architects talk of sustainable design, politicians may speak of sustainable planning or growth, however, because of the oppositional meaning of sustainability to many of our current societal values, it will be difficult, and extremely painful, to realize the sustainability which will need to be achieved, in order for humans to have a future not left solely to mother-nature’s force to bring the Earth into equilibrium.  The popular usage of the term sustainability is not really sustainable at all, but is normally based on the feel-good over-optimism that pervades Western societies.  This has been given the term ‘green’.  Is a building using vast amounts of energy for electricity, heating and air conditioning, which does not replenish that which is used within its own plot of land, and which is built of industrialized materials manufactured in high-energy consuming plants, and shipped over large land areas by fuel-guzzling transport, to be considered sustainable?  True, a building can be designed to be less consuming than a comparable structure with no consideration of sustainability.  But, in no way, could the typical western building be considered as ‘green’ as a primitive building without electricity, mechanized systems of heating and air conditioning, built of local materials, by human and animal labor, in the manner that traditional societies have built for the majority of human existence.  

People have not now become morally worse because they don’t understand true sustainability and its importance for a future positive experience on the planet.  To have a negative thought such as this is not useful.  Over the recent portion of human history dominated by Western philosophy, humans simply have not needed to confront the issue of sustainability.  We have been mainly concerned with living well and in a manner which provides for less hardship for ourselves and our children.  This has been admirable and, one could only say, made sense.  But now, the same philosophy, will need to be amended to deal with new, serious, and never before confronted realities.

Many primitive, non-industrialized, cultures achieved something close to sustainability in that their growth did not quickly outstrip their ability to provide for future generations.  It seems likely that primitive societies, for instance, those of Native Americans and African tribal communities could have survived for generations to come without the introduction of industrialized influence of Europeans societies.  An essential difference in the basic philosophy of Primitive and European societies is a mind-set of thinking beyond the immediate and in terms of generational planning.  With the rise of the importance of the individual, the role of the wider community and planning for future generations has lessened in importance.  Individual planning often does not go beyond the immediate.  We typically make choices based, perhaps, on a year in the future, for the short foreseeable future of our children, or at its most distant for retirement planning, but certainly not for generations to come. 

Many primitive communities set rules to plan for the survival of future generations and were based on sustainability.  These rules were explained in mythological terms and learned by common-sense by noticing cause and effect.  These cultures were able to survive based on a pattern of living with a low human density.  We now live in a state of the highest human density and one that will not cease growth until controlled by the influences of: natural disaster, disease, and war.

To contemplate the concept of sustainability, under the strictest definition, it must be understood what can be considered finite and irreplaceable, and what can be reproduced.  This often is the source of much of people’s confusion in today’s Western societies.  Up until the last few generations, humans have always had unsettled land to move into which could provide for additional resources for an ever increasing demand.  With these large quantities of untapped land, it must have seemed like the Earth had an endless supply of resources.  Now we live in a new and frightening time, we have fully realized and populated all the land masses of the Earth.  We no longer have unexplored land and virgin areas to provide for our ever increasing demand.  The understanding of what is finite and can not be replenished, and what can be re-grown, must become clearer than ever. 

Useful education must be maximized and mis-education minimized.  Anything may be taught and learned, but this is not enough.  The society must seek to attain wisdom and not only knowledge.

Although seemingly obvious, it will need to be emphasized over and over again, that the Earth is the only known planet which can provide for human life.  All resources, most importantly water and food, come from the Earth.  It can not be considered that there is water and food on the Moon, or on other planets.  Further, every individual needs to become fully cognizant of the fact: that everyone who has ever been met, or has been heard of, has lived on the Earth.  We have not yet come across a human being who has been from the Moon, a star, or another planet.  Therefore, the naive but prevalent thought, in many minds, that there may be hospitable places beyond the Earth, which can provide a suitable climate for humans, is nonsensical and extremely dangerous.  Sometimes the most simplistic notions need to be explained repeatedly as humans are prone to over-optimism and can be overcome by the expanse of the imagination influenced by beliefs in mythology, science fiction and pseudo-science.  People may be able to live on a space station or travel to another planet, but the resources for the trip come from the Earth.  Globalism can finish with arguments, however latent and based on human arrogance and over-optimism, that environments could be found beyond the Earth with the ability to support human life.  We do not now have time for science-fiction fantasies and un-useful mythology, but will need to actively deal with the realities which ultimately control our fate. 

Sustainability must also accept that our current belief in constant growth of population and economy can not be supported by land masses which are finite.  Some resources are finite in their existence, and without these things, human existence would be gone in an instant.  These include the Sun, the Moon and the Earth itself.  Some resources can be replenished by biological reproduction in time commensurate with human needs:  these include plant material and domesticated animals.  Other things have a finite limit because they are dependent upon being part of a finite Earth.  These include fossil fuels and minerals which do not reproduce in a timeframe useful to the human.  Water is recycled based on weather patterns and the seasons.  Human and animal biological rhythms are in-sinc with these seasonal patterns of rainfall and water.  Replenishment of water could never surpass what can be enveloped in the Earth’s atmosphere and collected on its surface.

It is known that the existing institutions are by nature conservative.  It does not matter which political party or group is being referred to.  The changing public opinion is always ahead of the institutions of society.  We have seen in the recent past that significant social changes have happened due to individual action.  These changes were assimilated into the society when the government was adequately sympathetic and could accept change.  When this was not the case, revolution and violence was the only means to influence governmental change.

Women’s sufferage, an increase of basic civil rights, the outlawing of slavery, the decreased honorific stature of warfare, and the right’s of the disabled are all examples of actual accepted changes which were promulgated by individuals against conservative institutions, but are now accepted by those changed institutions.  None of these changes were considered to be outside the bounds of human nature and seem able to be sustained.  Other examples, such as state-capitalism (better known as communism) and the prohibition of alcohol, were oppositional to human nature, and could not be sustained.  Any effective change will not come from any institution or industry.  It can only come from a strong enough collection of individual choice.

The key component of becoming more sustainable is reductionism.  Reductionism is the lessening of waste.  The goal is to reduce that which is discarded.  An item thrown away is essentially unusable for further creation of goods.  Through reduction, pollution and those things known to be toxic to the human body are also lessened.  This is necessarily affected most greatly by a lessening of consumption.  With less consumption, there is less to throw away.  Reductionism is also achieved to some extent by recycling of used material into new product.  However, for goods like an aluminum can, there is a limit beyond which the same material can be reformed into new cans.  A degradation of quality of the material is lost with each recycling and extra material must be added to fill in the gaps.  As well, recycling is a sloppy business which currently can not deal with most consumable items.  Recycling should be maximized, and it will need to be, by necessity, due to increasing prices of resources.  However, it is of limited value if the basic structure of industrial production and consumption are not altered.

Human population is the most critical factor forcing consumption.  Its control is also the most difficult for humans to contemplate due to the importance of family, children, and the basic sexual urge.  However, it has become clear that with increased rights for women and open and easy access to effective, ethical, and safe means of birth control, fertility rates will actually decline simply by individual choice.  In county’s whose citizens enjoy the greatest well-being and comforts of life (with also the most limited amounts of suffering), fertility rates are below 2.10.  The population of these places will decrease if the trend is left to run its course and if immigration is controlled.  The understanding of the duality of purpose of the sexual urge, to provide for intimacy without the necessity of procreation, is fundamental to allowing for a natural population decrease.  Forced attempts to control population by government mandate, or by unethical means after conception, only lead the human species into a moral quagmire with no good result.  These initiatives have been shown to be ineffective in adequately decreasing population as they have been unaccompanied by conscience preferred individual choice.  The effect of smaller family size will be to only make children more precious to the society.

Reductionism will be achieved either by conscious will and determination of individuals, (greatly helped if leaders of societies do not block its necessary course) or by the swinging of nature’s balance.  When sea levels rise, as is already in process with the warming of the Earth and melting of ice caps, coastal areas will first be submerged and land mass will be reduced.  Human population and consumption levels will go down as less land is available.  The largest accumulations of infrastructure will be under water, lessening the consumption by these flooded mechanical things and distribution networks.  The toxic soup, as stored oil, gas, and industrial materials are submerged, will pose perhaps the greatest risks, polluting water sources and leading to rampant disease amongst survivors.  These events will occur through individual natural disasters such as seen in the recent series of hurricanes in the Gulf Coast communities of the United States.  The residents of New Orleans, who were so noticeably devastated, will only be among the first in a long line of coastal populations to have their land mass claimed by rising ocean levels and an increased ferocity of storm events.

In contrast to a non-active response left purely to forces outside human control, we may make a conscious choice for reductionism.   It is acknowledged that this would be the most profound and radical realignment of ideological belief amongst Western influenced societies.  It is understood that the belief in progress and the general course through recorded time is based on the individual’s increased liberty and quality of life.  A good quality of life is understood to mean a lessening of the burden to provide for the necessities of sustaining life while maximizing individual comfort.  In the United States, this is equated to an increase in personal consumption and display of material items to achieve these goals.  There have, of course, been philosophers and individuals who have discounted the equation of greater material possession and consumption with greater overall quality life.  People like Gandhi, Thoreau and the founders of all the religions of the worlds have attempted to promote a conscious limiting of possession as a healthier form of living.  It is a commonly known verse of Christianity that, ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’⁴  However, prevailing Western thinking has overshadowed any individual attempts towards promoting a reductionist view point. 

In the most advanced societies, the individual consumes more and produces the greatest quantities of waste.  Quality of life can be measured most objectively by life expectancies.  It is difficult to scientifically quantify quality of living.  However in societies were people live longer, they must necessarily be on average healthier with less suffering.  When life spans are looked at closely, there seems to be a point of diminishing returns where consumption level per individual does not yield higher quality of life.  The American individual uses the greatest amount of energy per capita and produces the greatest per capita waste.  Many assume the American to have the highest quality of life.  However, life span data and health of the individual would not support this.  A return to common-sense interpretation can help explain this phenomenon.

We each know by personal experience that disharmony in life manifests itself by what we call stress.  Stress is mental suffering and the condition resultant from worry.  Suffering has both a mental and physical component.  We can be said to be physically suffering when we are excessively hungry, thirsty, cold, hot, or ill.  Because western societies generally provide for a fair distribution of food and drink for its inhabitants, the prevalence of suffering caused by these two factors is negligible.  However, we do recognize suffering in the form of physical illness and that which is mental or emotional.  Worry is what leads to stress.  We may worry about the physical reality of our bodily condition or as we have said, by purely mental thought processes.  Most individuals in first world countries suffer mainly mentally not physically.  Scientists have shown that mental stress can be just as damaging to the well-being of the individual and ultimately lessen the individual’s quality of life shortening the life span.  In the United States, our mental stress level is increased both by actual physical realities, because of poor availability of basic health care for large segments of the population, and due to worry of maintaining a vast array of possessions.

The prevalent Western viewpoint is that progress in quality of life is based on an increase in consumption and ownership of material possession.  As more things need to be cared for, the possibility for worry increases.  With each additional material object possessed, the probability of something to not function correctly, or to cease to function, increases.  This requires upkeep and maintenance to ensure a longer lifespan for the material object.  For all but the extremely wealthy, who have the necessary staff to maintain their various possessions, the upkeep must be performed by a limited number of individuals, (usually members of the family or the principal owner).  When the possessions’ needs for maintenance outrun the ability to keep up with them, worry ensues leading to stress.

Americans lack sufficient understanding that the comforts of life are increased by a second factor, in addition to conspicuous consumption, and this is conspicuous leisure.  The American is one of the hardest working types the world has seen.  The average worker toils day in and day out and usually receives only two to three weeks of vacation.  Extra hard work is needed to maintain the array of possessions needed to achieve acceptability and reputability in the social group.  As possessions are accumulated, there is a point of diminishing returns where the ease with which provision for the basic necessities of sustaining healthy living is countered by an increase in worry that accompanies additional responsibility.  With a focus on the ability to achieve quality of life by increasing pure leisure with a decrease in conspicuous consumption, both reductionism and quality of life can be positively affected.

Reductionism can also be positively affected by an increased appreciation of quality.  The traits of products currently valued by the American: greater size, greater quantity, and newness are not fundamental to higher quality.  Craftsmanship and evidence of skill and care are recognized components of quality.  These fundamental high-quality characteristics have the good sustainable result of making possessions less wasteful while increasing their longevity of use.  One way the upper or the greater educated classes can distinguish themselves, in order to gain reputability, without the need for more consumption, is to display items of conspicuous quality and usefulness with a reduction of wasteful items.

Increased toxicity of the environment is the result of wasteful consumption.  The greatest factor in poisoning the environment has been the use of the automobile.  The construction of automobile-scaled environments has had the additional negative effect of reducing good choices for transportation.  Freedom is enhanced by the greater number of good choices available.  Walking, bicycle riding, and tram and train riding are all good options to move around by ground in societies that allow for and provide for them in their planning.  To allow for walking to be a viable means of transport, buildings must be situated in a scale that makes for convenience.  The infrastructure for train travel already exists in the United States but has been neglected due to the cheap price of oil and the influence of the automobile.  The supremacy of automobile use at the detriment of other more sustainable forms of transport: the foot, and the bicycle, has created sprawling decentralized growth, which has only increased the destruction of animal habitats and the loss of non-human inhabited lands necessary for a properly balanced ecosystem.

A radical dismantling of the sprawling suburban development, only serviceable by the automobile, must be had.  This can not be easily done.  It could only be accomplished by decreasing population and increasing individual will to live in tight-dense communities in the traditional manner by which humans have lived for the great majority of their existence.  With a decreasing population, suburban living would be abandoned as new small and dense communities, easily traversed by foot, bicycle, and tram are re-established.  Inter community ground travel can be done by high-efficiency forms of automobile and the re-use of already existing train infrastructure.  Boat and airplane travel, which have their own devastating polluting effect, would only be reduced by an increased husbandry and love of one’s own environment, so that less desire would be felt to travel to far-off destinations, and by simple economic force, as oil prices continue to climb.

The dismantling of the automobile environment is indicative of a characteristic of truly sustainable thinking.  This is the maximization of the simultaneity of good sustainable effect.  The abandonment and de-construction of sprawling auto-exclusive landscapes, with the reformation of pedestrian-scaled density, achieves several beneficial ends at the same time.  First, the freedom to get places will be made easier with less costly means.  The citizen will not require the costly purchase and upkeep of automobiles which impose excess stress in providing the basic requirements for survival.  Secondly, the promotion of non-polluting transportation (walking, and bicycle riding), along with more efficient forms of public transportation will reduce the toxicity of the environment and climate forcing emissions.  Thirdly, the ability to get around pleasantly and conveniently without a car will increase the health of the individual.  Fourth, when the current sprawling suburb is dismantled, it will leave room to reforest and plant these abandoned areas to provide more habitats for animals and to provide more plant material to counteract carbon dioxide emissions.  Lastly, economic growth will be spurred on as people will be fully employed in the sublimation of their environment.  This is not to forget that any action will necessarily have some negative impact.  However, it would appear that if such dismantling and re-construction is to take place it must be non-forced and by conscience individual decision.  This will help to minimize any negative impact to individual lives.  Humans enjoy seeing work going towards improvement of their environment.  This is one reason for the popularity of current home improvement shows.  Real progress in achieving higher quality and minimization of waste is inherently appreciated.

Many great minds such as: Gandhi or Charles Dickens warned against the dangers of industrialization.  When contemplating a world with little need for the automobile, one should not worry excessively.  It must be remembered that human beings have been around for a long time and the car and truck have only been in existence for about a century.  Their existence is not essential to the life of the human-being and well-being without automobiles has been achieved by past societies.  Also, the United States is not in need of more buildings, only a better arrangement of fewer higher-quality buildings.  Progress will not be made by simple addition of manmade things but by the purification of the relationship of all things.

The mind is beset on all sides by distractions that impair the focus that must be paid to sustainability.  The public consciousness is constantly bombarded by propaganda over battles and claims to pieces of ground.  The wars of the Middle-East dominate the headlines and are the primary concern of the news report.  The background of these ever-wars is the type that Mother Courage had to endure.  The focus is lost in the endeavor for global thinking.  But still the industrial complex continues to spew out waste in its never-resting toxification of the Earth.

Once, however, proper attention and acceptability is given to Globalism and its aim of sustainability, emulation will be a strong force in promoting rapid conformity.  One may witness the current strength of the culture to insist on politically correct behavior in order to achieve reputability which resulted from its beginnings in the battle for civil rights.  Emulation and reputability will be strong forces in supporting a belief in the value of smaller family size and the creation of pedestrian environments.

If greater sustainability is not achieved, violence and war will be the result.  If environmental change is allowed to go beyond human control, and if the availability of resources becomes too small, there will be a break down of civility and a return to barbarism.

Procrastination is related to laziness.  Not acting will be as bad as acting unwisely.  There are many examples of human civilizations which made unwise decisions and acted too late to avoid excessive suffering such as: the people of Easter Island, the Spartans, or Nazi Germany.  Denial is a basic human trait, which along with hope, faith, and over-optimism, helps one to avoid mental stress by avoiding difficult decisions, but does not have any effect on outcomes except to make them guaranteed.

The U.N. could become a more useful body of leadership to effectively implement some of the necessities, especially in regard to education and birth control, to reach individuals rather than governments to help toward sustainability.  However, one cannot wait for institutions, as effective change will not initially come from these places.  Individual willful change of mind is the only effective way to achieve a more sustainable world.

One may begin immediately with sustainable action.  The following are points of immediate personal action that do not require one to wait for a central command to impose them, as they should be within the natural proclivities of a human being.

Notes

1.       New York Times quoted in, The Week: The Best of U.S and International Media. Volume 6, Issue 250, March 17, 2006, p.16.

2.       Joni Mitchell, ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, Ladies of the Canyon. USA: Warner Bros. Records, 1970.

3.       Chryssie Hynde, “My City Was Gone’, Pretenders, Learning to Crawl. USA: Sire/Columbia House, 1984.

4.       ‘Matthew 19:24’, New American Standard Bible, Anaheim, CA: Foundation Publications, Inc. 1995.

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