Sustainability Principles Online Dialogue

There is some interesting scientific research related to what appears to be survival based, genetically determined, 'altruistic' behavior in other species. (Check out, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins)

Maintaining the delicate balance of symbiotic relationships upon which all life depends apparently requires exhibiting certain 'moral-like' attributes that are automatically exhibited by other spieces and often (but not always) favored by natural selection.

The difference between humans and other species seems to be that we have both the greatest capacity and obligation ( or its curtains for us ) to overcome our genetic programming toward destructive selfishness through moral behaviors that we must learn since there is little evidence that we were born with the genetic programming to be moral beings.

Through our capacity to learn and form morality based cultures we may some day be able to do our part in maintaining the symbiotic web of life instead destroying it.

This is why I think education is key to the spiritual domain (see my previous post http://bfi-internal.org/sustainability/node/94

This is a very stimulating conversation, and also a familiar one, in a low-level anxiety-producing sort of way. For years I've been working in sustainability, and at the risk of oversimplification perhaps the premier challenge I've identified is this one: the tension between vision and doing, or if you will between ideation and implementation. It's as if there are two fundamentally different realms in our psyches, and the twain have trouble meeting. There is the noosphere, whence comes visioning (great stuff!) and intellectual conceptualization/parsing (important stuff, often great stuff too). And then there is the doing realm--people with hammers, so to speak. People tend to be really good at one and much less good at the other. The visionaries can't get it done, the doers can't see what needs to be done. One of the great things about Bucky was -- he was a "bridger."

For this reason, I applaud Buckyfan's comment, which is about going beyond "writ(ing) and post(ing) in an articulate fashion." I applaud this dialogue too, and all the passion and genius it contains, but without translation into the world of action it will only be oxygen in the closed system of the noosphere. How will it manifest? What are best strategies for making it manifest? These, for me, are critical questions.

Both Carl and buckyfan raise an important issue; talk alone won't get us very far unless its followed by action.

So I ask how do you make sure that our actions are not just well intended forms of ants in the pants?

The way nature works can be quite counter intuitive. I am learning this through reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Simple intuition cannot always be our guide when dealing with complex systems.

So the question to me is what will guide our actions in a way that can enable us to impliment systemic solutions not just feel good bandaids.

The hard work of establishing principles and then rigorously using them to screen actions and decisions and to evaluate outcomes seems the only prudent way to proceed in this touch and go relay race to achieve sustainability as a state.

Its a discipline that very few of the world's leading intituitions or organizations working for a sustainable world explicitly apply. The same is true at the individual level. My own life with its admittedly large eco footprint sorely lacks this principle based discipline.

One posting to this dialogue mentioned an article in a leading scientific journal that discusses the folly of building wind farms in peat bogs -- when these habitiats are disturbed they can release large quantities of CO2. The ends justify the means?

This is just one of many instances that tell us that if we dont take a principle based systems approach we could easily wind up making our problems worse by indiscriminately investing in the next green revolution.

The venture capital world is starting to get wise to the potential of clean/green tech, conservation and other so called sustainable technologies. Huge dollars are likely to flow in the coming decade toward this economic sector. Will any of this investment be guided by any systems based set of principles?

So, we can expect as climate and biodiversity crises begin to touch our hearts and minds the altruistic impulse to 'do good' will result in people and their money running in a somewhat helter skelter fashion to green the world which ultimately may or may not be about solving the real problem. It will be hit or miss game with a significant portion of miss.

We cannot avoid trial and error and we no longer have a big cushion of time to fall back on. The only thing we can do is to minimize the miss factor by rigorously guiding ourselves with the best thinking at the level of principle, policy and operations.

That is what this dialogue is all about --- helping to evolve a set of principles that can be made opersational and available to those taking action and making decisions on all levels.

how about "voluntary simplicity" as a strategy and principle?

Joshua's comment:

"The hard work of establishing principles and then rigorously using them to screen actions and decisions and to evaluate outcomes seems the only prudent way to proceed in this touch and go relay race to achieve sustainability as a state"

is of the essence.

Josh

Give me a little more about what establishing principles means. The word has different meanings. We have mathematically defined principles and we have the other kind of principle(like the golden rule) which I don't know how to describe.

The first kind is established by measurement, experience and testing. The second kind, I don't know how these are established. I need to be straightened out on this please!

Both Carl and buckyfan raise an important issue; talk alone won't get us very far unless its followed by action.

So I ask how do you make sure that our actions are not just well intended forms of ants in the pants?

The way nature works can be quite counter intuitive. I am learning this through reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Simple intuition cannot always be our guide when dealing with complex systems.

So the question to me is what will guide our actions in a way that can enable us to impliment systemic solutions not just feel good bandaids.

The hard work of establishing principles and then rigorously using them to screen actions and decisions and to evaluate outcomes seems the only prudent way to proceed in this touch and go relay race to achieve sustainability as a state.

Its a discipline that very few of the world's leading intituitions or organizations working for a sustainable world explicitly apply. The same is true at the individual level. My own life with its admittedly large eco footprint sorely lacks this principle based discipline.

One posting to this dialogue mentioned an article in a leading scientific journal that discusses the folly of building wind farms in peat bogs -- when these habitiats are disturbed they can release large quantities of CO2. The ends justify the means?

This is just one of many instances that tell us that if we dont take a principle based systems approach we could easily wind up making our problems worse by indiscriminately investing in the next green revolution.

The venture capital world is starting to get wise to the potential of clean/green tech, conservation and other so called sustainable technologies. Huge dollars are likely to flow in the coming decade toward this economic sector. Will any of this investment be guided by any systems based set of principles?

So, we can expect as climate and biodiversity crises begin to touch our hearts and minds the altruistic impulse to 'do good' will result in people and their money running in a somewhat helter skelter fashion to green the world which ultimately may or may not be about solving the real problem. It will be hit or miss game with a significant portion of miss.

We cannot avoid trial and error and we no longer have a big cushion of time to fall back on. The only thing we can do is to minimize the miss factor by rigorously guiding ourselves with the best thinking at the level of principle, policy and operations.

That is what this dialogue is all about --- helping to evolve a set of principles that can be made opersational and available to those taking action and making decisions on all levels.

Mak, beautifuly stated. This is exactly what it is about: the expansion of "ego" from exclusive "me"-ness to ever more inclusive spheres.

Janos,

Your whole statement contains a lot to think about. I am not sure Fuller would have even been satisfied with subsistence income.

There is so much valuable work that is being done in this world that is not recognized as such by the current economic system. I wonder if the economic system included this work in its measure of "gross progress" ( instead of gross product) if our concept of unemployment might change.

Perhaps instituting measures like the gross progress indicator(www.rprogress.org/) might be an important step in evolving our economic system toward the day when everyone has achieved at least a bare maximum level of income.

thanks

I gotta go with Ray on this one - I agree with others that ethics extends to all sectors, and I think it is important to recognize spirituality/inspiration/transcendence, but I'm afraid basing ethics in spirituality is part of what is holding us back - anyone care to discuss the sustainability of abortion?

Okay, I'll bite. I'm not 100% sure I get FERAL's point, but I'll bite anyway.

If what's he asking is: how can abortion be justified in the context of a transcendent spirituality? -- here's my answer. If "spirituality," as used here, involves the transition of consciousness from a "me-centric" to a "world-centric" worldview (ever greater levels of inclusiveness, ever greater identification of self with the "All"), it follows that it is appropriate to inquire into the value of individual life in the context of this inclusive whole. From this point of view, it becomes considerably less certain that every individual life is unconditionally sacred, as posited by the opponents of abortion. Rather, the question must be asked: in the context of the health of the entire global system, is abortion a net-positive or net-negative? Certainly the case can be made that it is a net positive, given that massive escalating over-population is at the very heart of the sustainability crisis. Fewer babies is therefore better than more, and abortion at the will of the mother becomes a justifiable and appropriate way to serve the greater good.

By this analysis, abortion is entirely aligned with the pursuit of sustainability and consistent with the Spiritual Domain premise, as defined by Michael.

Can technology fix spiritual problems?

-----How can abortion be justified in the context of a transcendent spirituality?----

I don't know anything about that but another question is- how can abortion be justified in the context of free advanced birth control technology, health care and a general abundance of wealth?

My point exactly - the ethics of abortion, from my viewpoint, can only be determined from an intellectual standpoint. By allowing unprovable spiritual belief to determine ethics, you quickly reach conflict.

The beginning of faith is the end of thinking. I think ethical questions should be answered outside of the spiritual realm.

Your original statement [without the NOT in it] jarred me. I don't think I believe it. I'm sure I believe it less now (that I'm in my 50s) than I did as a college student or young man.

There have been many great thinkers who have been deeply religious (which I take to mean they sustained their religious beliefs by faith). Newton and Gregory Bateson, to cite two eminent scientists. Einstien also, though I know less about his faith.

I think Bucky would fall here too. He had faith in the integrity of Universe, and even associated it in his poetry, his thinking, with love. I have long wanted to reread many of his books to trace the evolution of this faith as his thoughts about synergetics developed; I sense that Bucky was religious in his own way, and that his faith did not contridict or confound his empirical design science.

A second argument on this point has to do with beauty (or perhaps "pattern integrity"). Some believe that beauty is primary evidence for God and that faith is sustained by the presence of great beauty in the world. Scientists have discovered some of the most beautiful phenomena we know of. This points to a connection between the fruits of science and the motivation and justification of faith.

That both a scientific attitude of rigorous thinking and a profound faith can exist in the same human being would seem to indicate that they are not incompatible or dissonant. I suspect rather that the question or presumption that they are in opposition is misconcieved. Some poets and religious sages have described an integrated human consciousness where they coexist to form our wholistic humanity.

Maybe we can't think rigorously and feel our faith at the same time, but surely we can do so in the same conversation. We can weave an understanding of the world with warp and weft of these two ways of perceiving. For fun, we could argue about which is which! That is a different argument than yours, isn't it?

Completely agree that the "Spiritual Domain" extend beyond Ethics and in fact superceeds it.

In pointing to it I tried to point to the fundamental significance of a transcendent awareness of the oneness that underlies manifest phenomena.

From this essential source is derived an ethics, which ten would be implicated in the social domain but in other domains as well (the way we consider other species, the values we let drive the economic equation, even the way we handle "material" resources.

Ray,

All these domains are a holistic system. Ethics belongs to all these domains, doesn’t it? After all, this entire forum is about “sustainability”. Isn’t sustainability really about global ethics and human survival?

Andrew Owens

Hi Andrew

For lack of a better location within this forum to offer this, I'll speak up about the most spiritual event of all time in human history. You might understand why I'm following up your post with this. I mean, we're talking survival.

The cold war ended 15 years ago!

I don't know if you remember
the WWIII dark shadow cloud
we all lived under ever since childhood.
We didn't think about it all the time
but it did tempered everything we did.
The near-instant-global-wide threat
of total destruction measured in megatons
is our starting point in history
for our current global-warming megathreat.

We can't be sustained in an oven.
This threat to the survival of (pick a species)
is our present task.

Let's remember just how far we've come. I think it will help.

andrew i think you're right. no use of putting concepts into separate boxes... (that's preciselly what got us to the point where we are...)