Informed. Hopeful. Realistic. - William J. Marston

WJM writeup of talk for SSAP/ASF Conference April 6, 2008

Title: “Informed. Hopeful. Realistic.”

by: William J. Marston, LEED AP

deliverd: April 6, 2008 at the Sustainable Society Action Project Sustainable Conference at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania

[1,768 words]

This presentation will establish a broadscope of topics, gathered under just 3 categorizations. Each of these will address the current state of affairs in the context of sustainability, toward a future - based on the past but also created for a perhaps significantly contextually different future. As an architect, the speaker will frame these in the very common “language” of the built environment. Readers should note that they are all quite fluent in substantive aspects of this form of communication, even if they have not studied it. In fact, the built environment is as familiar to the entire range of people as is food, or social behavior.

The subject of how we will act in the context of sustainable living covers a wide range of personal behaviors which can be pursued broadly (as an individual or as one of a group), or very specifically. The key to feeling satisfied and successful about how we act is in being aware of our own actions being interleaved with a myriad number of other acts, by result of our choices or by others outside of our control or even our knowledge. Such is the nature of a viable ecology of human life — this awareness that we are a part of a living world.

SCALE

As living creatures, humans most certainly “live in the moment” but we also plan for the future. Planning may be very short-term (I’ll change the TV channel at 7:30) or far longer (to retire at 65 I’ll have to buy some good investments). We deal with things of all sizes — the tiniest, the small, the large and the cosmic. We use tools of all scopes, from nail clippers and child behavior management to those of global education, of hope & faith, or of economics.

Climate change reflects this range of scales. But as we know (above) we are highly experienced with working at such immense ranges of scale. And through our mobility and intellect we extend the amount of knowledge & information we have at hand at incalculable rates. Throught those same means we increase the number of minds and the number of teams working on the entire range. So — we are quite INFORMED. And we continue to advance the amount of information and increase our comprehension of that knowledge as well as the wisdom required to use it.

We know as much as we choose to know. If we cannot adequately comprehend it then we all have access to the best minds through our incredible linkages of two-way communication. Thus any person can discover what they feel they need to know in order to make decisions. There is no excuse for wrong actions or inaction. We certainly do not lack for INFORMATION.

FLOWS

Nothing is static. Natural systems of energy, chemistry, plant growth, money — all of these seek to fill gaps and thus the essence of all of them is flow, or movement, or change.

Seeing that all things seek to level or to maximize whatever they have as a basis for their existence, it is easy to see that we can achieve ease, comfort and efficiency by increasing the amount of stuff it takes to fill what we see as our needs. However, we tend to ignore the essential balancing that wants to occur in natural systems. Thus if one gets more, then somewhere else there is less.

Many well-educated but unaware people have preached that the human strength of ingenuity will overcome such imbalances. This ignores the essential, core fact of finiteness. We are apparently a long, long way from reversing entropy (the tendency of energy to continually degrade toward zero, for organization to fall into chaos, etc.). Yet many assume that they, and perhaps everyone, can produce and consume at increasing rates, while the population itself increases and resources dimish and toxins spread.

Those who understand the nature of things better know that it is in managing flow better that we get better lives and better circumstances. It is in making life more EFFECTIVE rather than just in making it MORE. When we live under the understanding that goods are merely a stage of a flowing set of resources, then our satisfaction will be ensured. By managing the means by which energy, water, minerals, land, power, knowledge move to fill gaps and add value we extend the value of those things themselves far beyond the single transaction.

So — in the Keynesian day I might buy carpeting for my office, and when it is worn or I wish a new color, or when another tenant moves in it is thrown away & discarded (i.e. it is to be used no longer). Another carpet is purchased, providing jobs and income and social structures across the globe.

But in a living world, there is no “away”. As some bright observers note, in natural systems “waste equals food” - leaves fall to provide nourishing habitat, energy and nutrient for a range of Earth’s creatures (plant, animal, mineral, temperature, etc.). And these go through cycles similar to that of the leaf, extending the web of this ongoing flow.

What does this mean to an individual person?

I no longer “buy” and “own” and “throw away” carpeting. Instead I might lease it from Interface, a flooring services enterprise. They will maintain it when it gets worn, replace it if I choose a new design and they will take it back as a technical nutrient for the creation of that next carpet. While this is not net-zero energy, NOTHING is. But when we maximize the value of flow, exchange, interdependence, symbiosis and inter-relationships we can live on the solar income, gravity, and the mass of the earth alone as our source of managerial power. So we should think efficiency, sharing, changing the definitions of things, finding power in the filling of those gaps in all fields.

But doing this requires that we “think different” as Steve Jobs urges us to do. And how shall we do that?

PERCEPTIONS

We all know that to one person a sound might be aggravating while to another it is blissful. Rather than go into more examples of similar experiences which any reader has ready at hand, let us agree that there is no one, single truth to almost everything.

Context is what changes a truth into a question. Was that sound heard while making love or while being tortured? Intent is another such variable: a touch by another person, with precisely the same elements and attributes, is love or torture depending on the relationship between the two people involved and the intent with which it is delivered.

Let’s call these and other attributes like them “perceptions”. So how do we use this age-old knowledge to change the reality of climate disruption and its impacts?

We know we are often less afraid when we’ve a hand to hold, or the knowledge that we are not alone in bad circumstances. And further that we feel more positive, and even more capable, when the matter is framed as an opportunity, or a pleasure, rather than impending disaster. So yes, there is a role for doomsayers. Often it is only they who are telling a truth before others perceive it as fact, or as important.

In these times I think the most important way that everyone has to gain strength from fear is to talk with others. Share the fear. Ask what they’ve done or heard. Offer your own observations and actions. Before long you will find that you both share a hopeful awareness! I do this all the time: casual chat with the grocery store clerk, another passenger on the train, talking to a colleague about the coming weekend and so forth. And this is gradually building common understanding, shared sympathy, and common cause.

___________

CONCLUSIONS

Yes, we do perceive things contrary to fact.

One reason is control and controllability. The closer we feel to being in control of something, the more we understand it and can act in an intentional way towards it then the more we are comfortable with it. Control is built into our beings in that it is a defensive attribute. Just as the once-injured lumberjack does in seeing the forest differently afterward, we extend our control even in a passive way by “paying attention”. Thus we feel more control over that forest when we perceive it as a dynamic powerful organism than when we perceive it as a place to cut trees.

Hmmm... how could that be true!? More control by just a subtle change in our own sensory mechanics than by an entire industry of Caterpillar tractors, hydraulic logging tongs, chain saws, long flatbed trucks and sawmills, with an economy to back it all up. Control gives us a sense of safety and security, both needful things. Control gives us at least a short-term known future, not absolutely needful but certainly helpful in many ways. Control gives us other things such as a sense of power, a satisfaction in our knowledge or expertise, and a way to reliably compare one thing with another.

OK, but the forest is the same whether we’re walking through it or not. It IS a forest in its chemical atmospherics, its birdsong and beetle chewing, its soggy loam and succeeding opportunistic plant species, in its tolerance threshold of the blind-and-deaf logging operations, the bagworms & aphids, the acid rain. But we don’t perceive it the same way all the time. In fact only a tiny percentage of people perceive that forest for what it actually is.

So it is with the world. Only a very few see this world for the living organism that it is - moving magma, spinning equator, spiraling energy towers of bacteria-laden seed-carrying pressure fronts that are thousands of miles long... and we just call it “weather” and many laugh at how those forecasters “never get it right!”

We gain control through perception — it is honestly that simple.

Many are now embracing the essential nature of the entire world as a system of systems all essentially working together, under rules of behavior we understand better and better every year. But our understanding is limited, and I urge you to overcome this with building your own redefined awareness — of togetherness, shared resources, of life in the ebb and flow rather than in the “once through, and gone” mentality. It is easy to do! Each time you do it, the next time comes far more easily!

So keep these things close in all of your day-to-day affairs (including those nights lying in bed before sleep, when the mind can flash and wander...).