Pathways to Sustainability

[David Braden]

Brad Jarvis and I have been comparing blog posts - such as his Optimizing Happiness and my Resources are not Scarce.

These to approaches are not an argument about the facts of our situation - it is about perspective or the light used to view the facts. This discussion is about combining these view points for the goal of effective actions we can take toward transition to sustainability.

I am hoping many of you will want to contribute . . . or at least follow . . . so that we may all become more effective . . .

[Brad Jarvis]

See the updated version of "Optimizing Happiness" on my Web site along with links on that page.

[David Braden]

Brad, I cannot say I fully understand the mathematical model - if I read the chart correctly, at current longevity of some 80 years there is 100% depletion in some 50 years?

In Resources are not Scarce, I argue that the basic things humans need to thrive - food, clothing, shelter, education and health care - can be provided for 6 to 9 billion of us without destroying the environment. Some of that requires changes in the way we produce those things but I do not necessarily consider those changes a "reduction in consumption" or, more importantly, a reduction in "quality of life".

I am also interested in your comments on "leaders" and "increasing the range of environments". The production and consumption of goods and services, it seems to me, is not determined at the national level. It is determined by the choices of individuals, families, businesses, and other "groups" (organizations, institutions). I think you are saying that we will need "top-down" decisions about "acceptable levels of consumption?". One of the reasons I am interested in the way "Transition" is developing is its focus on what we can do to make our community a better place to live. See Local Organizing and the Planetary Mind.

[Brad Jarvis]

The model uses the standard definition of life expectancy (what I call lifespan) which includes the assumption that world conditions will not change significantly from those at birth. Of course, in reality, if resources run out then people will be unlikely to outlive them. Here, lifespan is a proxy for health and happiness.

My discussion of leaders and their influence on "environments" deals primarily with government's role in securing resources and both creating and maintaining infrastructure (physical and "human" -- such as education and laws). This sets a basic context for all other activity, mainly the production and consumption that you rightly ascribe mostly to the rest of us.

[David Braden]

Yes, the role of government in building infrastructure and prohibiting dangerous behaviors is important. But elected representatives will always represent the interests of the majority of their constituents - and that majority is engaged in the dangerous behavior from which we wish to transition. See Business as Bridges.

So, if we wish to implement change through government, we must first convince a majority of the constituents of the government with authority over that infrastructure or behavior. That process may not be fast enough for our purposes - particularly where we have few examples of the alternatives. My thought is that we should develop the alternatives first and then government will reflect that new reality. I wrote about those different approaches in How Humans Came to Live in Peace and Plenty.

[Brad Jarvis]

I see a lot of what you're describing in my current study of ecological economics (see the discussion group). Various organizations are already beginning to approximate this in their adoption of the "triple bottom line," which I see as broadening of the traditional definitions of supply and demand, especially with regard to waste in all its forms.

Your "How Humans Came to Live on Peace and Plenty" looks like a variant of the visioning exercises involved in Transition. I agree with its sentiments, but am somewhat skeptical that most people will be motivated as you suggest. I've written about some of the reasons for this recently in a triplet of essays: "The Need to Hate," "The Need for Hope," and "The Need to Love." The gist of my argument is that only people who are already inclined toward cooperation will seek out sustainability; the rest, driven toward competition, will not go willingly (the odds are that they will try to "go" elsewhere, and barring that, try to get rid of those they're uncomfortable with). Governments like ours provide a means of both keeping our competitive friends from harming the rest of us and providing socially useful ways for them to find their own version of happiness (such as exploration and settlement).

[David Braden]

When you say “people who are already inclined toward cooperation” you assume that we all have equal power of choice. There is another dynamic addressed in How Humans Came to Live in Peace and Plenty and that is the difference between supply and “need”. We are used to hearing about supply and demand but demand is directly related to financial ability. The lack of financial ability creates a whole class of people who could benefit from additional supply but cannot afford to demand it. That class represents the “unused human potential” in our system and consists of all those who cannot earn a living wage – including students, the disabled, stay at home parents, the retired, as well as the unemployed. (In economic collapse all of us are at risk of needing something we cannot demand from the market.)

One approach to realize the potential of that class is outlined in Organizing to Heal Nature and Produce Abundance. We all would benefit from finding a way for those left out of the market to provide what they need for themselves. It would be a social safety net that is not a tax burden on the economy. Which brings me to your blogs on hate, hope and love.

I have been working with a similar formulation but from the perspective of how we are all the same. The following is from Human Needs:

The attraction in human systems derives from the needs of individual human beings. I postulate two primary needs – security and hope but there are three subcategories of security, physical security (police, fire, and armies), emotional security (family, church, community), and economic security (food, clothing and shelter). People also participate in organizations out of the hope that it will improve the conditions of their lives or that of their children (schools, rotary clubs, trade organizations).

From this point of view, each of us will defend those bridges that provide our security and whether we are liberal or conservative would seem to relate to the emotional attachment we place on the hope for change vs. the emotional attachment we place on the fear of change.

I was also playing with the idea that love and fear are the same emotion. Like yin and yang or two sides of a coin. There can be no fear with out the love of that for which we fear . . . be it a thing, a person, a country. I don't think any of us instinctively hate. Rather, when a groups to which we belong fears another group, we are taught about the threat and that becomes hate. Hate is fear institutionalized.

[Brad Jarvis]

You might want to check out my latest Idea Explorer blog entry, "The Moderate Middle," which ties my discussions of love and hate back to my model of resource depletion, which I should emphasize is largely empirical. It deals directly with the assumptions you're questioning.

[David Braden]

I agree that maintaining desired environments for human happiness:

. . . means that we must focus our attention on increasing the total amount of renewable resources to match current consumption . . .

and I fully support public policies that move in that direction. The problem with doing that through public policy alone, in addition to the opposition of interests vested in fossil fuels and monoculture farming, is that the renewable resources are not competitive when compared in a market oriented, time value of money calculation. Let me give you an example:

Based on the time value of money, no one would ever build a hydro power plant. The market value of electricity is too low to provide a return on investment within twenty years. However, anyone who owns a hydro power plant built more than twenty years ago, is still producing electricity and very happy that the investment was made.

We can think of the time value of money analysis as the “business” view – and that is a view necessary to compete in the market – and the market does a lot of good. The other view is the one we take as “families”. Parents invest in the best environment they can as an investment in the potential success of their children – and we as a community invest in schools, parks, etc. and that does a lot of good. The problem is not one approach or the other. The problem is the primacy of the business approach and the lack of resources remaining available to the “nuclear family”.

In the last four years trying to explain this balancing view, I have found three assumptions that prevent people from considering these options. They are:

1) someone else is responsible
2) resources are scarce, and
3) the market can solve all our problems

The state of the world is the cumulative result of all the choices each of us makes – if we desire a different world, each of us will have to make better choices.

We previously discussed that yes, fossil fuels, top soil, etc., are being depleted but, the resources necessary for 9 billion humans to thrive on this earth are not scarce, we only need to produce what we need in ways that cooperate with nature's processes.

And, this final one, that we can only have one system and the only system we can have is based on a market economy. I am suggesting that we can have two systems in operation – one based on the “business” analysis and one based on the “family” analysis – and the ideal situation for any one of us would be to have those two systems in balance. See Systems to Complement the Market.

[Brad Jarvis]

Your thinking matches up pretty well with the concepts of ecological economics, which model economies as subsets of the biosphere (the basics of which were introduced in this week's reading for Keith Akers's ecological economics discussion group, which you could probably still join). In this framework, there doesn't need to be two systems as you propose, but one, where the activities that can't (or shouldn't be) be bought or sold are viewed as "overhead" that society -- and all its parts -- must carry.

My conclusion about increasing use of renewable resources (which by shorthand also includes "reusable" resources as much as possible) comes from an extremely high level analysis that only illuminates a basic relationship between the longevity (and happiness) of individuals the longevity of an isolated population they belong to that has access to limited resources. In this empirical model, consumption varies with the range of life expectancies (and happiness) in the population, which affects how long resources will last for the population as a whole.

Life expectancy varies with "environments," but the model can't by itself address what the nature of those environments would be (how to influence the range of life expectancy) or how the amount of available resources might change. For example, Introducing reusability, for example, would to the model be the equivalent of finding renewable resources, despite its very different incarnation in the real world.

[David Braden]

yes, I noticed the discussion group a few weeks ago and had a conflict with the meeting time. I already have a couple of evening meetings a week - and it is my job to cook dinner :-). I wonder if your discussion group could move - at least part - of the discussion here?

[David Braden]

I am involved in a discussion called the Global Brain Application Set Up. We are talking about the absence of a global discussion about the pathways to sustainability. In that discussion one of my correspondents, Pawel Klewin of Warsaw, said:

20 billions agents called humans, most of them now deceased, focused on getting what they need from the universe, created and support powerful and inert hierarchy of institutions, financial & monetary on top, constituting global social system, effective telescopic lens to focus.

During the process of creation agents-humans assumed, and still assume, the information they consciously proceed (are focused on) is central to the universe – example of relativity of information to the agent. Information from outside they use consequently only “to get what they need from the universe”, believing all the rest of information flow is negligible.

Today, completely unprepared, they are confronted with the information from outside, climate change, crises and terrorism on top, carrying data quite opposite to their basic assumption, demonstrating their mistake.

They have three options:
• modernize the existing system
• pray intervention from "outside"
• change focus, reinterpret data in wider perspective

I think they should do all three, commonly and in full agreement. Only way to do it is recognize complexity of system using a complex of currently available information, to create fisheye lens/fisheye view and replace a telescope they are using to focus. Objects to zoom at should be controlled in view of wider perspective. Ability to zoom in and out is the advantage of currently living over ancestors.

Can you look at community sufficiency through fisheye?

He is referring to the Community Sufficiency Technologies I have been talking about in my blogs and in the presentation I have developed about these issues. Here is my response:

I don't think that modernizing the existing system can be done from the top down - as I interpret your usage - as in all the living humans agreeing on the proposed modernization . . . the current dysfunction at the top derives from the deficiency of connections where the system is formed . . . a deficiency at the level where each of us makes choices . . .

Intervention from the outside is inevitable. From the information available I predict one of two stimuli to change (modernization? - hopefully?). Either the rise in the price of oil will lead to development of systems based on renewable fuels or a human insistence on burning fossil fuels eventually results in substantial change in the climate.

The change in focus is, I think, the key. I am not sure the "fish eye view" or a wider perspective is the correct analogy. Looping back to how to modernize, is it not a microscope that allows us to understand how to correct the deficiencies at the level where each of us makes choices . . .

There is this other aspect of what you say that I find compelling. When you say:

humans assumed, and still assume, the information they consciously proceed (are focused on) is central to the universe

I think there is a point here on which we must be clear. Over these past millenniums the agent is not the individual human. The agent has been - and continues to be - groups of humans (family, tribe, clan, nation, company, religion) These groups are necessary because we all start out as infants and need these groups to support us until we are competent to act on our own - but we focus on what the group needs from the universe to thrive and defend itself. In that focus, sometimes (often?) the needs of the individual members of the group - or the needs of the larger system - are invisible - as you say, the group is 'believing all the rest of information flow is negligible'.

You ask:

Can you look at community sufficiency through fisheye?

Community Sufficiency Technology is about changing the focus from the needs of the particular human groups to which one belongs to a focus on the the needs of each of the individual people, plants and creatures resident in the locality. That is a fish eye view compared to the view of 1) what do I as an individual need from the universe, or 2) what does my company need from the universe. It is a fish eye on all of the relationships necessary for the resident people, plants and creatures to thrive - not just the needs of the individual or an individual group.

It is also a microscope. I do not think we can change the relationships between nations and international corporations and major religions without changing the way people, plants and creatures interact individually in their mutual locality.

I am interested in how you see this change process.

[David Braden]

Here is a further update to the Global Brain discussion:

Pawel, Let me comment on your revision below and let us see how close we really are . . .

“New level of agent emerges from activities in the brain informing cells based in organs.

Here the organs are this new form of human organization. The cells being informed are individual human beings who consider themselves a part of the 'organ' and who participate in the global flow of information.

The formation of organs from the cells and symbiotic microorganisms resident in organs creates the experience of acting as an integrated whole.

Here the symbiotic microorganisms resident in the organs are the other plants and creatures of the locality. The experience of acting as an integrated whole arises from an initial understanding of mutual interdependence of all life within our locality.

That experience at the organ level then informs the brain - in a bottom up transfer of information - leading to refinement of the "phenomenal state that makes up the life of the brain".

The global brain compares the condition of all organs reporting the phenomena of their current state of being and selects for redistribution to all organs the best available understanding of the relationships that give rise to "better" states (which we can define further but generally increasing complexity rather than decreasing complexity).

That refined understanding of the integrated whole of organism is then available for collective use, as new agent (integrated cells – body), using transferred information can “behave” in collective interest.

Here the integrated whole of organism is 'all life on earth' with understanding resident in the collective minds (and physical information storage mediums) of humans. All the combined organs we defined above constitute the 'body' you refer to here. (Note: I have not gone so far as to make a determination of how the local organs that apply the integrated knowledge will 'behave' as a group 'in collective interest'. I generally think of it this way: - as more power is exercised locally, the need for national power and international power is reduced.)

Each agent at cellular level perceives that refined understanding of the integrated information as his local environment, being supplied with everything necessary to prosper - the information is transformed by the experience of its application by the cell.

Here 'each agent' is each individual human, plant and creature. Each of these agents has a function within the organ, which is all the people, plants and creatures of the locality. The agency of the organ is directed by a local organ mind? (This need not be all the local humans - an individual may propose a new relationship and when that proposal is accepted by one or more others the local organ mind has changed the local organ) Perhaps we can describe that as the collective understanding of the human residents about what actions increase the number of productive relationships and what actions reduce the number of productive relationships.

The feedback loop is the integration of information at the level of the brain and application at the level of the cell”.

As each action is implemented by a local organ mind the end result of that choice is uploaded into the global brain for comparison with actions taken by other organs for 'integration' - selecting for those actions with the best increase in productive relationships - and an understanding of why one action results in an increase in productive relationships and another action results in a decrease in productive relationships.

Complexity of our knowledge, both on qualitative and quantitative level is enough to use systemic principles and “mimic” creation of man’s brain application in the web we already call "neural net of humanity".

Here is the next place that we need to develop a common language. The structure of the world wide web is in place to host the kind of process that takes place in the human brain - integrating environmental inputs with memory and conceptual constructs to choose an effective course of action. There is already a massive flow of information but no mechanism to 'integrate it'. There is no mechanism for knowledge in one field to be integrated with knowledge from all other fields to allow for a real evaluation of choices from the point of view of the organ we have described.

I believe that building the required mechanism requires this 'local organ mind' - a shift from a first dimensional (individual) view or a second dimensional (organizational) view - to a third dimensional understanding of the interdependence of all life in the locality. This need not be all the resident humans - or even enough of the resident humans to influence local government - just enough to start adding new productive relationships to the local organ - and reporting the results across the existing communications framework.