Sustainable Earth – Part II

Sustainable Earth: A New Destination for Western Culture?

A two-part blog post that explores how our modernist culture got us into the mess we’re in, and a small suggestion of how to proceed to an Earth that can sustain the possibility for human and all other life to flourish for generations.

Read Part 1 here.

Part II: A New Destination – Sustainable Earth

Getting Real About Humanity’s Situation

So, what is the alternative to trying to reach the modernists ‘perfect’ Globe?  In part one we came to understand that in any real sense we have never been modern, it was ‘only’ an idea.  Further, we recognized that the destination of the modernist ‘perfect’ Globe was an impossible conceit. It can never be reached.  But at the same time, we also recognized that we cannot and do not want to go back to the ‘Land’, despite the fact it had some positive points.

This is Your Captain Speaking

Bruno Latour, one of the pre-eminent philosophers of science alive today tells a great story to make our predicament clear.  To paraphrase:

Some years ago, we Westerners all got on a plane called ‘modernism’, that took off from the Land airport. After take-off, the Captain tells the passengers just how amazingly perfect their selected destination is, to expect continuous uneventful progress on the flight to the Globe, and that the flight will be short. Even though this is the first and only flight from Land to Globe, the captain's voice exudes confidence and excitement.  The captain gets updates from the destination, the Globe, and passes these on to the passengers: more details of how amazing the Globe is compared to pre-modern Land.

But just as the passengers were getting more and more excited about just how clever they were to get on this flight, the Captain announces turbulence and that a small diversion is required, but the course to the modernist Globe destination would be resumed soon.  Some passengers start to get nervous.  But what can they do at 10,000m?  Jump?  And even if they could find a parachute and jump, where would they come down.  The Land is far in the past, but the destination Globe is still far in the future.

Then the Captain receives the news the Globe airport is now closed due to a massive storm that would last longer than the fuel left on board.  The Captain, as the person responsible for everyone's well-being, naturally plans a course back to the Land airport, and announces this plan to the passengers, knowing most will be very upset – everyone wanted to progress to the amazing and perfect Globe.

But upon turning the plane around and radioing Land airport there is no reply; it appears that the airport has been demolished and no landing is possible.  The Captain gets on the intercom again: “Modernists, the Globe is closed due to bad weather, and the Land no longer exists. We have fuel for just two more hours. You need to decide where you want me to land and how to get there!  I’ve heard rumors that we may be able to land at a destination I'm becoming aware of called Earth.  You might want to consider this possibility and what it could entail; perhaps the cabin crew can help?” <pause>  “1 hour 55 minutes” <pause> “1 hour 50 minutes”…

What will the modernists decide to do, and how to do it? Will everyone perish, or will the Earth present new opportunities? Stay tuned for next week’s episode in the exciting story of humanitys' futures!”

A Path Forward to Sustainable Earth

So, could a path forward be to bring ideas from the Land, ideas from the Globe, and new ideas to a new place?  What if we called this new place "Earth" or "Gaia".  Can we recognize that now, in our current situation, some parts of the Land world-views and cultures are relevant to our circumstances today? (World-views and cultures that peoples who managed to retain their indigeneity against the onslaught of colonization often still live and breathe every day).  Can we recognize that not everything about the modernist project to perfect ourselves is inherently 'bad'; that there is some baby in the modernist bathwater?

Perhaps in this new place, this Earth, we can invent new world-views, new ways of being, new visions of desirable futures, new cultures.  Cultures that recognize our planet, and all life, including us humans, are not the same everywhere. Cultures that recognize diversity as normal and a source of strength.     Non-modern cultures.

Starting Our Journey to a Sustainable Earth

So how might we start such a project?  A project to save ourselves and future generations from our modernist selves.  Bruno Latour has a suggestion here too.  Perhaps we should start by understanding just where it is that we live, where it is that all life exists? 

Now for modernists, the answer is easy and clear.  We live on the Globe - literally and figuratively.  And of course, although we know it’s only a “pale blue dot”, we think of our planet as being huge.  But what about for us attempting to be non-moderns?  Attempting to chart a course to the sustainable Earth.  How should we think of our planet?

Perhaps we can take a lesson from one of the most well-known modernist projects: the moon shot.  One of the key cultural icons from this project was inspiring pictures.  For example, Apollo 10 took humanity's first complete picture of the whole of the globe.  And the modernists loved it: here was evidence that humanity lives altogether, that in some sense the Globe is real and that the perfect global village was in clear sight, just a few years in the future.

The Earth from Apollo 10 (© NASA, 1969)

But there are other pictures, much less well known, that call into question this reading.  At around 17h04 UTC on Nov 24, 1969, as Apollo 12 approached the earth at 12,000km/h, astronaut Allan Bean observed “Fantastic sight. What we see now is the Sun is almost completely eclipsed now, and what it's done is illuminated the atmosphere all the way around the Earth.”, then a few minutes later “You can't see the Earth. It's black just like space”.

“You Can't See the Earth, it is Black, Just Like Space” from Apollo 12 (© NASA, 1969)

So perhaps we don't live on a globe at all.  Perhaps the globe is in fact dark like space.  Perhaps we live in the 6km high thin sliver of the atmosphere that supports life?  If you like a 'critical zone' for all life.  Imagine if we conceived of our home, of Gaia, as this tiny space. Could this be a good way to start to conceive of our new destination, Earth?  A destination that we want to sustain all of us.  Could this perspective ground new cultures, new ways of knowing and being?  Could this perspective allow us to solve what for modernists are increasingly looking like unsolvable problems?

Just how tiny is the critical zone?  Let's put into perspective in two ways: (1) many of us have commutes to work that are longer than 6km (2) If the planet was the size of a basketball, the critical zone would be the thickness of a piece of paper.

The Tiny Critical Zone in Context (Derived from © NASA, 2010)

Our current modernist culture and journey to a ‘perfect’ Globe is making the critical zone less and less able to sustain us, let alone enable us and all other life to flourish for generations to come. Could the idea that we actually live, and can only live, in a tiny, fragile, 6km high critical zone be a useful mental frame for the Earth we actually live within?  What cultures do we need to create that will promote human behaviours which result in a critical zone amenable to the flourishing of all life?  What should we bring with us from the Land?  What should we bring with us from our ideas of the 'perfect' Globe? What role would human organizations, businesses, enterprises, governments play in such a culture?

We’ll continue to explore these questions in future blog posts.

Credits and Sources

With full credit to the Land, Globe, Erath/Gaia ideas of one of the pre-eminent philosophers of science Bruno Latour, author of “We Have Never Been Modern”  Go deeper with this curated YouTube playlist of some of Latour’s ideas.  Latour is often not so easy to follow, so expect to have to work to get these videos… but the effort is worth it.

Sustainable Earth – Part I

Sustainable Earth: A New Destination for Western Culture? 

A two-part blog post that explores how our modernist culture got us into the mess we’re in, and a small suggestion of how to proceed to an Earth that can sustain the possibility for human and all other life to flourish for generations to come.

Read Part 2 here.

Part 1: From Pre-Modern Land to Modernist Globe

Back in Time Before Modernism: The Land

Imagine you are back in the middle of the middle ages... before the Renaissance (1400s), before the Christian reformation (1500s), before the age of enlightenment (1600-1799)... before the ideas of modernism were imagined into existence. 

Before modernism, wherever you were living, Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas, human prosperity depended on the land - crops for food, plants for medicines, animals for food and raw materials (wool, leather), woodlands for fuel and construction materials, rivers and the sea for fish, and so on.  Humanity had to live with an understanding of its total and immediate inter-dependence with the land.  For communities who farmed, crop failure literally meant starvation.  For hunter-gatherers failure of a plant required as food for a hunted animal meant fewer animals to hunt.

And the Spirit (for monotheists) and the Spirits (for polytheists) were everywhere.  They were immediately connected to everything in and on the land: rocks, trees, woods, mountains, streams, rivers, oceans - and to everyday events - storms, rain, snow, wind, birth, death, and everything in between.  Humanity was connected to nature and each other practically and spiritually.  In many respects, much of humanity was living in balance with nature.  It would not be too much of a stretch to say that, to a great degree, this human life was sustainable.  That is, if these behaviours and worldviews remained they could have done so for a very long time. 

But, this is not some romantic past that the majority of humanity who have lost these sustainable ways would wish to return to.  Back then, life was hard; life expectancy compared to today was short; pain, death and loss were everyday experiences.  Further, just feeding our current and expected population prevents us from returning in practice.

To help us, let's give this cultural and practical environment, this world-view, this way of knowing the systems in the world and spiritual plane, this way of being, a label. Let's call this 'place' that humanity the world over found itself "Land".   And recall, back in the middle ages there was no sense that humanity was on some journey away from this ‘place’.  The Land was all that there was, and all that anyone could imagine would and could ever be.  

The Modernist Journey Away from the Land – Benefits and Harms

So what happened?

The processes of Western modernization gathered strength through the renaissance, reformation, and enlightenment caused Westerners to leave this 'place'.  The new big idea was that humanity was destined to progress to higher and higher levels of 'perfection'.  Humanity could know everything about everything and apply this knowledge to 'perfect' itself.  In the eyes of Western Modernists, that old place, the Land, was clearly less than perfect in nearly every way, and so needed to be condemned to history as a failure, with no redeeming features. It suffered that ultimate modernist damnation: the Land and its Spirituality was simply old-fashioned.  It was to be discarded as simply an early highly imperfect stage of progress.

If the most powerful idea of modernism was that all humanity was ultimately destined to go on an inevitable journey towards 'perfection', what was the ultimate destination?  The modernist's answer was that the journey was to a single 'perfect' global humanity, living in a single homogenous 'perfect' culture, in the 'perfect' global village.  Most recently we've called this journey 'globalism', or the process of globalization. 

And let’s be clear, very large swathes of humanity have benefited enormously.  The ideas of modernism were not some "bad" thing that now needs to be replaced wholesale so we can once again be sustainable.  Perhaps the key statistic to demonstrate the benefits of modernity is life expectancy.   For centuries the average life expectancy of a human was around 30 years.  And this didn't start to change until modernism had really gotten hold of the Western imagination.  By 1950 it was up around 40 years.  And by 2017 it was 72 years.  A remarkable achievement. 

And the averages mask massive inequalities.  Terrible injustices were and still are systematically committed.  These were and are driven by systematic processes such as forced colonization, that in turn were driven by belief in the modernist ideas of 'perfection' and globalization. 

 

Modernism… the Greatest Conceit of Western Culture

Let's unpack those quotes around 'perfection'.  The modernist idea was that humanity could 'perfect' itself.  But, isn't this the very definition of a conceit – excessive pride in oneself?  Or the definition of hubris – an excessive level of confidence?  I believe so. 

What are the major conceits of modernism? (1) progress towards the destination of the homogeneous 'perfect' global village is inevitable and cannot be halted or changed, (2) it is possible to know everything about everything and that will enable humanity to be 'perfect', (3) those who consider themselves more 'perfect' (aka 'civilized') are superior to those perceived to be less 'perfect' because they have supposedly made less "progress" and knew "less", (4) that capitalism, as it is now practiced, is the only possible economic system (5) there was nothing of value in 'older' ways of knowing, the 'older' ways of being.

And let's be really clear: modernism is 'just' a set of ideas. A very powerful set of ideas yes, but also a set of interlinked conceits.  Modernism is not real in any sense of that word.  You can’t actually be modern.  There is no such thing as 'progress', it’s a fiction, albeit a powerful one.  The ideas of modernism are 'just' in some human’s hearts and minds.  It is 'just' a world-view, a way of knowing and being in the world.  It is 'just' the basis for the ever-increasingly dominant human culture.

Again, to help us, let's also give this cultural and practical environment a label. Let's call this 'place' that modernist humanity the world over is aiming for the "Globe".  Today, for much of humanity, the 'perfect' Globe is all that many can imagine would and could ever be.  It is all that is worth trying to attain.

Trouble in the Modernist Paradise

Today the modernist conceit is slowly being called-out.  It is becoming clear that the modernist emperor doesn’t have any clothes.  From one perspective this is evidenced by a large range of philosophical intellectuals trying to claim that modernism is over, indeed that it must be over in order for humanity to survive.  These intellectuals are using labels like post-modern, ecologically modern, or reflexively modern.  From another perspective, social scientists are highlighting the current inequities systemic in our culture, education, the criminal justice system, opportunities for advancement, material well-being, and more.  And lastly, from the perspective of the natural sciences' nearly universal findings.  Our current journey to the ‘perfect’ Globe is literally reducing the natural environment’s ability to provide humans with what is necessary for our well-being, and the well-being of future generations.  Things like a stable climate, soil that can grow our food, clean water to drink, and so on.

Yes, we could continue to try to aim for the Globe and our 'perfect' selves.  We could try to use our undoubted capabilities for innovation to solve any problem 'just-in-time' to avoid mass human suffering.  Even when those problems are the results of our own past actions to reach the 'perfect' Globe.  But, given the scale and interconnectedness of our self-inflicted problems, this bet seems increasingly risky.  The likelihood of mass human suffering is becoming more likely.  For example, is it really possible that we're going to mitigate and adapt to climate change by innovating from the same modernist culture and worldview that created the climate crises in the first place?

In Part II we’ll explore a key idea that could provide a foundation for a new human journey to a new destination: Earth

Read Part 2 here.

Credits and Sources

With full credit to the Land and Globe ideas of one of the pre-eminent philosophers of science Bruno Latour, author of “We Have Never Been Modern”

Five Reasons for Enterprises to Aim-to-Flourish

I have a new version of this blog post which adds a sixth reason for enterprises to aim-to-flourish.  You can read it here.

As We May Feel... As We May Dream... Once More

I believe we live in a time of hyper-normalization.  We all feel something is wrong, and it's getting worse. We all sense our politicians know this.  We all know the politicians have no idea what to do.  And they know we know they don't know what to do. 

And yet, before SARS-CoV-2, we continued as if everything was normal. Though, we felt, we knew, it was not normal, we could not admit this to ourselves, to each other; and neither could our politicians.  Stepping back, looking at our very unusual experience over the past months, can we now voice this sense we already had, that the time pre-SARS-CoV-2 was beyond normal; it was hyper-normal.

In normal times we feel that the world makes sense; our lived experiences are 'ok' (although they may be far from ideal), but in general, we feel our politicians have a vision to make things better (whether or not we personally agree with the vision of the politicians in power).

Before SARS-CoV-2 jumped to the human species, I know I was experiencing every day, unsettled feelings almost constantly as I struggled and mostly failed to make sense of the growing contradictions and paradoxes in our world - for myself and those I love; for my culture, communities, countries, and planet. 

If you think back, to before SAR-CoV-2, just a few short months again, how did you really feel when you replied "I'm OK" to your partners or friends genuinely concerned question: "How are you doing?"

And yet as we felt more and more unsettled, we continued to behave as if everything was normal.

I wonder: was what we were experiencing, what we were feeling, an early sense loss, of grief, as our hearts grappled with the idea that a better future, of the very notion of progress and the promises of the modernist project, was slipping from our future, from our children's future.    And were we, in fact, starting to respond, just like humans always do to any loss?  Would this explain how we were feeling?

Looking back myself I am starting to see that some of us were in denial; they were actively suppressing the feelings of loss - and this is understandable.  Some of us were angry - understandably so.  Some of us were fearful - understandably so.  Some of us were depressed - understandably so. Some of us felt that how we chose to understand the world, and how we chose to act, was part of the unspeakable contradictions and paradoxes - and many of us hoped we wouldn't have to change too much - and this too is an understandably human reaction.  And, unfortunately, some tried to take advantage of these normal emotional responses to our experiences - stoking our understandable fear, anger, depression - to manipulate us, to gain or retain power over us. 

I know I was experiencing a whole mixture of these feelings every day.

And yet I and most of you continued to live our lives, in most respects, as if everything was normal.

A few had started to express our feelings in public.  We started to say "this is not normal", for example, the growing expressions of anger from Extinction Rebellion, Gretta Thurberg / Climate Strike, and more.

And yet, even for those who started to say in public "this is not normal", "the emperor has no clothes", we felt in our hearts the little change that was happening was far from enough.  Worse, we knew no one whose actions might be contributing to the causes of our unsettled experiences and feelings was or would be held accountable for the negative, far from normal, results of globalization, the dot com bubble, 9/11, 7/7, the 2008 financial crisis, the refugee/migrant crisis, the climate crisis and much more. Rather the people that lead us to these very real experiences continued, pretty much, as if all these events were normal and to be expected.

And it had got so bad, we were no longer surprised.  In our hearts, we no longer expected anything to make a difference.  This was now normal.  Indeed for most, taking action, working towards something different, had become abnormal, a truly frightening idea: What if we lose what we have?  What if our actions make it (much) worse?  And, as a result of these understandable fears, we appreciated that our politician's sights were now set so low they only dared focus on managing.  They struggled to prevent things from getting worse because we wanted them to just keep us on our current course.  We told the politicians this what we want, for them to manage and mitigate the risks; this is what we believed was good and right.  Y  And, this comforted us.  It lessened our understandable anxieties.

And, in the main, we continued as if everything was normal.  As if everything could remain normal.


But, eminent physicist Richard Feynman reminds us "reality must take precedence, for nature cannot be fooled".  And SARS-CoV-2 is a reality which is taking precedence.  In the past months, we realized we cannot, and indeed we have not continued as if everything is normal.  Our experience, our feelings, tell us a pandemic is clearly not normal.  And we're all prepared to admit this to ourselves and each other.  Now the extra-ordinary is required.   The extra-ordinary is normal.


So, this leads me to a question: are now we willing to admit to ourselves that almost nothing in the pre-SARS-CoV-2 world was normal either, that it was in fact, hypernormal?

And despite the SARS-CoV-2 death, grief, suffering, and despite our sacrifices, are we now open to imagining something different, something better, for all our futures?

Are we open to hope and possibility?

Are we open to the effort, to the sacrifices to work together to bring a different normal into being?

Do we have the courage to create a new normal?

One that makes sense.  One that we could and would want to celebrate.

And do we have the strength to imagine what that new normal could be? Do we have the resolve to ask ourselves: What do we want the future to feel like, to be like? What could it be? What should it be? What do we believe is our potential - each of us, all of us?  How high should we set our sights?

And how should we begin?   Should we start by agreeing the list the problems we need to fix?    Or should we start, as the UN Secretary-General has requested, with a conversation about "how good could we be?"


For myself, I don't want my highest aspiration, for the highest possibility for those I love, to be to merely survive, or perhaps "just" to languish half-alive, by focusing on fixing the problems of the present.

So I'd like to invite you to reflect...

What if we chose to strive for a new normal that aims high - not utopian - but for a new normal we know in our hearts, is possible, that perhaps we have each glimpsed?   A normal that aims to enable each of us, all of us, to be fully alive, fully human - in all our amazing and wonderful diversities.

What if we aimed for a new normal that strives for caring and being, not wanting and having; that strives for abundant optimism not fearful scarcity; that creates possibilities to feel, moment-to-moment, calm not angry; that places reconciliation, equity, respect, and well-being, for ourselves, each other and our planetary home in our hearts; that recognizes the needs of our Seventh Generation, our grand-childrens’ grand-children?

What would it be like for you, and those you loved, if we chose, as our new normal, every day to be humble stewards of all that is required to enable life’s highest potential: the possibility for humans and all other life to flourish on our shared planet for those seven generations and beyond?

How would you feel if you were a part of defining and working towards realizing such a new normal for yourself, your family, your community, your culture, your place?  How would your children feel about their life's possibilities in such a new normal?  How would you feel about leaving them such a possibility?


Or do we want to return to hypernormality? Do we want to go back to pretending everything is normal, when we feel, when we know, it is not? But yet we can't admit this to ourselves, nor each other, much less take action to return to normality.


I suggest, in these clearly not-normal times, this is a choice in front of all of us.

What do you choose?

What do your deepest held values and beliefs tell you that you should choose - for yourself, those you love (born and unborn), for all of us and all other life?



With inspiration from:
UN@75 - The Global Reflection on What We Want, Initiated on the 75th Aniversary of the UN by Secretary-General António Guterres
The Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group community of practice and research
The First Explorer community of the Flourishing Enterprise Innovation Toolkit
John Ehrenfeld - "Flourishing: a frank conversation about sustainability"
Bruno Latour - "We have never been modern"
Adam Curtis - "Hypernormalization", the documentary
George Case - "Silence Descends"
Jack Layton - The last Canadian politician brave enough to dare to dream a much better normal was possible?
Joanna Macey - "The Work That Reconnects"
John Worden - "Grief Counselling and Grief Therapy Handbook"
Jeff Gibbs - "The Planet of the Humans", the documentary
Vannevar Bush - "As We May Think"
Albert Einstein - "The Real Problem Is in the Hearts of [Humankind]"

Of Flourishing Business Models and Future Fit Business Benchmarks...

Friends - for those who would like a quick refresher on what the heck I'm up to - here it is!

Its all about helping business live up to the vision that a successful business creates tri-profit - financial rewards, social benefits and regenerates the environment by sustaining "the possibility for human and other life to flourish on this planet forever" - an idea first put forward by MIT Scholar John Ehrenfeld (summarized here). Yes, not a small un-audacious goal!

The why and how of this audacious goal is a big topic in its own right and I have a keynote talk (first delivered in December 2014 at Plymouth University) which discussed the goal in more detail.  I'll be presenting this talk twice at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto in March (details of this event and then video of that talk and slides forth are coming).
 
To contribute to realizing this vision in Jan 2012 I helped to co-found the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group (SSBMG) hosted by the Ontario College of Art and Design University's Strategic Innovation Lab (or OCADU sLab for short)! .  This is now a 340+ strong global community of professionals and academics on Linkedin (forum.SSBMG.com). We have another 200+ followers of the Strongly Sustainable Business Models page on Facebook facebook.SSBMG.com.   The project has a very basic home page www.SSBMG.com,  tweets @StronglySustain,  has a YouTube channel tv.SSBMG.com,  posts at blog.SSBMG.com, and maintains a wiki wiki.SSBMG.com.

My specific project - the Flourishing Business Innovation Toolkit - is one of a number of initiatives being undertaken by members of the SSBMG.

The Flourishing Business Canvas collaborative visual design tool is a key part of our Toolkit.  The canvas is featured in recent workshops we started delivering last fall in Toronto, Cleveland, Hamburg and Plymouth - see my tweets @aupward for photos of the canvas "in action" with workshop participants. 

The new canvas is a significant improvement over the groundbreaking Business Model Canvas featured in the million selling crowed funded book Business Model Generation (a number of members of the SSBMG were funders of this important project!) . A ~3 min audio/visual intro to the Flourishing Business Canvas can be found at: about.FlourishingBusiness.org.  More details about the canvas can be found in the learning map for the SSBMG wiki.ssbmg.com/home/learning-map.

Creation of this new tool was initiated back in 2010 by me at York University - Faculty of Environmental Studies and Schulich Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business within the Business School (Full thesis can be download hdl.handle.net/10315/20777). All this was part of my graduate studies into Business Model Design and Sustainability.  You can read more about the research on my company website www.edwardjames.biz/Research. (In case you're wondering the company was named, with a nod to questions of inter-generational sustainability, after my paternal and maternal grandfathers - Edward and James respectively).

The new canvas is being further developed and brought to market by a global team of 12 - all members of the SSBMG (for the team's pictures and roles on the project see this slide ; the rest of this presentation is an update on the project and next steps)

The project has its own basic, but soon to be improved, website www.FlourishingBusiness.org and tweets @FlourishingBiz. A facebook page is forth coming - updates are currently posted to the SSBMG facebook page facebook.SSBMG.com.

As befits a flourishing business project - the project's own strategy, business models (developed with the canvas of course) and detailed plans are all transparently available in public on this groups wiki - wiki.ssbmg.com/book-project. The terminology on the wiki is a little out of date and things are a little disorganized - this is because the team has been focused on the twin "funding challenge" and "gaining experience" hurdles common to most entrepreneurial efforts

I'm also working on another project of the SSBMG, with Dr. Bob Willard (a globally recognized expert in the business case for sustainability who is also working on the Flourishing Business Canvas), the good folks at The Natural Step Canada and the 3D Investment Foundation in the UK (Geoff Kendall and Martin Rich) on another highly related project - the Future Fit Business Benchmark (intro video here: FutureFitBusiness.org). This project is asking the question: How would we know a truly sustainable, aka a flourishing or strongly sustainable, business if we saw one!

Hopefully the following slide illustrates the symbiotic relationship between the Future Fit Business Benchmark and the Flourishing Business Canvas:

I think that about says it all... oh and as you can see from others posts to facebook and twitter things are moving forward in a positive way! But, anyone who wants to help the project financially, the project team would love to talk to you.

If you'd like to use the Flourishing Business Canvas you can - for free - just email inquiry@FlourishingBusiness.org and put "First Explorer request" in the email.  

If you want to show your support - like our facebook page - facebook.SSBMG.com or get more involved by joining our LinkedIn group - forum.SSBMG.com.  In addition to working on these two and other project the SSBMG meets monthly F2F and virtually for interesting presentations and discussions about flourishing, aka strongly sustainable, business. Details when you join the linkedin group.

"Managing without Growth" vs. "The End of Growth"

Earlier in the year I had the chance to listen to former Canadian bank energy economist Jeff Rubin talk about his new book "The End of Growth - but is that all bad?" .  His new book is a follow on from his excellent "Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization".

In his new book Jeff Rubin continues to demonstrate that he has a very good sense of the broader dynamics of the current changes underway in the global economy, including the balance , broadly sharing in the same world-view as Niall Ferguson  (The Ascent of Money) and Ian Morris (Why the West Rules - For Now: The Patterns of History, and What they Reveal About the Future).

Based on his talk at the Toronto Metro Reference Library  (and hence my impression of the new book which I've not yet read) is that Rubin is (one of) the first neo-classical economists who appears to be starting to reach the same conclusions as the "steady-state" ecological economists - i.e. he's starting to sound like he believes in what Ecological Economists call Strong Sustainability*.  BUT his reasons for doing so, i.e. price signals based on supply and demand in the monetary economy are deeply flawed.   

I believe Rubin will eventually start to see the flaws in his thinking.  Hopefully someone will give Jeff a copy of Peter Victor's book excellent "Managing without Growth, or get him to listen to Peter lecture or discuss the important differences in their thinking.

• Victor, P. A. (2008). Managing without growth : slower by design, not disaster. Cheltenham, UK ; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. 

Aside: In the interests of transparency, Prof. Peter Victor was my  Ecological Economics prof at York (ES/ENVS6115) in the winter 2011 (You can read my Term Paper: How Will Firms React to Limits on Bio-Physical Flows - An Exploration of Possibilities).

A summary of Peter's book, that uses systems dynamics models to explore the impact of strongly sustainable macro-economic policy decisions on the Canadian economy, can be viewed in the presentation Peter gave at the 2010 NetImpact conference at Schulich.  Click here for the slides which accompany this presentation.

Also Peter participated in CBC Radio 1 Ideas debate broadcast (from UofO) "Green Growth or no Growth" can be found here: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2011/02/02/green-growth-or-no-growth/ (it was sponsored by this interesting group: http://www.sustainableprosperity.ca/debate - a video of the debate is available on this page).  

* "Strongly Sustainable" is a term used by Ecological Economists to indicate the impossibility of substituting natural capital with human, manufactured, social or financial capital in time frames which might help mitigate the worst effects of climate change and other anthropomorphic impacts as described by the IPCC and other bio-physical science. This implies the need for organizations to balance the achievement social, environmental and monetary goals.  

• Neumayer, E. (2010). Weak versus strong sustainability :exploring the limits of two opposing paradigms (3rd ed.). Cheltenham, UK ; Northampton, MA : Edward Elgar

Silence Descends

I was inspired... and wanted to share...

I just finished reading (as my little bit of leisure right now) a short (95 page) sci-fi Novel published in 1997 by Canadian author George Case*: Silence Descends - the end of the information age - 2000-2500.  It is available from the Toronto Public Library (it was just "on the shelf" in my local branch when I stumbled across it).

This book is the first serious attempt I've read that considers what an evolved human species might look like which is not based on ecological modernization theory (i.e. that technology will save us from our messing up the planet and that Ray Kurtweil's singularity is inevitable).

Rather George Case suggests a spiritually oriented alternative "Community of Soul" (significantly) extending some thinking from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

For the story tellers amongst you you might like the focus on how IT intervenes and dumbs down the story telling process!

Below a quote from the last couple of pages... since it contains the lead up to the wonderfully inspiring reflection on our life today in the early 21st century indicating just how much further we can and could go.   This aspirational book suggests that in addition to the well understood spatial exploration (into the wider universe as suggested by the majority of Sci Fi) a perhaps larger (and more realistic) exploration is that of ourselves and our potential individually and more important collectively.  Wow!

At last the wind dies

Now a stillness calms the trees

Now silence descends (Japanese poet and engineer - 1990-2043)

Was Information's regime a dark age? (referring to the early 21st Century)  Not altogether. Over its course the women and men of the planet became far more known to one another than ever before-the phrase "global village" originated then-and far more learned in the symbiotic nature of their relationships. They reached levels of education and mental acuity that were virtually unthinkable to their predecessors. They had all the ingenuity and inspiration that had built up in the thousands of years before them to draw on. And, for good or ill, let them claim one superlative for themselves: never before or since has the human race been as informed as it was throughout their span. The Age of Information is aptly named.

But how slight an honour that now stands! What small triumph merely to be informed, to  tell and be told flimsy little scraps of truth in steady, stuporous gibberish! Dazzled by and dependent upon their inventions, the citizens of Information were blind and deaf to the invisible, wordless realities in their midst. It was not just their amusements that were illusory and escapist-this they admitted to themselves-but so were their solemnities; they were equally trifling, equally marginal to permanent questions of spirit and cosmos. Not a dark age, then, yet dim and lusterless, noisy with echoes of echoes, flickered with shadows of shadows of shadows.

Was it a failure? Time does not judge this way, does not see itself as glibly right or wrong. The Information Age is better described as the gloom before the morning, as a requisite bridge, into a firmer future. Its final centuries give it a taint of doom and error, but we might more charitably regard it as a natural cycle of growth and decay. The worst we could do would be to repeat its mistakes and boast of some lasting perfection, to presume our¬selves and our ways to be the apex of civilization forever-as the people of the Information Age did. They thought they had achieved the crowning destiny of the world, that they had harnessed eternity. They had not. They had only begun to prepare for the coming stillness, and to withdraw themselves into the roaring, receding distance.

Finally this brings to mind the works of (radical?) feminist / LGBT sci fi authors:

• Nicola Griffith - most specifically Ammonite which is amazing - mixing both typical science fiction space exploration (by women) AND the inner exploration which George Case focuses on (Slow River is good too) and
• Melissa Scott - most specially Dreaming Metal - also amazing;  the best exploration of the art and culture of a future society (the technology just "happens to be there") that I've read;  Then on top the story explores how that culture deals with the emergence of an AI (badly), created in part by the re-purposing of some technology in the cause of art and performance!

* Check out George Case's Blog here.