Response 1 to HeartCenteredOne

Heart Centered One raises an interesting challenge to my central contention that we lack a measurable way to define the solution so will be clear about what we need to do in order to succeed with our efforts toward a sustainable future. According to him:

“The problem is that all this comparing often prevents us from being guided by how we feel. We forget how to follow our hearts, our gut- instinct, our intuition. Many of us have forgotten how to feel, altogether.”

This makes sense to me because of another belief: As a society, Americans are highly alienated. We treat our social alienation with consumption. When we consume we satisfy certain longings, like the longing for candy. But when we are done shopping, when we get that new car that gets 16 MPG, we end up with a need for something else to consume, we feel hungry again, our blood sugar levels crash and we crave more candy. In this process we do not feel whole or ourselves; we are separated from our feelings “…many of us have forgotten to feel…” and our consumer economy reinforces more of the same.

“The challenge of sustainability gives us the opportunity to realize this state, (we want to do it - and we must, in order to feel whole, to feel ourselves), precisely because there is no objective way to measure our progress towards it. The only way we will know if we are making real progress is if we can feel better about the world we have created, with each passing year.”

Here’s where I disagree with the broad application of “feelings” as a reliable gauge for change, in the absence of objective scales. I believe in the need to empower people’s intuition as much as Heart Centered One. Here’s is a great example of intuition from my perspective and it is the foundation of my argument for modeling the solution so we can measure our progress toward change. As a part of our local Millennium celebration I designed a program for 600 students at our local school called the Millennium Garden Project (which I will talk about another time). The concept was for the children to shape their future by shaping a garden. As part of the design process I took the older children out to pace the garden and then make a map of the garden that was to scale (I wanted them to physicalize the space, no tapes allowed). After we came back and drew the boundaries I asked them to guess where the one tree should be placed on the map. They discussed it and agreed to a spot which we marked. When we validated the location it was only one inch off in scale.
They had a feeling about where it belonged on the map and this is entirely consistent with Heart’s need to protect the role of feelings as we measure progress on a subjective level. But their feeling came not from a book, not from a tape measure, not from an external standard but an internal standard, what I refer to in my lonely way as a standard of intuition. It involved body knowledge gained from thought, experience, and intention.

What I am advocating is the need for feed back loops that do not currently exist and the creation of scenarios (not absolute scientific standards or quotas) that create visions of how it could be: i.e. crisis-survival-prosperity. These are models that we can use to show consequences for today’s decisions that inform us in the future so we can act strategically when we observe signs that we are heading in the direction of one of the scenarios. This is a holistic approach that informs feelings and intuitions and does not impede them.

“But these rationalizations (which tend to reference external objective standards) occur because of fear - fear of failure, of being rejected. They are illusory. We need to see through them, and base our actions not on fear, but on love.”

There needs to be a core of people who act out of love, I don’t expect it to be epidemic. The reason I believe this is so is because there is a relationship between sustainability and healing. This is a concept that was introduced to me by a friend named Christine. If we experience the crisis scenario then the solution will be survival and those who can help others survive will be those who learned to put their love into action and heal themselves. These will be the one’s who have the resources to teach others how to heal themselves and stay healthy in an stressfull environment. Their love will touch others and the love will give people hope in the face of overwhelming fear.

“Fear has created the mess we're in today. There may be a way to evolve a sustainable world that continues to be motivated by fear. But I wouldn't choose it. I choose a sustainable world that revolves around love. Join me.”

I have no problem joining Heart but I am planning to bring my tape measure and my HP 11C scientific calculator. Thank you Heart Centered One for your contributions.

Problem Reduction and Sustainable Design

Introduction

A wonderful thing has happened over the past five years. Designers and engineers have acquired a set of tools that enable a design team to create developments that take the future needs of our children in to account. The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has developed LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) which establishes criteria in different areas of building that earn a building a LEED Rating and Certification. The assumption is that the higher the rating the more sustainable the certified building will perform.

This offers developers the opportunity to take responsibility for reducing the impacts of a critical problem that we all face today. Or I should say, a problem that is facing us. The problem facing us, our children, and the children that they will have some day, is the problem of diminishing wealth as our resources are depleted. Buckminster Fuller once said that wealth is the ability of a species to survive. By that standard, the problem facing us is our unrestrained patterns of consumption that consume a disproportionate level of fossil fuels, to mention only one example, then that level which is sustainable. LEED and sustainable design practices reduce the disproportion. They do not solve the problem.

The question is--what is the proportionate level of consumption that will give us the ability to survive, and for that mater to prosper? Nobody knows. We have defined the problem; we are consuming our non-renewable resources too quickly. We have not defined the solution; how much reduction in consumption is enough.

We can not define the problem in isolation as an industry today because the answer in part depends upon what happens to the consumption of resources in other sectors (transportation, industry, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and so on). We do not have a drawing board that is big enough to draw a picture of the total problem. Most every sector is drawing on their own board and they have only loose ideas about how the boundaries might fit together with other sectors. I don’t believe any of the sectors of consumption has a view of all the drawing boards and therefore is not able to view the whole picture?

The reason in my opinion is three-fold:
1. We are all too busy finding solutions that measure benefits by their ability to reduce impacts. Right now that is all we can measure with any certainty (e,g, lighting that consumes 20% less energy than state standards).
2. We are working diligently on our own concerns but in professional isolation. We can solve our building problems with out having an affiliation with transportation for example, at least as long as we define our work around the problem, not the solution.
3. Those involved in sustainable design are basically passengers in a plane that has a pilot, but no navigator. Our ultimate destination is a landing field that is hopefully with in range of our fuel supply, but there is no flight plan that tells us where that is or can guarantee with any certainty that the field is with in range.

So long as this is so, there is no flight plan that allows us to measure our progress as we approach a solution; there is no way to project whether or not what we are doing as sustainability professionals is enough. It is as if we are throwing a Frisbee to our dog on the other side of the park. Our dog is seen only as a silhouette against the sunset. We can not tell how far away he is. We throw the Frisbee but with out a better view we can only hope that we have used the right amount of force and threw it in the right direction. Our responsibility is to get the Frisbee to the dog, not to depend upon the dog to correct for our own mistakes.

And that is how I see sustainability as a movement today. Throwing hard and hopefully in the right direction. The question is, how do we get a better view of our dog and throw more confidently? How do we begin to measure our achievements with sustainability in relationship to the solution and not just problem?

Bruc 11-26-04