Becoming different – Part 12: Reviewing the Basics again – Part 1

I gave a short Zoom talk the other night.  I thought I would overview what I talked about as an overview for newer subscribers to this blog and as a way to refresh my views for longer time readers on the direction we need to take if humanity is to thrive in a better world.  As always, I begin with my standard vision statement: SUSTAINABILITY – Living within the limits of nature’s ecosystem services.  And to live together in communities that are equitable, regenerative, resilient and adaptive.  I’ll add that this is both a simultaneous Technological and Socio-Cultural change to developing Transition and Intentional Communities.    

The Long-Term Illusion of Monetary Wealth created by the consumerist worldview is one that keeps us trapped in this failed economic paradigm.  When you live in a western society and are dirt poor, having more money to make ends meet makes a big difference in your standard of living (SOL) and your quality of life (QOL-happiness and well-being).  It is however, not a linear increase for long, for when you become obsessed with making ends meet no matter how much more money you gain, you have been captured by the paradigm and your quality of life starts decreasing and because of the increased environmental problems from increased affluence, your standard of living starts to be detrimental to your life, and the stress of the ‘rat-race’ starts to take its toll.  There is a sweet spot where SOL and QOL are optimized that coincides with the local areas carrying capacity – you are approaching sustainability.

This sweet spot is where the integration of Socio-Cultural, Ecological, and Economic Sustainability occur.  Socio-Cultural Sustainability – thriving communities with equity and well-being for all doesn’t mean having more money. It means having more connection and community, while preserving individual sovereignty and learning to live as harmoniously as possible.  Ecological Sustainability – means living within the means of our local natural resources, and places natural values and ethics as equal to positive human values, e.g., Leopold’s Land Ethic (see earlier post, The Non-Solid Universe 2 – Human Societies Before Civilization – Deep Spirituality {March 2018}).  Economic sustainability – creates long-term sustainable values to provide resources that can be maintained indefinitely without detriment to people or the planet.  A place where money is a tool not an end-all.  We have been conditioned to think that progress was always forward for more and more stuff. When you are standing on the edge of a cliff looking out over the void, a step forward is not progress.

I’m often asked: “Will we ever become a Sustainable Society?”  I always answer: “Without a doubt.”  Humanity will become sustainable or what’s left of humanity after the collapse will struggle through a new dark age.  Not meaning to be negative here, just pragmatic.  Making the change is not about David versus Goliath.  It’s about helping Goliath to think differently and support a new way of doing things!  Many people mention that I don’t dwell on climate disruption.  That’s because I believe climate disruption is a symptom of the issues we face, not the whole singularized Problem.  Treating it as such bothers me, and I cringe at all international green deals being pushed by governments, the global financial systems (e.g., The centralized banks. The WEF, the IMF, and all those billionaires) trying to developed green taxes, carbon dioxide quotas, etc., as a way they can control fossil fuel pollution when they are in control of maintaining the economic system that perpetuates it all. 

The Big Picture of root problems means looking critically at those problems.  How can we solve the problems if we are not honest about the problems?  Are we doomed to collapse, or is there knowledge that can easily save us?  One author, Jared Diamond has looked at cultures that failed with fascinating conclusions on why they failed and then at cultures that succeeded under the same stresses.  It’s not the way they lived but the worldview by which they lived!  (e.g., see earlier posts, Health – Stress/Lifestyle 1 {January 2018} and Reframing and Visualizing a New Society 1 {March 2018}).  While sustainability is being embraced by global corporations, it is mostly greenwashing and seen mainly as an economic inconvenience used to keep guilty consumers happy!  And most of those consumers do not believe that we cannot possibly change, so they continue to live their lives regardless of having cognitive dissonance. 

Changing to a sustainable paradigm requires us to think differently. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete” Buckminster Fuller.  And don’t I keep saying that we can think differently!  Imagine a world where the people and the environment are considered primary.  Imagine a world where there are no regulations for any environmental problems for regulations are not needed.  Imagine a world where happiness and well-being are the primary indicators of success, not money. Imagine a world where people live more spiritually connected to each other and all Life!  All change begins within the imagination.  It’s up to us to push imagination into reality! 

I said in the second paragraph that to solve the problems we face we have to be honest about the problems?   I like what my colleague Dan Chiras had to say about roots problems.  Six root problems that cause all the other problems we face:  Three physical ones, Over-consumption, Over-population, and Fossil-Fuel Dependence.  And then three psychological ones: Inefficiency (we always go cheapest), Linearity (we can’t think outside the box) and Frontier-mentality (the inane belief that there’s always much more resource to be found somewhere else).    

Let’s briefly look at Energy as just one of the most important problems!  Plain and simple we need RELIABLE base-load energy!  As the UK found out this summer.  There were many days where the wind wasn’t blowing any of the wind-farm turbines.  I love that they invested so much in wind energy, but the reality is that we face a great many uncertainties in future Environmental Conditions that are out of our Control.  All the green technologies rely way too much on too many Rare Earth Minerals – especially cobalt and silicon.  And all Green Energy options require intensive energy processes to make them function as energy generators.  Don’t get me wrong, fossil fuel pollution is horrendous, the resources are limited, and the waste is not also polluting.  All the current green energy sources, and I include Nuclear in this category, require extensive mining (to create the technology to capture energy) and processing that is highly energy intensive to get to the green phase where electricity is actually produced.  After the green technologies have run their lifespan, there is then the problem of dealing with the waste, which itself can be quite toxic.  And then nuclear has its own set of problems, a good one being meltdowns. 

Electricity and hydrogen have lots of advantages as fuels but they are secondary to the technologies that produce them, i.e., the energy source is clean, but they require lots of dirty technology to produce the technology to make them.  Nuclear energy can produce a byproduct that can be weaponized for nuclear bombs and fossil fuels are politically weaponized to control global political decision making.  There is a technology that has been known since 1943 when the Manhattan project scientists reviewed all the elements that were relatively abundant in the earth and could be weaponized for the atomic bomb.  Ultimately, they chose Uranium, but one element they liked was Thorium.  It was abundant all over the planet so mining damage is minimized more, it cannot be weaponized, and can be used in a Thorium Molten Salt reactor that has walk away safe capability with no waste problems.  There have been Thorium research reactors since the 1960s, so could this be the better option for the near and middle future.  There’s still a lot of talk about Zero Point Energy capture.  Theoretically possible from the Quantum Vacuum and strongly rumored to have already been achieved!?  Is so that would be ideal, although I have to show concern about having free energy within a consumerist mindset.  Staggering to think of the damage we could do to the planet if energy was not a problem??     

To Be Continued …………………….

Becoming different – Part 12: Reviewing the Basics again – Part 1

I gave a short Zoom talk the other night.  I thought I would overview what I talked about as an overview for newer subscribers to this blog and as a way to refresh my views for longer time readers on the direction we need to take if humanity is to thrive in a better world.  As always, I begin with my standard vision statement: SUSTAINABILITY – Living within the limits of nature’s ecosystem services.  And to live together in communities that are equitable, regenerative, resilient and adaptive.  I’ll add that this is both a simultaneous Technological and Socio-Cultural change to developing Transition and Intentional Communities.    

The Long-Term Illusion of Monetary Wealth created by the consumerist worldview is one that keeps us trapped in this failed economic paradigm.  When you live in a western society and are dirt poor, having more money to make ends meet makes a big difference in your standard of living (SOL) and your quality of life (QOL-happiness and well-being).  It is however, not a linear increase for long, for when you become obsessed with making ends meet no matter how much more money you gain, you have been captured by the paradigm and your quality of life starts decreasing and because of the increased environmental problems from increased affluence, your standard of living starts to be detrimental to your life, and the stress of the ‘rat-race’ starts to take its toll.  There is a sweet spot where SOL and QOL are optimized that coincides with the local areas carrying capacity – you are approaching sustainability.

This sweet spot is where the integration of Socio-Cultural, Ecological, and Economic Sustainability occur.  Socio-Cultural Sustainability – thriving communities with equity and well-being for all doesn’t mean having more money. It means having more connection and community, while preserving individual sovereignty and learning to live as harmoniously as possible.  Ecological Sustainability – means living within the means of our local natural resources, and places natural values and ethics as equal to positive human values, e.g., Leopold’s Land Ethic (see earlier post, The Non-Solid Universe 2 – Human Societies Before Civilization – Deep Spirituality {March 2018}).  Economic sustainability – creates long-term sustainable values to provide resources that can be maintained indefinitely without detriment to people or the planet.  A place where money is a tool not an end-all.  We have been conditioned to think that progress was always forward for more and more stuff. When you are standing on the edge of a cliff looking out over the void, a step forward is not progress.

I’m often asked: “Will we ever become a Sustainable Society?”  I always answer: “Without a doubt.”  Humanity will become sustainable or what’s left of humanity after the collapse will struggle through a new dark age.  Not meaning to be negative here, just pragmatic.  Making the change is not about David versus Goliath.  It’s about helping Goliath to think differently and support a new way of doing things!  Many people mention that I don’t dwell on climate disruption.  That’s because I believe climate disruption is a symptom of the issues we face, not the whole singularized Problem.  Treating it as such bothers me, and I cringe at all international green deals being pushed by governments, the global financial systems (e.g., The centralized banks. The WEF, the IMF, and all those billionaires) trying to developed green taxes, carbon dioxide quotas, etc., as a way they can control fossil fuel pollution when they are in control of maintaining the economic system that perpetuates it all. 

The Big Picture of root problems means looking critically at those problems.  How can we solve the problems if we are not honest about the problems?  Are we doomed to collapse, or is there knowledge that can easily save us?  One author, Jared Diamond has looked at cultures that failed with fascinating conclusions on why they failed and then at cultures that succeeded under the same stresses.  It’s not the way they lived but the worldview by which they lived!  (e.g., see earlier posts, Health – Stress/Lifestyle 1 {January 2018} and Reframing and Visualizing a New Society 1 {March 2018}).  While sustainability is being embraced by global corporations, it is mostly greenwashing and seen mainly as an economic inconvenience used to keep guilty consumers happy!  And most of those consumers do not believe that we cannot possibly change, so they continue to live their lives regardless of having cognitive dissonance. 

Changing to a sustainable paradigm requires us to think differently. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete” Buckminster Fuller.  And don’t I keep saying that we can think differently!  Imagine a world where the people and the environment are considered primary.  Imagine a world where there are no regulations for any environmental problems for regulations are not needed.  Imagine a world where happiness and well-being are the primary indicators of success, not money. Imagine a world where people live more spiritually connected to each other and all Life!  All change begins within the imagination.  It’s up to us to push imagination into reality! 

I said in the second paragraph that to solve the problems we face we have to be honest about the problems?   I like what my colleague Dan Chiras had to say about roots problems.  Six root problems that cause all the other problems we face:  Three physical ones, Over-consumption, Over-population, and Fossil-Fuel Dependence.  And then three psychological ones: Inefficiency (we always go cheapest), Linearity (we can’t think outside the box) and Frontier-mentality (the inane belief that there’s always much more resource to be found somewhere else).    

Let’s briefly look at Energy as just one of the most important problems!  Plain and simple we need RELIABLE base-load energy!  As the UK found out this summer.  There were many days where the wind wasn’t blowing any of the wind-farm turbines.  I love that they invested so much in wind energy, but the reality is that we face a great many uncertainties in future Environmental Conditions that are out of our Control.  All the green technologies rely way too much on too many Rare Earth Minerals – especially cobalt and silicon.  And all Green Energy options require intensive energy processes to make them function as energy generators.  Don’t get me wrong, fossil fuel pollution is horrendous, the resources are limited, and the waste is not also polluting.  All the current green energy sources, and I include Nuclear in this category, require extensive mining (to create the technology to capture energy) and processing that is highly energy intensive to get to the green phase where electricity is actually produced.  After the green technologies have run their lifespan, there is then the problem of dealing with the waste, which itself can be quite toxic.  And then nuclear has its own set of problems, a good one being meltdowns. 

Electricity and hydrogen have lots of advantages as fuels but they are secondary to the technologies that produce them, i.e., the energy source is clean, but they require lots of dirty technology to produce the technology to make them.  Nuclear energy can produce a byproduct that can be weaponized for nuclear bombs and fossil fuels are politically weaponized to control global political decision making.  There is a technology that has been known since 1943 when the Manhattan project scientists reviewed all the elements that were relatively abundant in the earth and could be weaponized for the atomic bomb.  Ultimately, they chose Uranium, but one element they liked was Thorium.  It was abundant all over the planet so mining damage is minimized more, it cannot be weaponized, and can be used in a Thorium Molten Salt reactor that has walk away safe capability with no waste problems.  There have been Thorium research reactors since the 1960s, so could this be the better option for the near and middle future.  There’s still a lot of talk about Zero Point Energy capture.  Theoretically possible from the Quantum Vacuum and strongly rumored to have already been achieved!?  Is so that would be ideal, although I have to show concern about having free energy within a consumerist mindset.  Staggering to think of the damage we could do to the planet if energy was not a problem??     

To Be Continued …………………….