[Pil-pc-oceania] [Fwd: [Fwd: skills for the age of sustainability.pdf - Adobe Reader]]

[Kerry Dawborn]

Just had to forward this paper by Elizabet Sahtouris - haven't even 
finished reading it yet but it's soooo on the mark! Is about 
sustainability, transformation, economics, learning from nature etc....

Enjoy!

Kerry

Skills for the Age of Sustainability:
An Unprecedented Time of Opportunity
by Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D.
Tachi Kiuchi’s Tokyo newsletter, The Bridge
May 2002
It is an honor for me to be asked to address young people at the 
beginning of your careers
while also at the beginning of a new millennium. Your generation has 
been named the
Millennials, and this is a very important time in your lives, when you 
will make crucial
decisions. It is also, without doubt, an extremely important time in 
human history -- a time,
in fact, when you will necessarily change history forever.
If we are to talk about sustainability, we must, first of all, really 
understand that
unsustainability means CANNOT AND WILL NOT SURVIVE AS IS. In other 
words, we have
no choice but to change the way we live as a human species. You will 
either be a
contributing part of our change for the better, or, if you choose to 
ignore or deny the fact of
our present unsustainability, you will, by default, contribute to the 
rapid decline of our
civilization and all humanity. Naturally, I hope you will all choose the 
first course.
When you look at your society now, this may seem a difficult and 
hopeless time, with
unemployment at a new high and unsustainability in the very air you 
breathe. But if you
learn to look at the present from a broader evolutionary perspective, 
you will see the
potential for a very different future. In fact, the present is really an 
unprecedented time of
opportunity. Think of it as a stage between caterpillar and butterfly -- 
a time of
metamorphosis when an old unsustainable system fights to preserve itself 
as a new system
struggles to be born.
Caterpillars chew their way through ecosystems leaving a path of 
destruction as they get
fatter and fatter. When they finally fall asleep and a chrysalis forms 
around them, tiny new
imaginal cells, as biologists call them, begin to take form within their 
bodies. The
caterpillar’s immune system fights these new cells as though they were 
foreign intruders, and
only when they crop up in greater numbers and link themselves together 
are they strong
enough to survive. Then the caterpillar’s immune system fails and its 
body dissolves into a
nutritive soup which the new cells recycle into their developing butterfly.
The caterpillar is a necessary stage but becomes unsustainable once its 
job is done. There is
no point in being angry with it and there is no need to worry about 
defeating it. The task is to
focus on building the butterfly, the success of which depends on 
powerful positive and
creative efforts in all aspects of society and alliances built among 
those engaged in them.
If you look at unemployment figures with dismay, worrying about your 
future, you are not
yet an imaginal cell. In my own life as a pioneering imaginal cell, I 
discovered early that the
"business as usual" old system was not going to hire me or support my 
work. Why should it?
My work is to replace it with a different way of doing things. All of my 
friends and
colleagues now are imaginal cells. We have had to be very creative in 
making our living,
generating our own resources and discovering new ones. I will not say it 
has been easy, but it
has carried the enormous rewards of new adventure and pioneering a 
better future. I can say
with assurance that it is easier now than it was half a century ago -- 
much easier , because
there are so many of us now.
If you use this butterfly metaphor in thinking of our transformation 
from unsustainability to
sustainability, you will immediately see four sets of critical skills 
required to realize this
great opportunity for co-creating a better world:
1. the skills of thinking and seeing systemically or holistically
2. the skills of creating a positive vision of the future
3. the skills of finding like-minded people for cooperative efforts
4. the skills of using available resources in new ways
You will have to be adventurous and creative to learn them, because you 
will not find them
in the traditional university curriculum. I believe choices about 
institutionalized higher
education should be made on the basis of specific needs for reaching 
specific goals. If you
want to be an imaginal cell as a doctor or lawyer, for example, you will 
need to get those
credentials. But this will not be an adequate education for 
sustainability, so know that your
efforts to learn must go far beyond university education.
Let’s look at these skills one by one.
1. Thinking and seeing systemically or holistically
This set of skills is absolutely essential to making strategic decisions 
about how to
contribute to sustainability with your life, or even how to generate 
positive visions of
humanity’s future.
In the January issue of The Bridge, I cited scientific, religious and 
cultural worldviews,
economics, governance, technology and youth as critical factors in human 
evolution to
sustainable global community. Do you see what I mean by a holistic view?
Sustainability is not just an "environmental" matter; it is a matter of 
changing the
whole way we understand ourselves, the way we think about and behave towards
ourselves and each other, the way we produce and distribute goods and 
services. It
demands a holistic approach.
Tachi Kiuchi and Bill Shireman, to write their important new book What 
We Learned
in the Rainforest: Business Lessons from Nature, [1, 2, 3, 4] had to 
visit and study in
detail the entire ecosystems of rainforests in different parts of the 
world, including
their four billions of years of evolution, in order to understand their 
economics well
enough to translate them for the human business world. Thus they not 
only needed the
biological, ecological and systems thinking skills required to 
understand rainforests,
but they also needed the skills to understand the business world -- how 
corporations
function, how they fit into larger economic patterns, why and how they 
need to change
-- and they needed the skills to relate and translate effectively 
between natural and
human-created business systems. Because they had all these skills, they 
could reach
their conclusion:
Take any problem . . . in business, and one thing is certain: nature 
faced it, and
probably overcame it, millions or billions of years ago. Because of 
this, there is no
better business model than the rainforest.
I would add to this, there is no better governmental model or 
educational model or
even spiritual/ethical model than the rainforest or any other mature, 
healthy ecosystem
in which every species is fully employed, all work cooperatively while 
recycling all of
their resources, and all products and services are distributed in such a 
way that every
species remains healthy. That is sustainability.
At present, for example, we not only pollute and destroy our vital 
ecosystems,
including the air we breathe and the water we drink, but we also let 
25,000 children die
of hunger and easily preventable disease every single day (that is, 
175,000 a week;
over 9 million every year) without even considering this important 
information! We do
not bother to think of the many millions of people of all ages who are 
destitute
refugees. Our media makes visible only selected incidents of 
attention-getting violence
while the deeper and more destructive currents of violence go unheeded. 
This should
make it clear not only that our cultures are ecologically unsustainable 
in the long run,
but that they are truly dysfunctional on an ongoing basis.
Imagine aliens on another planet observing humanity and asking 
themselves whether
we are an intelligent species. What conclusion would they come to seeing 
how we
behave towards each other and other species on which we depend for our 
own living?
Many studies have shown that the amount of money required to give all 
humans clean
water and educational opportunities is a tiny fraction of our military 
budgets. The UN
has reported for years that there is enough food grown in the world now 
to feed all
people an adequate diet. This means that genetic engineering of crops, 
for example, is
totally unnecessary and not a solution to world hunger any more than was 
the much
touted Green Revolution which promoted the sale of fertilization and 
pest/weed control
chemicals while creating deserts in the name of making gardens, as the 
World Bank
admitted over a decade ago.
This should begin to make it clear that if we want to create 
sustainability and thrival,
we must evolve our entire present human systems -- our patterns of 
beliefs, values and
behavior as a species. We must look at the sustainability of the 
economic and
governing systems that determine our impact on the planet and each 
other, as well as
the scientific and spiritual concepts which form their context and 
rationale.
Evolution, from my perspective as a holistic evolution biologist, only 
occurs as a
response to pressure or full-blown crisis. Your good fortune is to be 
born into a time of
crisis, a time calling for dramatic change from one phase of human 
evolution to the
next -- a time in which we must shift out of a ten-thousand-year history 
of fierce
competition in which some get rich as most get poor to a new phase in 
which humanity
becomes a cooperative family within the larger family of all species.
Fortunately, other species have made this shift from competition to 
cooperation (or
from antagonistic conflict to healthy non-antagonistic patterns of 
conflict and conflict
resolution) as I have shown in my book, EarthDance: Living Systems in 
Evolution. So
we have precedents in nature from which to learn, to find clues for our 
own healthy
evolution into a better future, to see that this is a time not merely to 
work on survival,
but on thrival for all people and other species.
Next month I will continue with the three other sets of skills. I hope 
you will be with
me then.
2. The skills of creating a positive vision of the future
Though I am an evolution biologist, my holistic context is the whole 
universe. An
important part of my work is devoted to ending the historical rift 
between scientific
and spiritual conceptualizations of ourselves as humans within our 
universe. Along
with many colleagues, I now see this as entirely possible, and ever more 
thrilling to
work on, because it is resulting in an elegantly unified field theory 
within a meaningful
conscious universe. Values are restored to science, evolution is seen to 
be an intelligent
process, and hope for our enlightened and joyful sustainable future 
grows strong.
Nothing has given me a sounder basis for believing in such a future or 
greater
inspiration in working on it than this cosmovision.
A cosmovision is bigger than a worldview, as worlds exist within the 
greater cosmos.
The Greek word kosmos means not only cosmos, but order (pattern in the 
scheme of
things) and also, people. When Greeks speak of cosmos, they 
automatically have an
integrated vision of people within the design of the universe. This was 
reflected in
early Greek drama where individual human actions affected the greater 
realms of their
society, the society of their gods and both humans and gods were subject 
to universal
laws or cosmic order.
Many other ancient traditions also saw the cosmos in such layers of 
interaction, with
the same patterns played out at different levels from human to divine, 
as exemplified
by the ancient dictum, As above, so below. In our own terms today, we 
could call it
seeing fractally, or understanding holarchy.
Holarchy was philosopher/novelist Arthur Koestler’s way of showing 
embeddedness in
nature. Examples of holarchy are cells, organs, organisms, species, 
ecosystems,
planets, etc. or individuals, families, communities, ecosystems, 
nations, world.
Long ago, when I protested standardized intelligence tests as ways of 
labeling children,
I searched for my own definition of intelligence. Greek drama and 
holarchy seemed to
me important clues. The more layers of holarchy a person becomes aware of,
understands their influence on and takes into account in their decisions 
and actions, the
more intelligent they are.
With this definition, creating an intelligent positive vision of the 
future requires that we
take into account all holarchic levels and the interactions among them. 
Consider, for
example, what a business in which you would like to be working in a 
sustainable future
would look like holarchically. Imagine it in its holarchy: the business 
(infrastructure,
management and employees) embedded within the community of its investors,
suppliers and markets, those embedded in turn within its larger human 
communities,
which exist within ecosystems, planet and cosmos.
In your vision, how is this business accountable to all these levels? -- 
in other words,
how does it balance its service among profits, people and planet (the 
triple bottom
line)? What does it provide of real use to humanity and how does it 
avoid doing harm?
How are its values consistent with the human values of its stakeholders? 
This example
will help you develop not only your skill in creating positive visions 
of a sustainable
future, but will help you see what steps need to be taken to achieving them.
Another powerful model I use along with holarchy to understand 
biological evolution
and envision our human evolutionary trajectory to a sustainable future 
is a cycle of
evolution in which juvenile species are highly competitive and 
aggressive in seizing
territory and resources while mature species have learned to cooperate 
with their
competitors and evolve mutual support and recycling ecosystems.
This is why studying mature ecosystems such as rainforests and prairies 
can help us
create working models of our own future. Note that mature, healthy 
living systems
show enormous diversity (there are no monocultures in nature), create 
full employment
of all members, distributed leadership governance, equitable 
distribution of goods and
services and 100% recycling.
3. The skills of finding like-minded people for cooperative efforts
One of my own skills in practicing a holistic approach to teaching 
living systems is to
speak to very different audiences, adapting each lecture to what I have 
learned about
the particular audience’s worldview, their understanding of "How Things 
Are." Thus I
move between corporate, academic, religious, scientific, ecological and 
governmental
venues in many parts of the world, as well as speaking to many groups of 
people from
diverse backgrounds and occupations brought together by their interests 
in creating a
better world. From this I have gained considerable understanding of why 
we need to
integrate all these different perspectives. It has also given me a 
diverse and mutually
supportive base of friends and colleagues around the world.
Paul Ray, a pollster whose surveys of American and European values led 
to his book
The Cultural Creatives -- a wonderful resource for understanding the 
people hard at
work creating a better future -- has a new book coming out soon called 
The New
Political Compass . In it he reveals a dramatic shift in the US 
political spectrum of
voters to a new category, neither left nor right, that he calls the New 
Progressives. At
36% to 45% of US adults "this emerging political stance is the largest 
segment of the
polity, and they’re basically unrepresented by politicians." Ray defines 
them as
follows: "A new progressive . . . is far out in front on the issues, 
values planetary rather
than nationalistic interests, ecological sustainability rather than 
sentimental
environmentalism, feminism rather than heroic models, personal growth 
more than
personal ambition, and condemns globalizing mega-corporations more than the
religious right."
This shows us very significant growth in understanding human needs 
holistically. If
politicians with platforms reflecting the New Progressives’ views on 
issues were only
available for election, they could win easily, as demonstrated by US 
Congressman
Dennis Kucinich in a landslide victory. I suspect the same pattern of 
values and
priorities is developing in an equally significant portion of Japanese 
voters, waiting to
be tapped by politicians who can represent them.
My point is that the numbers of like-minded people who want a 
sustainable future and
are willing to work on it are growing very rapidly. In the US and Europe 
they are found
in peace movements, ecology organizations, Zen, Aikido, QiGong and Yoga 
training
centers, Health Food stores and organic growers associations, New 
religions such as
Unity and Religious Science, new politics and alternative lifestyle 
groups, and many
less obvious places.
As an example, I have just returned from a week of giving lectures to 
yoga teachers in
training, gathered from all over the world at a Sivananda Ashram in the 
Bahamas. At
the same time that they were hearing from western scientists, they were 
learning and
practicing the ancient Vedic science of yoga, which means union.
One physician there lectured on the difference between yoga and the 
physical culture
of western science, pointing out that western science teaches us only 
the physical
aspect of the body while yoga teaches the more complete body system 
including its
energy and spirit aspects. This more complete system was also taught in 
other ancient
sciences, including the Japanese Kototama. It leads to an entirely 
different conception
and practice of the healing arts which emphasizes self-healing rather 
than the lucrative
interventions of western medicine which actively discourage the often 
more effective
as well as inexpensive self-healing. Every yoga teacher trained in these 
ashrams --
thousands per year -- opens a new yoga center and teaches their values 
and practices
for a deeply spiritual and healthy sustainable future to many more people.
There are as many ways to build our sustainable future as there are 
people to do it. My
advice is to work on some aspect of it that lets your unique interests 
and talents
combine, that you truly enjoy, letting your passion for it overcome all 
negativity and
letting your enthusiasm attract others to work with you. Foster 
conversations and build
alliances with people doing different but related work until your 
networks grow strong.
The Internet is a fabulous place for locating like-minded pioneers in 
your own area and
all over the world. Network, network, network!
4. The skills of using available resources in new ways
Our recent modern and post-modern technological ages, as well as our present
information technology age, have been rooted in the assumption that ever 
more
evolved technology will bring ever more benefits and therefore a better 
and happier
future for all. But once we see holistically, we also see that 
technology alone cannot
guarantee our well-being. It cannot even guarantee the sustainability of 
technological
production itself. Rather, we must see in nature why our present 
technology is
unsustainable and learn a better way from it.
Human technology has always been inspired by nature. We have imitated 
spiders
spinning and weaving, termites building multi-level mud dwellings, moles 
and badgers
burrowing, cetaceans diving, clams making superglue, birds flying, bats 
echo locating,
brains calculating, and so on in our technologies. A whole chapter of my 
book
EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution describes this.
Now a whole new wave of nanotechnology is inspired by observing the natural
nanoworld (see an animated illustration of a bacterial motor, for 
example, at
http://www.arn.org/docs/mm/vidgraphics.htm). Over the past decade we 
discovered that 95%
of bacteria live in complex cities with amazing infrastructures never 
before seen:
skyscrapers, canals, bridges, etc. Scientific American magazine in 
January 2001
described some 30,000 recycling centers per individual nucleated cell in 
our bodies.
Multiply that by 100 trillion cells and you will see how serious your 
own body is about
recycling the proteins of which you are made to keep you healthy!
The nanoworld has an evolutionary history billions of years longer than the
macroworld we see with our naked eyes. Only now do we have the 
instruments to see
how nature produces the most amazing materials we know. The big news, as 
revealed
by Janine Benyus in Biomimicry is that while we forcibly "heat, beat and 
treat"
hydrocarbons to manufacture our products with 96% waste in the process 
and much
pollution, nature makes her fabulous materials, such as spider silks and 
mother of
pearl, out of carbohydrates at ambient temperatures with no waste at all!
Nature’s manufacture is, then, far more sophisticated than our own, and 
it is high time
we accorded it due respect and learned its ways. In the March issue of 
this newsletter,
my column was entitled What’s Wrong with Environmental Education. It’s 
main point
was that we must learn to see ourselves as a vital part of nature, 
rather than as a species
apart from the rest that sees nature merely as a vast resource for its 
own use. Once we
see ourselves within Nature’s awesomely complex living systems, as a 
newcomer
species with a great deal less maturity and sophistication than 
countless other species
coming before us, we will make rapid progress in maturing to cooperative
sustainability as a human species. Then, having solved basics in living, 
we will also be
freer to explore and develop our uniquely reflective human minds.
This is why I recommend to you Millennials, who hold the future in your 
capable hands, that
you begin your careers by opening yourselves with due humility to the 
teachings of nature’s
living systems. Learn the skills of thinking and seeing systemically and 
holistically and of
using available resources in new ways; learn to create positive visions 
of the future and find
like-minded people for cooperative efforts.
Once these skills are in place, there will be no stopping you! Just 
start right now to think in
evolutionary terms by asking yourselves what you would like to have your
great-grandchildren tell proudly about your role in creating their 
sustainable present.
http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/Articles/theBridge0502.html

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Fwd: skills for the age of sustainability.pdf - Adobe Reader]
Date: 	Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:31:10 +1000
From: 	Kerry Dawborn <kj.dawborn at bigpond.com>
To: 	kj.dawborn at bigpond.com





-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	skills for the age of sustainability.pdf - Adobe Reader
Date: 	Wed, 9 Apr 2008 19:16:45 +1000
From: 	Lisa <lisajobson at optusnet.com.au>
To: 	Kerry Dawborn <kdawborn at bigpond.com>



This is another one but still worth a look
Lx
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