Discuss: To Remake the World

Hello All. I waver between hope and despair regarding the environment and citizens of the U.S. making the changes that will be necessary to make a difference.

The “thousands of small battles” will not make a difference unless we as a society are willing to give up certain things such as the Hummer in the driveway or the McMansion 30 miles from work or the other myriad materialistic purchases which require tapping the ever decreasing supply of Earth’s resources. For God’s sake, we are 4 - 5% of the world’s population and we use 25% of the resources?

We can’t have our cake and eat it too. We have to make choices every day to make do with less, otherwise, I fear we are doomed.

hello, i wanted to respond initially to ralph’s comment that paul “also needs to address the issue of connecting these thousands of groups & individuals, for ultimately we must come to institutional forms that don’t depend on isolated acts of courage & foresight.”  i agree that this connecting of all these groups and grassroots initiatives globally is what is needed and that is precisely what http://www.wiserearth.org is doing.  please check it out.  i am a believer in connectivity because we are all like imaginal cells in evolutionary biology terms and there is a global transition from a caterpillar to a butterfly (from one way of being to another) and the connecting of these imaginal cells is what triggers the shift to a new species, a new organism.  wiserearth is one vehicle for that and there are already over 102,000 organizational profiles listed and this just launched on earth day weekend.  and basically it’s in beta.  which means, it’s evolving.  the key to this platform and this initiative is that it is our story.  this is a new story field we can engage in.  just like many others.  it’s moments like this when we are creating a new metanarrative for our culture.  the beauty i see in all this, and therefore the power (i see them as related) is that all these groups do not know they are part of this movement (or this movement of movements, or this new way of being, or a new social DNA).  not yet.  part of what will happen is that there will be a growing self-reflectivity that will allow these groups to see themselves as part of a larger whole and that will be huge!  right now there is this kind of siloed and isolated and atomistic thing going on.  a profound shift is underway.  paul estimates through his research that there’s likely to be 1 to 2 million groups like these out there (he talks about this in his 2006 bioneers talk).  for me, it is not critical that they all end up in wiser or somewhere else, because what’s being triggered is our ability to see who we are as a movement.  and this will create huge ripple effects out in the world.  seeing ourselves as part of the whole, and part of the larger social network of the planet’s immune system is profound. 

this gives me great hope.  i encourage you all to check it out and to engage and to think of it as yours and to engage with a loving and critical eye.  right now there needs to be alot of feedback so it can grow and develop into a site that will be more than just a relational database or inventory of amazing groups. 

i am inspired to think in terms of governance structures and new forms of governance.  during the wto tom hayden said, “it is not enough to slow the rate of destruction, we must increase the rate of creation.”  if we were living with the design principles of biomimicry and evolutionary biology (features of living systems), well then what might we design in terms of our self-governance prototypes. 

i feel hope because i see all the work that is being done and i feel the pulse of this new cultural maturity that we are in and i believe in the power of positive images of the future to pull us through the darkest of times.  history has shown this to be true.  it doesn’t mean i don’t also hold the suffering and pain that is going on everywhere.  i feel i can give my best at this time, in these times, by creating and by being willing to push the envelope of what that means as well.  and sometimes that means risking what we have experienced as comfortable and safe.  most people i know when i bring up new models of governance, get scared.  they think it is impossible.  or that it is so far into the future, that why think about it now.  :))

i wonder if there’s any forum talking about these things.  thanks for letting me go off on my related tangent.

blessings

Greetings and salutations from the Land Down Under - Australia!

I am grateful to have received this article. Having been an environmental activitist for the past 1o years, Iam both heartened and inspired to read that there are so many others around the planet who are looking for a sustainable future which is predicated on social justice and looking after the Earth Mother.

Hawkens article provides new depth to our mantra “think globally .... act locally”.

I suspect that once our sustainability consciousness reaches critical mass, it will culminate into the polarisation of humanity into 2 opposing camps (hopefully not as severe as depicted in Starhawks “The Fifth Sacred Thing”).

I welcome the opportunity to network/blogg with anyone looking to establish an enlightened global family.

I bought “The Next Economy” Lo! these many years ago in Sausalito at S & H…now I know how prescient was then, and still now is.

Thank you!

david buehler
MacAdemia

This movement is the perfect example of a complex adaptive system. (Organizational Survival in the New World, Bennet) CAS behavior is studied by militaries more often than not. So perhaps this CAS is a force for good, and self structuring.

Kate

Dear Friends and Colleagues All,

Unfortunately, Paul Hawken’s “good news” does not include data about the growth of the human population worldwide. As important as the remaking of the world is, it may turn out to be not such good news after all if absolute global human population numbers rise, as projected, by 40% between now and 2050.

What if the small planet God has blessed us to inhabit simply cannot sustain the fully anticipated 9.2 billion people in the human community by the middle of this century?

Consider the scale and growth rate of economic globalization and per human resource consumption during the next 43 years. How is a planet the size of Earth to sustain either the infinite growth of human enterprise in a finite world or the increasing and unrestrained per capita consumption of limited natural resources…… much less the unregulated addition of 2.5 billion more people than live on Earth today?

Within the first half of the twenty-first century, humankind could be presented with an unannounced and abhorrent predicament produced by the gigantic scale of certain global human activities, ones that are occurring synergistically in our time. Massive loss of wildlife and wilderness, reckless dissipation of scarce resources and the pernicious destabilization of the global ecosystems are probable results of these human overgrowth activities.

Huge and leviathan-like are the potential threats posed to humanity by certain distinctly human consumption, production and propagation activities now overspreading our planetary home. Even so, we can take the measure of whatsoever the looming global challenges and find solutions to our problems that are consonant with universally shared values.

To willfully ignore and remain electively mute in the face of so much good scientific evidence of approaching danger to life as we know it and to the integrity of Earth may not be a good idea. Indeed, our children may look back in anger at my not-so-great generation of elders for so much that we have done selfishly and for what we have needed to do but failed to do….all of which we continue representing to our young people as exercises of virtue.

Sincerely,

Steve

I commend Hawkins for his work over the years—
However, as a fellow Marin resident, he is not being honest (or possibly too indroctonated to notice) about a “ism” he can’t let go of—
“Capitalism” and his “Neo-Smithian” view toward production and organization—
We can do better, and will need too for survival.
A greater imagination is needed.

Dear Scott Ahlf,

Sorry to have to agree with you. In our time it sadly seems to me that both intellectual dishonesty and silence RULE over open discussion of real issues and science.

I like “happy talk” as much as the next person; but when it is employed in denial good science,  then my hopes sink for a good enough future for our children.

Thanks for injecting more realism and objectivity into this discussion.

Always,

Steve