Social Sustainability: Communication, Growth

brazenbotany:

Sustainability is not just about eating plant based diets, reusing and repairing things, or walking instead of driving. It is everything. 

Sustainability is growth, it is change. It is a change on a fundamental level, moving our society towards different technologies based on renewable sources of energy like solar, tidal, wind and biofuels. (Yes, biofuels still emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when they are used, but they are carbon-neutral, having come from recently living organisms.)

Sustainability is communication and empathy. It is talking to other people and understanding them, what they want out of life, and figuring out together, how to live with each other. The system currently in place in much of the world based on social identities (a relic of our tribal days; the famous “them vs. us” mentality), fundamental social inequalities based on age, sex, gender, religion, and ethnicity. This system that pits you and us against our neighbors based on these concepts is unsustainable. There is no common trust

Sustainability is collaboration. Don’t keep your talents to yourself. DO NOT.

•  Are you an artist? Fucking awesome. Let your art guide our social change for the better. Show us through your work what we cannot see with our own eyes. Help us scientists conceptualize what we’re trying to think of. Help engineers understand what their finished products look like. Help writers and journalists bring their words to life
• Are you a botanist? An ecologist? Great! You are just as useful and important as everyone else. How do you think all of this oxygen got on our planet? It wasn’t magic. It was millions and millions of years of work given to us by stromatolites, algae, plants and protists. Follow their example. Work hard. Use your knowledge of the natural world to help engineers and architects design cities that grow their own food and eliminate their own pollution. 
• A writer you say? A journalist? By all means. Talk to us. All of us. Listen to us. Hear our stories. Tell us the stories of our triumphs no one would otherwise hear. Help us understand where we all are. You have the gift that allows us to all look at the same page; to make sure we know where we are and where we need to go.
• Historians, Anthropologists, Archaeologists: You, of all people know how important it is to talk and collaborate. How evil humanity can be. Just as equally as how kind. Without you we will forget atrocity. We will forget war. It will happen again, and again. But your talents and skills are not lost solely on horror and death. You will help us remember how we were inspired by all that is wrong to create something better. 
• Engineers and Architects? Work with all of us. You are the bones and muscle of our society. How would we get to the hospital you built in order to see the birth of our child? How will we get to Mars tomorrow? Or the moon yesterday? What will we live in? Work with scientists to make amazing creations that sustainably benefit us, and minimize harm done to nature. Work with artists to make our world beautiful and functional. We all can dream. With your help, it will be reality. 

• Of course there are more fields. Of course there are more talents than the ones I’ve mentioned here. You are ALL  worth more than you are told. Talk to each other, work together and make this world better.

In a fit of realistic optimism, Sandor Teszler once said:

“Ez a mi feladatunk; Tudjuk, hogy nehéz lesz.” meaning:

“This is our task: we know it will be hard.”

The only way to be saved from hell is to do it ourselves. Not tomorrow. Now.