Desired Visual Didaction

Recently I put together a library of audiovisual materials on sustainability. The aim was a 'passive research' resource to allow a group of people to dip into new perspectives on sustainability issues at their leisure. The collection is here as a guide for others looking to find a list of the Top 30 Sustainability DVDs. They are in no particular order:

1. The 11th Hour (link)
2. An Inconvenient Truth (link)
3. A Convenient Truth (link)
4. The Age of Stupid (link)
5. Manufactured Landscapes (link)
6. FLOW: For the Love of Water (link)
7. The Next Industrial Revolution (link)
8. Who Killed the Electric Car (link)
9. The Planet (link)
10. Crude: The Incredible Story of Oil (link)
11. Up the Yangtze (link)
12. Energy Crossroads (link)
13. The Great Squeeze (link)
14. The Power of Community (link)
15. The End of Suburbia (link)
16. Escape from Suburbia (link)
17. The Corporation (link)
18. Drowned Out (link)
19. A Crude Awakening: Peak Oil (link)
20. The American Ruling Class (link)
21. The War on Democracy (link)
22. Life and Debt (link)
23. The Unforeseen (link)
24. Big Ideas for a Small Planet (link)
25. Addicted to Plastic (link)
26. The Future of Food (link)
27. A World at Waste (link)
28. Garbage Warrior (link)
29. Spirit Stones (link)
30. Blue Vinyl (link)
31. [Your Suggestion .... ]

Trusting that you will support these documentary gems and artistic entracements. There is a month of viewing there ~ and lifetimes of peoples' works.

Birds and Boids

In recent work with a strategic conversation group formed for generative dialogues for sustainability, I noticed the pronounced difference between generative and dissipative conversations. What was interesting was how it only took one defeating dynamic, one small mistake, to collapse the systems dynamic of healthy open inquiry. At that point the conversations reverted to any usual opinion sharing session about an intractable problem. This resulted in a similar pattern of despondent helplessness in the face of complexity, notwithstanding very strongly felt desires towards achieving the contrary.

For the penultimate dialogue I wanted to help (if I could) with the awareness of these dynamics. To do this I turned to the principles of biomimicry. If you are not familiar with Janine Benyus work in this field, it is really quite beautiful in many intricate ways. For this situation I looked at the dynamics of bird flocks. How small groups come together for collective benefit, how the leaders guide the intention of the flock as strange attractors of collective direction and how the entire process develops its own complex form of greater mimic sentience avoiding predators ~ is quite remarkable.

The system rules that govern such complex behaviours are very simple. The three necessary elements identified using computer simulations of boids (i.e. virtual birds) (Reynolds, 1987) are (with a gross simplification added): 1. Separation (Don't bump into your neighbours), Alignment (Turn when your neighbours turn), Cohesion (Head towards the forward median direction). The three simple rules applied locally allow the each member of the flock to function and for the flock as a whole to generate emergent phenomena. If one bird/boid crashes, divides the flock or is without direction, the flock dissipates. When the system rules are in place, functional beauty results.

Applying the same principle of emergent trichotomies to conversational generativity, the system rules we used for our strategic conversations were as follows:

•Rule # 1: Offer additional information to enrich
(Not imposing alternative views in conflict)

•Rule #2: Acknowledge value and explain why
(Stay aligned and different, but not divisive)

•Rule # 3: Follow the theme that is occurring
(Rather than disrupt or break the conversation chain)

Essentially the system rules are the same for birds, boids and words. Try not to clash ideas, follow others' leads and go where the conversation is going. The question is: If something is so simple, why is it so apparently hard? In watching our consciously simulated dynamic we also saw the barriers to these rules. The barriers were:

•Barrier # 1: Own view privileged as most material
(Knowledge Humility) - Openness

•Barrier #2: Own values defended in primacy
(Respect Others Values) - Tolerance

•Barrier # 3: Own point of origin regressed towards
(Self-Education) - Release

A generative conversation requires a submission of the self into the intention of the whole. When we assert our own identity we cannot also operate for the benefit of the flock. The two intentions are in tension and become contradictory. What we do not see, is what we together will be missing. Things apparently so simple as knowledge humility, respect for others and a release into unknowing are elusive to the asserting individual mind. When held gently together they combine into something so rare and yet considered essential in the collectives of nature.

Manufactured Landscapes

I am not sure what new I can say about Edward Burtynsky's photography. The theme of the scale of the human influence on the landscape that is the built environment is thought provoking for each person in a different way. In spending time with this work in the Arthouse Films documentary by Jennifer Baichwal it draws a reflection. Perhaps the photographer's own commentary on the stills taken from over two decades of work revealed for me the dual aspects of exploration and intention.

The shadow of the human psyche is the parts we deny. In seeking out the natural grandeur and beauty of the non-man made landscape we find solace in that part of nature not yet denied to us. What then is the manufactured landscape if not other than a reflection of nature - being the spore of ourselves reflecting our human nature? Burtynsky has sought this hidden part out, lest we deny it, and deny that part of ourselves.



In the portrayal of the ship breaking yards of Bangladesh recurrent images of the efficient creation and destruction of the detritus of the rainforest kept occurring for me. Within thoughts of the social justice aspects, it is the removal of value from the decaying by the leaf cutter ants that sustains the unsustainable in a cycle of distribution and renewal. In the unnatural landscapes of Burtynsky's record are natural phenomena. Be they the formation of chemical rivers, of mountains that appear through the gradual addition of individual particles, in computer chips or tyres, or the faceted erosion of canyon walls made of slate, marble or iron ore - the human intervention creates natural landscapes no different to those we are inspired by in the environment without man. The difference lies in their toxicity to the life of man and to all other life.

The question asked by his art is not a simple 'right or wrong, but requires a whole new way of thinking', for in this examination of the non-natural is revealed, not the unnatural, but the 'human' natural in a whole new ecology of productive inequity at scales we are only just beginning to understand.

Life and Living

I am doing some work building a capability ecology for an organisation. A strategic conversations group has been formed to explore strategies for making a positive difference in the sustainability impacts of the organisation. The brief includes looking at depletion, pollution, exploitation, extraction, displacement, consumption, globalisation, discrimination, confusion and dislocation at a global scale. Fun topics. The other part of the brief is to turn this around to examine the positive reversal of these dynamics beginning with the organisation's own spheres of responsibility.

In looking at the Messages for 2100 in the time capsule of the remarkable minds interviewed in the 11th Hour, the conversations group made an observation on the different stages of engagement with these issues. They noticed how we (as a humanity) are transitioning into different change phases, in different places, at different times. The patterns were clearly discernible for them.

This recalled for me how Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' integrative work on Death and Dying (1969) has been applied to organisational systems undergoing a transformational change in identity and raised the question of what might this same dynamic look like in the social system that is humanity.

Recalling the stages once more, they are Shock, Denial, Anger, Depression, Bargaining, Acceptance, Decathexis, with Hope underlying and supporting the entire transition. If we examine the global response to not only climate change, but the emergence of a global ethic of the health of the commons - we can see waves of concurrent unfoldment in the discernible stages of the grief cycle.

What is the entity that is dying here? Is it human life as we know it and the biota in which it is in symbiosis? Or is it the identity of mankind as the bounded rationality of separation refinds itself reborn in new identification with the greater commons?

Perhaps the reframe is from the death and dying - to life and living. The object of our identification might be what defines either loss or birth.

I myself am an optimist in that transition, recognising the stages of grief and regeneration needed which are there to be seen (should we care to look). I also understand that someone will have to be there to 'hold the hand of the dying and kiss the tears of the crying' as this path unfolds in hope.

Aesthetics of Profit

I was just reading Paul Hawken's remarkable synthesis of information and vision, 'The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability' (1993), and found myself in one of those moments of surprise while immersed in the familiar. In a call for a new language for business expanding its specialized dialect he says:

"The language of commerce sounds specific, but in fact it is not explicit enough. If Hawaiians had 138 different ways to describe falling rain, we can assume that rain had a profound importance in their lives. Business, on the other hand, only has two words for profit - gross and net. ... In other words, business does not discern whether the profit is one of quality, or mere quantity." (p. 10-11)

This made me think of the aesthetics of profit. What would be the qualities we would seek to vest in something that is apparently real, albeit merely a numeric fiction? If something as temporary as a cloud could have qualities, such as ... wispy, fluffy, buoyant, gloomy and stormy, why not profits? I can see no reason, as like Hawkens, I am not against profits or business, only the unconscious desire to externalise the costs of life to a location of isolation that is a solitary and momentary P/L statement.

The question is what qualities would we seek to attribute to the profits we desire? Rather than 'ethical', 'green', 'sustainable' or 'responsible' profits, I am sure we could discover more meaningful terms to recover the emotion of business.

I, like others, would invest in a business whose profits were 'nourishing', 'generative', 'enduring', 'resourceful', 'contributive' or even 'life enriching' to the human commons. The Accounting Standards themselves would require an inspired taskforce of newly enthused auditors to put greater meaning, feeling and precision into their assessment of the human worth of the productive gain. Rather than externalities, the profit forecasts of resonant aesthetics would appeal to the internalities, of our profoundest human emotions.

I wonder which 'beautiful' company might be the first to take this challenge? It is a conversation, I for one, would love to have.

Sustainability Groundrush

Have you ever experienced the groundrush that comes from the freefall approach to the ground while skydiving? I once jumped out of a plane at 12,000 feet and got a sense of this experience as the overwealm of information floods over your sensory capacity to take action. Even once the chute is pulled, there is a delay as the rush continues, before the relief of safety returns.

Recently while preparing a course in macro-sustainability strategies I was putting together all the data for the changes in the holarchy of humanity. Hours of looking at the statistics on oil depletion, water scarcity, deforestation, species transmigration, human population explosion, political instability, child literacy, wealth inequality, social dislocation and individual depression filled my awareness, recalling all I have read in these fields. When I finished there was a sense of 'sustainability groundrush' - that feeling of freefall overwhelm when the ground of reality rushes in to meet you.

When we look into the biosphychosocial system dynamics of humanity in emergence this is a common occurrence. The overwhelm factor becomes too great for us to hold the content. The trick is to learn how to hover - and take it all in. To hold this with equanimity. While sitting with this experience for a while there came a desire to map the dynamics of this in the sustainability spheres I use to explain this field. This is what resulted (in an apithology matrix):

Sphere. Pathology. Apithology
Lithosphere. Exhaustability. Utility
Atmosphere. Variability. Stability
Hydrosphere. Uncertainty. Certainty
Biosphere. Vulnerability. Integrity
Sociosphere. Insufficiency. Security
Technosphere. Inefficiency. Efficiency
Econosphere. Reactivity. Reality

Politiosphere. Autocracy. Authenticity
Ethosphere. Autonomy. Responsibility
Theosphere. Incapacity. Self-Efficacy

The cycle of resource depletion, causing greenhouse emissions and climate variation, creating water scarcity, compounding the loss of ecological viability, generating food insecurity, requiring expansions in consumptive technology, triggering hyper-inflationary markets, causing political instability, driving ethical isolationism and a feeling of spiritual paucity - reveals itself as the reinforcing dynamics of decline.

Yet what about its opposite configuration of equal potentiality? I envisage a world (daily) of resource utility, climatic stability, water predictability, ecological integrity, society cohesivity, technological creativity, economic sensitivity, political authenticity, inter-generational ethicality and spiritual generativity.

In avoiding the immensity of the compounding dynamics we can sometimes lose our perspective, seeing a part of the half and failing to see the health of the whole. The groundrush is an illusion, for we are not falling, only floating on the uncertain wings of our own desires.

Perhaps now it is time to pull the rip cord, to float on the thermals of ascent once more, undertaking the work of transition with generative and grounded hope, implementing this between the sun, sea and every shore.

For we have been waiting for a while ...