Three of 2023, Four for 2024

At the end of one year and the start of a new one, here are some two-faced inklings, as in looking backward and forward at the same time, like Janus. I share some quotes to connect to like-minded folks on each of the seven topics.

The three from 2023 are new and crux ideas, issues, actions that stand out as ones that came to me, or grew greater, in 2023 and seem most powerful and profound.

The four from 2024 are ones described elsewhere on this website and which have stayed true for focus and priority for understanding, acting, and facing the global ecological multi-crisis.

Three of 2023

Sustainers and Transcenders as chicken and egg

In our book (Fiscus and Fath 2019, Foundations for Sustainability) and elsewhere on this site I describe two hypothetical cultural groups, but the relationship between these two groups took on a new aspect late in 2023. We described Sustainers as folks who understand and accept the limits of the Earth environment and seek to change themselves and their cultures to live within those limits. We described Transcenders as folks who may understand limits of the Earth environment we are now facing, but as with most or all perceived limits, they see these as something to transcend, overcome, and circumvent via ingenuity, skill, and will power. (I will skip many, many issues that this hypothetical typology brings up, but am open to discussing all the details further if you contact me.)

During the Space Ecology Workshop Oct. 13 and 14 (see link here https://spaceecologyworkshop.com/) I gained a greater sense of real characteristics of folks like the hypothetical Transcenders. This expanded awareness and appreciation came via details explained in excellent presentations on highly developed work, technology, projects, and missions of the space ecology community. I was in awe of how thoroughly the space ecology folks have worked to design and deploy closed ecological life support systems for space travel, ships, stations, missions, and colonies. They clearly took the critical imperative of sustainability and environmental quality seriously, even more seriously than my usual group, more aligned with Sustainers. I speculated that this arises because we on Earth, as we think of Earth’s future, are aware of the enormous buffering capacity that our Life support systems have here. This paradoxically may lead to a kind of complacency. The space ecology folks, in contrast, have no such luxury to assume that massive, parallel, complex, robust, time-tested, resilient Life support systems will be available to sustain human existence beyond Earth.

Putting together a few other pieces, like in the quote below, I started to think that space ecology and the Transcenders can be helpful, transformative, and catalytic for thinking and efforts to address the global ecological multi-crisis and sustain Life on Earth.

“There is a cosmic irony (literally) in the fact that it required that we see the world piecemeal to develop the technology and economy to get to outer space where for the first time we could see life whole – from God’s perspective. The image in the rear view mirror was the most important dividend of the space program, allowing us to appreciate Earth as something more than a bunch of parts.”

Eugene Linden, “Gaia Going Forward”, in Gaia in Turmoil (2010)

Perhaps this taps into the expression, and Joni Mitchell song, that “we don’t know what we’ve got ‘til it’s gone” or until we’ve gone, or even until we’ve imagined going. This fits with the experiences of William Shatner and others and their “overview effect” – some who left Earth, even briefly, had life-changing experiences that radically amplified their sense of the unique beauty and value of Life on Earth.

The old chicken and egg paradox takes on a new context. This perennial puzzle persists as a saying in part because it is impossible to answer as typically stated – neither can come first, yet it seems that one must come first. If Earth (Sustainer culture going back to and including present day indigenous peoples) is the “chicken” and space travelers (Transcender culture including the space ecology community) are the “egg”…perhaps it is likewise true that we cannot easily say which comes first in terms of a lasting success in the perennial open-ended story of Life. Something to ponder for those here and those out yonder…

Environment and sustainability – a necessary reframing

In 2023 I experienced growing awareness and increased clarity of essential work to correct the flawed (and highly suspicious) framing and pigeon-holing of concerns for the environment and sustainability as partisan issues. Caring about and working for environmental quality and sustainability somehow got defined as a narrow set of issues specifically of concern only to environmentalists, “greens” and “tree huggers”, liberals, and similarly characterized “special interest” sub-groups of society. This is ridiculous, wrong, dangerous, and one more aspect of the multi-crisis we can flip creatively into an opportunity for high-leverage solutions.

Better framing of the environment is just the opposite – not as a basis to divide and polarize people, but as a unifying discussion space where all people can find literal common ground and shared values. The oxygen a human breathes is not colored red or blue! The water a human drinks does not differ for conservatives and progressives! The food we eat has similar essential macro- and micronutrients! All the necessities of Life are generated and provided by the shared ecological and biospheric Life support systems that created humans and sustain our every second of existence.

Sustainability is less like some plank in a political platform or item on a futuristic wish list and better considered like survival. Sustaining and regenerating our Life support systems are universal necessities that must be shared values and top priorities for all people. And the Life-Environment relation is equally as fundamental a scientific principle as the “hard science” and quantum physics scientific principles of the observer-observed relation. It shares generic priority with the first steps of scientific modeling or analysis which start with the system-context relation and “boundary conditions”.

How did we get to this crazy framing? In 2023 I started to speculate that it has been intentionally manufactured by the same forces that have brought us tobacco-cancer “uncertainties”, fossil fuel “necessity”, plastic “recycling”, and related myths and masses of misinformation. Keeping my focus on the paradigm of science, I continue to see the need for science to change itself first. I believe that radically new mental models in science will provide the necessary leverage and ripple effect changes to society and economics. This quote of Bernard Patten helps illustrate these ideas:

“Before Darwin (1859) environment was considered an organic whole. Everything in it made some contribution and had some meaning with respect to everything else. Darwin subscribed to this view, but his emphasis, and that of his followers, on the evolving organism struggling to survive, suppressed the exploration of holistic aspects of the origin of species that might have been developed. After Darwin, the organism came into great focus, first as a comparative anatomical entity, then later with physiological, cellular, molecular, behavioral and genetic detail. In contrast, the organism’s environment blurred through relative inattention into a fuzzy generality. The result was two distinct things (dualism), organism and environment, supplanting the original organism-environment whole (synergism).”

Patten (1982, pg. 179)

Bernie Patten has written and spoken about alternative scientific framing of environment. As a logical complement to the perennial question, “What is Life?” Patten asked, “What is Environment?” He has also posed the provocative puzzle (paraphrased): “Is there any other way to organize a biosphere besides a network of eating and being eaten?”

In the U.S. we have enshrined as “inalienable right” and self-evident truth that all people have equal access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The true nature of the environment and sustainability have been misframed in ways that allow the Life context of these rights to be stolen. We have the democratic responsibility to fight to reframe discourse and regain our rightful relationship with the sources of Life now and into the sustainable future. In the U.S. we value and pride ourselves on scientific leadership, and so science must participate proactively to understand and teach that the foundational aspects of Life, society, and culture are fully integrated – in all places, at all times, for all people – with environment and sustainability.

Solving the multi-crisis through art, creative play, and fun!

Several experiences in the past year inspired me to turn over a new leaf to increase my appreciation of the importance of creativity, play, fun, art, joy, appreciation, curiosity, gratitude, and positive attitude. These I now see as essential and with multiple benefits during what can be stressful, depressing, overwhelming, and at times seemingly hopeless work of despair during the global ecological multi-crisis.

I have grown up largely in the sciences, and it has felt paradoxical to me each time I sensed the intuition that fun, play, and joy are essential for effective actions and results in work seeking to understand and solve our shared planetary crisis. Perhaps the most inspiring examples came during the Urban Soils Institute 8th Annual Symposium watching presentations by filmmakers, sculptors, and artists engaging creatively with challenging issues of soil, water quality, food, colonizer culture, and more.

A quote that encapsulates this idea well for me is attributed to Emma Goldman:

“If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution.”

[Note: See below in references for more historical details of how this quote was created by others based on Goldman’s life and work.]

I want to be part of a movement, and revolutionary change for sustainability, and I want to dance and sing all the way to the great celebration of our collective success!

Four for 2024

My greatest hopeful intention for the new year is to contribute to and join with others in actions to truly turn the corner from continued worsening crisis toward transformative solutions. To my top three action plans I add one from new inspirational energy picked up from artists, creative people, and people with power to be positive, be happy, find fun, and share in the joy of living on Earth and in the universe. I list 2024 efforts here and highlight them with quotes. More details have been posted elsewhere on the site on numbers 1 to 3.

Sustainable science facilities – to design and construct science facilities that run on renewable energy, function within material cycling processes, and operate with a net positive impact on environmental quality. This strategic action is inspired by Albert Schweitzer (Byers, 1996) who said, paraphrased:
“For influencing others, example is not the main thing. It is the only thing.”

ASTEM Education 2.0 for teaching two science paradigms – Art, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (ASTEM as an alternative acronym to STEM or STEAM) to explain, compare, and contrast reductionist, objectivity-focused, analytical, mechanistic science and holistic, organic, living system science. The latter is the science paradigm we need to understand and solve the global ecological multi-crisis. The former is an important science paradigm with other roles to play in service to Life and humans.
Donella Meadows inspired this focus in multiple works including when she wrote:

“. . .people who have managed to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm have hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems.” (Meadows, 1999, p. 20).

Meetings of Indigenous and Space communities – it may seem they are world apart, but indigenous people and those in the space community share an understanding of the importance of Life. They focus on complementary actions – one focused on long-term sustaining of Life on Earth, the other on dispersing Life into space. By meeting and finding common ground, these diverse communities could facilitate widespread unity around the value of and importance of service to Life.

This article tells about Alvin Harvey, a Native American graduate student at MIT working in space science, bioastronautics, and sustaining astronauts’ health in space:
https://betterworld.mit.edu/aspiring-astronaut-brings-indigenous-peoples-perspective-to-space-science/

“While pursuing space research at MIT, Harvey says, he also has taken the opportunity to reflect on his cultural roots. He aspires to advance Indigenous perspectives in the making of space policy.

Advocating for an Indigenous People’s approach to the Earth to be extended to the Moon and stars, he asks: ‘How can we make space sustainable?’

‘For a lot of Native Americans, certain things like the Moon have a spirit that should be respected. If you’re outside looking at the trees or the mountains, you’ve got to treat them with a certain respect,’ Harvey says. ‘That’s something that Indigenous People, based on their own experiences, can contribute to the conversation.’

Becoming an astronaut, he says, wasn’t on his radar until he met John Herrington. A member of the Chickasaw Nation, Herrington was the first Native American in space. He, along with other astronauts, encouraged Harvey to consider trying out for the space program.”

Be creative, make art, find fun in science and sustainability – in addition to creativity, fun, and benefits of following one’s imagination, art may be quicker to deep insights than science itself. Leonard Shlain’s book, “Art and Physics”, explores and details the way artists often gets to new ideas first. The book’s website (https://www.artandphysics.com/) says:

“Leonard Shlain proposes that the visionary artist is the first member of a culture to see the world in a new way. Then, nearly simultaneously, a revolutionary physicist discovers a new way to think about the world. Escorting the reader through the classical, medieval, Renaissance and modern eras, Shlain shows how the artists’ images when superimposed on the physicists’ concepts create a compelling fit.

Throughout, Shlain juxtaposes the specific art works of famous artists alongside the world-changing ideas of great thinkers. Giotto and Galileo, da Vinci and Newton, Picasso and Einstein, Duchamp and Bohr, Matisse and Heisenberg, and Monet and Minkowski are just a few of the provocative pairings.”

I am curious if Andy Goldsworthy, an artist who works with natural materials, often outdoors in natural environments, has anticipated science breakthroughs soon to come. The film about him, his life, and work, “Rivers and Tides”, depicts Goldsworthy’s evocative explorations of two aspects of time – linear time associated with rivers and cyclic time of tides. I see Goldsworthy’s art to hint strongly at deep principles to help understand how the universe works and that may be crucial for understanding and solving the global ecological multi-crisis.

Best wishes for a creative, fun and successful 2024!

References cited

Byers, J. 1996. Brothers in Spirit: The Correspondence of Albert Schweitzer and William Larimer Mellon, Jr. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY.

Goldman, Emma. Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman. Which states:
“…feminist writer Alix Kates Shulman…was asked by a printer friend for a quotation by Goldman for use on a T-shirt. She sent him the selection from Living My Life [Goldman’s autobiography] about “the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things”, recounting that she had been admonished “that it did not behoove an agitator to dance”. The printer created a statement based on these sentiments that has become one of the most famous quotations attributed to Goldman even though she probably never said or wrote it as such: “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution.”

Linden, E. 2010. Gaia Going Forward. In Crist, E. and B. Rinker (Eds.) 2010. Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis. MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.

Meadows, D. 1999. Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. Sustainability Institute. Hartland, VT, USA. Available from: http://donellameadows.org

Patten, B.C. 1982. Environs: relativistic elementary particles for ecology. American Naturalist, ISSN 0003-0147, 119(2): 179-219.