Archives for April 2019

I have talked before about a new kind of communication in order to tackle our challenges. 

A new way of communication might be the greatest leverage there is. Through our communication and conversations, we enact our culture. It represents how and what we think about the world and about each other. In order to come to new, co-created, transdisciplinary, emerging ideas, we need conversations that connect the different disciplines and tribes, instead of separating them. We need to be able to speak out the unspeakable, we need to stop arguing and overcome the boundaries of what separates. 

We often argue about which of the two is more important. In regards to sustainability we wonder what is „the true nature“ of humans and if we can create a world that is more in line with this true nature. Although an interesting discussion, it becomes obsolete when we understand and become clear, that who and what we are is determined by our relationships, to others and the world, that one changes the other and that their is no hierarchie. Identity is formed in relationality. The logical conclusion to that thought is that there is no one true human nature, but that it is determined by the environment, becoming nurture. Nurture and nature are not separate. What‘s innately human is changing in relation to the environment, to the nurture.

We are all related. The human to the non-human. Your grandma to your dog. To act out of this relatedness is a key to make the next step in evolution. To make it work. To make us work. We are currently not measured for our fitness, but as Bruce Lipton calls it, we are measured for our “fittingness”. The great opportunity of humankind is that we are conscious co-creators of the next step in evolution. Congratulations. 

We measure our environmental impact. Carbon Footprint, ecological footprint, energy use. We characterize sustainability by abstract and quantifiable entities. SDG‘s. Our wellbeing is measured by metrics such as the gross domestic product. 

Life becomes increasingly post-political. It‘s about the numbers. 

What and how we measure the environment influences how we interact with it and how we perceive ourselves in the world. 

Measuring is not wrong. It‘s useful. It‘s a tool. A tool representing a part of reality. Unfortunately, it is often mistaken for reality itself. Measuring the parts reinforces the divide between us and the environment. It takes the world into pieces. 

What‘s missing when we focus on single measures is the awareness and ability to deal with the relation between those measures, to bring them into a more coherent whole. 

I write a lot about how it‘s our inner development that will lead to sustainable development. Being a bit delusional, I can easily come to the conclusion, that we all just need to evolve to a new level of consciousness and BAM, the world will be in harmony, peace and love forever. No matter how important a shift in perception and a new mode of consciousness may be, what can‘t be missing are changes of  institutional structures that make it easy for people to behave sustainable if they want to. There is no top-down vs. bottom-up. There is only a top-down AND bottom-up. 

Our way of thinking that the world works like a machine that can be taken into pieces – which is called Cartesian Thinking – worked quiet well for some time. No offense to Descartes who laid the groundwork for this approach. 

Today though, few people deny that sum is greater than it‘s parts, that our challenges are connected and that we don‘t find solutions by looking at the parts. Social fragmentation and ecological degradation. Political apathy and personal crises. They can‘t be treated in isolation.  

Great. We know and most people agree on that part. 

Yet, the question is: now what?

What‘s challenged is a new way of knowing, being and doing. 

We can check the knowing. We know. 

What’s missing is the being and doing. 

Most of us don‘t yet have the mental, emotional and spiritual capacity to act upon this understanding.

It‘s the famous knowledge-action gap, that might more adequately be called knowledge-being-action gap. 

To address sustainability means to become a practitioner of new ways of knowing, being and doing. As there is no blue-print for what that looks like, we need to become our own researchers, constantly contemplating and reflecting on our actions. We need to leave our autopilot and steward our being.  

At one point in history we learned that the world is a machine and we build a world around this understanding. Not in a day, but over time. 

At this point in history we learned that the world is not a machine and we can build a world around this understanding. Not in a day, but over time.