Mapping the Big Picture (the Core Briefing)

Many people are concerned about the future, and indeed are actively working within
their own sphere to do the things we need to do to create a positive future.
Others are concerned, but do not have a clear idea of the kinds of changes we need
to make in order to have a viable society in, say, 30 years. We are at a remarkable
point of choice at this time in human history. The decisions and actions we take
today will have huge consequences for young people alive now – some of whom may
be reading this manual – and certainly for all grandchildren yet to be born. It is
well established that our rate of ecological deterioration is worsening, not
improving, despite local improvements in some areas. We are in a race between
exponentially increasing environmental deterioration and people’s increasing desire
to make the changes necessary to avoid collapse. Which will determine our future?
Will we be the generation that fulfils humanity’s promise, or the generation that
knowingly destroys the Earth?

While it is evident that changes are necessary, few people have an integrated view
of what those changes are, or the extent of the changes that are actually
necessary. They can see pieces of the puzzle, but not how everything fits together.
The Core Briefing develops a big picture image of where we are and where
constructive points of change are. Our procedure will be to step-by-step develop a
diagram that has the major elements that shape our current industrial civilisation.
We start with basic ecology.

The process of obtaining raw materials through mining, industrial agriculture and
cutting down forests produces environmental degradation.
The raw materials are processed in factories, which produce their own
environmental damage through chemical toxins, acid rain and the greenhouse gasses
that accelerate climate change.

All of these are involved in the production of the ordinary things that we use.
The more things we produce and consume, the more environmental damage is
produced - vastly more than most of us imagine. In the following diagram, as the
red arrow on the right representing increasing consumption goes up, the red arrow
on the left representing environmental deterioration goes up even more.
It is clear that if we are to become environmentally sustainable, we must reduce
the overall environmental impact of the process of making and consuming things.
‘By how much?’, we may ask.

If we cut trees from a forest plot, and we cut them faster than they regrow,
gradually the forest will get smaller and smaller until it is gone. This is an example
of cumulative damage. It adds up over time. If we intend to be ecologically
sustainable, our goal must be to reduce our cumulative rate of environmental
degradation in each key area (water, biological diversity, fish stocks...) to zero.
Zero! This rigorous demand comes from the nature of reality itself. If the overall
trend is of increasing deterioration, we end up producing a desert.

The technical hope is to reduce environmental degradation through improved design.
A great deal can be done in this direction. Lovins and Hawken’s Natural Capitalism
shows that in every area from agriculture to architecture to manufacturing we can
reduce energy use and material throughput 90 percent or more. This is exciting
stuff, and more of us should know about it. It is a crucial key to our future
sustainability.

But there is reason to doubt that improved design can be sufficient by itself.
sometimes improved design means that things are produced more cheaply, making it
easier for people to buy more of them. And as affluence increases, many people
tend to buy more things. This is incompatible with becoming environmentally
sustainable. Therefore I suggest that we must set as our goal reducing actual
consumption. This requires a whole system change, not just changes in specific
behaviours such as recycling.

To understand the nature of this change let’s consider factors that tend to
increase consumption.

First, as you know, advertising plays a major role in this.
But advertising per se does not compel us to buy things. There are psychological
drivers that affect our desire to purchase things. Many people lack a feeling of
inner wellbeing, and instead have a sense of an empty hole inside. If this feeling of
emptiness were to be directly experienced it would be extremely painful. People
avoid it or compensate for it by compulsively distracting themselves, taking drugs,
or by stuffing themselves with things. Some stuff themselves with chocolates,
others indulge in ‘shopping therapy’, and yet others buy Lear jets. So we will add
stuff oneself with things to our map.

Desire for status also drives excess consumption. There is healthy status and
dysfunctional status. Healthy status is earned, it arises because of one’s
contribution to the community based on competence and caring. Pathological status
is based on a profound need to feel good about oneself by appearing to be superior,
or at least not inferior. This finds expression as conspicuous consumption and
keeping up with the Jones. So we will also add status to our map.

As you know, our economic system is oriented around increasing shareholder value.
The vast majority of shares are not owned by ordinary people, but by a relatively
small number of extremely wealthy people. So we may say that our economic
system is set up to help the wealthy get wealthier. They are assisted in this
through government policies that they themselves have influenced – policies that
emphasize increasing the Gross National Product. And while most businesses
advertise, the most extravagant advertising is done by transnational corporations.
So we may add another layer to our diagram.

The behaviour of people directing the large transnationals is at times extremely
aggressive, to the extent of even being closely aligned with wars such as the
invasion of Iraq. The WTO and the pattern of increasing transnational corporate
power can be seen as the current expression of the 5000 year old pattern of
empires.

While it is a deep question as to why individuals and groups willingly go to war, it is
plausible to link the eagerness to hurt others to one’s own experience of being hurt
in childhood. It is well known that people who have been physically abused in
childhood tend to repeat or ‘act out’ that abuse when they become adults. This
acting out finds expression at many levels, including abusing one's own children or
spouse, workplace bullying, and adopting policies that hurt groups of people or
entire countries. From this point of view, some corporate behaviour is malicious.
So when we included these are psychological factors our diagram looks like this:
We have talked about inner emptiness and lack of felt well-being, as well as about
responses to childhood abuse finding expression as large-scale corporate
aggression. These psychological aspects, although they are rarely discussed, are
actually key drivers of environmental deterioration in developed countries. It boils
down to this: environmental deterioration is driven by unhappy people (as well as by
population increase).

It follows that a key point of change for creating a positive future is that people
should become happier in themselves. Ideally we should develop such an internal
feeling of wellbeing that excess consumption simply becomes uninteresting.
Improved parenting, personal development work, and organising business, education
and government to operate on partnership values can all contribute to genuine
happiness and wellbeing. Other points of change include improved industrial design
and reducing the amount of advertising.

Partnership or Dominator?
In our next section we will explore two quite different modes of relating to people:
partnership/respect relating and domination/control relating. These are core
values that shape the tone of entire societies as well as individual relationships.
Therefore they should go on our map as well
People who use a partnership mode of relating take pains to empathically
understand other people, and they work collaboratively for the good of the whole.
People who use a dominator mode of relating work for their own aggrandisement (or
that of their group), and characteristically use force to achieve their ends.
Arguably it is people with dominator attitudes who shape the policies that are
currently inducing increasing environmental and social deterioration. If so, the fate
of the world depends upon partnership values coming to set the tone.
The world has put an amazing amount of creative resources into building an
astonishing industrial civilization. Now it is time to shift our emphasis to creating
a world where magnificent well-being is our primary goal. And the good news is: we
know a vast amount about how to actually do this. We have the technical design
strategies that can vastly reduce adverse ecological impact. We know how to
support parents in becoming more nurturing. We have effective means of helping
adults resolve their childhood hurt and become more loving (and inwardly
contented) people. We have methods of personal growth that can help people shift
from dominator relating to partnership relating - a shift that can make both
governments and businesses work better, as well as improving personal wellbeing.
We know how to run successful institutions on partnership values. All in all these
approaches can take as far towards an ideal of becoming so inwardly contented (and
ecologically responsible) that excess consumption simply becomes uninteresting.
However, at the moment we have a society that is severely ecologically out of
balance and getting worse. We will suffer the effects of climate change and other
environmental degradation; they are already happening.

To sum up, we have two options. One is to continue on a path that is becoming
increasingly dismal. The other is to get excited about building a world of
magnificent wellbeing – and invest in the intellectual, emotional and practical things
necessary to actually build that world. The option of muddling along making small
piecemeal environmental improvements is not an option that will lead to future wellbeing
for young people alive today. The near future (within the lifetime of our
children and grandchildren) will either be unspeakably horrible or, through a
fundamental shift in social direction, surprisingly wonderful. Utopia or oblivion.

Andrew Gaines
Alliance for Sustainable Wellbeing
Accelerating the transition to a viable society
www.alliance-for-sustainable-wellbeing.com