Surveying the Landscape

In embarking on the quest to meaningfully move forward in the right ways, let’s return to the central question of the Preface, detailing it out further:

Where do we need to be?

Regarding where we need to be, the practices of indigenous

peoples embody one answer, as indigenous people live in concert with the land and use local resources. Their lives are powered by biodegradable resources (plant fibers and animal hides) and bio-based energy (like firewood). The indigenous directly feel the impacts of land mismanagement in many cases, allowing them to take appropriate action. Over the millennia in which all were indigenous, we had a world that was sustainable, verdant, and healthy – at least, as far as we can tell. The rituals and guidance that arose out different indigenous groups help to keep their societies on track, and interrelationship with the land is a key aspect of those rituals and guidance. Indigenous wisdom has informed our best understanding of how to live on the planet and relate to our surroundings.

The challenge is that very many of us have far outstripped our indigenous roots, and we have developed industrial-scale supply chains that reach widely beyond our local carrying capacity. We don’t see all or even most of the impacts of these systems that gather, process, and redistribute minerals, fibers and crops from around the globe. Yet, we have become accustomed to lives that depend on creating those impacts, at least those of us in more resource-intensive nations. The vast bulk of those of us who benefit from these systems would like to maintain our advances in technology and science, and make those advances available to more people should they wish to engage in them – while mitigating, if not eliminating, the negative repercussions. Yet, making advances available to more people only increases the prospect of scaling negative impacts.

The Vision

With this as the backdrop, in steps R. Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller. Bucky was a widely acclaimed designer, educator and thought leader of the twentieth-century. In the early 1960s, as the goal for the “World Game”, he concisely framed the goal(s) to which we should strive as:

“To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”

The World Game was an exercise Bucky developed for his students to craft solutions to world problems. You might think of it as SimWorld meets social conscience. Rather than merely a game, though, it was intended as a tool to systemically approach world problems through a design lens1. Under the assumption that we respect all life on the planet and its ability to thrive into the indefinite future, Bucky’s quote encapsulates our real world challenge brilliantly. What it lacks, understandably, is how to get there, and those details, it seems, pend the playing of the game.

Further defining these goals is The Natural Step (TNS) movement of the late 1980s and 1990s. Born in Northern Europe, TNS served as an international network of stakeholders, charting out how human society can best align with the interests and needs of the planet, constructively working with the processes of geology, hydrology, ecology, sociology, and atmospheric science. After several iterations, TNS came up with four clear principles that are essentially this2:

We must strive to use 100% renewable resources (energy and materials)

We must strive to use 100% non-toxic materials (life-friendly)

We must maintain the productivity of the earth’s living systems (habitat regeneration)

Resources must be used fairly and efficiently to meet human needs (social equity)

Between Bucky’s maxim and TNS’s four principles, we have the fram