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Consciousness
Written by Marcus Bussey   

Beyond Sustainability

It is not just the environment that is on decline but the human culture in general is facing economic downfall, social unrest and political corruption. The need of the hour is to restore the weakening relationship between the human civilisation and the living world. Besides, the effort should also be to utilise the resources of our planet in a way so that it sustains the present generation and also supports the coming generations.

The way we think about sustainability needs to change. At the moment, all focus comes from institutional contexts that have their own self interest and logic driving them. This focus has been enshrined for many years in statements about sustainability that establish bench marks for sustainable activity. The Brundtland Report (1987) is an early example of this . This United Nations document links sustainability with development, defining it as "development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Similarly, the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 declared that "the right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations."  There is a lot of declaring in sustainability talk.

The link in both these contexts is development, which of course highlights the power and prestige of modern growth-oriented economic theory. It also highlights the fact that this growth has not been kind to the majority world and to the environment. There has to be a better way is the subtext here. Furthermore, the model also highlights rights but somehow sidesteps responsibilities; again underscoring the alignment in this discourse between continued growth and the satisfaction of needs without reference to context and the relational responsibilities that underpin this.

From Development to Resurgence

When we start thinking about sustainability without development, a wider canvas becomes available. This highlights the question of relationship without the need to engage with development. Thus Paul Hawken notes that “Sustainability is about stabilising the currently disruptive relationship between earth’s two most complex systems – human culture and the living world. The interrelation between these two systems marks every person’s existence and is responsible for the rise and fall of every civilisation” (2007, p. 172). It is useful to see how Hawken handles this relationship. He continues with the following observation:

Although, the concept of sustainability is relatively new, every culture has confronted this relationship, for better or ill. For thousands of years, civilisations have not been able to reverse their tracks with respect to environmental damage but rather have declined and disappeared because they forfeited their own habitat. Today, for the first time in history, an entire civilisation – its people, companies, and governments – is trying to arrest the downspin and understand how to live on earth, an effort that represents a watershed in human existence (my italics, ibid, p. 172).

For Hawken the answer lies not with institutions but with people who take ownership of their contexts by recognising their responsibilities and work to change their lives and thus the lives of others. Thus:

The goal is to create a more resilient social and economic understorey in what is basically an oligarchic world, a powerful act that restores a measure of autonomy and power to citizens (ibid, p. 175). 

Beyond Geosentiment

Though Hawken’s gaze is global he is still constrained by a western vision of autonomy and efficacy – note his use of the singular in civilisation italicised above. The need of the moment is to not just champion the wonderful initiatives springing up around the globe in response to institutional failure to protect the less powerful – both peoples, species and environment – but to grasp one of the most precious human resources in this struggle: namely the civilisational resources at our disposal in a global and globalising world.

Deleuze and Guattari have highlighted the limitations inherent to a geo-historical and geo-philosophical world view (1994) and pointed to the potential enrichment of people’s lives as a result of casting off this limited reading of reality.

The domination of one civilisational discourse is disrupting the natural resilience of the entire system putting it out of balance. Thus, Sarkar has pointed out that when prama or balance is lost between macro, meso and micro contexts that societies and their contexts degenerate and eventually become dysfunctional. He notes:

Human society today has reached the stage of degeneration and, as a result, is lost in the wilderness of economic bankruptcy, social unrest, cultural degeneration and religious superstition (1992).

The creative and spiritual resources of the planet are available to us at this unique moment in history and should not be squandered because of an unconscious geo-sentiment that establishes the context and confines for how we approach the question of human survival (Sarkar, 1982).

We need to move beyond sustainability to more resilient and inspiring understandings of the potential inherent to the relationship that exists between culture and planetary context. This relationship can be rethought when seen from this expansive position as not singular but multiple in nature allowing for micro engagements such as those described by Hawken, meso actions that involve institutional and social responses such as those described under the sustainable development rubric and macro-level encounters between worldviews and mythos in which new hybrid stories emerge from the civilisational imaginary to guide us through the difficult times ahead.

Historically, all civilisations in the past have faced the demon of environmental decline on their own. If there is something in our favour it is less likely to be the science of climate change and environmental systems but the rich store of cultural wisdom and civilisational knowledges that are at our disposal. Cultural ferment is rich today and while it is easy to lament the loss of identity, this overlooks the abundance of responses to globalisation that flag the reverse: cultural resilience, connectivity and rebirth (Muecke, 2004).

Spiritual Resources

The spiritual resources available to us as the result of civilisational dialogue and synergy are not of the mystic kind but practical and engaged, and relate to our relationships with the planet and our neighbours. Neo-humanism brings a sense of connection that has been stripped from the modernist sense of being that views all things, including citizens as a resource to be consumed (Sarkar, 1982). Prout grounds this relational aspect in initiatives that link personal aspiration with collective enhancement – thus weaving the individual into the fabric of the whole (Sarkar, 1992). Both neo-humanism and Prout are Tantric expressions of engaged spirituality drawing on an integrated vision of planetary potential in the face of a unilateral civilisational discourse that ignores the possibilities inherent to civilisational encounter. The spiritual sparks arising from these encounters are a greatly under-utilised resource today.

It is these resources that underpin the mass movements, which Hawken describes – they are mostly unaligned and passionate contextual outbursts of grief and action that lead to a resurgence of planetary consciousness.

In this encounter lies hope for a future beyond climate change pessimism and the vision of the prophets of decline. By moving beyond the discourse of sustainability we begin to reclaim our right as planetary citizens to a future that promises personal fulfilment and planetary restoration.