the myth of sustainability?
I agree that the entire system that we live in is unsustainable. But we have to qualify that statement. What I mean is, until now the system, no matter how many crises it has had, has not completely collapsed. So this system that we have has sustained itself until now. The million dollar question is, until when can the current system sustain itself? Or put another way, over what time frame/time scale does the current system become unsustainable. For that I don’t have an answer, but I have a gut feeling that we still have a few more generations before the system can no longer sustain itself.
The next question I ask myself is, will we change the system before it becomes unsustainable, or will we change it only after it becomes unsustainable? For that I have a very strong opinion that it will be the latter. This is a very important point for me. For me this means that the goal of developing these “alternative lifestyles”, or alternatives to the current system, the goal is not to force the current system to change (as I once wanted to do, and as I get the feeling a lot of people want to do), but instead to develop alternatives to the current system and allow those alternatives to mature sufficiently so that they will be ready to be implemented when the current system is no longer sustainable.
And these new alternative systems will of course be sustainable, just as our current system is sustainable, over a specific time frame… but it is unlikely that the new systems will be sustainable indefinitely.
We may someday come to an equilibrium with the earth and find a sustainable system for living indefinitely on our planet. But even then, someday our sun will burn out and the system will fail. We may even find a sustainable system for moving from solar system to solar system, or even simply creating our own “stars” so to speak by harnessing fusion reactions like those found in the center of the sun to power our civilization. But that to could someday become unsustainable if the universe collapses in on itself in its endless cycle of big bangs and big crunches, as some scientists have theorized.
But if we don’t find a “sustainable” system for living on this earth, the game will be over much much sooner, and I for one want the game to go on as long as possible.
Ultimately speaking, sustainability is a myth, just like perfection, but it is an ideal still worth striving for.
