TUESDAY, JAN 10, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Module 1-1
A short 8-week course in ecological design, module 1, lesson 1
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SUSTAINABILITY, FROM THE WIRES, LANGUAGE GAMES
Abstract: As I have sustainability concerns and concerns for posterity's and the biosphere's future, I will start a course in Ecological Design tomorrow, which is one of four 'dimensions' of the offering. Subnotes to file will likely follow.
COOS BAY (A-P) — The 1st lesson. [My comments are in brackets.]
Introduction
THE AIM OF THIS FIRST MODULE is to sketch out a very large canvas of the ‘big picture’ of design for sustainability. You will be introduced to a series of whole systems approaches to ecological design all sharing a common thread, the agreement that we need to re-design the human presence on Earth if we want to get serious about co-creating regenerative and sustainable cultures everywhere, cultures contagious with creativity, meaning, and significance so they can spread across the globe, adapting to the bio-cultural uniqueness of place and manifesting a sustainable human civilisation in all its wonderful diversity, solidarity and communion with the wider community of life. [The vision is one of re-designing the modern techno-industrial (MTI) form of civilization, and not designing a potentially viable form of civilization and replacing the non-viable form. Everyone who is invited or envisioned to be part of a re-design is part of the problem and not any possible solution. None have met the enemy yet. Envisioned is reform, not revolution.]
We will take a look at some of the major drivers of change that make such a transition to a sustainable human civilisation no longer a utopian dream, but an ecological imperative if we hope to see our species thrive into the 22nd or 23rd century. We will take a brief look at the dynamic Earth Systems that underpin the work of regenerative ecological design and our integral presence as a species within those dynamics. Briefly, we will review the most up-to-date information on the great challenges of our time - biodiversity loss, desertification and climate change — from a whole-systems approach that provides clarity for purposeful action. We will look at how concepts such as peak oil have been affected by the political decision to stay below 1.5 degrees average global warming in order to avoid catastrophic climate change and how the three UN Framework Conventions that emerged from the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 are finally coming together in the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. [Success is envisioned as we MTIed humans thriving into the 23rd century and beyond by changing the MTI system at the margins, and not the complete destruction of the MTI form of dysfunctional metastatic socioeconomic-political pathology.]
Before moving to specific applied and tested solutions in the areas of energy, food, water, and building, we will explore a whole systems framework for design that reminds us to link products to buildings to communities and industrial systems, to cities, bioregions and into national and global collaboration. Design for sustainability is about creating synergies between these different scales of design. Design for sustainability aims to optimise the health of the whole system for the long-term benefit of all participants in the systems, rather than maximising a particular aspect of the system to the short-term benefit of only a few. Building a globalised sustainable human presence on Earth is about decentralising and localising our intimate relationship with the uniqueness of place and the specific bio-cultural conditions of each bioregion and each ecosystem. This process will require global collaboration and knowledge exchange. [A metastatic cancer is not health. It will destroy the body that hosts it and destroy itself. Pogo's 'We have met the enemy and he is us' is dismissed by the MTIed. A belief in the possibility of re-design allow Anthropocene enthusiasts to keep on keeping on incurring posterity's overshoot debt. None of the sustainability enthusiast envision being the ones who have to pay the debt.]
Starting from the concept of “Building Cultures of Sustainability”, this section covers the “big picture”. As opposed to detailed design concepts, we look at some broad philosophies and principles of ecological design. This involves looking at the whole system within which we carry out our lives and affect the world through the specific design decisions we take and implement. [The details to come are a distraction, so it is the broad philosophies and principles that need to be right, or all that follows is not and working to impliment the details becomes part of the failure to understand the planet and live with it properly.]
"The scale of global interconnectivity and interdependence has resulted in a step change in the complexity, uncertainty and speed of change in today’s operating environment. Many of the concepts we used to rely on to make sense of our world no longer have traction. In many respects we are experiencing a ‘conceptual emergency’. In response organisations, communities and governments are adopting familiar strategies: intensifying standard processes, strengthening the centre, sticking to core competencies, prioritising short-term results, promising only what can be delivered.”
International Futures Forum, Powerful Times [Our belief in MTI society is unsustainable. Cognitive dissonance is the future and losing our belief in belief may be curative. Nature don't care what we believe. Why should we? Let go, stand down, know the humility of not knowing, the condition that allows one to listen to Nature who has all the answers.]
The International Futures Forum has developed a “World Systems Model” (WSM) in response to our ‘conceptual emergency’, which looks at the linkages between key aspects of our world, within a whole system. The 12 nodes of the WSM connect twelve critical elements of a viable and thriving human system (Hodgson, 2012).The model can be used as a question generator and whole systems thinking framework. It has been designed so to be applied to the scale of communities, cities, bioregions, countries or for the planet as a whole. Healthy, regenerative and mutually supportive relationships between all the elements at any one scale affect the health and sustainability of the system at all other scales. [A climate model is not the climate. A World Sstems Model is not the world system. The pointing finger is not the Moon. Look at the Moon.]
To give an example of how the model functions as a question generator that invites systemic thinking, imagine you are asked to design a water system using a whole systems approach. You can use the World Systems Model to explore the connections of your task with the other elements of a viable system and thereby find synergies which may also meet needs in other elements of the system. How does your water system affect and interact with the flow patterns of ecosystems and the biosphere? Are you creating a water solution with a positive impact on climate regulation and the health of the biosphere? Will your solution influence the need for inputs from afar and could it also be of use elsewhere (trade)? How does it help to increase the resilience and wellbeing of the local community? What are the energy demands of your solution and where does this energy come from? Is there an educational (worldview) component to the solution being more widely adopted or used appropriately? Can the water system be optimised in ways that support food production? How does our system relate to current policies, regulations and guidelines (governance)? ['To think is to listen.' Concept mongering is not thinking.]
Applying the WSM as a tool for whole systems design can help us to create integrated regenerative design solutions, which take all elements of a viable human system into account. Each one of the 64 connecting lines invites us to explore the relationship between different elements and all of them together take us closer to making wise decisions as we are faced with complex challenges. The conceptual emergency humanity is facing invites all of us to learn the art of whole systems thinking and design. [We are the storytelling animal. Storytellers have an emergency. Humanity and the biosphere have an emergency that is the Anthropocene. Posterity will renormalize or go extinct. Posterity has an existential crisis that we MTIed one are creating. An extinction rate 1000x baseline is the emergency we are the cause of.]
World model and image developed by International Futures Forum
[All is humancentric: Well-being for humans (and Nature as it serves human recreational/spiritual needs; food for humans, livestock, pets, zoo animals, and wildlife that humans like to watch; trade to benefit humans; energy to met huiman needs; climate such as humans like; biosphere integrety such as humans require; water for people;....]
Module 1, lesson 2
