Mapping Optimism
Posted on | February 2, 2010 | 2 Comments
“I have cast my lot with those, who, age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”
—Adrienne Rich
By Yushi Wang
By Scott Boylston
What on Earth are we doing? Is it OK to ask that? Does the common wisdom of the day monopolize insight into what can and cannot be done in this world, not only despite its gross shortcomings, but because of the burden those shortcomings place upon those who challenge it? Is the inertia of 6.6 billion indefatigable?
These questions carry a weight of their own, and that weight—more than the weight of the status quo—is often enough to stop individuals. What on Earth are we doing? Why do we fight so hard against the current? Yes, the current; the present moment. Everybody knows it won’t work—it’s never worked, only what works now actually works. Why the energy, then?
But the issue, as Fritjof Capra explains, is not energy or force: the issue is meaning. In his book Hidden Connections, Capra writes: “A machine can be controlled; a living system, according to the systemic understanding of life, can only be disturbed. In other words, organizations (or communities) cannot be controlled through direct interventions, but they can be influenced by giving impulses rather than instructions.”
Those impulses can be embodied by jolts of meaning to a populace’s flat-lining sense of historical continuity. Systems—communities, social networks, government agencies, institutions—do not respond to force or energy as much as they respond to meaning. And it is the obligation of any movement to present their case in a way that best illustrates the validity of these meanings, not necessarily as new meanings, but as meanings already interwoven through the culture that need only be revealed.
By Saad Aqeel
Students in a graduate Sustainable Practices in Design class have been grappling with the complexity of the Emergent Structures Project, and as they move toward effective solutions on many fronts, they’ve attempted to visually describe the landscape so as to help define its topography. The idea, in part, is to help define the new context within the old system. So, consider these parts of a larger roadmap for meaning; for not only answering the rhetorical question, what on Earth are we doing?, but for defining the thoughts that lead to action, and the actions that lead to solutions. Two are presented here now as works in progress–they represent a moment in time only–while others will be presented in the coming weeks.
The Emergent Structures Project continues to grow, and it grows in patterns that might have been expected, even if they couldn’t have been predicted. Much of the growth is in the root system. This cannot be rushed. Yet, the leaf system also matures, with branches and fibrous knobs that will soon miraculously morph into buds, which will themselves morph into other things; things we might call flowers.
In his latest book, Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken describes the people he has met who are determined to re-shape the human endeavor into more sustainable forms by referencing the Adrienne Rich excerpt at the top of this post. Hawkin is awed by the size and sincerity of this loosely defined social movement, as are we. And, like any movement, this one grows when its core tenants loosen their associations to messengers (tainted as they can often be by prejudice), and become meaningful in their own right to the broader public; when perceptual shifts occur so that new ideas resonate with an individual’s pre-existing yet often inchoate understanding of the way the world should work.
The question What on Earth are we doing?, then, becomes irrelevant, or nonsensical, or even comical. We are trying, is what we are doing. And, so a more important question to guide us is perhaps this; what are we doing on Earth? With our time here, what do we choose to do with it? How do we choose to define our relationships with the rest of humanity, and with nature? Do we continue to do what is already being done, or do we do things that provoke us into challenging even our own senses for the sake of an existence that carries less negative impacts.
Optimism is not just the message; it is the message’s origin.
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2 Responses to “Mapping Optimism”
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March 8th, 2010 @ 9:28 AM
Interesting observations. I have found much of this to be true in my work with communities who are seeking new sustainable economic paradigms. The model for change you describe is also very similar to the original approach of The Creative Coast Initiative: rather than direct intervention, instead create an environment where change (in this case economic) comes about organically, rather than forcefully. Because this differs dramatically from traditional economic development and social change models, the lessons have been slow on to be absorbed by existing development organizations but it can be seen clearly that places that do adopt this approach do move ahead and those that are still trying to force old models slowly slip behind.
March 8th, 2010 @ 8:50 PM
Chris, new models are almost always viewed with skepticism, aren’t they? And the expressed reasons for this skepticism range erratically between the two extremes (which are ironically espoused by the very same people). One side of the mouth suggests that the ‘new’ ways are so radically different from anything we know they should be resisted lest we lose our connections to the past, while the other side of the mouth dismisses them as nothing more than new twists on tired remedies from the past.
The argument would seem to go like this: if they are derivative of old models, they simply cannot work, because our culture has ‘advanced’ beyond them so as to make them irrelevant. Yet if they are in fact new, then they are simply too new, because any real new is not compatible with our traditions. Makes one wonder how the present ever made it past the past.
All economic change is, at heart, social change. Perhaps more importantly, any shift in economic thinking requires a shift in thinking within the social realm as a catalyst. The Creative Coast was ahead of the curve on this front, in that it recognized that living and making a living are inseparable. And it seems increasingly imperative that more effort be placed in nurturing the informal culture in Savannah, with the idea that the health of the formal culture—the economic—will sprout from the vitality of the informal.