Musing Sustainability

I was mainly thinking about sustainability on the level of the environment when I joined this course. Imagining the flow on effect of sustainability in the natural world, upon which we depend for survival as individuals and a species, would permeate through every aspect of society and each individuals life. People who hurt and kill animals can and quite often do hurt and sometimes even kill people. There is a flow on effect that seems to be at work there, so maybe in the other direction it will work as well, or so is my thinking.

Too Precious to Lose

However, once conversant with the importance of sustainability in the world we inhabit people would no longer do things that was destroying any more of the natural world and the balance evolution was trying to restore. The problem is bending peoples minds round to the obvious can be extremely challenging.

Having attempted to introduce people to another way of thinking on other subjects and aware of the difficulty, think, in all areas one must first consider and attempt to get through to the members of the human race. Not because we are the most clever species, but rather because they are the species with the greatest capability of destruction. This capability would not be a dangerous thing in the hands of a clever species, but in our own it's incredibly worrying and constantly used to achieve some horrendous outcomes.

For the moment moving past the base of our existence and the sustainable continuation of our tenure here, the planet and its environment. We can examine sustainability in other areas and they will lead us back to the base at any rate and the lack of respect we have for the planet.

The sustainable next generation of beekeeper.

Just a moments aside.

The new generation of beekeeper. A sustainable transition which the natural world can handle without any stress or needing to tighten up. Much is lost as children find the new cities the place to be. Maybe this one will find it the same. But as he is my grandson he will first be introduced to and taught how wonderful the natural world is, and how to survive in it, so he will ever have a safety net that will not only assist him with understanding, but catch him should he ever fall.

If all goes well he will never be far from the sound of cicadas, the sweet scent of nectar being cured to become honey in the air and the lovely surprise of a wallaby or wombat stumbled upon in his day or night wanderings.

Sustainable government.

Sustainable government relies on the ballot box, but it also relies on people then accepting what has been decided by the majority's vote for the term agreed upon by plebiscite of referendum. However, democracy is not all that great, but it does give every individual of voting age in the population the opportunity to make a mistake. Which can be corrected when the vote comes round again.

Sustainable government is not what we have in most developed countries, because the politicians are **not** the servant of the people as they claim. They are the masters, the gods of our society. They ask for a chance to represent by serving the communities of their electorate and once they have the votes become the master, a representative of their own ideas. Though some do listen when many of their constituents get behind a cause even if only to save their job. The result is not always good. As we are aware most popular is not always best and it may not be sustainable, but it does allow the most people to get their way.

Sustainable government is to know about legislation before it's presented to parliament. First to discuss it with friends and family and with modern technology have that legislation go to the people and allow them to have their say. If their elected representative wants to sell it to their electorate, they have to meet the people and get their message across before they are asked to have an electronic vote on the legislation.

This will come into being slowly, as the electorates representative get briefed and then go out and try to convince their constituents just how good is, and why they should vote the way of the party that is in government. That will be sustainable, because people will feel they own their governance.

When the people with all the information available to them, have a chance to speak and be the main driver in decision making, are in fact the shakers and movers. A government is sustainable and only those in government who do the wrong thing will need to be removed.

Education:

Education as it stands currently is not sustainable. More and more parents are already starting to home educate their children. Why? The reasons are different. In some cases people are starting to believe that the education system is driving their children to become one of a few that will have only academic tools and need to challenge others with the same tools for the same few jobs. A wider practical education is more important, something that builds the child, reinforcing their strengths and strengthening their weaknesses is more important in their lives than just a one string bow of academic achievement.

Education has slipped to making people expert in a very small area of expertise rather than helping them become a whole person.

Education is focussed on turning out people who will be fodder of industry and for corporations, rather than a whole people who have wide interests and skills, deriving pleasure from more, and generating it in their job.career.

The way education is evolving isn't sustainable in the long term because there is no horizon, there is no pleasure except that which money can buy. Self satisfaction is less and self worth gauged by being advanced by employer accolades or lost because of mistakes made or being dismissed from their job or career because there is another who can perform better.

Education should be a series of nodes where the population of all ages can go to for information, visual and tactile, which is learning, for instruction verbal and hands on, which is also learning, to discuss ideas and thoughts which is also learning.

Education should bring people together, those who know and those who want to know and those who think they want to know, who can drop out when they discover they have made the wrong choice and have the option to find something that suits them better. Educating the community rather than just the young. By bringing in those who can recount their mistakes so the person new to the discipline or trade is forewarned but not forbidden to attempt the same thing in a different way.

Education a huge subject and the reason that centres of “learning” attendance is falling is because it's not serving the needs of people and community and is only catering mainly for those who wish to be in the academic workplace rat race. This isn't sustainable and will create enormous rifts in society. It wants to implant knowledge it believes a student should have rather than have it searched for and be found by an interest for it.

Over Population:

Someone in, or should that be on, the course suggested that the mention of over population is “taboo”. But I think not. What the planet can't support will perish and that's already happening except, that those more “advanced” countries and societies are exploiting those who are not as well situated keeping them down as servants to their wants.

It's possible to sustain the population we have now if our consumerism can be reeled in and controlled. Birth control left to the individual will probably not create the outcome that will save the planet. Like all species, just about every human wants to create children of their own. This is again where humans like the idea of god, and create people in their own image.

A sustainable population is one that realises what sustainable means and acts accordingly. Human beings become a dangerous planetary parasite the moment they create injury to their host and this is happening as well. A parasite that is symbiotic with it's host, is part of it, nurtures it, this is a clever parasite which knows it's survival relies on the host it inhabits and is a well governed community.

People in numbers too numerous for the planet to sustain are poison. There is no other way to describe it. People on the planet demanding more from it than can be obtained, weakening it will destroy it, but destroy themselves first. Using all manner of dubious enhancements, i.e. cloning, chemical fertilizers, genetically modified organisms and generally chasing production without looking out past that aim are the most toxic and treating again, doing what humans do best. Treating the symptom rather than the cause.

The Feel Good Factor of Recycling:

The conundrum of certain “good” habits.

Recycling is a much touted desirable thing to do. This isn't all bad, though it would be better in the “good” sense if it was called repairable. Instead of throwing away the things that are broken we become once more the society that repairs and doesn't discard so easily. That cleans rather than renews everything.

In that sense recycling would be very desirable. But in the other sense, recycling packages we are again coming in from the attending to a symptom rather than a cause. To educate manufactures to use less packaging, to use better packaging and to possibly create packaging that has a practical reuse other than being put in the recycle instead of the rubbish bin and made into something lesser.

Products made from recyclable material are much more expensive in some cases than that made from the raw material. This makes one wonder?

It can be assumed the process to recycle, remove and transport the particular material and then the resources needed to manufacture the product from this substance after it's been cleaned of impurities attached to it or contained in it are enormous. Hence the high price. But it could also just be because the “feel good” factor allows the manufacturer to suspect that it will be favoured and place a larger mark up on the product because people will buy it?

Either way, recycling would be better if there was less packaging and better, purposeful and other use packaging first and then, becomes the lowest common denominator, recycled material is used to manufacture items that don't actually use huge amounts of resources like electricity and water.