sustainability Archives - Revolutionary Misfit

Sustainability is a Spiritual Concept

September 23, 2014 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

I believe the essence of spirituality is the search for truth, about ourselves and our world.

Lately I’ve been interested in the atheistic viewpoint, reading the likes of Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krause.

I’m not an atheist. But I don’t believe there’s anything inherently wrong with atheism. It’s just another way of trying to figure things out.

In other words, atheists are just as spiritual as the rest of us seekers.

On the other hand, religious people, or those who have accepted the dogma of a particular religion as representing undeniable truth, are unspiritual.

That’s because in my mind, as soon as you stop searching, you lose spirituality.

On Sunday of this week, people around the world, with some 400,000 in New York city alone, marched in support of action to prevent the catastrophes threatened by global warming and resulting climate change.

There is overwhelming science behind the idea that the burning of fossil fuels is the culprit behind the phenomenon of global warming. And climate change is something we are actually experiencing now at an accelerated rate.

Yet, there are many who scoff at those who would take action to sustain our planet. In the U.S., the loudest of the scoffers is the Fox News Channel.

I watched a video this morning of the Fox News Five deriding the participants of the march in New York with their typical terminology, calling the marchers hypocrites, hippies and communists.

What exactly is the underlying motive behind the cynical attitude of Fox News towards people who have a passion for sustainability?

Because in my mind sustainability and spirituality go hand in hand.

I believe it’s because Fox News has positioned itself as the guardian of the status quo. And many are saying, now more loudly than ever, that in order for us to combat global warming, the status quo must change.

Change to what?

Something better. Something more sustainable.

And that scares the hell out of a lot of people, especially the ones that regularly tune into Fox. And of course, that’s what keeps the Fox News ratings high and Rupert Murdoch, one very happy billionaire.

The only reason to be afraid of change is if you are convinced that the status quo represents the truth, or the way things are supposed to be. And in America many believe that’s exactly the case.

Our capitalistic system is sacred to many. It’s as if they believe it to be god-ordained. But unfortunately it’s the engine behind the activity that’s overheating our planet.

Being convinced that something is true doesn’t necessarily make it so, unless, of course, your conviction is backed by scientific fact.

Moreover, the mode of thinking being perpetuated by Fox News, that the status quo is somehow sacred, is what really threatens us all.

And, despite the fact that most of the Fox viewers would probably identify themselves as christian, this Fox News motivated mode of thinking is inherently unspiritual.

I wrote the following piece many years ago on the connection that I see between sustainability and spirituality.

I believe it’s now more relevant than ever, so I decided to re-post it this morning. Because in my opinion those so-called hypocrites, hippies and communists who marched on Sunday are actually the most spiritual among us. They are the ones searching for truth. And they are the ones who can help save us, despite the contrary efforts of Fox News.

…

My last post addressed my personal definition of what it means to act sustainable. However, what is the ultimate aim of sustainable action? I believe only in knowing that can one truly bend the bow, release that arrow of ardent action, and hit the intended target.

It seems we’ve been far too focused for a very long time on maintaining inanimate objects, or stuff, than we’ve been on sustaining life.

If you’re a spiritual person with a belief that life is beautiful, regardless of your conception of how it might have come to be in the first place, you probably also hold fast to a conviction that we should try to sustain life in its healthy and beautiful state.

But human interaction and impact, with its priority on the inanimate stuff that gives us that false sense of comfort, has tended to diminish that healthy state.

Sustainability thus becomes our attempt at managing our interactions and impacts in a way that promotes the health of living things…

a healthy environment with healthy ecosystems, our own healthy bodies, even healthy relationships.

I guess we could call this facilitating ecological health, or endurance.

Of course, if you’re not at all spiritual and would rather subscribe to a “survival of the fittest” philosophy of life, then you probably don’t feel much of a need to act sustainable.

That’s the status quo way of thinking…that seeks to sustain not the health of living things, but the pursuit of selfish interests, with continued priority on the inanimate stuff that satisfies our lust for material comfort.

Sustainability, on the other hand, is a spiritual recognition that life is connected and that every part has a role to play in sustaining the whole.

It’s not sustainable to just sit back and expect for living things to sustain themselves and if they fall short, well it was just meant to be.

That all that really matters is my own personal comfort and the fact that people are starving, animals are becoming extinct, rain forests are disappearing, and the planet is overheating, just doesn’t enter into my picture.

Because the reality of connection is that, oh yes it will, eventually!

Sustainability is a spiritual concept that’s concerned that our interactions and impacts facilitate the health and endurance of the life that surrounds us, and of which we’re an integral part.

And I truly believe that in so doing the spiritual health of the human race can also be dramatically improved.

Self-Sustainability

May 15, 2014 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

I’ve written quite a bit over the years on the topic of sustainability. Much of my writing has concerned environmental sustainability and managing impacts in order to avoid ecological harm to the planet.

Here I want to twist that topic around a bit and point it back at ourselves…

with the idea of avoiding self-harm.

How can we live lives that help us to be more self sustainable and less reliant on others…

such as the phone company, electric company, bread, milk and cheese companies and other mass manufacturers of the shit we consume into our bodies on a regular basis?

Having more control over one’s life is a good thing.

I know that to be especially true in business. The more I can control, or at least exert a high degree of influence over, the better I can predict what will happen next and that’s always a good thing in any economic undertaking.

And I believe that principle also applies to the business of life.

In our quest for convenience and luxury I’m afraid we’ve ceded far too much control to corporations who are more concerned with “shareholder return” than “customer well-being.”

Examples can be found lurking right inside your fridge. Food that’s mass produced is full of stuff we don’t know is there…

and if we did (and the long-term effect it can have) we probably wouldn’t dare eat it.

So why not produce our own food?

Some time ago I got into organic gardening. The reason I did so is exactly in line with the topic of this post. To be more self-sustainable and less reliant on some profit motivated corporation to make sure I’m properly nourished.

Oh sure those huge carrots and strawberries in the produce section of Walmart look healthy, but they’re not. They’re grown in food factories that inject all manner of chemicals and pesticides to make growing them as efficient and profitable as possible.

And if you’ve ever tasted a piece of produce not so injected, you’d know that that Walmart stuff actually tastes like crap.

Mass production of food might be good for the profit and loss statement’s bottom line, but it ain’t so good for your personal bottom line….the one upon which your ass is squarely placed.

So I tried to learn how to grow my own food, first with organic gardening.

Organic gardening is great as long as (1) you have a place to do it, (2) time to do it and (3) you don’t plan to move any time soon (organic gardens are not very portable).

But because I really had none of the above conditions met very well, I migrated to another form of self-production of healthy food…

hydroponic gardening.

When I first starting researching it I came across all these complicated systems of doing hydroponic gardening that were expensive and seemed to require an engineering degree from MIT to implement.

That is until I moved to Perez Zeledon and stumbled into my now good-friend, David Picado.

David, who’s sort of a tico whiz kid, took a course offered by INA (which is the Costa Rican free education system for ticos to learn all sort of trades and skills) in hydroponic gardening and then started his own little business constructing and installing personal hydroponic green houses.

I came across his advertising one day (painted on a large rock near my house) and decided to give him a call.

He installed a very simple and rudimentary greenhouse and hydroponic system in my back yard and I’ve had it there for a couple years now.

They require very little space and can be moved relatively easily.

In fact the concept of hydroponic gardening the Picado way could be installed in a space as small as a 50th floor balcony overlooking Central Park.

You can do it virtually anywhere. And the cool thing is that the plants grow incredibly fast and delicious. So fast that you can be eating lettuce from your garden in about a month.

All it takes is a little sustaining substance for the plant roots (I use carbon chips), sunlight and the proper amount of liquid nutrient that you administer to the roots daily.

That last part is a bit complicated for this post, but the information is no big secret…

just google it!

Self-sustainability, via hydroponic (or organic) gardening is cool as hell and if the world caught on, it could mean more health, less hunger and less greed.

That to me is a very good thing.

What is Sustainability?

January 12, 2014 by costaricaguy 1 Comment

I am still on quasi-vacation in Colombia. I say “quasi” because when you’re one of those crazy wild-eyed online entrepreneurs, you tend to take your work with you, wherever you may go.

And on Tuesday that will be to the Amazon jungle in the southernmost spot on the Colombian map…Leticia…on the border with Brazil and Peru.

Jungle traipsing has me thinking about all things sustainable this morning. And rather than re-invent the wheel I thought I would reach way back into the old Costa Rica Guy archives to pull out some of my ponderings on this topic.

Sustainability is definitely a concept that is near and dear to the heart of impact mindfulness. But exactly what is sustainability?

To address that question I am re-posting an old CRG post that is still relevant and allows me to relax the brain cells a bit while I remain “on vacation.”

Sustain-Ability

This post is apt to be one of those cathartic ones that has me “thinking out loud” (in written form) and trying to answer a question that has been bouncing around in my head.

That question this morning is…what does sustainability really mean?

I think that is important because I tend to see myself as some sort of sustainability guy and in order to be that person I believe it is necessary to have a firm grasp on what it is that I’m talking about.

Because it order to be a “sustainability guy” one must “act sustainable”…and I am not sure I always do that all that well. Maybe that is because I have yet to succinctly define what it really means, for me.

I did a quick Google search on the term and Wikipedia defined it like this:

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. In ecology the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. For humans it is the potential for long-term maintenance of well-being, which in turn depends on the well-being of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources.

Wikipedia went on to say that “sustainability has become a wide-ranging term”

Boy is that an understatement!

These days you have “gurus” using the buzzword “sustainability” to address a whole host of human activities, like tourism and development. In fact, Costa Rica is looked upon as a model country when it comes to sustainable tourism and development.

But on a personal level, what does the term really mean…to me?

I believe it has everything to do with interactions and impacts. That is, how I interact with other people, with the planet, and (I know it sounds a little weird) with myself and the collective impacts resulting from those interactions.

According to Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Probably taking that notion out of context somewhat, it implies that our interactions result in impacts, on others, on our natural world and on ourselves (for example, throw a piece of trash out the window of your car and you have both an interaction and an impact, though not a sustainable one).

If “sustainability” is the “capacity to endure” it then means that those interactions and impacts should be “facilitative” (as opposed to destructive) of endurance.

On a human interaction level, it means helping others to be more capable of enduring, physically, socially, economically, and culturally. On the level of interactions with the natural world, it means conserving and nurturing growth, while doing as little harm as is truly necessary. On a personal level, it entails personal actions that nurture and promote physical, emotional and intellectual health and well-being.

Now that I have a clearer idea about what sustainability really means, it is easier to see where it is I am falling short of my goal of being that “sustainability guy.”

Nevertheless, I believe it is a worthy aim and I will continue to strive for it.

One thing that’s for sure, sustainability requires thought before interaction in order to produce the desired impact.

photo credit: just.Luc via Compfight cc

Sustain-Ability

Connect with RM