Theses on Sustainability | Orion Magazine

Reading this Theses on Sustainability, I'm reminded vividly of my Environmental Ethics class and Laurence Berman's "Reenchantment." Our semester-long conversation (that has yet to end, and probably never will) took us through a basic journey of man's disenchantment.

I'm printing out this piece and plan on continuing to absorb it. As with #10 and the "all we can do" statement, there is much to be unpacked within these theses.

#4 is a key thesis to take in (As are the others).

[4]
NATURE IS MALLEABLE and has enormous resilience, a resilience that gives healthy ecosystems a dynamic equilibrium. But the resiliency of nature has limits and to transgress them is to act unsustainably. Thus, the most diffuse usage, “sensibly far-sighted,” is the usage that contains and properly reflects the strict ecological definition of the term: a thing is ecologically sustainable if it doesn’t destroy the environmental preconditions for its own existence.

Our planet, although it has its limits, will fight off disease. It has its own defenses. The immune system is resilient.

I'm still taking in all that this piece has to offer. I'm so impressed with the writing's conciseness and style. This piece sums up a lot of my own personal philosophy, at least to the extent that it breaks down the variety of interpretations that come from one word. The different uses of this word need to be sorted out as their connotations change throughout society. The point that is made is a valid one; "sustainability" has become thrown about in more arms than it can handle.

The last point, #18, is key to the direction I hope to take my life. "NO, THERE IS NO PRECEDENT for what we are struggling to create. We have to make it up ourselves." This is the most important driving factor in my life, and a growing factor in the lives of many, many others. There is doubt in how we lead our lives and this doubt needs to be addressed and eventually resolved. We do not yet know how it will be resolved, but there are surely hints within the natural world. We should not look far for answers, for they lay within ourselves; how we become to understand these answers is the question to be addressed.

Theses on Sustainability | Orion Magazine