(DP) A philosophical approach to sustainability part 2

In the other hand –unfortunately- it won’t be important just our choices, even the government ones it will be the key for our future. If with our choices we can be advocates for our future, to induce any changes in the government’s choices is not easy and it seems even harder because the governments of developed countries (and other international organizations) were (and are still) leaving behind a worrying situation: they seem to understand just the “profit” word, and to reach as much as possible of it, they deal the third world’s countries and the developing ones just as resources areas and not more, and moreover they trying to perpetuate this vicious circle to ensure for their the prosperity and the continuous growth with no limit. Without any changes on policy and approach from those countries/organizations it will be impossible any real change or any dream of equity in the world’s population. I’m going to analize better the inequities of these establishments (IMF, WTO, UN, and so on…) later, because I’d to go deeply on that topic. This is just the  my “painting of nowadays”, I would to analize in the next steps the current theories that could be applied and that might change (in better) the situation about social inequity and environment sustainability.

This is the last part of my first post, “A philosophical approach to sustainability”, that was even an introduction to the next posts, and from that I would to start the second post on our possible (future) choices.

Part 2: what can WE do?

I think that we have great power in hour hands, we can change a lot with our convinctions, but even more with our ACTIONS.

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I think that the people should come back to a “more shared” sociability, that could flows in a final act of PARTECIPATION.

One of the weaknesses that afflict our generation is the lack of sociality, and then of participation; the networks had broken down many walls, the distance, the cultures, the differences…nowadays if you want, you can “be” in every part of the world and every part of the world could be in your home.

We have the communication, we have the network, we could spread with these anything we want to say, anything we’ve seen, just staying at home with our little device, it doesn’t matter if it’s our blog, our facebook, linkedin or whatever account.

This is a big tool, and we should do leverage and pick it up, to being more influent.

Yes influent…but how? I think we can be really influent with our choices, and become CRITICAL MASS, and not just buyer mass.

We should understand our power, not just the power of each of us, but the power of society; with our choices we can achieve significant results.

For instance we should start to influence the choices of our government, in Italy we have an example of this: many people has start to be tired and critic against the behaviour of the politicians and they’ve decided to join their forces in one movement to change these behaviour and to have an influence in the political issues “from the bottom”; they are called “Movimento 5 stelle”[1], and they’ve started their activities from network, it’s a “sharing movement” and everyone could join it and give its contribution and push his/her ideas; it’s young people that tries to install a new mentality and try to give some answers to the most important and current topics through new media and network and they basically wants to protect the common goods of the common people, that is, quoting their program: “Stato e cittadini Energia Informazione Economia Trasporti Salute Istruzione” (translation: “State and Citizens Energy Health Information Economy Transportation Education”[2]). Their activities was starts since two years, and they are already been elected in some little and major municipalities, provinces and regions establishment, as people’s representatives.

Actually in Italy they are doing to understand to the people that is possible to act and do something if we join our resources and our forces, it’s a huge message that we have to catch.

In the same way, we can act and influence the multinationals strategies: if we start to choose energy saving goods, if we start to choose fair trade goods, instead luxury goods and non-necessary goods, we will influence their input, and inevitably their outcome.

If we want a better world, and if they would to go on to sells, they should give us the goods that we prefer…a “better goods”; we don’t forget that we are the final consumers, and we have the power to choose, so if we start to choose in a CRITICAL way, they have to follow us, and our behaviour.

So far this is what can we do to influence other subjects, but in the last, but not the least, we can apply our positive behaviours to another level: the relationship and domestic life.

What should be done?

Now our consumption is really too high, because our behaviour and our waste, and it seems that we don’t understand it, and we go on and on to “grow” it.

There’s an alarming (and interesting) index that should let us reflect on which way we have been taking: the

ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT.

This index measures -taking in account the natural resources available on our planet, and the earth’s capacity to regenerate it- how’s our demand of nature. Basically if our footprint exceed the bio-capacity of our planet [see the map below], we would need to find resources elsewhere (in another planet?), and this is really clear that it is not sustainable.

Here you can CALCULATE YOUR OWN FOOTPRINT: http://myfootprint.org/en/visitor_information/

What is shows this index? That we’re not sustainable for our earth, we aren’t in equilibrium with our ecosystem, we’re exploiting that and we are just taking and we don’t give it back, in the end this is a vicious circle. We should change it, in a VIRTUOUS CIRCLE!

The reduction of our footprint should become our new global law, there are many simple ways to reduce the footprint you leave on the planet. “learn how to reduce your footprint in each consumption category-carbon, food, housing, and goods and services-but don’t stop there. Amplify your impact by encouraging others to follow your lead. Engage your friends and community with local and global movements for social change, or start your own movement!”[3]

Please, check it out here http://myfootprint.org/en/take_action/reduce_your_footprint/ the behaviours that you can follow, and you can do it right now.

To achieve this goal we should “DEGROWTH”, and come back to some behaviours and practices that nowadays are almost been lost, as we can find in E. F. Schumacher’s 1973 book “Small is beautiful”[5] where he wrote “since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption….The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity.”

Following this thought we could undertake a path which could be defined “back to the sociality and simple life”, which is done of auto-production (of food, of renewable energy), of responsible use of energy, to give more importance to the values of life, and return to live and enjoy our environment and give greater importance to the interchange of products rather than giving importance to the money, and finally to life as a ”social activity” of the human beings.

2 comentarios / 11 Dec 2011 por Luca Palma
IMSD /

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