Today’s post is by regular contributor, Richard Jurin. Before his retirement, Richard led the Environmental Studies programme at the University of Northern Colorado, where he launched a degree in Sustainability Studies. His academic interests are environmental worldviews and understanding barriers to sustainability. As ever, with our blogs, the views expressed are not necessarily shared by NAEE.
“It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think … Intellect is not wisdom.” Thomas Sowell.
When I hear urban and suburban leaders talking about resilience, inevitably it is about planning to maintain the status quo in times of economic change. Much like environmental education is seen as an addendum to most educational curricula, adaptation to changing ecological conditions and sustainable development is framed through an economic lens. True adaptation that builds resilience is occurring but is limited to small enclaves. Adaptation means building Harmony and Balance between the anthropocentric and ecological world. It also means recognizing how overall anthropocentric behaviors are barriers to true resilience.
Back in 1962, Rachel Carson said; “Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, in his cities of steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water and the growing seed. Intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he seems to be going farther and farther into more experiments for the destruction of himself and his world” and ““Now, to these people, apparently, the balance of nature was something that was repealed as soon as man came on the scene, when you might just as well assume that you could repeal the law of gravity. The balance of nature is built on a series of interrelationships between living things and between living things and their environment.”
The major critic of Carson (Robert White-Stevens, Assistant Director of the Agricultural Research Division of American Cyanamid) exemplifies the discord between Caron’s observations and the dominance mindset that still exists; “The crux, the fulcrum over which the argument chiefly rests, is that Miss Carson maintains that the balance of nature is a major force in the survival of man, whereas the modern chemist, the modern biologist, the modern scientist believes that man is steadily controlling nature.” This discord exists today and is coupled with an unwillingness to see how complex systems are creating change for which human adaptations are essential, and that these adaptations are not technological in nature. The need for Systems Thinking on a larger scale is essential if we are to successfully adapt.
The reductionist way of looking at the world has worked for researchers to understand components of a system but is not suited to understanding how to build resilience. Systems thinking is a Wholistic way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by reducing it down into its parts.
Our modern world is reduced to and controlled by economic expediencies, and modern globalization has created industrialized systems and supply chains that are practically incapable of adapting to disruptive ecological conditions. Two of the most essential primary needs for modern human society are energy and food. Energy has always been the most restrictive aspect of human endeavor, but until relatively recently, food was not such a primary concern. Today, with growing urbanization, the majority of people in the developed world now rely on energy grid systems and the import of food over vast distances. In 1949, Leopold had a sage comment about these social systems, “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace” Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac.
Re-localizing energy and urban agriculture is a first step in building community resilience. A few examples of resilience can be seen as examples to study. Rob Hopkins for many years has championed ‘Transition Communities,” the Findhorn Foundation has steadily built a large global following from its early days as a spiritual ecovillage. Throughout the world, several small communities have built resiliency and wisdom into their social structure. For example, the small Dutch town of Oosterwold has required all residents to grow food on 50% of their property as a response to food resiliency. Examples in small enclaves exist everywhere, but do we have the collective wisdom to embrace them on larger scales up to large towns and cities. How do we as educators best reach out to teach these lessons of wisdom?
Psychologists generally agree that wisdom involves an integration of knowledge, experience, and deep understanding that can embrace the uncertainties of life to think systemically and pragmatically. Psychologists Paul Baltes and others, define wisdom as “expert knowledge in the fundamental pragmatics of life that permits exceptional insight, judgment, and advice about complex and uncertain matters.” We all have innate expertise that communities can embrace for collective local decision-making that breaks out of the hierarchical trap of expecting political and financial leaders to have all the answers.
Building resiliency means empowering individuals to be involved and have primacy in local decision-making. I recall travelling with the late Geoff Fagan (CADISPA) as he showed me examples of how small rural Scottish communities sought to build sustainable communities and resiliency throughout the remote Highlands. When you live remotely, you are more aware of how fragile systems can be. Building resiliency requires wisdom in recognizing that larger urban communities can quickly feel very remote when large scale systems become disrupted.
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Richard can be contacted at: richardjurin@gmail.com