TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2015: NOTE TO FILE
Sustainer vs Growther
Having enough vs having more
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SUSTAINABLE, TRANSITION, RESILIENCE, FROM THE WIRES, CORPORATOCRACY, GROWTH CULTURE
Abstract: Steady-state living is different form a live to grow/grow to live culture. Growthers want to keep on keeping on and believe in sustainability so long as they don't have to actually understand what it means. Sustainers actually keep on keeping on, it's what they do, so they don't have to believe in sustainability.
TUCSON (A-P) — Having more and more may seem like the best of all possible worlds, and it is, but only for a time. If the "And then what?" is overshoot and collapse, then what seems unquestionably right and appears utterly good at the time is neither. Wiser owls counsel that "life sustainable is possible" and preferable.
To be brief:
| Sustainer | Growther | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy mandate | High efficiency—slow, low, the power of enough | High power—faster, bigger, MORE! |
| Characterized by | Low maintenance, rationing, saving/storage | High maintenance, hording, overselling |
| Orientation | Sustainability, limits to growth, not-a-zero sum game | Growth without limit, zero sum game |
| Focus | Environment/community needs | Maximizing power, wealth, wants |
| Goal | Ecosystem/community prosperity | Personal wealth |
| Spatial | Live local, support localization, more rural | Live global, have more than one home, urban |
| Temporal concerns | 7+ generations | Next quarter earnings or next pay check |
| Transportation | Bicycle or LEV if going too far to walk | Car, bigger/faster better if flying not possible |
| Medical system | Health care = prevention, palliative care, tx | Sick care = aggressive expensive treatmentx |
| Hierarchy | Few levels; generalists serve common interests | Complex; elite interests served by specialists |
| Ethics | Focus on community/planetary well being | Focus on individual rights and autonomy |
| Design | Open source, shared, copied freely | Proprietary, copyrighted, patented |
| Durability | Lifetime+ | Planned obsolescence, disposible |
| Metaphysics | System over self | Consumer over consumed |
| Consent | Informed, mutually agreed upon by informed | Manufactured |
| Needs | Focus on basic needs, self-reliance | Focus on wants and turning wants into needs |
| Social | Cooperation, altruism, diversity, harmony | Competition, bigger dog eats smaller dogs |
| Religion | Individual quest, inquiry | Organized; justifies business as usual |
| Economy | Local sources of energy/resources. Biophysical economics |
Global derivative financial $£€¥$ wealth. NWE and attention economy |
| Politics | Data-driven by choiceless awareness of what-is | Belief-driven serving competing self interests |
| Production | Local, based on shared designs/information | Centralized, proprietary, global transport |
| Technology | To enable needs to be met, appropriately | To profitably meet manufactured wants |
| Government | Democratic Meritocracy | Global Growth Hegemon |
| Military | Shared global military to stifle aggression | Military industrial complex for each nation |
| The world is | Dynamic | Static |
| Values | Partnership-respect | Domination-control |
| World organization | Federation of Watersheds | Nation-states of, by, and for the Growthers |
To have enough is to be rich (prosperous). To have more than enough is to be richer, and the richer always want to be more rich if not the richest. Transitioning from growth to a steady state of prosperity is no longer an option. Such a transition would have had to be made before overshoot. We are in overshoot, which by definition means decline follows. The greater the overshoot, the harder the fall. We can transition via ordered descent to prosperous sustainability or try to maintain growth and be forced to transition kicking and screaming via chaotic collapse to a lower level of sustainability for fewer survivors on a planet that will have been all used up.
To not have enough is a curse; to have more than enough is also a curse. — Zhuangzi
Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power. —Arundhati Roy
