The Bare Bones Co-Existence Model of
Ecologically and Socially Sustainable Humanity.
(rough draft)
Abstract:
Humanity can
never become ecologically and socially sustainable, unless it is
known what "ecological and social sustainability" is. In order for
humanity to become truly sustainable, we have to start agreeing on
what "sustainability" ought to be, using what-ever expedient means
there might be available. This could include using to everyone
accessible and by any- and every-body amendable models which would
show all the possible sustainable ways of living on Earth.
I propose the "bare bones co-existence model of ecologically and
socially sustainable humanity" that would allow for any and all of
the sustainable ways of living to exist side by side on Earth as
long as those ways were truly sustainable. The sustainability of
any of the purportedly sustainable ways could be proven by
"evolving" those from the conceivably simplest ways of sustainable
living to more complex ones step by step in order to ensure that
those more complex sustainable ways would remain indeed
transparently sustainable at any stage of
complexity.
Text:
Although the
notion of "sustainability" exists, there is no clear definition of
"sustainability"; or rather--there are very many definitions of
what "sustainable" and "sustainability" should mean.
As a consequence, there is no consensus on what our common
sustainable existence on Earth should look like. What seems to be
happening is that there are many actions that purport to deal with
doing away with what is perceived not to be sustainable undertaken
without any indication of what the desired, supposedly sustainable
resulting situation should look like.
Because there is no clear commonly held idea of what the commonly
shared sustainable actuality should be, it is no wonder that, on
the whole, it cannot be said that humanity is becoming more
sustainable, since we (collectively--all of us on Earth) do not
have a commonly agreed upon idea of what the collective
"sustainable"/"sustainability" ideal should be.
To expedite the shift to sustainable humanity, it would be very
helpful to unify and harmonize all the various individual ideas
about what a sustainable humanity should be like in order that we
all aim towards the same goal, so that all the differences that
there are among our ideas on the subject would not continue to be
resolved with a tremendous waste of lives, resources, and time in
real life.
It would be better to resolve the differences about what our ideal
co-existence ought to be by co-operatively constructing to everyone
"visible" presentations using what-so-ever expedient means, e.g.
computer modeling, etc. (this subject is covered more extensively
at www.ModelEarth.Org/intro.html ).
Bare Bones Co-Existence Model of Sustainable Humanity:
The simplest way of accomplishing the shift to a sustainable world would be to allow, to encourage everyone to start living fully sustainably.
In the "bare bones co-existence model" it would be possible to show
how to accommodate any and all sustainable life-styles of varying
degrees of complexity at the same time on one Earth--all those
various sustainable life-styles could co-exist in the world without
interfering with each other, and without interfering unduly with
other life forms that share the Earth with humanity--providing that
all those life-styles would be demonstrably and
provably sustainable. This kind of a model would present an
Earth that in different areas would have communities living
sustainably on varied levels of sustainability--from the simplest
type of sustainable living to whatever level of complexity of
sustainable living.
This situation, of course, would not require any modeling--a
"Gedanken Experiment" would be enough to present such an Earth;
However--modeling would be necessary to prove that all the
different kinds of sustainable living are indeed sustainable, as I
content that it would be impossible (or at leat difficult) to
include non-sustainable features in a model. For an instance: it
would be impossible to model our present day economics in a model
for the simple reason that no-one understands how model our present
day economics works. No one would bother to include positive
feedback loops into a model of sustainable situations.
By using this "bare bones co-existence model" there would not,
perhaps, even be any need for any extensive computer
modeling--"gedanken experiments"(note 1) might even be
enough, at least at the start; computer modeling might, perhaps, be
used later for proving that the more complex sustainable
life-styles would, indeed, be sustainable, as I think that
sustainability of any system could be proven to be indeed
sustainable in computer simulations, since it would be impossible
to include in the model any non-sustainable situations.
To ensure that any style of a sustainable living of any degree of
complexity would really be, beyond any doubt, sustainable, the
design of any of those should start from the level of the simplest
way of sustainable life possible--a hunter-gatherer society.
From there the model would be "evolved"--from the hunter-gatherer
way of life to the more complex sustainable life-styles, step by
step, always plainly, transparently displaying that the design
would remain sustainable ecologically and socially.
Important:
It has to be noted that this "evolution" in model would not
follow the actual evolution of human society in which competition
for territory and resources has been the initiator and mover of
"progress" ever since there were no new territories to be
discovered by humans and expand into.
On the contrary--the evolution of sustainable life-styles in model,
from the simplest to more complex, would be driven by consideration
for the wellbeing of all in the system--human and non-human alike;
In this way sustainability of the system at any stage of the
"evolution" would be assured. In this way it would be impossible to
introduce into the design any non-sustainable elements.
In a model evolved thus, any way of sustainable living--from the
simplest possible to the most conceivably complex ones--would
demonstrably be transparently sustainable--i.e. truly
sustainable, not only "sustainable" in name.
A design evolved in this way would allow anyone to live at any
level of complexity of a sustainable life-style. No too complicated
computer programs would be necessary to model a sustainable Earth
in this way! All different sustainable life-styles would fit in as
long as the "sustainability" in each case would be clearly provable
on the basis of all known and pertinent data.
The overall global population size should be determined by what
population of hunter-gatherer the Earth could support, even though
any sustainable style of living would be possible. The global
population--the total of all humans on Earth--should aways remain
at the level of of density of hunter-gatherer society (the simplest
and, at the same time, a sustainable way of living on Earth), so
that if the more complex forms of sustainable living (that might
even be more "efficient" at using land area for food production,
perhaps) should fail, or become not attractive anymore, there would
never be any overpopulation problem(note 2) should
everybody have to start living at (ultimately) the hunter-gatherer
level again.
The idea of any "expansion", or "growth" (of population, of
economy) would be foreign in a sustainable world. In a sustainable
world there would be no need for growing population; a growing
population would be antithetical to common sense--no one would
introduce such ideas into the design!
The design that would be based on the above stated principles would
have the best chance to support life even in by the humans made (in
the past), or most naturally caused extreme environmental
conditions.
Humans, and countless other species, could ride out all the
difficult times ahead of us much more smoothly if it is recognized
that the disturbances caused by humans are also fixable by humans
themselves--we have all the knowledge and resources to make it
happen. This is, though, only going to happen if we humans.
collectively, are truly as intelligent as we believe ourselves to
be.
Notes:
Note 1:
"gedanken experiment"
-noun (Physics)
thought experiment.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gedanken+experiment
Note 2:
That overpopulation is a problem is very well illustrated in
Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (pp45-49) by Meadows,
Donella, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows (2004 White River
Junction, VT 05001: Chelsea Green Publishing Company)
The need for designing a sustainable world co-operatively is
explained at The Need for
Designing the Future Collaboratively
(http://www.modelearth.org/intro.html).
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