Here’s a hypothesis…
Is it possible that sustainability will give back to us a
sense that time moves cyclically, and give us a new idea of “progress?”
“Progress,” the idea that human society advances ever
forward into a better future, is tightly associated with modern thinking. In particular the brave-new-world notion that
progress in technology will always make our lives better and will always leave the
past behind to be remembered but not repeated, is now almost a caricature. The forward thrust of modern ‘progress’
mirrors the cradle-to-grave manufacturing model of making new things (out of
‘raw materials’ or ‘natural resources’), using them up and throwing them away (where
they disappear). The process moves
always ahead toward the new. Several squirrelly
ideas and a fatal irony are embedded.
First, what’s new about something new? I’ll just leave that one to
ponder. Second, using things up suggests
that nothing is left behind, an obvious falsehood – even food eaten up leaves poop
behind and fuel used up leaves CO2 at least.
Thirdly, throwing things away doesn’t get rid of them, just takes them
out of sight. We clearly know by now
that there is no ‘away,’ everywhere is somewhere and the more we insist on an ‘away,’
the more it crowds in on us. In Freud’s
terms, denying things or feelings by putting them out of sight or “foreclosing”
them simply embeds them more deeply in our mind and body, until they infect our
every action.
And the irony… progress implies a utopia or state of perfection
always ahead like a mirage. There, presumably
everything is perfect, progress stops and time becomes cyclical again. Hmmm. So cyclical time is the goal.
Sustainability however proposes that we live in the world
without diminishing it. No graves. No ‘away.’
No using things up. It embraces
the fact that everything exists before we ‘use’ it and continues to exist after. Technology may transform materials and move them
from place to place, but nothing is left as waste. Everything is recaptured and
returned to the cycle. Progress means
innovation that improves the cycle in all its phases, not just the ‘making
stuff for our use’ part of the cycle. Life
can be excellent, and everything returns, so that it can go around again and
again.
Thinking of materials in this way implies a cyclical sense
of time: that all things return, in different forms, with an accumulation of
memory perhaps, but always already present.
Same, same, but different. We are
part of the cycle of the natural world, and progressively innovate new ways to
keep it strong and healthy, year after year, century after century, and
millennium after millennium, always changing and, if we do our jobs well, always
the same.
