I’ve recently written about building resilient households and communities.  This is a result of a mindset shift to free thinking that embraces technology, yet rejects the prevailing views of society based around control and hierarchy in favour of independent thought.

We’ve seen the fruit of conventional authoritarian thinking – massive bank losses, ordinary people losing their houses and jobs, problems of alienation, environmental destruction and wastage and constant warfare.

Read on to find out more about the contrast of values between traditional thinking and free thinking, and how this impacts on environmental sustainability and personal and community well being.

Money

• Traditional thinking: earn as much as possible, pay a lot of tax, specialise and outsource
• Free thinking: choose lifestyle over money, build capital to reduce the amount of wasted work in the future.

Traditional thinking focuses on income.  This gives the traditional thinking person a feeling of meaningfulness and a position in a hierarchy.  They seek to maximise income, even at the expense of health, well being and spare time.

The free thinking person values capital rather than income.  Capital is grown over time (literally, in the case of a reforestation project), and invested in assets that provide a long term benefit, sometimes even for future generations.   Photovoltaic and wind systems generate sustainable power with little recurrent cost.  Water recycling reduces wastage and environmental footprint.

Income may be consciously minimised rather than working excessively in a high taxed environment.   Even if the free person has to take on other tasks that are otherwise outsourced, the free person sees this as part of the richness and variety of life and enjoys the simpler lifestyle.

Management of outputs

• Traditional thinking: move the waste somewhere else
• Free thinking: waste is a resource to be valued

Human activity is based around transformation of inputs into outputs.  Some of these outputs are immediately useful, some are side effects.  The difference between free and traditional thinking is how side effects are managed.

For example, in traditional thinking, carbon dioxide is a problem – something to be sequestered underground.  Economic games are played to reduce the output, but the problem is not attacked head on.  Otherwise, the problem is ignored completely until the ramifications must be faced.

The free thinking person actively reduces waste, but sees it as a valuable resource to be recycled rather than dumped.

Carbon dioxide is a feedstock for algae to be turned into oil free plastics, food or biodiesel.  It can be turned into building materials.  Food waste is composted.  Water is purified and used to grow food.  Packaging is minimised by purchasing in bulk, then reused.  The free person values the elegance of the cycle that reuses and recycles waste, using ambient energy with technology.

Timeframes

• Traditional thinking: don’t see beyond the next quarter
• Free thinking: look hundreds of years ahead

Traditional thinking is based on the quick, superficial win – the shell game where problems are temporarily shifted around and where constant growth helps sustain the Ponzi game.  Whenever growth drops in a quarter, panic bells sound.  Long term investment is difficult.  Research and development must pay off immediately, or risk being scrapped.  Relationships are contractual and litigious.

Free thinking is not bound by the dictates of fast money.  It applies economic criteria, but correctly values both inputs and outputs.  It aims for long term, sustainable solutions that have a massive long term payoff.  Long term relationships are more like partnerships that are of mutual benefit.

Conclusion

You can see how planning for a sustainable future is more than a slogan – it comes from adopting a certain perspective and set of values.  These values are completely opposed to mainstream thinking, which looks at the short term, has adversarial relationships and has no responsibility.

Tags: environmental, sustainable

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 8:54 pm and is filed under Sustainable community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.