[SustainableTompkins] "Solidarity, Sustainability, and Religious Violence"

[GayNicholson at aol.com]

Hello Joel,
 
I'm just back online, after a week of chasing internet connection  
problems....
 
Actually, I wasn't trying to say that I thought  " Merely  
managing/containing the violence keeps in place the intensifying spiral of   consumerism."   
When I wrote that, I was trying to summarize/report  what I felt the author's 
system dynamics model was concluding.  And that  was why my next statement was to 
suggest that he needs to refine his model  because I feel that our social 
reality includes efforts toward sustainability,  such as those that our community 
is taking, even in the absence of  radically desperate conditions.  This 
requires the addition of several more  feedback loops to his model, working in 
opposite directions.  On the one  hand, when conditions are in crisis and people 
feel at risk, more people may be  likely to finally take steps toward 
redesigning their lives to cope with a  changing energy environment or  climatic 
conditions.  A  countervailing force is that people may finally become motivated to 
 change only to find that there are fewer resources available for the  
redesign of our infrastructures of living.  Under stable conditions, fewer  people 
feel motivated to make great changes, but those who are making changes  can do 
so with greater financial, social, and natural resources available to  their 
efforts.  I didn't have time to read the article carefully, but  I  wondered 
about his apparent conclusion that sustainability would arise  out of the ashes 
of consumerism.  He seemed to think that a violent  societal collapse would be 
necessary to end the spiral of consumerism, but I  hardly see how that 
results in sustainability rather than chaos, poverty, and  various forms of 
feudalism under warlords.  He probably was not concluding  the above, but his model 
diagram was pointing at that.   
 
Gay
 



In a message dated 9/5/2006 11:11:02 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
joel.and.sarah.gagnon at lightlink.com writes:

I'd like  to come back to this thread, because I think it is important.

"  Merely  managing/containing the violence keeps in
place the  intensifying spiral of  consumerism."

Did you really mean that,  Gay? It seems to me that a stable environment is 
a minimum essential for  developing and maintaining any sustainable system. 
While it is true that  stability enables the usual economic relationships, I 
think it is also  true that it enables the alternatives as well. It is hard 
to imagine any  real progress  in an atmosphere of war/conflict or 
revolution.  Investment, both human and economic, is discouraged in such 
environments.  Much of the most intractable misery in the world is so 
difficult to  address precisely because it is associated with social  
instability.

The original article that you referenced was very  interesting. As a 
Christian myself, I found it encouraging that someone  was trying to make 
the case for nonviolence being at the core of  sustainability. The 
fundamental rejection of force as the way to "settle"  differences is at the 
heart of the gospel message, despite the unfortunate  historical efforts to 
accommodate reality by justifying its use. Jesus'  core message is radically 
nonviolent, and he validated it by demonstrating  its application in his own 
life by enduring an unjust and brutal death at  the hands of a imperialistic 
empire. That said, it remains true today that  the Christian community is 
divided on the situations in which force is  justified in response to 
violence and injustice. The author of the article  attempted to posit a 
middle ground where we can agree that if violence is  resorted to, its use 
should be minimized. In doing so, he joins the ranks  of those who (like the 
developers of the "just war" principles) have  labored to make Christianity 
relevant to the realities of a violent world.  I'm not convinced that 
measured responses to violence are manageable,  especially when it comes 
down to war. Once we are into it, the principles  seem to be forgotten in 
the effort to win. Witness the disproportionate  response of Israel to the 
Hezbollah provocation.

I'm glad we had  the posts about keeping these discussions focused on 
sustainability. As  others pointed out, the topic is broader than the nitty 
gritty of energy  efficiency and localization of the  economy.

Joel
>
>
>Yes, I understand your  hesitancy.  I had only looked at the part of  his
>newsletter  about system dynamics and religious anthropology before  I  
>forwarded
>this site, because that's my particular  interest.  Later I  scanned over 
more
>sections and saw that  it was primarily written from a  Christian perspective
>that is  trying to integrate the new/ancient values of  justice and  
>compassionate
>community with the emergent paradigm  surrounding  sustainability.  It's an
>interesting exercise to  see what systems modeling  adds to that effort.  His
>first  attempt at the modeling seemed to indicate  that we will only be  
>inspired to
>the "solidarity and sustainability ethos"  when  things dramatically fall
>apart and violence is  rampant.   Merely  managing/containing the violence  
>keeps in
>place the intensifying spiral of   consumerism.  I think he needs to refine
>the model because it  isn't  accounting for activities such as our own at the
>local  level, where we are  inspired both by concern for what is going on  
>and by
>the benefits of trying  something new.  I  don't know the author, except 
>through
>cyberspace and an   earlier global email conference on integrative sciences 
--
>but I  remember he did  have an interesting blend of a researcher's rigor  
and
>a humanist's pragmatic  understanding of how people  behave.
>
>But your point is a good one.  There always seems  to be someone who is
>willing to grab power, even through a theme like  solidarity.
>
>Gay
>