segunda-feira, 18 de junho de 2012

unsustainable sustainability - part 2

Does sustainability need money?
Maybe it is more a matter of action and direction... or a matter of changes...
Many times changes are not comfortable "movements".
But each one must find its own change.
In the deep this is not "my change", or "our change" but "your change".
Arne Naess thought about superficial ecology and deep ecology.
Sustainable sustainability implies deep ecology.
Many steps of superficial ecology are perhaps necessary, but they are not sufficient.
Between 1992 and 2012 the world was, in the first half of this period, in the Postmodern climax; and in the second half it was in the descensus of the Postmodern, in the waning of the efficiency.
In after-postmodern we must find other ways to find the change inside complexity.

terça-feira, 12 de junho de 2012

unsustainable sustainability

Susteinability is the word of the moment...
Nonetheless we do hear so much but we do not see how to sustein...
As we said before, in after-postmodernity we see the end of the efficiencies, those efficiencies of post-modernity: strong as a truck but not too much "human"...
Everything that is done for environment is necessary but it is not sufficient for achieve a new level of sustainability.
Human beings need to talk and deal all the time to achieve a balance between "modern life" and "after-postmodern conditions" that include a stronger respect for nature and life on earth more than ever were before.
For while we see more "vicious circles" than "virtuous circles" in therms of sustainability. 
In other words, what seems to bee sustainable, in the end of the day brings unsustainable collateral effects.
A sustainable virtuous circle could mean a chain of sustainable causes and effects.
Maybe History itself will, step by step, push humankind to inevitable sustainable paradigms...
But it could be less expensive if human beings try to start practical measures to stimulate small communities to find their own ways to development respecting environment, at the same time the greater measures are applied among countries. 

domingo, 3 de junho de 2012

after-postmodern problems, after-postmodern solutions

Henri Bergson wrote that we will be free when we formulate a problem instead of simply receive it already formulated. 
Thomas Kuhn wrote that a paradigm conditionate the formulation of the problem and the formulation of the solution. Most times that we read this we do not pay attention to the word "problem", we only pay attention to the word "solution". We can also replace the word "problem" with the word "question" and we can replace the word "solution" with the word "answer". It is a similar thinking.
So, we are conditioned to see a problem or a question only under the current paradigms.
But we are in times of changes...
Kuhn also wrote that when a paradigm cannot have anymore answers or solutions it is time to rise a new paradigm.
In after-postmodern era it is more and more difficult to use the postmodern paradigms to solve the problems.
We must read or write questions and problems with new formulations.
Maybe there are not only "global" problems. When we think only in global problems we do not see the "local" problems. 
So, transdisciplinary, we can see at same time global and local problems. But, in after-postmodern, maybe it is a liitle more important to look to the "local" problems, because we have the bias to forget a apparently "small" problem when we have a bigger...
Maybe we should ask to each community: "how the current crisis affect you ?" "What do you think that could be the solution for your local problem?"