Subject: The S word is a verb (fwd)

From: Victor Guest <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Nov 1997 14:33:20 WST

To: Recipients of CHRM-GENERAL <[email-masked]>

Many people in the Northwest are asking, what is sustainability?  How
can we measure, define, or encourage it?
 
But there are also quite a few people in the Northwest and elsewhere
who are asking a fundamentally different question.  They see the S
word as a verb and ask instead, what do we want to sustain?  This is a
hard question for most of us, but the ongoing work of answering it is
the foundation or starting point of holistic decision making.
 
Not only is SUSTAIN a verb, but it is a verb that requires both a
subject and an object.  For example:
 
Love sustains marriage.
 
Listening sustains trust.
 
Agriculture sustains civilization.
 
The United States Department of Agriculture, price supports, and the
land-grant university system sustain American agriculture.
 
But wait a minute.  Is this last one the truth, or does it reflect a
hope, and a forlorn one at that?  Isn't it the soil, and the values,
experience, and habits of our land stewards, and markets that in turn
sustain these-aren't these what sustain American agriculture?
 
It is no accident that holistic decision making is taking hold first
among the agricultural community, because by and large these are
people who are forced by the nature, simplicity, and directness of
their enterprise to be on the lookout for what sustains what.
 
Some people, rural and urban and all degrees in between, are getting
clear about what they want to sustain.  These are their core values,
their means of producing or creating those values, and the basics of
what is needed to sustain all of this.   Once people begin getting
clear about what they really value, what they really want more than
anything else, what there are no substitutes for-it seems to become
easier to adjust behaviors and actions to sustain those values and to
move toward what they really want on the land, in their relationships,
and in their finances.
 
Once people are able to get together to focus on what they do want-as
opposed to what they don't want-much of the trend toward conflict,
biodiversity loss, and deficits can be reversed.  It may not be easy,
but it is fundamentally simple and achievable using common sense.
 
PRACTICAL HOLISM IN THE NORTHWEST: A JOURNAL OF PEOPLE, LAND, AND
MONEY is a new quarterly that reports on the opportunities and
challenges people are finding when they set out to manage wholes
rather than "parts"-for example, the ecosytem, a region, an economy, a
piece of land, a watershed, a family, a neighborhood, an organization,
a business, a political entity, a backyard-all of which are to each
other as wholes within wholes and overlapping wholes, like the wave
patterns on still water during a hard rain.
 
Most of our premier issue can be viewed on the Web site at
 
www.orednet.org/~pdonovan
 
There's plenty of reporting elsewhere on what's new, groovy, and
"green."  Because we believe that real change will only result from
fundamental change in our thinking and decision processes and habits,
PRACTICAL HOLISM focuses on how people are making these changes, and
on how to share that learning effectively.
 
Please take a look at our first issue.  If you think we can sustain
you in your effort to achieve what you want, then please help sustain
us with your subscription.
 
Peter and Erin Donovan

--

PRACTICAL HOLISM IN THE NORTHWEST: A JOURNAL OF PEOPLE, LAND, AND MONEY
is now available by subscription.  For more information, visit the
Resource Management News Service at:  http://www.orednet.org/~pdonovan