Growing Things
Nothing on the Earth can grow or expand indefinitely. All living systems and the Earth itself are finite. If something grows indefinitely, it is out of control, like cancer.
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We’re beginning to transition our thinking from endless growth to sustainability. At the same time, though, everyone still wants more growth. Our political leaders talk incessantly about “growing the economy,” “growing jobs,” “increasing trade,” “growing productivity,” “expanding markets”—ever more growth! Growth! Growth! …. It’s all part of our particular culture (not of human nature), and therefore part of who we of the modern West are as persons, to want more, to expect more.
The “more” that we want in large part translates into more things. We want to grow things—bigger houses, bigger cars, fancier cars, faster computers, bigger TVs with clearer pictures, “phones” that do everything. We’re also growing more people, bigger cities, more suburbs, bigger box stores, more freeways. It’s all part and parcel of growing the economy.
It can’t continue. We know that now. Therefore, we have to somehow bring what we feel, and what we do, and what we want, more in line with what we know. Is the idea, the goal, of sustainability part of that process? Maybe.
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But where do you start? You’re addicted to Growth. Like any addict, you start by admitting the problem. You reach for a clear-eyed, non-denial of your predicament.
In that vein, we have to start with what we have—that is, an economic and political system that is predicated on growth. In the system we have, the alternative to growth is stagnation, depression, even collapse. But endless growth also inevitably leads to collapse at an ever more catastrophic scale the longer it continues. Damned if we do and damned if we don’t. We can, in our time, boast the unprecedented achievement of having ramped up the scale of that deadly predicament to truly global proportions.
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Perhaps simply more investment in sustainable technology is the answer. We hear a lot these days about “sustainability.” What about that? It’s a little like Ghandi’s reputed answer when asked what he thought about American democracy. He replied, “it would be a good idea.”
A sad truth of human history, however, is that no civilization has ever been sustainable. Everything we know tells us that the dynamics of civilization are by definition, by their very nature, unsustainable. In that sense, it’s like global climate change: We have the data, and the theory, and they’re consistent. But even so there are still deniers.
In that light, the idea of sustainability is seductive, both because it’s so necessary, and because it is possible to do particular things more sustainably. And we should when possible. By all means. But the addict’s “fix” doesn’t fix his problem, but only temporarily relieves it. Similarly, the immediate technical fix doesn’t fix, and indeed often exacerbates, the basic problem—especially if it’s seen as a more efficient or benign way to fuel endless growth. I’ll talk more about that in later posts.
For now, let’s just be clear on this one thing: there’s no such thing as “sustainable growth” in broad terms, at the whole system level. That’s an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. It’s one of the ways that Denial of our basic problem slyly worms its way back into how we view it. To talk realistically about sustainability (which we have to begin to do), we have to somehow get outside of the paradigm of endless growth. The dynamics of civilization never have been sustainable, and are not so now. They are by definition and in reality not sustainable. They eventually fail. Later posts will say more about that also.
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What’s the answer? I don’t know. No one does. That’s what we have to work out together. But as I said, the work starts by facing up to our challenge. It begins by understanding the profound nature of the problem, and by taking it seriously.