“What is sustained in a sustainable community is not economic growth, development, market share, or competitive advantage, but the entire web of life on which our long term survival depends. In other words, a sustainable community is designed in such a way that its way of life, business, economy, physical structures, and technologies do not interfere with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life.” — Fritjof Capra

America has always been good at counting. You might even say we are obsessed with it. Everything is always reduced, valued, scrutinized, calculated, and summarized by a number. Our most popular sports are full of statistics and numbers all striving to achieve the ultimate number; one. With money, counting is even more detailed and fretted over. To be a millionaire, to save pennies, to collect interest, to pay a tax, to tip a waiter, to pay a commission, to what is owed, who owes who, a IRA, a stock or bond, and always on the horizon, the nest egg. A linear way of thinking that has led us down a straight and narrow path towards a questionable future.

“A vibrant community is aware of the multiple relationships among it members. Nourishing the community means nourishing these relationships. Understanding relationships is not easy for us for it is something that goes counter to traditional scientific enterprise in Western culture. In science we measure and weigh things, but relationships cannot be measured and weighed; relationships need to be mapped.” — Fritjof Capra

Once you get used to seeing beyond the linear thinking, its amazing how quickly you see patterns that are overlooked. I’ll use the Boundary Bay Airport as an example. Now recently there was concern that a nesting pair of eagles would eventually interfere with the air traffic going on over its nest. So the Airport authorities got a permit to remove the eagles nest and tree. So out comes the crew, chainsaws, chipper and trucks, and a few hours later no more eagles nest, no more potential for problems. Well as far as the Airport Authorities could see, this was the solution, they saw the nest next to the airport and they removed the nest.

But when you look at this situations pattern, then it becomes clear that another solution would be best, remove the Airport; but that is an unacceptable solution for linear monetary thinking bureaucrats. You see, the Boundary Bay Airport is in the middle of the biggest bird flyway in the world. The airport also happens to be between 70 other eagles nests and the water where eagles get 90% of their food. The web of life in the Salish Sea all revolves around the marine habitat. So putting a airport in the middle of a migratory freeway and not expect to have lots of birds flying around, is to fail to see the pattern of how the local ecosystem works. The consequence is that we are interfering with natures ability to sustain life. That interference has only accelerated in recent years.

But the City of Vancouver was not done yet, as they created a landfill across the freeway from the Airport, which attracts thousands of seagulls, and crows, who sift through the garbage for food. In the background on numerous poles the Bald Eagles keep an eye on the Gulls to see if they find anything good to eat.

Then across the street from the airport they have allowed a large composting farm, which operations also attract many birds and eagles, Why?, well because they mix in chicken scraps and occasionally pork scraps into the soil mix. The real danger of this is not only the increased bird traffic around the airport (less 1 eagles nest), but the bacteria and very bad viruses that the chicken factories produce. In the U.S. they make the factories burn the mix of droppings and dead chickens, but here in Boundary Bay, they do not, and so introduce the toxins into the local bird populations. Canadian operations like this are not suppose to lay the droppings and scraps on the ground, but they do, and so the vicious cycle continues, and the eagles and birds are at further risk.

As Mr. Capra defines where we need to go; “a vibrant community is aware of the multiple relationships among its members. Nourishing the community means nourishing these relationships.” Clearly in Boundary Bay the only consideration for nourishment comes in the form of commerce and the pursuit of profits and the collecting of taxes. Of course this is true of greater Vancouver, and most cities across the continent.

Matter and Form

“And here we discover a tension that has been characteristic in Western science and philosophy through the ages. It is a tension between two approaches to the understanding of nature, the study of matter and the study of form. These are two very different approaches. The study of matter begins with the question, ‘What is the pattern’? And that leads to the notions of order, organization, relationships. Instead of quantity, it involves quality; instead of measuring it requires mapping.” – Fritjof Capra

Mapping requires understanding the relationships between all entities in our environment. The few examples I’ve cited in Boundary Bay of authorities not understanding the wider relationships of nature has led us to the perilous position that we are currently trying to find a way out of.

To see the patterns and to begin to craft new maps that reflect the new literacy we hope to spread, there needs to be certain principles that need our attention. Capra gives us five to start with; 1. that an ecosystem generates no waste, one species waste being another species food. (no not toxic chicken parts) 2. that matter cycles continually through the web of life. 3. that the energy driving these ecological cycles flows from the sun. 4. That diversity assures resilience. 5. That life , from its beginning more then three billion years ago, did not take over the planet by combat but by cooperation, partnership, and networking. Experts on energy have said that if we can combine all these principles into actual practice then we can get by with using only 10% of the energy we currently use.

Mr. Capra believes that teaching this ecological knowledge, which he interchangeably also calls ancient wisdom, will be the most important role of education in this century.

With mainstream media constantly mudding up the waters with public relations propaganda, this transformation has been slowed to a crawl. In talking to teachers and parents its clear that kids do get it far more then any previous generation, but with the old guard holding the purse strings, we’re in danger of not getting there fast enough.

With the growing presence of community gardens and workshops for children, we are slowly helping to promote systems thinking and so gives us hope for a better future. By going through the entire life cycle of plants, children and adults alike are being reconnected to the web of life and so reinforces a sense of place into our communities.

“In the garden, we observe and experience the life cycle of an organism — the cycle of birth, growth, maturation, decline, death, and new growth of the next generation.”
– Fritjof Capra

From the garden we can expand to understand the entire web of life that has been so neglected for so long. People ask why are the salmon gone? The answer goes back to us removing natures ability to sustain life. This understanding needs to be a shared responsibility among everyone in the community. We need a number of individuals to step forward and find the inspiration to make the transformation happen.

Mr. Capra concludes his lecture with the following; “the survival of humanity will depend on our ability to understand the principles of ecology and live accordingly. This is an enterprise that transcends all our differences of race, culture, or class. The Earth is our common home, and creating a sustainable world for our children and for future generations is our common task.”

Fritjof Capra quotes:
March 20th, 1999
Liverpool Schumacher Lectures
Center for Ecoliteracy
Berkeley, CA