workshop arrival reflection--thought provoking quotes about strong sustainability

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Motivations are more important than effectiveness, because you can never truly know how effective your actions are — Joanna Macy


We don’t have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it — Douglas Adams


Minds awaken in a world. We did not design our world. We simply found ourselves with it; we awoke both to ourselves and to the world we inhabit. We come to reflect on that world as we grow and live. We reflect on a world that is not made, but found, and yet it is also our structure that enables us to reflect upon this world.

Thus in reflection we find ourselves in a circle: we are in a world that seems to be there before reflection begins, but that world is not separate from us.

— Francisco J. Varela


Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice — Will Durant


The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable — John F. Kennedy


Reality must take precedence, for nature cannot be fooled

— Richard Feynman


Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but rather the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. Assume hope all you who enter here!

— Vaclav Havel


How do I want to be remembered? “She was the one who got caught… trying!” — Majora Carter


I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas; I’m frightened of the old ones — John Cage


If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed — Chinese Proverb


To change the person, change the environment — Buckminster Fuller


The best way to learn and understand a system is to change it. — Russell Ackoff and Jamshid Gharajedaghi


I can understand why people want more of a good thing. What I don’t get is that we seem conditioned to want more of the same whether it’s any good or not

— Roxanne Ward


We live in two worlds— perceptions of experience alongside conceptions of understanding— both based on knowledge and assumptions that may be wrong — Richard Gregory


The world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done this far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level at which we created them.

— Carl Jung and Albert Einstein (variously attributed)


Our ‘Age of Anxiety’ is in great part the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools, with yesterday’s concepts — Marshall McLuhan


The plan is nothing; the planning is everything — Dwight D. Eisenhower


You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape — Woodrow Wilson


We are searching for some kind of harmony between two intangibles: a form which we have not yet designed and a context which we cannot properly describe

— Christopher Alexander


Any medium presents a figure whose ground is always hidden or subliminal — Marshall McLuhan


It is not easy to arrive at a conception of a whole which is constructed from parts belonging to different dimensions… we lack the means of discussing in its constituent parts an image which possesses simultaneously a number of these — Paul Klee


Design is something far more pervasive and profound then is generally recognized

Designing is fundamental to being human: we deliberate, plan and scheme in ways which prefigure our actions and makings.

Hence we experience Heidegger’s ‘hermeneutic circle’ and Maturana & Varela’s ‘autopoieses’: Reflexively, we design our world, while our world acts back on us and designs us — Anne-Marie Willis (paraphrased)


A life unexamined isn’t worth living. — Plato


A life unlived isn’t worth examining. — Michael Lissack


There’s no sense being exact about something if you don’t even know what you’re talking about — John von Neumann


Just the other day, scientists discovered they’ve had some basic things completely wrong. For 300 years they said the world was really simple beneath its complicated surface. Now they find out it’s the other way round. It turns out, we should have been judging by appearances all along. Everything is changing constantly — Kevin McMahon


I believe we are leaving one cultural and technological age [the machine age of analysis] and are entering another [the systems age of synthesis], and that we are in an early stage of changes in our conception of the world and in our way of thinking about it — Russell Ackoff


Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest of all the arts — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Tryin’ to make it real— But compared to what? — Les McCann


You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result — Mahatma Gandhi


Every significant step in every field is taken by an individual who has freed himself from a way of thinking held by associates and friends who may be more intelligent, better educated and better disciplined… but who have not mastered the art of the fresh, clean look at old knowledge. — Edwin Land


Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away — Philip K. Dick


It can be very dangerous to see things from someone else’s point of view without the proper training — Douglas Adams


In this world, there are many heads, but in each head there is a different world — Ida Jo Moreno


The nature of knowledge:

• We accumulate ‘data’ through experience

• We negotiate shared understanding by exchanging ‘data’

• ‘Information’ – figure plus ground – appears when our data is in sync with the social and natural environment of our experience

— Arnold Wytenburg


I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be — Isaac Asimov


The Process of Knowing: 1. I observe my experience of my actions, consciously and

unconsciously 2. I select data from what I observe 3. I add meanings, both cultural and personal 4. I make assumptions based on the meanings I add 5. I draw conclusions 6. I adopt beliefs about the world 7. I take actions based on my beliefs 8. Repeat

…and each time this happens my observations and the data I select change based on my revised beliefs — Arnold Wytenburg (paraphrased)


Knowledge is a matter of testing assumptions against reality — Arnold Wytenburg


Those who think ‘Science is Measurement’ should search Darwin’s works for numbers and equations — David Hunter Hubel


The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind — Charles Babbage


The scientist is a practical man and his are practical aims. He does not seek the ultimate but the proximate. He does not speak of the last analysis but rather of the next approximation — Gilbert Newton Lewis


Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world — Albert Einstein


I cannot tell you the truth. I can only show you what I see — Arnold Wytenburg


Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact and event, a process: the process namely of verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation — William James


Where machine-based processing is inherently derived from the assumption that ‘a fact is a fact is a fact,’ human understanding is based on the ambiguous notion that nothing is a fact until so deemed. — Arnold Wytenburg


The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. If we listen to ourselves honestly we shall often find we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.

— William Trotter


Tomorrows Child Without a name; an unseen face and knowing not your time nor place Tomorrow’s Child, though yet unborn, I met you first last Tuesday morn.

A wise friend introduced us two, and through his sobering point of view I saw a day that you would see; a day for you, but not for me.

Knowing you has changed my thinking, for I never had an inkling That perhaps the things I do might someday, somehow, threaten you.

Tomorrow’s Child, my daughter-son I’m afraid I’ve just begun To think of you and of your good, Though always having known I should.

Begin I will to weigh the cost of what I squander; what is lost

If ever I forget that you will someday come to live here too.

— Thomas Glenn


All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident — Arnold Schopenhauer


I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future — Ibsen


Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment… sense of quality in what you do, even the most simple action — Eckhart Tolle


It’s what you do next that counts — Jamie Reagan, repeating advice from his Grandfather, from the TV Series “BlueBloods”


In telling stories, we obey certain principles and laws of drama and melodrama, of crisis and resolution, of impact and silence. We generate an energy through our stories that helps to define who we are and where we are going. We are all creatures of narrative, and these narratives are important to us even if they are tragic narratives. It certainly has been my observation for many years that individuals would much rather have a tragic narrative than no narrative at all, and they will cling to suffering in order to discover the material for such a narrative

— David Spangler


PROFOUND CONTRADICTION # 92012-990: How, in a dominant/hegemonic society whose ‘institutional’ interest is the maintenance of things as they are and, at best, incremental change, do we teach for the dissent that is necessary to save the planet, if not our souls?


All models are wrong, but some are useful — George Box


Don’t confuse the map with the territory — Daniel Kim


Resilient sustainability: the possibility that human and other life will flourish on this planet, forever — John Ehrenfeld


Unless you can answer four questions about sustainability, you don’t have a clue: 1. What do you want to sustain? 2. For whom? 3. For how long? 4. How much will it cost? — Timothy Allen, Joseph Tainter,

Thomas Hoekstra (paraphrased)


When you go to an expert, the first answer to your question is always: ‘Well, yes, it’s a good question; but I’m afraid it’s a lot more complicated than that…’ — Jack Cohen


It is our responsibility not to give the answer today as to what it is all about, to drive everybody down in that direction and say, “This is a solution to all,” because we will be chained then to the limits of our present imagination… Whereas if we always leave some room for doubt, some room for discussion… then this difficulty will not arise.

— Chris Bates


At the macro level there are only three “simple” avenues (and combinations) available for management action to achieve sustainability: 1. Simplify to level commensurate with available

energy. 2. Find more energy to subsidize increasing

elaboration. 3. Use energy supplies as efficiently and effectively

as possible. — Timothy Allen, Joseph Tainter, Thomas

Hoekstra (paraphrased)


Sustainability is an active condition requiring choice, not a passive consequence of doing less — Timothy Allen,

Joseph Tainter, Thomas Hoekstra


Sustainability is the interplay between a continuously evolving state of nature and a continuously changing state of mind, not a static ecological condition; hence sustainability is only assessable historically. — Timothy Allen, Joseph Tainter, Thomas Hoekstra (paraphrased)


The definition of sustainability must come from the values of the observer, it can’t come from the “material world”; sustainability is not a “natural law” — Timothy Allen, Joseph Tainter,

Thomas Hoekstra


PROFOUND CONTRADICTION #72891-324 How, as products of educational systems that have, for the most part, taught us how to regulate, within ‘common sense’ norms our bodies, our sexuality, our habits, do we learn dissent?


Recipe for Common Sense Ingredients – A dash of good sense – Three dollops of bad sense – Nonsense – The sense of those few who

own and control the greater share of the material resources of our world

Method: – Place in blender – Hit frappe Optional Ingredients: – add bitter pill – add lots and lots of sugar

(cane sugar fruits or corn syrup recommended, fruits of oppression an acceptable substitute)

Common Sense is neither good nor bad – it is common.

Which is to say that it is hegemonic


The things we want to sustain have only the values we assign to them, which are (hence) transient, variable and mutable

— Timothy Allen, Joseph Tainter, Thomas Hoekstra


Unsustainable practices can sometimes improve people’s well-being — Timothy Allen,



Part of the dilemma of sustainability is that intelligent and well-meaning people can review indicators of sustainability and reach quite opposite conclusions about our future. Moreover, they could all be correct — Timothy Allen, Joseph Tainter,

Thomas Hoekstra


The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees. — Arthur Schopenhauer


Our urgent need is to produce knowledge (of what constitutes sustainability) more rapidly than the growth of unsustainable complexity — Timothy Allen,



Silence Descends At last the wind dies Now a stillness calms the trees Now silence descends (Japanese poet and engineer - 1990-2043)

Was the early 21sst century’s 'information age’ a dark age? Not altogether. Over its course the women and men of the planet became far more known to one another than ever before-the phrase "global village" originated then-and far more learned in the symbiotic nature of their relationships. They reached levels of education and mental acuity that were virtually unthinkable to their predecessors. They had all the ingenuity and inspiration that had built up in the thousands of years before them to draw on. And, for good or ill, let them claim one superlative for themselves: never before or since has the human race been as informed as it was throughout their span. The Age of Information is aptly named. But how slight an honour that now stands! What small triumph merely to be informed, to tell and be told flimsy little scraps of truth in steady, stuporous gibberish! Dazzled by and dependent upon their inventions, the citizens of Information were blind and deaf to the invisible, wordless realities in their midst. It was not just their amusements that were illusory and escapist-this they admitted to themselves-but so were their solemnities; they were equally trifling, equally marginal to permanent questions of spirit and cosmos. Not a dark age, then, yet dim and lusterless, noisy with echoes of echoes, flickered with shadows of shadows of shadows. Was it a failure? Time does not judge this way, does not see itself as glibly right or wrong. The Information Age is better described as the gloom before the morning, as a requisite bridge, into a firmer future. Its final centuries give it a taint of doom and error, but we might more charitably regard it as a natural cycle of growth and decay. The worst we could do, looking back from the year 2500, would be to repeat its mistakes and boast of some lasting perfection, to presume ourselves and our ways to be the apex of civilization forever-as the people of the Information Age did. They thought they had achieved the crowning destiny of the world, that they had harnessed eternity. They had not. They had only begun to prepare for the coming stillness, to be not to have, to love and to withdraw themselves into the roaring, receding distance.

— George Case


To be sustainable is clearly a delicate business. Furthermore, although none of the elements of sustainability (monitoring, predicting and problem solving) can be left out, even undertaking them all does not guarantee success — Timothy Allen, Joseph Tainter,

Thomas Hoekstra


While social justice is part of sustainability, and that democratic systems appear to be the best way of achieving that, it is irresponsible to allow populist demands to destroy the means of production (i.e. the eco-systems within the biosphere) — Timothy Allen, Joseph Tainter,

Thomas Hoekstra


Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity we shall harness the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin


Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end — Immanuel Kant


In a world of pragmatic thinking, my understanding of the same world that both of us inhabit is likely to be different from yours because you and I have led historically different lives. This realization is important as a fundamental context of love and acceptance, because, as long as people are acting and thinking authentically, no one can own an absolutely “true” belief about the world or claim to have the one “right” way to act

— John Ehrenfeld


To be truly authentic, to realize the potential of flourishing, we need a shift from a view of ourselves first from one of Having to one of Being and second from one of Needing to one of Caring. This involves breaking addictions that have been put in place by the existing modern culture and replacing them with an adjusted set of values, beliefs and behaviours, that fulfil the broken promises that have left people unsatisfied.

— John Ehrenfeld


Pragmatic beliefs on which to act (truths) arise during a continuous inquiry by the community of the concerned (stakeholders). Many business leaders have a badly mistaken idea that being pragmatic is doing what ever works for them as the holder of all that is important to a company. But that is not true; an entire community of interests is essential to any inquiry that is likely to produce useful results.

— John Ehrenfeld


The first thing I need to change is me, in order to change the world. So I need to listen to what other people are saying; to listen to how I feel; to understand my own limits and beliefs and look in the mirror to see all of the wrinkles and the warts. First I change myself. And while I do this, I connect myself with all the other selves with whom I interact, through listening, reflecting, learning, understanding, and sharing. And then we change together. — Richard Charles (“Doc”) Holloway


• Without awareness, people have only a poor sense of a change

• Without perspective, people are unable to make good decisions in the face of change

• Without insight, people can’t share their views and experiences with change

• Without sufficient well-being (integrity, influence, competence, impartiality and meaning), people can’t care for each other and together successfully adopt a change

— Arnold Wyntenburg & Merlina Missimer (Freely adapted from)


Do not dance to the music, just dance the music

workshop arrival reflection--thought provoking quotes about strong sustainability

Technology

unchangeable john

unchangeable certainty

good thing

yesterdays tools

human experience

richard feynman7

wrong richard gregory

old ones john cage10