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Purposeful Young Professionals

Sustainability schmustainability

What's in a name?
I've been banging on about sustainability for about 5 years now. Even so, I've always been allergic to the word. It never felt quite right.

And by that, I literally mean that it had an uncomfortable feeling associated with it. My perspective on this is that words carry intention, and each intention has a specific energy attached to it. This energy is either an energy that makes us open up to it or contract.

Say to yourself the word "hate". And now, say "love". Contemplate them, and notice whether you can feel anything different in your body. Is there any sense of opening or contraction?

When I reflect on these words, I get a different physical sensation in my belly. How about you? That's our belly brain we are feeling. Try a few different other words.

When you utter 'Sustainability' to yourself, what do you feel? For some time I noticed that I felt contracted, and when I thought about it further, it fell short of describing the wonder and beauty that I have in mind which in every way surpasses the anthropological world that we created thus far. It was about preserving 'the current state', which felt static, rather than opening up to 'what could be'; the future, the potential.

So it turns out, the words we use really matter. And the energy that words have is powerful and important. That's why I think it has come time to banish a whole bunch of words that are not serving us. For the chop (in my opinion!) are 'green', 'eco' and 'sustainability'. I'm even feeling pretty sketchy about the term 'climate change'. Which if we are invoking negative energy with this word, we better be careful - because we've been using it a hellava lot over the past decade!

The term "regeneration" popped up on my horizon a couple of years ago, and this certainly generated better 'feelings' in my belly brain, but it also raised feelings of 'lack' or maybe a sense of 'barrenness'. This is because every word has a "shadow". When one word is uttered, its companion "opposite" word is also presenced. I also noticed that I only was able to associate it with the environment and was unable to relate it to human activity.

A few years ago, I wrote an article for World Sweet World called Sustainability, Schmustainability. It was at that time that I planted a seed for a new term. Its taken all this time for the fruit to ripen and over the weekend, I plucked a juicy well formed and nutritious word that gives me all that I need to help guide my action as a citizen and social innovator:

'Thrivability'.

It really does it for me. I can see it applied to all aspects of society - from business to health, from education through to ecology. I could imagine using it when talking to climate skeptics, politicians or greedy businessmen, and I could imagine using it and knowing that it captures and articulated what is deep in my heart abou the world that I am striving to bring about. I also think its got legs - it is a term I hold in my heart and know that it will serve me for a lifetime.

If you like it, take it and use it. I'd be interested to hear how it comes across to you and to the people you use it with in your conversations.

Tags: Sustainability, belly, brain, change, climate, schmustainability, thriveability

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Comment by Carl Chenery on December 22, 2009 at 22:45: I'll chip in...
First off, the words are signposts pointing in a direction. I agree words matter, and I think the distinction you are making is pointing to something beyond sustainability.

What I like about thrivability is the buoyant energy it has as a word. It points in the direction of things getting better which is important for us to aim for.

Bill Reed and many others talk about Sustainability as 100% less bad. Restoration and ReGeneration sit beyond this with a shift from fragmented to whole systems thinking.
Trajectory of Env Responsible Design.tiff
(from Bill Reed and his team)

Interesting your noticing on the word regeneration Megan. I think the point that people don't see/experience themselves as part of nature/the 'environment', that we/nature are separate, is 'the problem', or is what would result in the consequences we are seeing in our 'environment'.
Thrivability I think captures that connectedness in the word itself- things cannot thrive on their own, they have to be part of a thriving system.

I am curious about the notion of adding 'green', 'eco', or 'sustainable' (instinctual repulsion) as a prefix to words. I DO think this is useful for the point of distinguishing from the status quo, but I think when we do that there is a risk that it puts it on the sideline, as though it should not be ALL that we are doing. It feels quite different to do the opposite and put 'unsustainable' in front of all things in the status quo- unsustainable by definition meaning that it will not last. At least this clears the plate to be creative about what comes next.

Using the 'green', 'eco' and 'sustainable' as prefixes I see as also coming from and perpetuating fragmented thinking (as seen below the line in Reed's diagram above). Sustainability or beyond it is not about 'things', it is about 'relationships'.
Would you use the language of 'green' for a product that goes back as food to soil or industry? (to me that would be a 'good' product)
Can a product or project by itself be regenerative? (not by itself but in relationship with the rest of the system)

Its probably important to note that some/many people aren't at 'sustainability' yet, and where the (bicycle biological nutrient tyre) rubber hits the road- using language like 'green jobs for all'- the notion of green jobs strong enough to lift people out of poverty, will cross more bridges than using language that is less explicit (particularly in a time of widening injustice and ecological degradation.)

In terms of abundance- I think this also has a shadow- often is is the flipside of scarcity- its more than we need. Instead of abundance, what about sufficiency... enough. In our culture, having enough, being enough is a revolutionary concept. Abundance can come from there.

We might feel differently about the word sustainability if it hadn't been misused from its original intentions. Paul Hawken names this in his talk The End of Sustainability talking about the usurption of that term for more efficient (still destructive) behaviour.

The main brunt of my choosing not to use the word 'sustainable' or 'sustainability' anymore (or only in reference to it being a 'thin line'- will post more on this later) a couple of years ago- also in 2007, was feeling that there was something else, and also not wanting to conspire with people that the kind of future I was thinking and dreaming about could come about by being more efficient at what we are presently doing, which 'sustainability' often is.

If humans don't 'live in the world', but 'live in their conversation about the world', anything we can do to shift the conversation is a contribution.

Comment by Caroline Ward on December 17, 2009 at 10:52: i'm definitely pro abundance. i don't believe that sustainability exists, and if it did it would probably be beige and a bit like a sensible pair of ortho shoes that you don't want anyone to know that you own.

Comment by Nurture Girl on December 12, 2009 at 3:46: Hi Megan! Thanks for your lovely post. I totally agree. Someone mentioned the world thrivability to me in 2007, and I have been questing after it ever since because it resonated so deeply. See thrivability.wordpress.com for some of my explorations on it. We are working to spread the meme at thrivable.org. Let me know how it resonates in your circles. Like you, I think the term should be promulgated. Here is my interview on Worldchanging about it: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010455.html

Last night I had a lovely conversation with MetroHippie (Joshua Foss). He is headed to New Zealand this month. He is a big thrivability advocate... if you like, I can try to connect you.

Comment by Annabel McAleer on December 11, 2009 at 10:30: I'm also feeling fed up with 'green', 'eco' and 'sustainability'. It is boring to use the same words over and over again! I try and use words without baggage, like 'smart' and 'forward-thinking' but sometimes they don't fit the context. I love 'thrive' as a word but my editor belly feels a bit grammar-icky at 'thrivability' (or should it be spelled 'thriveability'?). It would be great to use a word that already exists ... but I've been wracking my brain for two years now and still haven't come up with one!

Comment by Jay Robinson on December 10, 2009 at 21:35: Hi, Megan,
May you have life, and have life abundantly.

Thrivability does it for me, the same way abundantly does.

Why live our lives in limitation, when there is so much good energy to share. Our bodies/spirits are not repositories of fossilized energy like petroleum but rather rays of abundant energy like the sun.

good on ya,
Jay