Socially Sustainable

Socially Sustainable

After turning ideas over for years now related to our culture and its accelerating fragmentation, I finally decided to write a blog about social sustainability. Writing about these ideas, with the hope of connecting with like-minded others, is a way for me to make sense of things – as well as a way for me to share the concepts and practices I’ve developed and gathered.

I imagine it would help to put this writing within a larger context if I tell you a bit about myself. I come from a large, extended family, and am of predominantly Italian heritage on both sides. We all know that the Italian culture reveres the family, that they are often emotional, and usually physically affectionate and demonstrative. My family fit this stereotype. Having a large family was central to my life growing up, and this influence gave me a taste of the close family and community bonds I long for. I have been imbued with a kind of nostalgia, which I have had to make sense of given the greater context of our cultural evolution and development. You should know where I am coming from personally – as it is the personal resonating with the cultural that has shaped my thinking, and has pulled me here.

Being raised in the Bay Area has been another influence. San Francisco and Berkeley were leaders of progressive thought when I was growing up in the seventies and eighties, as they continue to be today. Early on I was sensitized to the issues of equal rights, diversity, multiculturalism, and feminism. And while I greatly value these human rights issues and all that they have done for those of us who had been marginalized or oppressed, at one point I also began to notice the way that postmodernism seemed to take over completely. That is, that pluralistic relativism – the belief that everything is relative, that nothing or no way of being is better than anything else, began to dominate our thinking and thus the way we lived. A person didn’t have to really commit to anything or anyone anymore, because there were no more rules. No one could say what was right or what was wrong. It became all about the individual, the ego really, the me generation. I watched as families fell apart, including my own. I was extremely tolerant for a long while. After all, weren’t we living in enlightened, progressive times?

It was only several years ago that I began questioning this postmodern takeover. I started to long for my family to be closer, for more community. I watched as people became more isolated, and seemed to feel a lack of connection and meaning to something greater than themselves.

I began to think in terms of sustainability, and asked myself, is the way we are living today socially sustainable?

You may want to read some of the essays in the right column to gain a clearer understanding of what I mean by socially sustainable. But for now, I will just give a brief description. Social sustainability, like environmental sustainability strives to take future generations into consideration, and to live with the awareness that our actions make an impact on others and the world at large.

When we practice environmental sustainability, we act in accord with what is healthy for the earth as a whole. We let our knowledge in science and nature guide our actions. When we practice social sustainability, we act in accord with what is healthy for humanity.

There are a multitude of problems related to our lack of social sustainability. Here’s a paragraph by Robert D. Putnam from his book Bowling Alone, describing what he calls our growing social-capital deficit:

Television, two-career families, suburban sprawl, generational changes in values- -these and other changes in American society have meant that fewer and fewer of us find that the League of Women Voters, or the United Way, or the Shriners, or the monthly bridge club, or even a Sunday picnic with friends fits the way we have come to live. Our growing social-capital deficit threatens educational performance, safe neighborhoods, equitable tax collection, democratic responsiveness, everyday honesty, and even our health and happiness.

In contrast, a socially sustainable lifestyle would include, but not be limited to, some of the following basic elements:

~Flexible work schedules so that parents have time to bond with their children

~Quality & affordable childcare (preferably subsidized)

~Parents who receive support from extended family & community (and government)

~Ideally, one parent has the option to stay home, to ensure secure attachment & family balance

~Partners who don’t divorce if it wouldn’t be socially or financially sustainable for the whole system (unless there is severe conflict or abuse)

~People who make decisions with the whole in mind; long-term social sustainability

If you would like to give more consideration to these ideas, and start to explore how you might create a more socially sustainable life, the following practices and questions will get you on your way:

Practices and Questions

1. The main practice is to begin to question…and to look at the world through the lens of social sustainability.

Ask yourself – is this socially sustainable? If not, how can it be?

2. Are there ways you can alter your priorities or values to increase the social sustainability in your life?

What are they?

3. Is there anything keeping you from making these changes? Do you have beliefs that are in conflict with any potential changes?

4. Practice being aware in the moment with your relationships. When a conflict arises with your partner, child or friend – take a step back and try to get perspective. What feelings are being triggered? Can you pause and breathe before you react?

Then practice coming back to the relationship, to what is best for the whole – to remembering the importance of social sustainability.

5. Meditation and mindfulness practice is a wonderful way to become more aware and to exercise stepping back from your conflicts, and taking a larger perspective.

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6. Practices continue to deepen as you explore more parts of yourself, your relationships, and the level of social sustainability in your life.