Fortunately for us, there are a few foresighted individuals that are already planning and building living systems based on ecological strategy. For instance, Living Systems breaks their plan down into five concepts and offers their information to all via the website. Examining their ideas for sustainable living, we see the same composition as an ecosystem.
- Mutually empowering communication skills – networks. Conflict is necessary in order for human beings to learn, grow, and advance; but it must be handled delicately and intelligently. It then becomes an asset rather than a liability because it is based on mutual responsibility. Each person searches for a way that the society can benefit from.
- Permaculture/biodynamics – nested systems. A garden is the foremost environment to nurture both humanity and the planet: living systems within living systems.
- Eco-villages/Eco-cities – development. With a super efficient infrastructure, mutually empowering communication skills, and a social environment, where we know most of the people we deal with regularly, the community is set up as a meta-organism ( in the place of a microorganism).
- Environmentally beneficial manufacturing – dynamic balance. Currently, our manufacturing technology is environmentally damaging and depletes our non-renewable resources. Buckminster Fuller’s idea of a mobile factory is only one of many new models being explored.
- Internal economies – cycles and flows. With our own economy, we can control what is considered valuable, such as mutually empowering communication skills. By holding this skill in high esteem, it could become enormously useful and therefore more valuable. Combining this with the Local Exchange and Trading System (LETS) would create an internal economy, which could be easily exchanged for local currency, until such time as currency exchange is no longer required.
The benefits of clean air and water, renewable fuel sources, and fresh food will be immediately felt by a population that is weary of fighting to maintain a meager existence. Because eco-living environments are not conducive to the practice of using others for personal gain, huge income disparity will become obsolete. By investing our time and effort to create such systems, we will assure a level playing field for all and encourage sustainable, universal, and reasonable prosperity.
As as result, much of the animosity that pervades society today will disappear, and a sense of mutual responsibility and a concern for the whole will appear in its place. We can rest and recuperate in the loving boughs of Mother Nature that will no longer wreak havoc across the land. ‘I’ has to be replaced by ‘we,’ and the entire system will feel less stress. This will allow human nature and Mother Nature to evolve harmoniously together.
After all, mankind’s ultimate goal is to reach its highest internal potential, and as we study and learn to navigate an integrated world, we must cooperate with the laws of nature.
If we do not, we will have to face undesirable consequences. Mother Nature cannot be fooled; nor can it be compromised a compromise with her. Inevitably, the truth will be unveiled in cooperation with her laws. Mankind must adjust. Then, our great-great-grandchildren will look back and proudly say, “Our ancestors were intelligent enough to transform the world”.