From growth to resilience: is this the world’s future?

OK, I’ll own up. I didn’t go to the Making Rights Real conference in Birmingham yesterday. I’ve all sorts of excuses I won’t burden you with, but it did give me a clear day at my desk to try and sink some of the jobs that have been awaiting my attention. Sadly my to-do list has the kind of growth rate that would put China’s economy amongst the also-rans. But never mind. I’m sneaking a few moments to write here.

Growth

And talking about growth (stay with me, you’ll see the link in a moment), I’ve now finished Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down (as reviewed in this previous post).

Homer-Dixon produces evidence to show that the world’s ecological, environmental, energy and social systems are facing synchronous collapse. Why? Because of our addiction to economic growth. We are stressing the environment and all our other systems to breaking point in the name of growth. But never mind. Growth is the god we worship.

We’ve created a complex and closely coupled high energy world. But it isn’t sustainable:

The growth phase we’re in may seem like a natural and permanent state of affairs - and our world’s rising complexity, connectedness, efficiency, and regulation may seem relentless and unstoppable - but ultimately it isn’t sustainable. (p. 253)

Energy costs will rise inexorably. We’ll be forced to reduce our use of energy, so our society will inevitably become less complex (it takes energy to create complexity). We’ll travel less, says Homer-Dixon, and we won’t travel and trade over such long distances. The world won’t go on becoming “flatter”, with fewer barriers to economic integration. Economic and political power will go to parts of the world with good access to energy.

Eventually those of us in rich countries will have to change many things in our societies and daily lives - not just the machines we use to produce and consume energy but also the work we do, our entertainment and leisure activities, how much we travel in cars and airplanes, our financial systems, the design of our cities, and the ways we produce our food (because our current agricultural practices consume a huge amount of energy).(p. 253)

Resilience

So what takes the place of growth?

A prudent way to cope with invisible but inevitable dangers is to … build resilience into all systems critical to our well-being. A resilient system can absorb large disturbances without changing its fundamental nature. (p. 283)

Roman and Victorian engineers, not knowing how their materials would take the forces operating on them, often “over-engineered” their bridges rather than try to make them more efficient by using less rock, brick, iron and so on. For those engineers there were too many unknown unknowns, things they didn’t know they didn’t know. Structures that were built too efficiently might be liable to sudden and unpredictable collapse.

The same is true, argues Thomas Homer-Dixon, in our complex world.

We should give up some of our obsession with efficiency in favour of more resilience. In this way, we will be better able to prevent foreshocks (like the credit crunch resulting from the subprime mortgage crisis in the US) from triggering synchronous failure of all our systems.

In other words, we can, if we let go of our prejudices and presuppositions about how the world “is supposed to be”, learn to think prospectively, openly, about other futures for our world. What Homer-Dixon refers to as “the prospective mind”…

…knows that scientific knowledge is the best tool to determine the boundary between plausible and implausible futures. But precise prediction is impossible…

Values

We also have to talk about values. Homer-Dixon distinguishes three kinds of values:

1. Utilitarian values - Homer-Dixon thinks of these as simple likes and dislikes.
2. Moral values - those concerning fairness and justice.
3. Existential values - those values that give our lives meaning - we might even call themspiritual values

We don’t really like talking about moral and existential values, so we try to satisfy our need for meaning by acquiring more and more stuff.

Reduced to walking appetites, we lose resilience. We risk becoming hollow people with no character, substance, or core - like eggshells that can be shattered or crushed with one sharp shock. (p. 301)

So whose interests do our current values serve?

Our current values serve the interests of today’s political and economic elites, and so are aggressively defended by these elites. Growth, even in already obscenely rich societies, is sacrosanct. This central value won’t really change until it’s discredited by some kind of major shock, which probably means some kind of system breakdown. Then alternative values that are centered on the idea of resilience might flower, not just at the fringes of our societies but also at their core.

What might values of resilience promote? Homer-Dixon suggests:

• Smaller populations that tread lightly on nature.
• Decentralized communities
• Less complex and fast-paced lifestyles.
• Broader, fairer and more vigorous democracy.

And only through much broader and deeper democratic practice will humankind likely develop the expansive “moral commonwealth” essential to our collective survival.

We’re one we

Here we come to the very core transformation that we all need to undergo. And this is absolutely the Baha’i solution:

Only when we all grasp that we’re in one boat together - that together we’re one we with an indivisible fate - will we be serious about making the concessions to each other that are essential if we’re to address global challenges like climate change and energy scarcity. (p. 306)

I realize that this post has gone on much longer than I had intended and that the only person left reading it is me, but I do want to conclude by quoting at some length from an admirable document published in 2005 by the Baha’i World Centre, One Common Faith, pages 42-43:

The power through which these goals will be progressively realized is that of unity. Although to Bahá’ís the most obvious of truths, its implications for the current crisis of civilization appear to escape most contemporary discourse. Few will disagree that the universal disease sapping the health of the body of humankind is that of disunity. Its manifestations everywhere cripple political will, debilitate the collective urge to change, and poison national and religious relationships….

Unity is a condition of the human spirit. Education can support and enhance it, as can legislation, but they can do so only once it emerges and has established itself as a compelling force in social life. A global intelligentsia, its prescriptions largely shaped by materialistic misconceptions of reality, clings tenaciously to the hope that imaginative social engineering, supported by political compromise, may indefinitely postpone the potential disasters that few deny loom over humanity’s future…. As unity is the remedy for the world’s ills, its one certain source lies in the restoration of religion’s influence in human affairs. The laws and principles revealed by God, in this day, Baha’u'llah declares, “are the most potent instruments and the surest of all means for the dawning of the light of unity amongst men.” (Tablets of Baha’u'llah, page 129.) “Whatsoever is raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its structure.” (Baha’u'llah, quoted in Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u'llah, pages 202-203.)

Central to Baha’u'llah’s mission, therefore, has been the creation of a global community that would reflect the oneness of humankind. The ultimate testimony that the Baha’i community can summon in vindication of His mission is the example of unity that His teachings have produced.

The Baha’i solution goes far further than Homer-Dixon’s. We’re not just in the business of “making concessions” to others. We’re in the business of working together with others to build a radically new kind of civilization based on explicit existential and moral values and bringing with it explicit means to enable everyone to engage fully and equally in the shaping of all our futures. There will be breakdown. Breakdown is part of the way the world works and allows new growth to take place. Humankind has a future, a future based on unity in diversity, moderation and justice. It will be a future of reasonable prosperity for all. Our descendants will look back at the growth mania of the capitalist era and shake their heads, just as we shake our heads over the European wars of religion of the 16th century.

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