The Right Way to Flourish

When is organic food not organic? When it’s labeled “organic.” The Sunday NY Times (7/8/12) ran a long [article](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/business/organic-food-purists-worry-about-big-companies-influence.html?pagewanted=all) about the creeping takeover of the organic food producers and processors by Big Food. > The fact is, organic food has become a wildly lucrative business for Big Food and a premium-price-means-premium-profit section of the grocery store. The industry’s image — contented cows grazing on the green hills of family-owned farms — is mostly pure fantasy. Or rather, pure marketing. Big Food, it turns out, has spawned what might be called Big Organic. > Bear Naked, Wholesome & Hearty, Kashi: all… Read More

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Of many similar columns about the recent spate of bad news coming from extreme weather events, I found this [one](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/the-fires-this-time/) by Timothy Egan highly evocative. > Nature makes a mockery of our vanity. We live in flood and fire zones, nurture stately oaks and take shade under pines holding the best air of the Rocky Mountains. We plant villas next to sandstone spires called the Garden of the Gods, and McMansions in Virginia stocked with people who have the world at their fingertips. . . Summer is barely two weeks old and two-thirds of the country is in the grip… Read More

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have been 300 years old, just a week before today, the 4th of July. Terry Eagleton, writing in the Guardian, ponders how Rousseau might feel about Europe today. Eagleton is a British intellectual best know for his theories of literary criticism. His short remarks about Rousseau are equally germane to the US, especially coming so close to our Independence Day. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the [column](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/27/rousseau-our-selfish-age-philosopher?CMP=twt_gu). > What would this giant of Geneva have thought of Europe 300 years on from his birth? He would no doubt have been appalled by the drastic shrinking… Read More

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The conjoining of both/and is a powerful linguistic device well matched to the complexity and richness of the world. It is the antithesis of absolute statements about what is right and wrong. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we are torn between two possibilities and realize that both contain truth. We may still have to choose between the two, but act with a sense of the legitimacy of the other. Both/and or yin/yang recognize that two things or statements that appear to be contradictory may both be true. In any positivist or dogmatic system of truths, this cannot be.… Read More

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Always on the lookout for stuff showing the dark side of technology, I found good example in the June 2012 issue of The Atlantic. Andrew Keen covered a new class of mobile device apps, as the headline says, “New “social discovery” apps try to engineer chance encounters. Could they spoil true serendipity?” Describing a scene in a bar, Keen writes, >After squeezing in at the bar, we slapped down our iPhones, like digital gunslingers. But as we caught up, I was distracted by a continual buzzing from her phone, which vibrated so relentlessly that it seemed to have a mind… Read More

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This week has been very exciting for me. The first draft of the book Andy Hoffman and I have been writing was sent to the publisher for their comments. The process has been the mirror image of the preparation of my first book, Sustainability by Design.That one took abut 5 years from start to finish. This one has taken less than a year from idea to first draft. Andy had the idea to expand a keynote presentation we did together at MIT to a book. We presented our stuff as a Q and A with Andy prompting me to respond.… Read More

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“I’ve got mine and you can’t take it away from me, even if I got it by cheating, lying, and unfair (but legal) practices.” This seems to be the cry behind so much of what I read these days. One side of the US political campaign springs from this at the roots, even as the campaign tries hard to find other words. The Rio+20 conference starting just a few days ago, will, I believe, end up with the wealthy nations shrugging their collective shoulders at the plaints of the poor ones with all kinds of excuses for inaction or at… Read More

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Sorry to my regulars for my absence. I have been moving about for the last week. The big event was a grandson’s graduation from high school. He is going to follow his older brother to Harvard. Quite an accomplishment. Today, I am going to talk about Rio and what this gathering could be. There is a lot of chatter on the Web about degrowth and low or no growth economic policies. Some is timed, I believe, to the proceedings in Rio, but not necessarily. An [op-ed piece](http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=5690DE5A-B033-11E1-AB8D-002128049AD6) in the Wall Street Journal railed against “growth economics.” Nothing surprising here except… Read More

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I often write about the systemic character of sustainability-as-flourishing, but it’s rare to read an article that presents this idea in stark, quantitative terms. [Writing](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/are-we-in-the-midst-of-a-sixth-mass-extinction.html?_r=1&hp) in the New York Times, Richard Pearson warns us about the dangers of accelerated species extinction. > NEARLY 20,000 species of animals and plants around the globe are considered high risks for extinction in the wild. That’s according to the most authoritative compilation of living things at risk — the so-called [Red List](http://www.iucnredlist.org/) maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. > > This should keep us awake at night. If we are concerned… Read More

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Again, David Brooks got me thinking. Today he [writes](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/opinion/brooks-the-segmentation-century.html?hp) about “The Segmentation Century,” his way of describing the failure of national and international cultural convergence. > In 1949, Reinhold Niebuhr published a book called “Faith and History.” Niebuhr noticed a secular religion that was especially strong in the years after World War II. It was the faith that historical forces were gradually bringing about “the unification of mankind. . . Old nationalisms would fade away, many people believed. Transportation and communications technologies would unite people. Values would converge. . . Unfortunately, this moral, cultural and political convergence never happened. In… Read More

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