ARE YOU AFRAID?

That would be a fairly reasonable and normal response to the COVID-19 threat today.

It is also a very common response to some of the other huge life-threatening environmental challenges that we are facing including: climate change, pollution of our air, waters, seas and food supplies, loss or extinction of thousands of species that we depend on like bees and fish stocks.

But the thing about allowing fear to dominate your thoughts is that it can freeze the mind and set the body into a survivalist ‘fight or flight’ mode. Unfortunately, we cannot stand up and fight COVID-19 nor the other environmental threats. Neither can we take flight to run away from them. So a fear-based response can make you feel helpless and hopeless in the face of danger which often leads to anger and blame (both are typical responses to fear) which does not help us to effectively deal with the threats.

But telling someone ‘don’t be afraid’ when they are actually in peril – is just plain dumb. It does not help!

And recommending a ‘gung-ho’ big brave attitude without thinking – is equally not smart!

Happily, there is a better way to deal with fear.

To be able to intelligently and effectively deal with a dangerous situation, you can override the fear emotion by introducing an even more powerful emotion.

There are two emotions I know of that are more powerful than fear.

LOVE is one – there are millions of cases where people have overcome their fear and done incredible things in the face of great danger – to save the life of a loved one.

DESIRE is another – there are equally many cases where people have done the most amazing things and succeeded despite all odds against them because they wanted something so passionately that they are willing to feel the fear but still do what is needed to achieve their heart’s desire. Like a one-legged, blind person skiing down a mountainside or a poverty-stricken, suppressed, unarmed community overcoming the might of a powerful, wealthy and highly armed immoral regime. Remember that? And Martin Luther King was saying ‘I have a dream’ at a time when everyone else was suppressed by fear… So the fact is that a powerful desire can also overcome most odds.

And those are the emotions we need to leverage right now, to overcome the current threats to humanity.

Bring love and desire together to formulate a VISION of the society and environment that you would really LOVE to live in. And let this vision stimulate, motivate and drive your thoughts and actions to overcome all odds to achieve it. 

SELF-FULFILLING VIEWS AND BELIEFS

In addition to overcoming fear, there is another reason to build your own motivational VISION of the world you would love to live in.

I remember my instructor when learning to drive, saying to me “Now just drive straight ahead between those two poles – and do NOT hit the poles”. You can guess what happened!  Why? Because my mind was filled with the fear of hitting the poles – that was the point of my focus and concentration. The fact is that whatever we focus on – we magnify and our thoughts become somewhat self-fulfilling.  So if you are constantly paying attention to negative world news – then your world is likely to be a very scary, dangerous place. But if you are a nature and wildlife photographer – your world will most likely be filled with beauty and wonder and you will see ever more and more of it.

So what kind of self-fulfilling world do you want to create and live in?

I know that just as we have created a dysfunctional world today through short-sighted and self-destructive values and thinking, we do have all the technologies and resources we need to create a beautiful, harmonious, happy and healthy world – if that is what we actively choose and we ACT upon that choice!

So instead of running scared of the dangers we are facing, let’s get busy identifying and creating a very clear picture or VISION of the world that we DO want!

To use the driving school analogy – you keep the poles (dangers) in your peripheral vision – but focus on the objective (vision) that you want to achieve.

That way, you feel the fear, but are not overwhelmed by it. You activate love and desire to achieve the better world that you would love to live in.

When creating your Vision for the world you want to live in, do not be limited by what you ‘think is possible and achievable’. That would be far too limiting. Remember, going to the moon was once regarded as impossible. So was the four-minute mile. There are thousands of other examples of people achieving the so-called ‘impossible’.   So remember the saying ‘what can be dreamed – can be achieved’.

Now is the time to really have fun. Let your imagination go wild. What kind of world would you love to live in? Dream it and define it in detail. And get into the feeling of it. Emotion magnifies your thoughts – so ‘think it and feel it’!

Get it down on paper. Look at it often to build on and refine it. Share your vision with someone that you can bounce ideas off and stimulate each other’s imagination.

BEGIN IT NOW!

In the next blog, we will look at the advantages of an integrated and inclusive viewpoint. Have you been taught and led into a ‘Silo‘ perspective or have you resisted that temptation and built a more ‘holistic’ perspective?

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, you find it attached to the rest of the world.”- Glaciologist and environmental philosopher, John Muir.

Many important and impactful decisions are made today on the basis of narrow focused interests and un-integrated (silo) perspectives.

This is because such thinking has been educated and trained into most of us through our current educational systems and thereafter, in our careers. Both in higher education and in our careers, we are encouraged to specialised because typically the more specialised we become, the higher the salary we can command. Whilst the advantage of specialisation is that it helps to increase the depth of knowledge and experience in a particular field, the down side is that this often comes at the cost of commensurately narrowing our perspective and understanding of the broader ‘big picture’. The result is that many decisions are made, that may be quite logical, appropriate and beneficial from a narrow (silo) perspective, but may be absolutely inappropriate or even harmful to the wellbeing and balance of the greater whole.

Nowhere is this more evident and with devastating results than in our current accounting and economic models that drive most of human behaviour today. The economy directly affects ecology. Yet this reality is not included in our accounting and economic models that do not include or account for the use of air, water, soil and the Earth’s ecosystems. They are referred to as ‘externalities’ and as such are regarded as ‘irrelevant’. Thus, according to our current accounting models, the pollution of our world and destruction of our natural resources does not matter!

This un-inclusive and un-integrated thinking extends into our economic modeling. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has become the common basis to identify and measure the wealth and health (growth) of our economies and wellbeing of our societies. 

However, GDP excludes and ignores the qualitative aspects of financial growth, which influence the quality of our lives.

In terms of GDP measurement, it makes no difference if you spend the same amount of money on buying a machine gun, drugs or a piano. The contribution value to GDP is the same. The GDP viewpoint would also see ‘benefit’ from a huge oil spill that pollutes seas and coastlines, destroys fish, seabirds and ecosystems, and could take centuries to recover. The vast sums of money spent on cleaning up the oil-spill will contribute positively to GDP. In terms of this ‘unwholesome’ perspective, divorce is a more positive contributor to GDP than maintaining a united family and a working marriage, because when divorced, the family will need two houses instead of one, two fridges, two washing machines, more transport, additional expenditure on lawyer’s fees and more stress which results in more medical expenditure.

Thus through such an un-inclusive and un-integrated way of measuring our wealth and well being – we are not only destroying the foundations of environmental sustainability, we are also undermining the foundations of social sustainability and human wellbeing.

As Amory Lovins (Chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute) puts it “Today we have a temporary aberration called ‘industrial capitalism’, which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital – the natural world and properly functioning societies. No sensible Capitalist would do that.”

To be Eco-Logical, we should therefore replace GDP with a more inclusive and integrated measurement tool for our economy. It is time to redefine our concept and measurement of ‘wealth’ to include:

• Health
• Happiness
• Education
• Physical security
• Rest and leisure time
• Family and community relations
• Our state of mental and spiritual peace
• The quality of the physical environment that we live in
• Creativity and self-expression through arts, crafts and self-enhancing skills

By including and integrating these qualitative aspects into how we measure wealth and wellbeing, there will be less of an obsessive focus on money and material assets. Promoting such an integrated and inclusive perspective of wealth motivates and incentivises a very different way of thinking, living and being in this world. It can potentially reduce the drive to extract and use up the Earth’s natural resources at an unsustainable rate and promotes a much richer, healthier and happier society to live in.

Happily, at senior levels in many larger corporate businesses, the need to serve ‘People, Planet and Profit‘ in equal measure is being recognised. It is referred to as ‘The Triple Bottom Line’ However too many give only lip service to this concept and many smaller organisations still see profit as their sole objective. This is not sustainable and it is not morally acceptable. We should all therefore use ‘the power of the purse’ (i.e. our spending power) by actively choosing to buy products and services from organisations that demonstrate care for people and planet as well as their profit.  Such consumer power is likely to motivate a change away from environmentally and socially destructive practices far quicker than any moral argument.

THE ‘POWER OF THE PURSE’ IS YOURS – USE IT!  

Getting back to the original point of this VIRTUE, let us always remember in business, government and in our communities, that we are all interconnected and interdependent parts of a greater whole. Damage to one element will invariably in the long run negatively impact the whole. It is therefore in our own best interests to care for each other and to take an inclusively integrated view before we take any major decision or action that significantly impacts and affects other parts of the whole.

With more than 50% of the world’s population living in cities or urban environments – how relevant is Nature in your life today? In the next blog we explore the advantages and dangers relating to R is for ‘Reconnecting with Nature’.

DID YOU KNOW?

The silk woven by a golden orb spider is proportionately stronger than the steel cable we typically use in construction and industry!

Isn’t that amazing!?

And that’s not the best of it. Think of the mess, waste and pollution we create and the massive amount of energy we use to make steel cable.

Yet with no mess, no waste and no pollution, the spider makes a superior product, stronger and more flexible than we can make!

Here’s another illustration of Nature’s superior technology. Despite the fact that snakes move over ground, through dirt, mud and swamps – you will never see a ‘dirty snake’! Why? Because clever snake has developed a skin that dirt cannot adhere to. Imagine if we learned to make our clothing like that. Imagine the huge savings of water and energy and no more need for polluting detergents.

Why do you think I am telling you this?

It’s to illustrate that Nature is not ‘dumb’ and to realize that we can benefit enormously if we change our misguided belief in ‘human superiority’ and have the humility and open-mindedness to look and learn from Nature.  

Well, the good news is that we are beginning to do that. At the cutting edge of science today is the art/science of ‘Biomimicry’ (mimicking/copying Nature). And from that we are improving many of our essential products, medicines and industrial processes. See the link at the end of this post for wonderful examples of this.

This goes to show that not only does Nature provide us with all the essential elements we need to survive like air, food and water – but if we carefully look and learn from Nature, she can also help us to THRIVE!

To push the point a bit more, there is growing evidence that children who spend time in Nature (instead of being mesmerized in front of an array of screens) tend to be physically healthier, mentally more creative and emotionally more balanced. It’s also well recognised that spending time in Nature is an effective way to alleviate stress and depression. It lifts the human spirit.

So these are just a few good reasons to re-connect with and to protect Nature.

But, there is another serious reason – focusing on a darker side.

That is – to be alert and willing to TAKE ACTION against those ignorant and greedy few who are destroying the eco-systems and creatures that are our life-support systems for the sake of their own selfish financial profit.

Let’s name a few:

• President Bolsonaro of Brazil – who promotes the burning of the Amazon for commercial reasons.  He is deliberately destroying a vital eco-system that produces oxygen for us to breathe.  That’s potentially more dangerous and life-threatening than COVID-19!
• President Trump – who is aggressively undoing legislation to protect US wildlife and eco-systems – again for the sake of short term financial profit. How incredibly foolish and short-sighted.

And here in South Africa – Not only do we have Elephant and Rhino poaching, but many less-known destructive commercial activities including the overfishing of sharks to supply the Australian Fish ‘n’ Chips market. The science is very clear: at the current rate of shark fishing, not only does SA stand to lose its most iconic shark species (the great White Shark), but this is having a devastating knock-on impact on the tourism industry, on our economy and the health of our entire marine ecosystem (See links below this article for more on this).

FEEL GRATITUDE AND EXPERIENCE THE JOY OF RECONNECTION

To increase our level of awareness and to tap into an endless source of pleasure, I invite you to take just seven minutes per day, every day to do two things:

1. Take two minutes to focus your awareness on just how much we depend on Nature for our own health and well-being and cultivate a sense of gratitude (which is a key to experiencing Joy) for the air, water and food that Nature provides us with. Remember that your own body is made up of the Earth’s materials and we are therefore actually a part of Nature. Recognise that if we allow the Earth to be abused and her eco-systems destroyed – it will have a knock-on effect on our own health. If we assist the Earth to recover from past abuses and we help restore Nature to a healthy state – this will positively affect our own health and our children’s future well-being.

2. Take the next 5 minutes to tap into the joy and pleasure that Nature can give you.

All you need do is to spend 5 minutes carefully studying one thing in Nature.

It can be a tree, a rock, clouds, a bird, flowing water or any other single element of Nature that appeals to you.

Study it carefully to see the beauty in it. The more closely you examine it – the more beauty you will see in it and the more pleasure you will experience. Your mind may wander. But don’t be worried by this, it’s natural. When you become aware that your thoughts have wandered – just return your focus on your chosen element of Nature.

Not only will this increase your mental power of concentration (that is useful in all aspects of life) but after 5 minutes of seeing and experiencing the beauty in Nature, you are likely to feel calmer, more refreshed and energized.  You will discover an endless source of pleasure – that costs only a small amount of your time each day. And this joy will have an accumulatively positive effect in your life! 

ENJOY RECONNECTING WITH NATURE – IT IS YOUR SOURCE OF HEALTH AND HAPPINESS!

In our next Blog – ‘Are you intellectually hopping on one leg, instead of running on two?’

• Examples of Biomimicry:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_GFq12w5WU
• Carte Blanche Episode Shark Fishing: https://m-net.dstv.com/show/carte-blanche/videos/flake-n-chips/video 

Join the fight against shark fishing: https://sharkfreechips.com/.

If you were born with two strong legs – would it make sense to ignore one and spend your life hopping around on one leg?

If you would not do this to your body – why would you do this to your brain?

Our current education system, most businesses and most science-based occupations – encourage and cultivate the conscious rational mind and strongly discourage emotional engagement as being irrational and unreliable.

This way of thinking was advocated by the 17th-century philosopher Descartes who still influences our thinking today – particularly in business and the sciences. Descartes considered the world including people and animals to be simply ‘Machines ‘that are governed by the laws of material matter alone. To him the only legitimate and reliable source of knowledge is the intellect (i.e. the cold, unemotional, logical and rational mind)

Is this thinking outdated? Well, ‘let the proof be in the pudding’ as they say.

The fact is that ‘Business’ without compassion can be a monster! You need only look at the way that ‘agricultural business’ treats chickens, cattle and other livestock.  Todays ‘factory farming’ practices inflict cruelty on creatures (that experience terror and pain just like us) in the most abominably ‘heartless ‘manner.  The brutal and excruciatingly painful experiments conducted on animals ‘in the interests of science’ have also been horrifically cruel and ‘heartless’.

 I believe that it is not morally acceptable or justifiable to allow such thinking and behaviour to continue – because humans and all other life forms on Earth are more than machines.

To evolve beyond such ‘barbaric’ behaviour into ways of thinking and behaving that are more humane, emotionally intelligent, practical and productive– we need to engage with all three of the kinds of intelligence that we are born with.

The intellect (the conscious rational mind) is a wonderful tool for the quantitative measurement of material things (like; how much, how far, how quick etc.). However the intellect is not at all good at measuring the qualitative aspect of things (like; beauty, elegance, love, compassion, serenity, harmony, and good vs. bad). For these qualitative aspects, we are born, equipped with our instincts. Just as the intellect has different forms and levels of refinement, so too do our instincts, ranging from the basic instinctive capacity to breathe and move without consciously thinking about it, to the more refined subconscious levels of ‘gut feeling’ and ‘knowledge of the heart’. Thousands of lives have been saved when soldiers, policemen, firemen and others have reacted to their ‘gut feeling’. Fortunes have been won based on a ‘hunch’ and millions of people have achieved success and self-fulfillment in their relationships and careers – by ‘following their heart’.

Our feelings and emotions play a critically important role in determining the quality of our lives.

There are two significant differences between the way that the intellect and the instincts work.

The first is in the way that they communicate. Whilst the intellect communicates primarily in the form of words, our instincts communicate through our feelings. 

The second major difference is their cognitive capacity.

The capacity of your unconscious and subconscious mind is vastly greater than your conscious mind. And they can process information faster and at far more subtle levels than the conscious intellect can. It has been said that the intellect is like the cash in your pocket compared to the size of the economy which represents the scale of your unconscious and subconscious minds.

So why would you want to limit your cognitive capacity by utilizing only your conscious, rational mind?

Let us therefore recognise that both the intellect and intuition provide very different but equally valuable sources and forms of knowledge and understanding.

It should also be recognised that using one form of intelligence to the exclusion of the other is likely to produce an ‘imbalanced’ outcome. I believe that a ‘balanced outcome’ is achieved when consensus is reached between both instincts and intellect. In other words, if it ‘makes rational sense’ and also ‘feels right or good’, then it is likely to be ‘balanced’ or what I would call a ‘wise outcome’. However, if it is rational but feels bad – I would recommend that you keep looking for an alternative solution until both logic and feelings are satisfied. The inverse applies equally.   

And then we come to our intuition!

Intuition is quite different. It is not a feeling, but rather a sudden ‘knowing’ or ‘understanding’ that arrives ‘out of the blue’ with no logical or rational process leading up to it!

Albert Einstein is said something along the lines of ‘Sometimes I just know something – it then takes me a while to prove scientifically what I intuitively know’. This instinctive ‘knowing’ also played a significant role for one of the world’s greatest inventors Thomas Edison who after hundreds of failed attempts finally validated his ‘intuitive knowing’ to produce a working light bulb.   

Accessing and utilizing your intuition I would compare to using your computer (your conscious mind) to access the internet (your unconscious and subconscious mind– see link to a TEDx Talk on this at the end of this Blog). Like any other human capacity, the more you use your intuition, the better and more reliable it becomes. Ignore it and it will wither and waste away. To trigger it into action, I firstly formulate my question VERY CAREFULLY (Fuzzy questions get fuzzy answers). Then I sit quietly and present this question as if speaking to my own internal Guru. Then I wait for an answer. Sometimes it’s a quick response and other times I have to ask the question again and again over several days or even months before I get an answer. When you do get an ‘aha’ moment in response – sit down immediately and put it in writing in as much detail as possible. It’s in this process of putting it in words that you get greater clarity and are better able to remember the feedback that you received from your intuition/internal Guru.

Still going to hop around on one leg of the intelligence capacities that you were born with?

Engage with and benefit from your ‘3Di’.  It will be of benefit to ‘people, planet and profit’ to expand your cognitive capacity by utilizing all three of the forms of intelligence you were born with: Instinct; Intellect and Intuition.

Here is a practical talk on intuition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ71pKKDe1E

In our next blog we explore whether the practice of UBUNTU is an outdated tribal tradition – or a safety net for the looming threats of climate change, environmental pollution and diminishing food and other essential resources.

The Zulu description of UBUNTU ‘Umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye abantu’, roughly translates into English as: “People are people through other people”.

Now – imagine the following scenario:

A highly infectious disease arrives in town. It either makes you very ill or it kills you. So Government orders a lockdown – everyone must stay at home. As a result you lose your job and your only source of income. So you ask for help.

I have no money –the neighbours respond – ‘that’s your problem, not mine’

I am running out of food – the neighbours respond – ‘sorry, not giving you any of mine’

I am feeling ill; I might have caught the disease – the neighbors respond – ‘stay away from us – just die quietly without making a fuss’.

This is the exact opposite of UBUNTU!

Ubuntu is not some wishy-washy, outdated tribal African philosophy.

It’s not a pious, self-righteous ‘be nice to your neighbour’ value system.

It’s a whole hell-of-a-lot more than this!

UBUNTU – IS A SURVIVAL STRATEGY!

Ubuntu is a practical response in recognition of the fact that we are all inter-connected and interdependent on each other. No-one can actually survive today without the support from others including; Government, local municipalities, grocery stores, doctors, farmers, police, airlines, rubbish collectors, factory workers who make the clothes and shoes you wear, butchers, bakers, cell-phone makers – and a whole hell-of-a-lot more!

You need them as much as they need you!

Unfortunately, Hollywood not only creates highly unrealistic hero’s like Batman and Superman – for your entertainment, it also encourages hero-worship of: the rebel, the ones who do not conform, the ones who say ‘To hell with them, I am not a sheep, I can think for myself – so I will do what I want when I want and how I want’.  In the Hollywood movies, these are the ones who overcome unbelievable odds, climb insurmountable mountains and emerge as the heroes who defeat the bad guys. Sorry to have to remind you – these movies do not show reality – they are mostly fantasy (but sometimes based on a few fragments of reality). These are the role-models we have been encouraged to adore, admire and try to be like them!

The result is that far too many people today, think of themselves first and foremost as INDIVIDUALS – separate and independent from the COMMUNITY they live in!

Let’s be clear, expressing your unique qualities, talents, tastes and showcasing your independent thinking – is GOOD. It is a healthy process of exploring, learning, self-awareness and self-development.

But when this is carried to a selfish extreme – when it becomes ALL ABOUT ME and TO HELL WITH EVERYONE ELSE! – Then it becomes destructive both to the community you live in, and in the long run, with the resultant breakdown of society, it also becomes DESTRUCTIVE to YOURSELF. (Because you ARE a part of that society that you have chosen not to care for – resulting in increasing crime, violence, litter, pollution and with jobs and businesses moving elsewhere to safer places – creating a self-destructive spiral of unemployment, poverty and a dysfunctional society)

Do you want a better option?

It’s called UBUNTU!

In pragmatic terms, UBUNTU means taking the time, making the effort – to look after your neighbours in the same way that you would like them to look after you in your time of need.  It does not mean abandoning your individuality and your unique qualities, but it does require a lack of selfishness – and sometimes a deliberate and conscious self-sacrifice of your own wants in order to support someone else’s needs. If you do not demonstrate care for others – how can you expect them to care for you!? And that is why I say that UBUNTU is a self-survival strategy!

Now, here is some good news – this dreadful COVID-19 virus – it too shall pass!

Sooner or later a vaccine will be discovered and like Polio and HIV, we will find ways to defeat it.

HOWEVER, there are other MUCH BIGGER threats to human survival – that will not go away in your lifetime or even in the lifetime of your children, including:

• Climate Change
• Pollution of the air we breathe, the waters we drink and the soils in which we grow our foods
• Destruction and burning of ‘the Lungs of the Earth’ – the Amazon
• Overconsumption of the Earth’s Natural Resources – for the financial benefit of a greedy few

You on your own cannot stop this, and you on your own may not survive these huge threats to yourself and the community you live in.

BUT COLLECTIVELY – WE CAN MEET THESE CHALLENGES and WE CAN SURVIVE THEM!

Here is a way forward:

• Start cultivating a mutually supportive UBUNTU culture in your own community. It begins with YOU – giving of your time and energy to show your neighbours that you do care for them and are willing to support them if they need your help.  Give the love and you will be amazed at how much more flows back to you. With intelligent effort, you can co-create a happy, secure, generous, healthy and thriving community to live in. This is not some ‘pie in the sky’ wishful thinking – it has been successfully implemented in many places around the world today (See some useful links to examples at the end of this article).
• Use your VOICE, your vote, your participation in petitions – against the kinds of abuse to this planet that are causing climate change, pollution, destruction of eco-systems and greedy over-exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources. PARTICIPATE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST THEM – collectively we can stop them just as collective action did stop slavery and apartheid. We can and we are gradually winning the battle to stop such destructive behaviours towards Mother Earth. But you can’t wait for ‘others’ to do it for you. It’s YOUR EARTH and YOUR SOCIETY – if you want to protect them – then YOU need to practice UBUNTU on both a local and global scale.

Here are a few links to give you reason for hope and inspiration:

• https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/people-culture/people/ubuntu-is-about-relationships – a more detailed explanation of UBUNTU
• https://www.ted.com/talks/boyd_varty_what_i_learned_from_nelson_mandela?language=en – what I learned from Nelson Mandela and in the Cathedral of the Wild
• ’Eco-Ubuntu’ –an article written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu for The Enviropaedia

In our next blog, we will explore how to become an ‘Ethical Consumer’.

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” –  Mahatma Gandhi.

The so-called ‘consumer culture’ of today is a recently ‘socially engineered’ value system that manipulates people’s egos and promotes a misguided belief that the more ‘money and stuff‘ you own, the happier you will be and the greater your importance in society. A bumper sticker seen in New York expresses this materialistic mindset very well. It says: “He who dies with the most toys – wins”.  

While this sticker is meant to be funny, it does reflect how successful this manipulative social engineering has been in convincing people that money and material assets are the most important things in life. And as a result too many people today measure their worth and their level of success simply in terms of the quantity of money and stuff they own and consume.

Such a superficial and un-thinking value system has been seriously harmful for both people and planet because this drives an insatiable desire to convert as much of the Earth’s natural resources into money and material assets – as quickly as possible.

As a result, we are now consuming and converting the Earth’s natural resources – faster than the Earth can recover or reproduce.

This is effectively an act of slow suicide on our part as the process of destroying and converting our natural resources into consumer products and financial assets is damaging the quality of our air, water, and soil and causing climate change. The simple fact is that the more consumer goods we demand, the more we destroy the Earth and generate climate change. This is brilliantly illustrated in the YouTube video “The Story of Stuff” – see link at the end of this Blog.

Instead of this self-destructive, materialistic value system, we can derive great pleasure by looking beyond money and material assets to appreciate and enjoy the more refined and more mature ‘human qualities’ and our ‘intellectual assets’ including: intelligence; creativity; culture; compassion; elegance; leadership; and a person’s contributions to the community they live in. These quality-based virtues and intellectual assets build and strengthen us as individuals, are supportive to our communities; are sustainable in terms of the Earth and its ecosystems and finally – this is a more mature and intelligent way to measure a person’s real worth to society.

It will also be beneficial to apply a qualitative value system to our consumer choices.

When we recognise that the quality of a product is as important (if not more) than the quantity of product produced, this will have a powerfully positive effect on the way that manufacturers and retailers produce and deliver consumer products. Manufacturers will be motivated to design them to last longer, which will reduce the overall amount of resources and energy used up in the process of creating a product and delivering it to us.

Take for example a pen. Without any focus on quality, it is OK to use dozens of cheap disposable pens each year, every year. Each one uses up a quantity of natural material and requires an amount of energy to manufacture it, package it, and deliver it. In contrast, if our focus is on quality, we would buy a pen of higher quality designed to last many years or even a lifetime. Such a higher quality pen would be:

• Only manufactured once (= savings of natural resources + energy).
• Packaged only once (= further savings of energy + resources).
• Delivered to the point of sale only once (= saving fuel and reducing pollution).

All these savings add up to a considerable reduction in the use of the Earth’s natural resources and a reduction of pollution and climate change producing emissions.

The same applies to most other consumer products. Fewer but higher quality products could potentially produce better employment, income and profit opportunities than masses of cheap, low-quality products.

Significant revenue and profits can be made in producing, servicing, maintaining, and repairing higher quality products and in finding innovative ways to upgrade facelift and re-skin these products. This shift could:

• Increase customer satisfaction and pride in owning a high-quality product.
• Generate jobs to repair service and maintain these products.
• Reduce the amount of the Earth’s natural resources used in manufacturing, packaging, distributing and delivering products to consumers.
• Reduce the amount of energy used.
• Reduce the amount of waste.

Thus going for quality instead of quantity in our consumer goods can be beneficial to people, planet and profits.

The next step in promoting an ethical consumer value system is to actively use your consumer power to influence the behaviour of those that manufacture and distribute our consumer products.

If a company sees their market share and sales volumes increasing because their product is more eco-friendly and socially responsible, they will be financially motivated to increase their expenditure on being more eco-friendly and socially responsible. This will have a quicker and more effective influence on the way manufacturers and retailers do or do not harm our Earth, than any moral argument or legal imperative.

The key driving force here is you – you have ‘the power of the purse’ – so use it by becoming an ‘Eco-Ethical’ consumer.

Look for products and suppliers that demonstrate that they do care for ‘People and Planet’ and avoid those that are purely ‘profit-driven’ who show no signs of social responsibility or any consideration for the Earth and our natural resources.

So remember:

• A quantity-based consumer culture drives a rapid depletion of the Earth’s natural resources
• A conscious ethical and quality based consumption:
• Reduces the quantity of the Earth’s natural resources that we use
• Supports our more mature and refined human qualities and builds our intellectual capabilities that improve and add to the wellbeing of both people and planet.

A young child has difficulty in ‘delaying gratification’ – they want it all NOW!

That is classical ‘short term thinking’ (the opposite of long term or ‘Sustainable thinking’)

So why are we allowing our political and business leaders to behave like children? In our next Blog we will look at the concept of ‘Sustainability’.

Link: “The story of stuff”.

This beautiful Earth runs in slow, steady cycles, yielding fruits, flowers and rain and turning to face the sun at just the right speed and angle to make life on Earth possible and pleasant for us human beings. The Earth provides for all our needs through her rhythmic supply of ecosystem services. But we, with our demands for immediate gratification of excessive materialistic desires, are ignoring the reality of the operating speed of our Earth. We are pulling fish out of the oceans faster than they can breed. We are putting chemicals into the soils and waters of the Earth faster than the Earth can absorb, break down and neutralise, resulting in toxic, dead oceans and soils. We are demanding an ever-increasing number of products made from the Earth’s natural resources, faster than the Earth can actually regenerate and supply. 

Our demands and desires have become ‘dis-harmonious’ – out of rhythm with the heartbeat of the Earth.

And this is the very essence of ‘unsustainability’ – demanding much more, much faster than the Earth is able to support on an ongoing basis.

The term ‘sustainable development’ is commonly defined as “development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

A core element of this term ‘sustainable development’ is the issue of time and this is a critical key to unlock our current unsustainable behaviour. Psychologists say that young children have difficulty in being able to delay their desire for immediate gratification. A child’s demand for instant gratification tolerates no delay, no thinking about the consequences, no weighing the advantages versus the disadvantages. The child-mind simply says: ‘give it to me NOW, and if you don’t, I am going to stamp my feet and scream till I get it’.   

The inability to delay satisfying a desire, in order to consider the consequences before satisfying that desire – is therefore a classic symptom of an immature level of emotional intelligence.

Unfortunately, this immature attitude has been deliberately encouraged by suppliers of consumer products in order to boost their sales and profits. They promote the idea that you deserve ‘instant gratification’ without the responsibility of having to think about the consequences of your instant gratification. And this message has been designed and delivered so well, so effectively and so repeatedly, that it is now seen as a normal and reasonable expectation. And so indeed it is – for children! But not for adults. 

To be truly ‘grown-up’, a person needs to be able to see beyond the here and now. An emotionally mature mind is able to delay making a decision, until they have weighed the short-term advantages against the long-term effects of their decisions and actions!

However, whilst we consumers do therefore have a very significant role to play in ensuring the survival and sustainability of the Earth and its eco-systems, it is important to note that our business and political leaders have an even greater role and responsibility as their choices and decisions have a far greater scale of impact.

Yet, sadly short-term thinking is the common norm in both business and politics today. Two of the major contributing reasons are:

• The performance and value of most western capitalist businesses are measured based on their short term (quarterly) results. As clearly demonstrated in Sir Richard Branson’s Book “Screw Business as Usual”, and also demonstrated by the success of the Japanese long-term strategies to dominate the worldwide motor industries – a long term business strategy is very often far more effective and profitable.
• The short-term employment contracts of most business executives and political positions. If there is little prospect of your being around to face the long term consequences of short-term decisions, there is little motivation to introduce strategies or plans that only benefit the organisation in the long-term. If an executive or political employment contract is only five years, then that is likely to be the maximum time horizon of their vision and planning.

In terms of the Earth’s ecosystems and regenerative capacity, five years is the blink of an eye.

Just these two factors alone almost guarantee the prevalence of short term thinking in business and politics.

The very survival of the human race today is thus endangered by the fact that we allow the emotionally immature mentality of short-term thinking to dominate in both our business and political decision making.

To correct this, it is therefore essential that every business executive and senior political appointment should be mandated in their job description and in their Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to develop a strategy to ensure the long-term sustainability of ‘People, Planet and Profit’ and their salary and bonuses should be linked to their performance and delivery against such a strategy. Without such a measurable ‘sustainability performance strategy’ (SPS) relating to the scope of their own sphere of influence and authority, we have a perfect recipe for long-term disaster.     

Let us remember that we put these leaders into positions of power through our political voting and through our consumer buying decisions. We must let them know ‘loud and clear’ that we can and will hold them accountable and will remove them from power if they do not demonstrate a commitment to such a long-term strategy and implementation plan to ensure the long-term survival and sustainability of the Earth and its eco-systems that support all human and non-human life forms on Earth.

In summary, whilst we consumers need to slow down and moderate our levels of material consumption (living more simply today so that our demands do not endanger the survival of our children and their children tomorrow) we also need to demand that our business and political leaders stop behaving in an emotionally immature manner of short-term thinking. We need them to formulate a ‘sustainability performance strategy’ (SPS) to ensure the long-term survival and flourishing of People, Planet and Prosperity.

In closing – remember ‘There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth – we are all Crew” Link here to Sir Richard Branson’s Book “Screw Business as Usual” http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/screw-business-as-usual-read-chapter-one

We cannot choose the experiences that life throws at us.

But we can choose how to respond.

And our responses practically define who and what we are.

So how do you choose to respond to the COVID19 crisis?

Your decision will not only define who and what you are, but will also set the course for the future of the world we will live in tomorrow.

If we choose to respond in fear, anger and blame, then there is every reason to expect widespread chaos and potential economic and market collapse.

However, if we choose to see this as an opportunity to re-think our values and priorities and use these to build a better world than we had before – then there is every reason to believe that this is exactly what we can create.

I choose the latter. I aspire to build what I call an Eco-Logical society and environment. By Eco-Logical, I mean healthy, happy, life-enhancing, economically flourishing and sustainable.

But what do we need to do to achieve these desirable outcomes?

I believe that we can achieve these by applying what I call the V.I.R.T.U.E.S of Eco-Logic.

Let me unpack that.

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, I was primarily concerned about the increasing damage we are causing to both our environment (air, water, plants, animals and all other life forms and systems) and our human communities (recognising that we humans are totally dependent on our environment to survive and thrive). In response, I focused my time and energy on educating people about these threats through The Enviropaedia. But after 20 years of doing this, I can now see that simply providing information about these threats, is not generating a response at the scale that is actually needed. This led to a further recognition that these threats to our environment (including climate change, pollution and mass extinction of species) are the logical outcome of our human behaviours and our behaviours are driven by our thinking and values. So if we want to achieve different and better outcomes (like clean air, water and healthy human and non-human communities) we need to start by changing our thinking and values. To paraphrase Albert Einstein ‘The world has problems – that cannot be solved using the same logic that created those problems’.

SO WHAT ARE THE THINKING PATTERNS AND VALUES THAT WILL PRODUCE A BETTER (CLEANER, HEALTHIER AND HAPPIER) WORLD TO LIVE IN?

To answer that question, I applied reverse analysis to our current situation. In other words, I looked for the thinking patterns and values that are causing the most damaging and harmful effects on ‘people and planet’ and from these I could then identify their logical opposite thinking patterns and values that can help us to heal and regenerate ‘people and planet’.

The harmful thinking patterns and values include: fear, extreme selfishness, greed, excessive material consumption, short term thinking, lack of compassion (especially in business and science), narrow-minded thinking (not seeing the interconnected big-picture) and seeing ourselves as being separate from nature and therefore not caring much about the eco-systems, plants, animals and other life-forms that we depend on.

The positive opposites of these negative thinking and values were then arranged in a sequence that produced the anagram -V.I.R.T.U.E.S because the word virtue is actually a very good description of each of these positive thinking patterns and values.

I would like to share these V.I.R.T.U.E.S with you as I believe that right now in response to the COVID-19 crisis is the perfect time and opportunity for us all to re-evaluate our thinking and values in order to create a new frame of reference and pathway towards building a healthy, happy, thriving society and environment.

In my next blog I will therefore begin with ‘V- is for Vision’.

And please note, Vision is not the same as aims, ambitions or goal setting. It is a very different process that is critically important and effective in creating a better tomorrow for ourselves and our children.

I don’t need to tell you about the wriggly eco-worms that have spilled out of the can and are rapidly spreading out across the floors of company boardrooms, government corridors, and scientific think tanks. If you are reading this magazine, you probably already know their names and labels: Climate Change; Plastic Pollution; Poaching and the Sixth Extinction – the list of these slippery troubles goes on and on.

But what is missing from the conversation – about how to deal with them?

As editor of The Enviropaedia, (An environmental encyclopaedia designed to educate and empower South African consumers and businesses to address today’s environmental challenges) this is a question that has kept me awake at night. Why is it that even though global leaders got together in Rio in 1992 to identify the worlds rising environmental challenges and agree on appropriate solutions to these challenges – why has so little change happened since then? The same problems they identified then persist today and have grown in scope and scale.  

Fed up with sleepless nights, I took to digging for answers and came to a few of my own conclusions:

• It’s not for lack of information: Environmental organisations, governments, and Al Gore amongst many others have spread the news far and wide – especially to those most responsible for causing these crises.
• It’s not for lack of care: scratch the tough surface of the most hardened capitalist and you will find that they enjoy being in nature and most do care about our environment.

So why the lack of progress in dealing with these environmental challenges?

Albert Einstein’s words provided me with the key to an answer – a ‘Eureka’ moment for me!  He said something along the lines of “The world we have created has problems – that cannot be solved using the same logic that created those problems in the first place”.

The critical issue he points to – is our thinking.

We have been focussed on the wrong end of the problem, by trying to treat the conditions, instead of addressing the underlying cause of these conditions.   

Climate Change and our other environmental challenges are an outcome of our past behaviours, which are an outcome of our thinking and values. (Please read this statement again – and again. This is the key to understanding and dealing with these eco-worms)

Trying to fix our environmental challenges without first fixing the thinking and values that create these challenges – is like trying to fix a punctured tyre by blowing in more air, without first fixing the leak!

So to successfully address today’s environmental challenges, we first need to identify and correct the thinking patterns and values that drive the behaviours that produce the unhappy outcomes (environmental crisis) we are currently experiencing.

This is not so hard to do – and I am willing to bet that if you sit down and write out your thoughts on this, you are likely to come to a very similar list as mine. The problem with this was that the list soon became too long to handle. So I set about distilling the list down to the seven most basic root causes of behaviours that result in negative environmental impacts. They included:

• Selfishness
• Short-term thinking
• A materialistic value system (that drives unsustainable, overconsumption of Earth’s resources)
• Insular, disconnected, silo thinking (encouraged  by our educational systems that promote specialisation of knowledge and career  pathways)
• A cold-hearted lack of compassion for people and planet (this is strongly encouraged in business and science where they promote and praise ‘dispassionate’ thinking and behaviour)
• Disconnection with nature (quite understandably as a result of the fact that the majority of us today live in  urban environments with little interaction with nature)
• A flood  of negative ‘doom and gloom’ messaging and predictions about our environment and future of the Earth (resulting in people feeling  overwhelmed and unable to effectively do anything about the situation – therefore becoming apathetic and ignoring the situation)

Having identified these seven root causes that drive negative environmental outcomes (fully recognising that these are not the only causes – but they are to my mind, the most common) – the next task is to look at the logical alternatives to these mindsets and values. To my delight I found that if I rearranged the order of these alternative ‘Eco-Logical’ mindsets and values, I could create an acronym to define them as V.I.R.T.U.E.S:

• Vision – to inspire us and counteract any doom and gloom expectations
• Inclusive and integrated – to bring insular and specialist thinking together to see and understand the ‘big picture’
• Reconnection with nature – creating benefits and innovations through ‘Biomimicry’ (copying and ‘mimicking’ nature – which is proving to be an exciting and highly effective way of improving today’s products and technologies).
• Three-dimensional thinking – including instincts, intellect, and intuition to achieve more kind and balanced (wise) decision making in business and science.
• Ubuntu – recognising the value of community and the benefits of diverse, collective knowledge and intelligence to address our common environmental challenges.
• Ethical consumerism – appreciating our less materialistic qualities and assets (like intelligence, arts and culture, love and caring contributions to the community we live in) over and above materialistic consumption (and promoting quality and durable products rather than cheap, disposable and wasteful consumer products).
• Sustainability – demanding that our social, political and business leaders include a long-term perspective and consideration when planning for today’s needs, and the future.

So these are the footprints of the invisible Elephant in the room. When you look carefully at each one of them, you begin to see the increasingly beneficial potential they each produce. They are pleasing, practical and profitable.

They can motivate very different human behaviours which will result in a much kinder, safer, fairer and more sustainable world.

This evolution to a more eco-logical way of thinking and being, need not take generations to achieve. I have seen radical changes happen fast in social thinking, values and behaviour– almost overnight when the time is ripe. And the time is ripe today. Proof of this is evident to me as I receive startling, delightful, brave, innovative and profoundly practical entries into the annual Eco-Logical Awards hosted by The Enviropaedia. This year, myself and a number of businesses and environmental senior executives will judge and present in June at the new super-eco-friendly Sun International Hotel in Menlyn Maine. I hope you will be as inspired by the entries and winners as I am. You can view them on www.eco-logicawards.com. And if you would like to engage further with this concept of Eco-Logic visit www.enviropaedia.com.  

I have no doubt that we have the intelligence to evolve beyond current dysfunctional mindsets, values and behaviours – to become happier, healthier and wealthier eco-logical human beings living sustainably on this beautiful Earth.

We have the potential – do you have the will?

What do you think?