Positive Ecology
The transformation to sustainability and/as ways to happiness
What seems to be heard most often are the environmentalists predicting doom, and the deniers and delayers arguing that change would hurt us, personally and economically.Recently, we see an emergent understanding that a transformation to sustainability is actually not just about hard choices for "saving the planet," but about ways in which human happiness can ...learn more
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Created: Nov 23, 2007
Updated: Oct 25, 2009
Membership: Open
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Topic: Is Positive Ecology about ways to happiness, or reducing suffering?
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Certainly an interesting definition (of insanity).
Where I (and "positive ecology") came from is actually the parallel to (positive) psychology: I have been involved in issues of ecology/sustainability since 1990, and the focus has always been on ever-better predictions of doom and gloom (or so it seems when looking at the media). This mirrors how (as Martin Seligman argued) psychology was very concerned about diagnosing mental illness... but useless when you are not ill, but still feeling that maybe you could be better. This link between psychology and sustainability continues: Indeed, if happiness were in materialism, reducing our environmental impact by reducing consumption is not a promise but a threat. - And just look at how most talks about sustainability go, and there you find that. (Or, in a more modern shift, you find additional consumption but of "green" goods.) Psychology has been showing that happiness is not in affluenza, however, and very clearly at that. The question is: What does it take to spread that message? |
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It also seems to me that to talk about a transformation to sustainability requires that one define what is meant by sustainability, and also that one is clear about what defines one ecology as positive, and another as negative. Perspective has a lot to do on how we see things, and how do we include the perspectives of other sentient beings who don't happen to speak a language we are conversant in?
Until we are clear about all the inter- and intra-relationships that impact upon the happiness of not only all sentient beings, but those forms of life that are essential for the sustainability of sentient beings, I think it will be difficult to categorize, or talk about all the ways in which human happiness can be fulfilled and progress in human affairs supported.
I look forward to hearing from others about how a vision for a future can be presented more inclusively!
jp