Hope is not wishful thinking. It's not a temperament we're born with. It is a stance toward life that we can choose . . . or not. The real question for me, though, is whether my hope is effective, whether it produces results or is just where I hide to ease my own pain.
What I strive for I call honest hope. And it takes work, but it is good work. It is work I love. I began this book suggesting that it starts with getting our thinking straight. Since we create the world according to ideas we hold, we have to ask ourselves whether the ideas we inherit and absorb through our cultures serve us. We can only have honest, effective hope if the frame through which we see is an accurate representation of how the world works.
The good news is that we face this historic challenge just as our understanding of life's rich complexity, and human nature itself, is expanding exponentially. I am pretty sure, for example, that I'd never even heard the word "ecology" until I was in my twenties. And that was only because I was fortunate enough to marry one of our country's most brilliant ecological thinkers, the late Marc Lappé. Now we are realizing that ecology is not merely a particular field of science; it is a new way of understanding life that frees us from the failing mechanical worldview's assumptions of separateness and scarcity.
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So here, in this final chapter, is an invitation to explore what it means to think like an ecosystem. Since ecology is all about interconnection and unending change, creating patterns of causation that shape every organism and phenomenon, "thinking like an ecosystem" for me means living in the perpetual "why." It's keeping alive the two-year-old mind that accepts nothing simply as "the way it is" but craves to know how something came to be. It's understanding that all organisms emerge with specific potential, including the human organism, but its expression is enormously shaped by context.
So, if we want life to thrive, we keep foremost the question, What conditions enhance life? And, more specifically, what specific conditions bring out the best in our species? My hypothesis is that three conditions — the wide and fluid dispersion of power, transparency, and an assumption of mutual accountability — are at least a good part of the answer. An eco-mind is also able to see that our own species' thriving, through our consciously creating the essential context for that thriving, determines the well-being, even the continuation, of other species and whether key dimensions of our wider ecology remain conducive to life.
Shifting from the mechanical assumption of separateness and seeing our societies as ecosystems, we get curious about how aspects interact. And, writes Oxford historian Theodore Zeldin, "It is only curiosity that knows no boundaries which can be effective against fear.". . .
Using our eco-minds, we soon realize that in our complex human ecology, many of the most important causal interactions may not immediately meet the eye — just as they don't in the wider ecosystem: When you or I look at a forest, for example, we see distinct trees. We don't see that beneath the forest floor trees intermingle for mutual support, sometimes through their roots, sometimes through "mats of cooperating fungi," explains the late sustainability genius Donella H. Meadows. Mycelia, the underground part of fungi, can spread "cellular mats across thousands of acres."
The implication? Cutting one tree is never about just cutting one tree. Every act has multiple effects. . . .
It's the context, stupid!
Thinking like an ecosystem means seeing everything in context, or at least giving it our best shot. By this I mean that, with an eco-mind, we realize that what's "good" in one context might bring disaster in other.
I first think jatropha. Never heard of it? Jatropha is a small tree whose nonedible but oil-rich seeds can be turned into a clean fuel. In parts of rural Africa and Asia, this oil liberates small farmers from hours of daily wood gathering and continuing forest loss. It grows well in poor soils with little rainfall and can be interspersed with other crops, helping to prevent erosion. The tree's smell repels hungry animals, protecting nearby crops. And a poor farmer selling jatropha oil in the West African country of Mali, for example, can double his or her income in the first year of planting jatropha, while not significantly decreasing yields of other crops in the same field.
Jatropha needs no pesticides and no fertilizer beyond the residue returned to the soil after oil is pressed from the plant's nuts. Compare those gains with other biofuel plants like corn or sugar cane, which actually displace crops that could feed people directly and use huge amounts of water, fertilizer, and pesticides.
So what's not to like? Poor farmers, big winners — and environment benefits too.
Now, place the very same plant in another context.
Several years ago the government of India began backing the spread of large jatropha plantations, with the ambitious goal of producing enough biofuel from its seeds to significantly reduce dependency on imported oil. Here, empirical results from the southern state of Tamil Nadu reveal that jatropha cultivation is not pro-poor at all, say scholars writing in the Journal of Peasant Studies. "Jatropha cultivation favors resource-rich farmers," they write. Instead of aiding the growth of food crops, as in the Mali story, jatropha plantations in India have replaced food crops and helped push poor farmers off the land.
This contrast in outcome reflects the web of relationships in which the plant grows.
Once seeing through a contextual eco-lens, we also realize that what might be perceived as a single change in a community — whether animal, vegetable, or mineral — can create endless ripples. Hearing, for example, the word "organic," a lot of us see green — maybe a curly kale in a lush field. For most people, it's a package of farming and eating without pesticides. But as we learn to think like ecosystems, the word "organic" can come to evoke vastly wider associations. A recent UN study, Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Africa, beautifully teases out a few organic ripples that might surprise.
African farmers who cultivate beneficial insects to control pests, the report finds, develop a lot more knowledge and skills than they did by just spraying pesticide. Where farmers are building on indigenous knowledge, they also experiment more to solve problems instead of merely relying on what a corporate input supplier tells them.
Imagine the greater self-confidence and resiliency in facing climate challenges.
Organic farming also leads to improved health, the report notes, including less malaria in rice-fish zones. Plus, the improved nutritional value of organic produce, along with a greater variety of foods, strengthens people's immune systems, particularly vital to HIV/AIDS sufferers. "Extending the life of a farming parent [with the disease] by several years could mean the difference between life and death for the children left behind," notes the report. Imagine the ripples, where 11 million children in sub-Saharan Africa are already HIV/AIDS orphans.
Organic farming "can undoubtedly reduce poverty" because of increased production selling at higher prices. And because some of the additional income from greater food production goes to paying school fees, "education of the wider community" increases, notes the study.
And then there's the female ripple. In many communities using imported seeds and chemicals, women on their own couldn't get access to these inputs or credit to buy them. (In Africa women receive less than 10 percent of the credit going to small farmers.) But once taking up organic practices, and thus freed from dependency on credit, women gained more equal footing with men. Their output could then grow, providing surplus to sell in the market and helping the whole family.
This report also tells us that, because organic practices can produce more food, hunger is displacing fewer people from their communities. (A separate University of Michigan study found that if the entire world were to move toward agroecological approaches, food output could increase substantially.) Some people are even migrating back to their organic farming villages, as more vibrant local economies offer more jobs.
Finally, climate: In my daughter Anna Lappé's Diet for a Hot Planet, we learn about why the food and agricultural system contributes about a third of the gases heating our planet. So, as explored [earlier], this move away from extractive, chemical farming means facing down climate chaos. Now, there's a really welcome ripple.
Clearly, one change — organic farming — is not one change at all. Even M. S. Swaminathan, celebrated Indian champion of the 1960s Green Revolution — or what I call "dependency agriculture" because it made farmers dependent on corporate-controlled chemicals and seeds — now recommends the direction this report from Africa highlights: toward technologies "rooted in the principles of ecology, economics, gender and social equity, employment generation, and energy conservation." He calls for research "based on an entire farming system."
For me, Swaminathan's shift of perspective is yet more striking evidence that it's possible for any of us to rethink even long-held assumptions.
Excerpted with permission from EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want, by Frances Moore Lappé (New York: Nation Books, 2011)
The essay is excerpted from The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision, by Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi (2014, Cambridge University Press). The book integrates the ideas, models, and theories underlying the systems view of life into a single coherent framework, exploring its implications for a broad range of endeavors, from economics and politics to medicine, psychology, and law.
From Quantitative to Qualitative Growth
It seems, then, that our key challenge is to shift from an economic system based on the notion of unlimited growth to one that is both ecologically sustainable and socially just. From the perspective of the systems view of life, "no growth" cannot be the answer. Growth is a central characteristic of all life. A society, or economy, that does not grow will die sooner or later. Growth in nature, however, is not linear and unlimited. While certain parts of organisms, or ecosystems, grow, others decline, releasing and recycling their components, which become resources for new growth.
This kind of balanced, multifaceted growth is well known to biologists and ecologists. Capra and Henderson (2009) have proposed to call it "qualitative growth" to contrast it to the concept of quantitative growth used by today's economists. The recognition of the fallacy of the conventional concept of growth, the two authors suggest, is the first essential step to overcoming our economic crisis. In the words of social-change activist Frances Moore Lappé (2009):
Since what we call "growth" is largely waste, let's call it that! Let's call it an economics of waste and destruction. Let's define growth as that which enhances life — as generation and regeneration — and declare that what our planet needs is more of it.
The notion of "growth which enhances life" is what is meant by qualitative growth — growth that enhances the quality of life. In living organisms, ecosystems, and societies, qualitative growth includes an increase in complexity, sophistication, and maturity. Unlimited quantitative growth on a finite planet is clearly unsustainable, but qualitative economic growth can be sustained if it involves a dynamic balance between growth, decline, and recycling, and if it also includes the inner growth of learning and maturing.
The focus on qualitative growth is fully consistent with the systems view of life. As we have emphasized several times in this book, the new science of life is essentially a science of qualities. This is relevant in particular to the understanding of ecological sustainability, since the basic principles of ecology — principles like interdependence or the cyclical nature of ecological processes — are expressed in terms of patterns of relationships, or qualities.
In fact, the new systemic conception of life makes it possible to formulate a scientific concept of quality. It seems that there are two different meanings of the term — one objective and the other subjective. In the objective sense, the qualities of a complex system refer to the properties of the system that none of its parts exhibit. Quantities like mass and energy tell us about the properties of the parts, and their sum total is equal to the corresponding property of the whole — e.g., the total mass or energy. Qualities like stress or health, by contrast, cannot be expressed as the sum of properties of the parts. Qualities arise from processes and patterns of relationships among the parts. Hence, we cannot understand the nature of complex systems such as organisms, ecosystems, societies, and economies if we try to describe them in purely qualitative terms. Quantities can be measured; qualities need to be mapped (see Section 4.3).
With the recent emphasis on complexity, networks, and patterns of organization, the attention of scientists in the life sciences has begun to shift from quantities to qualities, and there has been a corresponding conceptual shift in mathematics. In fact, this began in physics during the 1960s with the strong emphasis on symmetry (see Section 8.4.3), which is a quality, and it intensified during the subsequent decades with the development of complexity theory, or nonlinear dynamics, which is a mathematics of patterns and relationships. The strange attractors of chaos theory and the fractals of fractal geometry are visual patterns representing the qualities of complex systems (see Sections 6.3 and 6.4).
In the human realm, the notion of quality seems always to include references to human experiences, which are subjective aspects. This should not be surprising. Since all qualities arise from processes and patterns of relationships, they will necessarily include subjective elements if these processes and relationships involve human beings.
For example, the quality of a person's health can be assessed in terms of objective factors, but it includes a subjective experience of well-being as a significant element (see Section 15.2). Similarly, the quality of a human relationship derives largely from subjective mutual experiences. To describe and explain the qualities of such subjective experiences within a scientific framework is known as the "hard problem" of consciousness studies, as we discussed in Chapter 12.
These considerations imply that, to properly assess the health of an economy, we need qualitative indicators of poverty, health, equity, education, social inclusion, and the state of the natural environment — none of which can be reduced to money coefficients or aggregated into a simple number. Indeed several economic indicators of this kind have recently been proposed. They include the United Nations (UN) Human Development Index (HDI), launched in 1990, and the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, which assess twelve criteria and use monetary coefficients only where appropriate (see Capra and Henderson, 2009).
Growth and Development
…A developing organism, or ecosystem, grows according to its stage of development. Typically, a young organism will go through periods of rapid physical growth, In ecosystems, this early phase of rapid growth is known as a pioneer ecosystem, characterized by rapid expansion and colonization of the territory. The rapid growth is always followed by slower growth, by maturation, and ultimately by decline and decay, or, in ecosystems, by so-called succession (see Section 16.1). As living systems mature, their growth processes shift from quantitative to qualitative growth.
The distinction between the biological and the current economic sense of "development," and the association of qualitative economic growth with former and purely quantitative growth with the latter, help to clarify the widely used but problematic concept of "sustainable development." If "development" is used in the current narrow economic sense, associated with the notion of unlimited quantitative growth, such economic growth can never be sustainable, and the term "sustainable development" would thus be an oxymoron. If, however, the process of development is understood as more than a purely economic process, including social, ecological, cultural, and spiritual dimensions, and if it is associated with qualitative economic growth, then such a multidimensional systemic processes can indeed be sustainable.
Such a broad, alternative view of development is advocated today by a number of scholars and activists, who see development as a creative process of increasing one's capabilities — as characteristic of all life — which requires, first and foremost, control over local resources (see Escobar, 1995; Esteva and Prakash, 1998; W. Sachs, 1992). In this view, development is not purely an economic process, but includes social, ecological, cultural, and ethical dimensions. It is a multidimensional and systemic process, in which the primary actors of development are the institutions of civil society — the NGOs based on kin, neighborhood, or common interests.
Because people are different and the places in which they live are different, we can expect development to produce cultural diversity of all kinds. The processes whereby it happens will be very different from the current global trading system. It will be based on the mobilization of local resources to satisfy local needs, and informed by the values of human dignity and ecological sustainability. Such truly sustainable development is based on the recognition that we are an inseparable part of the web of life, of human and nonhuman communities, and that enhancing the dignity and sustainability of any one of them will enhance all the others.
Sources:
Capra, F. and H. Henderson (2009). Qualitative growth, in Outside Insights. London: Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. October; posted on www.frijofcapra.net.
Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development. Princeton University Press.
Esteva, G. and M.S. Prakash (1998). Beyond development, what? Development in Practice, 8(3): 280-96.
Lappé. F.M. (2009). Liberation ecology. Resurgence (UK), January/February.
Sachs, W., ed. (1992). The Development Dictionary. London: Zed Books.
It seems, then, that our key challenge is to shift from an economic system based on the notion of unlimited growth to one that is both ecologically sustainable and socially just. From the perspective of the systems view of life, "no growth" cannot be the answer. Growth is a central characteristic of all life. A society, or economy, that does not grow will die sooner or later. Growth in nature, however, is not linear and unlimited. While certain parts of organisms, or ecosystems, grow, others decline, releasing and recycling their components, which become resources for new growth.
This kind of balanced, multifaceted growth is well known to biologists and ecologists. Capra and Henderson (2009) have proposed to call it "qualitative growth" to contrast it to the concept of quantitative growth used by today's economists. The recognition of the fallacy of the conventional concept of growth, the two authors suggest, is the first essential step to overcoming our economic crisis. In the words of social-change activist Frances Moore Lappé (2009):
Since what we call "growth" is largely waste, let's call it that! Let's call it an economics of waste and destruction. Let's define growth as that which enhances life — as generation and regeneration — and declare that what our planet needs is more of it.
The notion of "growth which enhances life" is what is meant by qualitative growth — growth that enhances the quality of life. In living organisms, ecosystems, and societies, qualitative growth includes an increase in complexity, sophistication, and maturity. Unlimited quantitative growth on a finite planet is clearly unsustainable, but qualitative economic growth can be sustained if it involves a dynamic balance between growth, decline, and recycling, and if it also includes the inner growth of learning and maturing.
The focus on qualitative growth is fully consistent with the systems view of life. As we have emphasized several times in this book, the new science of life is essentially a science of qualities. This is relevant in particular to the understanding of ecological sustainability, since the basic principles of ecology — principles like interdependence or the cyclical nature of ecological processes — are expressed in terms of patterns of relationships, or qualities.
In fact, the new systemic conception of life makes it possible to formulate a scientific concept of quality. It seems that there are two different meanings of the term — one objective and the other subjective. In the objective sense, the qualities of a complex system refer to the properties of the system that none of its parts exhibit. Quantities like mass and energy tell us about the properties of the parts, and their sum total is equal to the corresponding property of the whole — e.g., the total mass or energy. Qualities like stress or health, by contrast, cannot be expressed as the sum of properties of the parts. Qualities arise from processes and patterns of relationships among the parts. Hence, we cannot understand the nature of complex systems such as organisms, ecosystems, societies, and economies if we try to describe them in purely qualitative terms. Quantities can be measured; qualities need to be mapped (see Section 4.3).
With the recent emphasis on complexity, networks, and patterns of organization, the attention of scientists in the life sciences has begun to shift from quantities to qualities, and there has been a corresponding conceptual shift in mathematics. In fact, this began in physics during the 1960s with the strong emphasis on symmetry (see Section 8.4.3), which is a quality, and it intensified during the subsequent decades with the development of complexity theory, or nonlinear dynamics, which is a mathematics of patterns and relationships. The strange attractors of chaos theory and the fractals of fractal geometry are visual patterns representing the qualities of complex systems (see Sections 6.3 and 6.4).
In the human realm, the notion of quality seems always to include references to human experiences, which are subjective aspects. This should not be surprising. Since all qualities arise from processes and patterns of relationships, they will necessarily include subjective elements if these processes and relationships involve human beings.
For example, the quality of a person's health can be assessed in terms of objective factors, but it includes a subjective experience of well-being as a significant element (see Section 15.2). Similarly, the quality of a human relationship derives largely from subjective mutual experiences. To describe and explain the qualities of such subjective experiences within a scientific framework is known as the "hard problem" of consciousness studies, as we discussed in Chapter 12.
These considerations imply that, to properly assess the health of an economy, we need qualitative indicators of poverty, health, equity, education, social inclusion, and the state of the natural environment — none of which can be reduced to money coefficients or aggregated into a simple number. Indeed several economic indicators of this kind have recently been proposed. They include the United Nations (UN) Human Development Index (HDI), launched in 1990, and the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, which assess twelve criteria and use monetary coefficients only where appropriate (see Capra and Henderson, 2009).
Growth and Development
…A developing organism, or ecosystem, grows according to its stage of development. Typically, a young organism will go through periods of rapid physical growth, In ecosystems, this early phase of rapid growth is known as a pioneer ecosystem, characterized by rapid expansion and colonization of the territory. The rapid growth is always followed by slower growth, by maturation, and ultimately by decline and decay, or, in ecosystems, by so-called succession (see Section 16.1). As living systems mature, their growth processes shift from quantitative to qualitative growth.
The distinction between the biological and the current economic sense of "development," and the association of qualitative economic growth with former and purely quantitative growth with the latter, help to clarify the widely used but problematic concept of "sustainable development." If "development" is used in the current narrow economic sense, associated with the notion of unlimited quantitative growth, such economic growth can never be sustainable, and the term "sustainable development" would thus be an oxymoron. If, however, the process of development is understood as more than a purely economic process, including social, ecological, cultural, and spiritual dimensions, and if it is associated with qualitative economic growth, then such a multidimensional systemic processes can indeed be sustainable.
Such a broad, alternative view of development is advocated today by a number of scholars and activists, who see development as a creative process of increasing one's capabilities — as characteristic of all life — which requires, first and foremost, control over local resources (see Escobar, 1995; Esteva and Prakash, 1998; W. Sachs, 1992). In this view, development is not purely an economic process, but includes social, ecological, cultural, and ethical dimensions. It is a multidimensional and systemic process, in which the primary actors of development are the institutions of civil society — the NGOs based on kin, neighborhood, or common interests.
Because people are different and the places in which they live are different, we can expect development to produce cultural diversity of all kinds. The processes whereby it happens will be very different from the current global trading system. It will be based on the mobilization of local resources to satisfy local needs, and informed by the values of human dignity and ecological sustainability. Such truly sustainable development is based on the recognition that we are an inseparable part of the web of life, of human and nonhuman communities, and that enhancing the dignity and sustainability of any one of them will enhance all the others.
Sources:
Capra, F. and H. Henderson (2009). Qualitative growth, in Outside Insights. London: Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. October; posted on www.frijofcapra.net.
Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development. Princeton University Press.
Esteva, G. and M.S. Prakash (1998). Beyond development, what? Development in Practice, 8(3): 280-96.
Lappé. F.M. (2009). Liberation ecology. Resurgence (UK), January/February.
Sachs, W., ed. (1992). The Development Dictionary. London: Zed Books.
THE DECLINE OF BOURGEOISIE
Runtuhnya Kelompok Dagang Pribumi Kotagede XVII-XX
Penulis: David Efendi
Pengantar: Achmad Charis Zubair
Penerbit: Research Center for Politics and Government, Jurusan Politik dan Pemerintahan UGM
Cetakan: 2009
Tebal: xxvi+276 halaman
Pada awal dan pertengahan abad 20, Kotagede terkenal dengan keberadaan “Orang Kalang” yakni klas kaya di Kotagede. Pada perkembangannya, klas orang kaya tidak hanya terbatas di kalangan orang Kalang. Orang-orang yang berhasil menduduki klas ekonomi atas muncul dari berbagai latar belakang, terutama paska Indonesia merdeka dan akhir abad 20. Telah terjadi dinamika orang kaya dan peranan sosialnya di Kotagede, terutama menjelang pergantian milenium.
Buku karya David Efendi ini berusaha melacak keberadaan klas-klas kaya di Kotagede tersebut, sekaligus menyusuri jejak kemundurannya. Tulisan di dalam buku ini mencoba menguraikan apa yang terjadi dalam dinamika klas-klas kaya Kotagede merentang lebih dari dua abad, sejak Mataram Islam hingga paska kolonial atau kemerdekaan Indonesia. Bagi penulis, buku ini diharapkan memberi kontribusi atas perdebatan mengenai formasi elit, klas menengah atau yang penulis sebut sebagai borjuasi di kalangan kelompok pribumi Jawa, kelompok intelektual pada zaman-zaman berikut.
Buku ini merupakan pengembangan dari tulisan tugas akhir (skripsi) untuk mencapai gelar sarjana di jurusan Ilmu Pemerintahan Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM). Kata pengantar buku ini ditulis oleh Achmad Charis Zubair, seorang akademisi Fakultas Filsafat UGM dan penduduk asli Kotagede. David Efendi, penulis buku, merupakan alumnus Jurusan Ilmu Pemerintahan FISIPOL UGM tahun 2008. Ia banyak membuat artikel yang dimuat di berbagai media.
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