Systems Thinking for Sustainability Beyond Organic Gardening

Have you ever watched someone play the entitlement card to get what they want? Do you ever play the entitlement card when you think you can get away with it? How about consciously squeezing someone to try to get something for nothing? C’mon, be honest about it. How far did you push? Did you see how far you could take things? Did you get frustrated and angry when you encountered resistance? Did you even go so far as to retaliate when you didn’t get what you wanted? What’s worse, did you feel justified in applying your own selective “justice” for the slight?

What made you believe that you were entitled to getting what you wanted at someone else’s expense? What is behind your anger and outrage? Now that the economy is at the worst most people can remember in living history and the whole world is feeling the crushing consequences of a dysfunctional, catabolic economic system, do think that squeezing others is the way to go, now more than ever?

Ever wonder what’s the current fascination popular culture has with vampires? That may seem like a non sequitur question out of the blue, but hang in there with me for a minute. Vampires have a prominent place in our consciousness as charming, sexy, seductive creatures of the night. Think about the symbolism, though. Vampires have no reflections, i.e. they can’t see themselves. Their parasitic existence cannot withstand exposure to light. They need to drain life in order to sustain themselves (and if you willingly consent to being “food”, all the better). Worst of all, the act of feeding upon others makes more vampires in the process. Popular culture and media have latched on the attractively sexy aspects of vampirism without examining either the substance of the symbolism or the meaning of the prevalence of the imagery.

Everyday encounters with real life vampires aren’t as sexy. You can identify them by how you feel after being around them – drained. (And if you’ve noticed that you’re driving others away, perhaps you’re one of these bloodsuckers.) Hang around a vampire long enough and maybe you’ll even feel sick to your stomach, depending on how heavily the vampire has “fed” on you. Vampires take and don’t give back much in return. When they give, they give just enough to make you perceive reciprocity without the actuality of its existence. Rather, they take as much as you permit them to and leave you feeling worse for the encounter. Vampires can only feed on you with your consent.

My view may be skewed because I currently live in Los Angeles, but a new acquaintance who was a project manager in the construction industry chimed in that this megalop0lis has throngs of people who are out to get something for nothing. In other words, this place is overrun with vampires, or at least people who act like them. Yeeech!

What kind of hole in the soul, what deep unmet need, drives this kind of entitlement? From what I’ve observed, the most virulently dangerous vampires are deeply unfulfilled individuals missing something fundamental. Some lack meaning and purpose in their lives. Others are missing a connection to something bigger than themselves and pieces of their own humanity, like conscience or even chunks of their souls.

Some individuals are sh*ts for the sake of being sh*ts, being rotten to others just because they can. This facile kind of vampire uses people up and discards them afterward. Other vampires, such as child molesters and abusive spouses, groom their targets and use their victims over a period of time. Other vampires have psychological and relational disorders that warp their personal relationships to the individuals they’re closest to. Still other people are not vampires to the core, but they exhibit behaviors that are draining to others around them. An attitude of entitlement is but one symptom – a clue about the nature of the vampire in question.

What else do vampires do? They complain. They don’t want solutions to the problems that lead to their complaints, but rather sympathy and attention. Speaking of attention, they want it – all of it. It’s all about them. Vampires want to be lavished with your life energy, time, money, love, expertise, etc., and they feel entitled to what they need from you. Whatever it is that you have of value that a vampire wants, he or she wants it in spades and will raise hell if they don’t get it. Forget reciprocity or equality because neither fundamentally exists from a vampire’s perspective. You’re fodder. What you need and want as a sovereign person don’t figure into the picture because you exist to feed the need.

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Sometimes an idea has to be cooked back down to its origins so that it may be reborn with new vitality and strength.

Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy has reached one of these choicepoints. It is unlikely that the workshop will continue to be offered monthly in Southern CA, but not because the content of the workshop is irrelevant and superfluous. A friend recently commented that this workshop may be ahead of its time. It may be. Then again, because the workshop exists and because Divine timing is always spot on, Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy may just be right where it needs to be right now. The workshop just needs to exist in a different format.

I had hopes that the workshop would be gaining positive momentum while facilitating new social connections between workshop attendees as they learn the mindset that allows sustainability to take root. In other words, teaching people systems thinking is the ostensible goal of Urban/Suburban Ecoliteracy but one of the key intentions of the workshop was to rebuild sorely needed social capital.

Here’s a quick test to see how much social capital you have in your neighborhood. How many of your neighbors do you know? Of the neighbors you have met and liked, how well do you know them and how well do they know you? How many would you trust to watch your kids? How many could you depend on to have your back if the crap hit the proverbial fan? How many of your neighbors can count on you to have their backs? Most of us don’t know our neighbors, let alone trust them. Trust is a measure of the presence or absence of social capital. The psychological, emotional, and physical safety and well-being of children (and other vulnerable members of society) in their own neighborhoods and in their families is another measure of social capital.

It was also part of the inherent design of the workshop format that that material would be tailored for its locale. Each and every community would, in effect, be hosting a unique workshop that was intended to create or enhance a sense of place. Considering the disparate communities that the workshop participants have come from, creating a sense of community connected to and grounded within a place wasn’t going to happen through the workshops. Metropolitan Los Angeles sprawls too far. It’s a place without a true center, which may be said to be everywhere and nowhere all at once. Although interpersonal affinities may be felt among workshop participants, authentic community is hard to foster without face time in real time. That may offend all you Twitter and Facebook users, but the need for face time is our collective social reality. It’s just how we’re wired as social beings.

As a recently soured relationship with a former client has reminded me, we are collectively a long way off from where we need to be and where we yearn to be. Regardless of political stripe, I know of no person of reasonably good character who does not want to be safe and for that safety to be extended to beloved friends and family. We yearn to trust and yet we’re surrounded my messages that pelt us day in and day out that 1) we’re not safe, 2) we’re never good enough, 3) we can never have enough, 4) we’re surrounded by crazy people and predators, and 5) the world is rife with scarcity, fierce competition, incessant threats, and ever-present danger. You have to get “them” before “they” get you, whomever “they” might be.

Is this honestly the world that you want for your children and grandchildren? Is this the world that you want for yourself?

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Are you one of those property owners who tills? Why do you till? More importantly, what do you believe that tillage achieves?

Maybe you think that the soil needs more oxygen. I’ll grant that soil life, including the plants, needs a combination of moisture and oxygen to survive, but soil with good texture already has oxygen in it! Soil that isn’t compacted from constant foot or vehicular traffic is just fine as it is.

Imagine a clear plastic or glass container filled with ball bearings. If you shake that container, the ball bearings will settle into an arrangement that minimizes the spaces between the bearings. This is what soil compaction would look like if you could magnify soil particles. But soil isn’t composed of only one particle size! The magical stuff that is soil is composed of varying particle sizes. If you go back to the image of the container with the ball bearings, now picture those ball bearings mixed in with kumquats, ping pong balls, tennis balls, and the occasional basketball. Those varying particle sizes allow for air and water to infiltrate the soil.

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Did you ever stop to consider the legacy of the lawn and its origin? What does having a lawn mean to you personally? Would you keep your lawn even if you didn’t have pets or children? Brown has invariably become the new “green”, not by choice but by mandate in Southern CA as lawns that were never drought resistant in the first place manifest the inevitable dieback that is the consequence of only being able to water once or twice a week.

Believe it or not, dieback is not inevitable for all lawns. For one, you need the right grass species. There are some lovely CA natives that work well for smaller patches of lawn. For another, the lawn has to be “trained” to become drought resistant by slowly diminishing the amount of irrigation it receives. Not all species of grass are going to be appropriate for this training, which is not for wimps!

Change offers the valuable opportunity to reconsider what is valuable and necessary as we sift through the detritus of habit. I for one am voting for end of the era of ornamental lawns.

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