I am writing to you from Atlanta, en route to Tucson, Arizona. I am headed there to do my work in the world. In this case I will be giving a guest lecture at the University of Arizona College of Architecture, while also working with their Solar Decathlon Student Competition team for a few days. I am feeling centered and clear about what I have to share…even as I know that my news is disruptive. Somebody’s got to do deliver it.
The main gist of the message is the same one that I have for any and everyone- we have built our version of the world on faulty foundations. This is tough news to swallow, as the implication is that everything has to change. And we don’t like change. Yet the fact of the matter is that in the game of life, that which refuses to change… dies. Life just doesn’t stand still. Living beings are either evolving or devolving. Period. It might be wise to stop and reflect on which direction we are headed. It would further be wise to not mistake technological advancement with evolution. They are not the same thing. In fact technological advancement without evolution is one of the surest ways to wind up extinct.
That is why I am shouting from every mountaintop I can find. I will be delivering this same message as the keynote speaker for the Vermont Green Building Network Annual Celebration in a couple of months. So what am I talking about? By now, if you have been reading this blog for any amount of time, you get the idea. The problem that we have on our hands is a worldview issue. Our story is off. We can, and should, be forgiving with ourselves, others, and those from whom we inherited this worldview. But enough already. The foundations upon which we built Western civilization as we know it disintegrated almost 100 years ago. We just couldn’t be bothered to notice.
What I am talking about is the Cartesian worldview which postulates that the world we see and experience is objective, made up of matter that cares not one iota about our presence. It’s simply not true. Quantum physics proved that way back in 1925. I have been over this before, so I won’t get into the specifics again here. What’s curious is that 100 years later we keep teaching the same old model. We keep telling the same old story. It’s just too difficult to face that the foundations upon which we have built this whole dang building have rotted out. So we pretend that isn’t the case and keep working harder and harder, throwing more and more technological fixes at it, in an attempt to keep the building from falling down. It never occurs to us to build a new foundation that is rooted in the way nature actually works.
Speaking of nature, the other part of our worldview that has been off from the day it was asserted is our “survival of the fittest” story about evolution. I have covered this one already before too, but will cover it again now. It was not Darwin who uttered “survival of the fittest.” That was Hebert Spencer. He was a social scientist who among others was keen on proving that unchecked capitalism operates in accordance with natural law. You can understand what was at stake. If capitalism was in accordance with natural law, then it too was law. To make his argument, Spencer extracted Darwin’s findings, took them out of context, and changed their meaning entirely. Specifically, Spencer asserted that competition drives evolution. Darwin was disturbed by this conclusion and objected. It didn’t matter. He was ignored, because the story had to fit the emerging capitalist narrative.
So here we now stand in our neoliberal world, competing each other to death. Again, I know this isn’t pleasant news and if me saying these things doesn’t push a button somewhere in you then I might guess that you are not an American. Hang in there with me for a second, or perhaps just a bit longer. Our survival is in fact dependent upon being in alignment with natural law. We just didn’t get that law correct those many years ago. What Darwin knew, and what ecologists have since proven again and again, is that it isn’t competition that drives evolution. Cooperation does. I’m not saying that competition doesn’t play a role, it just isn’t the primary driver. Cooperation is.
Let’s return to the case of the trees. What seems obvious is that the straightest, fastest, tallest growing tree will win the race. And it does. It is rewarded with the longest life. Competition, right? Yes. It wasn’t until we were able to start deciphering what is going on beneath the ground that we got the full picture. Down in the soil, forests have a network made up of roots and fungus that rivals our internet. Through that network trees share information, say about impending threats or current conditions. That helps the trees survive. But here is the real kicker. You know what the tree that grows the straightest, tallest, fastest gets for winning? It gets the responsibility of feeding all of the trees around it who didn’t win the competition. Congratulations! Welcome to elderhood!!
Let that sink in. Then think about how we do it. Some would argue that the reason they don’t want wealth distribution is because the winners will naturally take care of the losers. Is that your experience? If you look around and are really honest with yourself, is that what you see happening in this country, without fail? I’m not saying that people aren’t charitable. Yet that charity is withheld as a right rather than a responsibility, and the truth of the matter is that we have taken the exaltation of self-interest too far. Which is to say we have extracted self-interest outside the bounds of natural law. You know why the elder trees feed the losers? Because they realize that they are stronger together. They realize that their own survival is dependent upon living in a forest, with friends and family. It isn’t an act of charity.
If Darwin could take back his narrative, what he would say is that the “fittest” is the one who best serves the system in which it lives. That is what he discovered and that is what he meant. In short, it is cooperation that drives evolution. Do you see how radically different that interpretation is than the one we have been taught? It is critically important that you do, that we all do. Otherwise, we will continue to build out our societal systems on faulty- or completely rotted as the case may be- foundations. As any architect or builder knows, you have to get the foundation right to have a healthy building. In the case of our social-ecological systems, the foundation is our worldview. If you want to know what to do from here, I’m about to give you the best architectural advice that I can give: take a good hard look at your foundation before you make one more move.
Speaking of foundations, our house- I am now speaking of Shannon and my literal house- is in fact sitting on a rotting foundation. So you know what we are going to do? Starting in just a couple of short weeks, we are having the whole darn house lifted ten plus feet into the air so that we can replace the foundation with a sound one. It’s shocking that we can do such things, right? But we can. And if we can lift a literal house, we can do the same with our virtual house. The only question is, will we?
