Beneath the three pillars of sustainability

Image by Warren Griffiths from Pixabay

Sustainability is often said to rest on three pillars: 1) Ecological, 2) Economical and 3) Social sustainability. When supporting a structure with pillars, we also need a solid foundation, or the pillars might sink into the ground. In today’s post, I explore what this foundation might look like. The foundation should consist of eternal values. Two such values instantly come to my mind: Beauty and Education. The primary difference between these two eternal values and the three pillars, is that the three pillars need to be optimally balanced against each other over time as the facts on the ground varies, whereas beauty and education unconditionally strengthens all three pillars at once.

The legs of a three-legged table should have equal length, or things will roll off the side. It is easier to accomplish that on a floor that is flat and solid. For example, if we only focus on ecological sustainability, completely disregarding the economical and social aspects, civilisation will break apart. If we cannot tolerate that we will have some effect on the environment, our species and civilisation cannot exist. The same goes for the other two. There is no business on a dead planet (no further explanation needed). And third, a society with equal outcome for everyone, becomes static, and cannot survive in a dynamic world. But too much inequality of outcome will also rip the fabric of society apart, thereby eliminating equality of opportunity, which I personally value higher.

Now, let us consider beauty. Few things can stand the test of time as well as beauty. A beautiful building will still be beautiful in a thousand years. It will simply be re-purposed and adapted, as the requirements change with time. But if we focus too much on function over form – like we often do today – the building might not last even a hundred years, because it becomes so damn ugly that no-one want’s to be in it. The requirements on function changes with time, thus sometimes making the perfectly optimised building obsolete quickly. The beautiful building on the other hand, might not be as productive from an economical perspective in the short term, but that would be the equivalent of looking at Mona Lisa through a microscope. Take Cambridge university as an example. The buildings on campus are breath-takingly beautiful, and when walking in them you are filled with awe, pride and respect. I am convinced that this results in a significantly increased learning quality for the students, thus yielding an incalculable value for society and the world at large. Now THAT is true sustainability! Now compare Cambridge with Umeå University, my hometown. To claim they are equally beautiful is an idea so wrong, that you can’t even call it bad. The students are our future and they deserve nothing but the best. Everyone benefits from beautiful buildings and especially from beautiful educational facilities. This is the perfect Segway into the next layer of the foundation of sustainability: Education.

There is a lot of discussion on what ecological measures we need to do today to improve the world a hundred years from now. This is an immensely complicated question. We cannot even predict accurately what the weather will be like in a week from now. Consider this thought experiment. What if the people that lived in 1920 were to impose regulations and guidelines on how society should be run today, in 2020? Do you feel confident that they would do a good job? They couldn’t even begin to imagine what the world looks like today. Now, consider that it would be a LOT easier to predict 2020 a hundred years ago, than what it is for us to predict the year 2120. We are witnessing game changing development at an accelerating pace. Better yet, the rate of acceleration is itself accelerating. This exponential growth of civilisation makes an accurate prediction of 2120 near impossible. However, there is one thing that is definitely within our reach that absolutely will have a huge effect a century from now. The humans that are born today. They will still be around in 2120 and I cannot think of a single better way to improve the environment, the quality of life and mankind as a whole, than by giving them the best possible education today. We can do it.

Let’s start by making things beautiful.