Sustainability seems to have a strong focus on elimination of what is bad. Take the things we don’t like (racism, carbon emissions — you name it) and declare war against them. Measure them, and try to stop them. It’s a focus on making “not bad” happen.
But unfortunately, the “not bad” isn’t something good. Not bad isn’t what you necessarily want. For example, not racism isn’t having connected, diverse communities — it’s simply not having racism. Not carbon emissions isn’t a healthy ecosystem, it’s not having carbon emissions. I’m sure you can imagine just as well as I can what happens if all we can do is stop the bad. We might live in eco-efficient homes, but we’d still feel isolated, alone.
So let’s focus on the truly good things instead — our vision for what would be deeply fulfilling lives, collectively, in service of all life. How can we do that now, some people say? We have to get rid of the bad things first. Maybe, but consider that that might not be entirely true. When we focus on the good, many bad things go away naturally. They don’t happen when good things are in place. And then as a bonus, we get more than just “not bad” — we have good.
What if we redirected the majority of our energy towards creating good? Do we even know to do to that, or have we gotten too caught up in the war against bad?