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LIFESTYLE | SUSTAINABILITY | SYSTEMIC DESIGN | BUDDHISM
The art of buying groceries
(five steps to start changing the world by practicing kindfulness)
When the feminist and Palestinian activist-designer Dana Abdulla spoke about the contradictions of sustainability, at #RSD11, the yearly convention of the Systemic Design Association (I have written more about Dana here), the audience was dumbfounded by her arguments. I was there, so I know — and I thought that what Dana was saying was eye-opening too.
It is too easy to go about and speak for a sustainable future. Not taking an airplane, not cutting that tree, not polluting the water. Vandalizing a painting, driving an electric car, calculating carbon footprints, going fully vegan, generating anger, accusing others of blah blah while exempting yourself, always putting the blame on people and things outside of you: all this is too easy.
For a sustainable future, what we need is overall systemic change. This doesn’t mean some big disruption. We do not need a revolution.
What we need is eight billion people thinking and behaving differently. And not in some grandiose kind of way. What works better is the smaller stuff. We need to start very small indeed. It isn’t difficult. It’s easy. But it does…
