Final Post

At the beginning of this course I wasn't sure what sustainability meant, but I thought that it would have to do with limiting the amount we use. I still believe that it has to do with limiting what we use, but I definitely think it has to do with more than that.
Sustainability is more than just making sure to recycle, or to build houses or buildings that use renewable energy sources. To me, it's more important to realize that the building needs to stop. Yes, your brand new house may use solar energy...but did you need to build a brand new house? What about all the other, older houses in the neighborhood over that are vacant? I think it's a common in societies like ours that we gauge the level of advancement or the wealth of a country or place by the amount of development. This is so backwards! By development we mean destruction and then creation. Destruction of the environment, of ecosystems, of life and creation and construction of non-living material buildings, or parking lots, or whatever. Our economy and our lives are both viewed in linear manners.
I think that this has something to do with the difficulties we have in discovering what it means to be sustainable, and in attempting to be sustainable. For most of us, we see life as being born, growing up, and dying. We don't seem to be sustainable as human beings so what do we know about sustainability? But I think that we are sustainable. I think that our bodies are sustainable. When we die, the line we live on does not end. It loops around and becomes a circle. Our bodies decompose and nourish the earth. Our minds go on and do whatever you believe they do (perhaps they are reused as the cycle of births and rebirths continues), but our lives are not lines, they are cycles. I think that once we de-mechanical-ize our lives and focus more on just being passionate and creative the connection with nature will be effortless to acknowledge. This also seems to relate to the idea of quality, not quantity. If we limit the amount we use, the amount we buy, we will automatically limit the amount we throw out and the amount we disrupt the environment.
One of the main ideas of sustainability to me still seems to be networks, circles of life, relationships. Once we realize that we are intertwined with everyone around us and with nature, we can being to see that what we do has an impact. We can take ideas from nature and use these ideas to come up with more sustainable ways of living. Nature demonstrates that sustainable systems are possible, so we should be taking ideas about how to live from nature (for example, structure of things that we build can be built in more "natural" ways). I guess I still don't really know what sustainability is. But I think that it begins with education. I think that education should begin from the very beginning, from pre-k. All throughout our young childhood we spend so much time outdoors, and I think, many of us feel a real connection to nature. Then we get put into school for seven hours a day, a school filled with artificial lighting and we learn theories and formulas but not about our connection to nature. We should integrate sustainability, in whatever way we see fit, into classrooms starting at the beginning and moving way on up to engineering school (for example). In addition, I think that sustainability has to do not only with limiting, but with not doing. Deciding whether we actually need something before we build it, or buy it, or use it. I think sustainability also has so much to do with relationships. Relationships with nature and the environment, but also relationships between people. We need to work together, across academic fields, across occupational areas, across fences and yards as we work in a community and strive for a sustainable future.