179_After Sustainable Habits, What's Next?
Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast
Episode 179
After Sustainable Habits, What’s Next?
Episode link
After Sustainable Habits, What’s Next?
20 minutes listen
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adventuresinsustainableliving.com
My veterinary career has truly been quite varied. Upon entering veterinary school I only had experience in one hospital. Upon graduation, I was determine to broaden my focus. After years in practice I am happy that I’ve had the opportunity to live in work in multiple different countries.
The result has been a much broader perspective on the world and a much greater appreciation for other cultures. Lessons learned abroad have been brought back home which in turn has shaped my habits and values.
I believe that true progress only comes through growth. But once our habits and values mature into something that is focused more outward, instead of only on ourselves, what is the next step?
So join me for E179 After Sustainable Habits, What’s Next?
Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E179 After Sustainable Habits, What’s Next?
Sustainability question of the week
What are non-renewable resources?
Good News Story of the Week
Okay, the good news story of the week is actually about bumble bees. But it is really more a story of interest because it actually fits right into this episode.
As most of you know, bees are very social creatures. But as it turns out, they are capable of acquiring non-natural behaviors and teaching those skills to other bees. By doing so, the other bees learn behaviors that would be too complex for them to learn alone. This at least suggests that humans and bees share knowledge in exactly the same way.
One of the most remarkable attributes of the human species is our ability to progressively improve our skills and technologies. Then we take that knowledge and build on it to produce new innovations.
In this particular study, a bee was taught to solve a puzzle for a reward. It was a two step puzzle box in which the bee first had to move an obstacle to allow a rotating lid to open in order to access a sugary reward.
In the second step of the study, members from three separate colonies were given 24 days to independently solve the same puzzle. Not a single one succeeded. The third step was to use the trained bees to demonstrate this skill to other bees. In which case, they quickly learned the new behavior.
Interestingly enough this study provides evidence that bees can socially learn and pass on that learning on a level of complexity thought to be unique to humans and our ancestors. This suggest social learning and cultural transmission.
Now, culture is a word that we hear a lot. Culture is loosely defined as “the way of life for an entire society.” So, culture includes our dress, language, religion, rituals, laws, morality, manners, systems of belief and our values.
But at the root of our culture is the designation of a particular behavior that is socially learned and persists over time. And I think in that last statement lies the very reason that people find it difficult to change or perhaps never change. Many people never travel, are never exposed to new and different ideas, thoughts or values. Consequently they never realize that there just might be a different way to live. There might be different values and behaviors that are more socially productive.
This was exactly how I grew up. I was raised in a culturally narrow minded environment. We never traveled. We were never exposed to other cultures. In fact, I was taught that other cultures were insignificant and even lesser humans as compared to white people. It was not until I moved to Colorado that I realized just what I was taught was completely wrong and inappropriate.
Now, when I go back and visit people in the part of the country where I grew up, I see exactly the same thing. People who never leave the area where they were raised. Consequently, the narrow minded, culturally intolerant mindset persists. And it rests in the basic fact that people just don’t know any better.
I experienced this recently at a hospital where I was working except the circumstances were completely different. I was working in a part of town where the average value of a home is between $750K to $1 million USD. Consequently, most of the clients are very well educated. However, not all of them are well traveled.
For some reason we got off the subject of her visit and started talking about cultural values. I shared with her how I grew up and what I did to change the narrow minded values that I was taught. I could tell that she was appalled at how I was raised but also happy that I had changed. She had this rather overwhelmed look on her face after she asked me if I had first hand experience with racism and I said yes.
I then asked her if she had ever been outside of Colorado or even outside the US and she said no. So here was a well educated person that was not necessarily narrow minded but certainly had a limited cultural point of view. She seemed so surprised when I made her realize that there are a lot of people in the world that are just not tolerant of other cultures. But I feel as if I at least taught her something and maybe changed her view of the world a little bit.
These are two examples of how getting outside your comfort zone and broadening your perspective has the potential of changing your views and habits and maybe even your culture. You just have gain a new perspective that there just might be a better way to live.
So, our culture includes our dress, language, religion, rituals, laws, morality, manners, systems of belief and our values. And it is our values that ultimately shape and influence our view of the world and our everyday life as well as our habits.
Furthermore our values and habits affect our view of sustainability. In the last few episodes I have talked a lot about the barriers to a sustainable life and how to overcome those barriers. A lot of that has to do with changing our values and habits. But once we do that, what is the next step and what can we do to have the greatest impact.
To get my point across let’s take a look at a couple of examples.
Tree for the Future is a well recognized United Nations World Restoration Flagship organization. The founder, Dave Deppner, established Trees for the Future in 1989 after recognizing a link between poverty and deforestation.
Mr Deppner recognized that unsustainable land use and the resulting environmental degradation was threatening the future of millions of people and it was the farmers that had the power to change everything, the very farmers that are at the heart of our global food system. It was possible to break the cycle of hunger and poverty by teaching the sustainable land practices.
In 2015 Trees for the Future surpassed 100 million trees planted around the world and they are on track to plant one billion trees by 2030. Once Mr Deppner recognize the problem, he then found the root of the problem and found a solution. And the best part of that solution was teaching others where he had learned.
After traveling through several third world countries, I realized there was a significant need for providing proper veterinary care for the hundreds of impoverished villages where I traveled. I spent a couple of years searching for an organization that had a mission in line with what I wanted to do. Then I spent at least 10 years working in third world countries for weeks at a time. We set up mobile veterinary clinics, provided basic health care and surgical services. It was a tremendous amount of hard work.
But then I realized that I could spend the rest of my life performing this kind of work and never even scratch the surface of what was truly needed. That was when I changed my tactic and started teaching. I taught at three different universities and in numerous smaller clinics and hospitals. We taught basic medical, surgical and business skills. By doing so the local veterinarians could build sustainable businesses that would support the local community and provide them with a financial gain. It took me 10 years to realize that teaching was by far the best way to have the greatest impact.
The same principle holds true for having a sustainable life. Once you start mastering some of the basics, the best thing you can do it to share your knowledge and teach others. As long as I have been doing this I also find it productive to share sustainable ideas on social media platforms and to see what other people are doing. Teaching others and passing along our cultural values is truly how we are going to build a sustainable future.
One of the things I admire the most about the animal kingdom is that animals keep things rather simple. There is strong leadership with very simple rules. They are not worried about wars, famines, globalization, the price gasoline, or building walls in order to protect their territory. They simply focus on the basics of survival.
Yet as humans I wonder if we will ever be able to set aside our greed so that we can manage and equally distribute our vital natural resources so that everyone has a guaranteed quality of life. Will we be able to set aside our need for revenge when it makes no sense whatsoever because it brings us to the brink of the destruction of humanity. Will we be able to forget about our tribal loyalty when such loyalties justify dismissal of our moral values and basic honestly just in order to hurt the other tribe. When will we stop living in denial that we are headed for a very grim future if we do not change this culture of consumerism into a culture that values sustainability.
So often we easily forget that what we need for our continued survival is directly connected to the natural world. And yet we continue to squander our resources. I truly believe that despite all the bad news about climate change that we hear almost daily, we are not yet at the point of no return. However, we are at the point to where there are no easy answers. Throwing money and technology at our problems is not the answer to lasting change. It all starts with our culture, our behaviors, and our habits. And finally teaching others is the best way to pass on a cultural of sustainability.
What we need is a highly organized, focused social structure with strong leadership that is so often seen in the animal kingdom. Much like the ants, we cannot be intimidated by the work ahead of us. We must work together with lots of good communication much like a pack of wolves. Yet in our quest for a sustainable future we must also keep the compassion of the elephant if we are going to resolve conflict, respects the needs of our neighbors, friends, other cultures, and other nations. And because we have an enormous amount of work ahead of us, we have to delegate and be highly organized similar to bees. And similar to the bees, we need to pass on learned knowledge and skills to the next generation.
We have been so condition to think we live in a world of unlimited resources. But once we learn that we don’t, and we learn how to conserve, replenish, regenerate and live a sustainable life, the best possible thing you could do is teach others to do the same. As we learn new behaviors and habits, teach those to others.
Now I want to start winding down this episode by answering the sustainability question of the week.
Sustainability question of the week
What are non-renewable resources?
Non-renewable resources are energy sources such as coal, natural gas, and oil. These resources are produced naturally over time but it takes thousands if not millions of years. In the absence of total depletion, these resource would eventually renew but on a geological time scale. That means they are not renewable in the lifespan of anyone alive today. This is why they are referred to as non-renewable.
Well folks that about it for this episode. I just to remind you that I have completely redesigned the home page for the podcast. You can find me at adventuresinsustainableliving.com. If you visit me there you can get a free down load of 200 sustainability questions and answers. Additionally that download contains numerous links to other resources. And it is completely free. So be sure to visit me at adventuresinsustainableliving.com
Now I want to end this episode with a quote from Alexander the Great. He said, “Remember, upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.”
And from the prospective of sustainability, true and lasting human change begins with the individual.
If we start changing our day-to-day habits to something that values sustainable behavior, and we start teaching others, before you know it, we will have sustainable communities, then sustainable cities, and then sustainable nations. Sustainable nations then work together to form a sustainable global community.
Until next week, this is your host Patrick signing off. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.
Patrick
