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Greek to Me
Sustainability’s a Bitch
© 2009 by Michael Raysses
I’m an inveterate linguaphile—I love words. Being a writer, that stands to reason. But wrangling words is just part of how I have come to have such boundless affection for them.
My connection runs so deep because they strike me the same way that people do, which is to say that they are capable of moving me to great passion They can beguile me, vex me, or in their most torturous state, infuriate me with their chameleon-like ability to change color, becoming temporarily invisible, only to resurface with yet another meaning, and thus another face.
“Sustainability” ranks high on my list of elusive words, touching all those emotional bases in the process. Keeping the words-as-people analogy, Sustainability is a woman, a grand dame of many facets.
Broadly, she represents the ability to maintain a certain process or state. But over time she has become associated with biological and human systems. Ecologically speaking, she embodies the ability of an ecosystem to maintain natural processes, functions, biodiversity and productivity into an undefined future.
Age has done nothing to diminish her complexity. Today Sustainability implicates almost every facet of life, whether referring to the many different levels of biological organization (wetlands, prairies and forests), to her expression within the realm of human organization concepts (eco-municipalities, sustainable cities), or human activities and disciplines (sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, and even—yikes!—erectile dysfunction).
On a global level, for people to live within Sustainability’s edicts, the earth’s resources must be used at a rate at which they can be replenished. Clearly, humanity is living beyond her means. Despite Sustainability’s protean ways, in 1989, the World Commission on Environment and Development articulated what has now become Sustainability’s widely accepted definition: “to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Contemplating Sustainability’s macro application moved me to consider it as it plays out in my own life. And when I did, she reared her head once again, unceremoniously requiring me to rethink some fundamental assumptions that unbeknownst to me, had outgrown their utility.
For instance, there was a time when I prided myself on staying abreast of the news, of being well-informed about all manner of issues on local, national, and international levels. Coincidentally, this period crested around the last presidential election and began to recede in the run up to the inauguration itself.
Unfortunately, I found that I couldn’t sustain that level of awareness because in its best light, I found it stultifying.
And in its darkest glow, it literally paralyzed me with its toxic burden.
Quite simply, my days of being immersed in current affairs are over because lately I can only stand so much of the news before it gets old. And by old, I mean it’s nothing new; it’s the same old diet of death, desecration and greed—shouldn’t there be a law or at least some social compact whereby that which is labeled “the news” has the decency to at least be, well, new? Or at least not presented in terms that feel dated and flat?
Beyond not being new, the news today is implicitly phrased in binary terms: of good news versus bad news. And you don’t have to be a Beltway pundit to know which one predominates. Recently, a major network newscaster made news by soliciting stories that met the “good news standard,” which, ironically enough, really isn’t anything new at all. If the fact that too much bad news isn’t good news qualifies as a bulletin in your life, you clearly have larger issues to contend with than the news.
I am tired of having the quality of my life be defined by the news I ingest. Don’t I have a rich, (okay, mildly colorful) personal history that helps me understand who I am based on the people I come from: my ancestors? (I do.) Didn’t my grandparents immigrate to this country with no more than the clothes on their backs? (They did.) And didn’t my parents raise and send all three of us kids to college while working double-shifts and sleeping on hide-a-beds? (They did that, too.)
But then I realize that none of that is really relevant right now, especially as I confront the world that’s in the news today. With institutions falling as fast as the numbers on a stock exchange that always seemed like voodoo to me anyway, and unemployment rising faster than the fever-pitch hysteria that has gripped the media in the last six months, I am left with the inescapable question: Who am I today, right now, this minute?
Recognizing that this is the primary question I have to currently concern myself with is the most newsworthy realization I’ve had in a long time. Because not only is it true, it’s sustainable—and necessarily so.
All my own personal myths and fables don’t mean a thing as I confront the world that is. And for the first time in longer than I can remember, I actually feel very much in sync with what the majority of us are posed with right now—who are we, devoid of our history, recent and long gone, as we stand in the maelstrom that engulfs us? Are we a nation of resilient and plucky individuals united in joint effort to make this the best place in the world to call home? Or are we riding on the coattails of threadbare memories?
The answer to that question has yet to take shape. And as for the media, I don’t yet know whether no news is literally good news, but I envision a scenario where less news makes room for some essential personal inquiry. In these inscrutably trying times, that is an insight I will definitely sustain.
Michael Raysses is a writer/actor/National Public Radio commentator living in Los Angeles. E-mail him at MichaelRaysses@hotmail.com.