Consilience » Blog Archive » For Body and Planet

For Body and Planet

Jonathan Pfeiffer (UCSB grad student in Global and International Studies)

When it comes to creating new systems, ideas, things, and experiences on planet Earth, there are two ways of making things happen. The first is blind evolution: Start with some variation, add a mechanism for selecting the fitter variants, and watch what happens. And then there is conscious design: A designer, who is typically human and therefore herself a product of evolution, purposefully produces something new, and if she is fortunate or skilled, something also predictable, efficient, and easily controlled.

These two ways of producing complex systems are profoundly different. It is not surprising, then, that various disciplines, like those of technology versus those of biology, are divided by their concentrations, respectively, in design and evolution. But in reality, everything that humans are and everything humans care about are results of both kinds of processes. Design and evolution interact to create the space we live in, regardless of whether that space is bleak or bountiful. The demand for sustainability is a demand for a generous integration of design and evolution which serves, above all else, the needs of the human body and the human mind.

Sustainability calls for social, economic, and environmental interactions that are bearable, equitable, and viable. These demands carry human consequences which are highly personal and visceral. How many liters of blood will be shed this century in food riots? How many liters of clean, delicious water will be swallowed per capita? How many times will people get shot with firearms in conflicts over water? How many creative breakthroughs will happen after aspiring artists and scientists move out of the slums and suburbs into bright green cities, where they may find that their minds and bodies are conspicuously unburdened by poverty, pollution, or pathogens? We will never be able to answer these questions with exact numbers. But the more we ask such questions about the actual results of sustainable economic development, the more clearly we can think about their goals.

In the present, sharp thinking about sustainable development is dulled by the burden of saviorship. As the ecosystem services that sustain our communities begin to diminish, we come to believe that the entire Earth system is facing an apocalypse. Nature editor Oliver Morton remarked a couple of years ago, against conventional wisdom: “Our planet is not in peril.” Nothing humans are likely to do, no matter how destructive, is likely to stop the continued biological and geological evolution of Earth. Saving the planet is not the point of sustainable development.

Still, the fate of the human person — with all of its health, imagination, and reason — is tied to the fate of the biosphere. As the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has argued since the 1980s, the expansion of human opportunities and capabilities is the ultimate objective of economic development. Moreover, we have seen in many places around the world that this kind of humane development absolutely requires prudent use of natural capital. Human development, economic development, and sustainable development are three ways of describing the same ambitions for human society, three ways of pointing to the same kind of progress. Consider agriculture: Nourishment for people, thriving markets, and fertile soils are all vital components of a peaceful planet.

Agriculture is a fitting example because it highlights an important characteristic of both human persons and ecosystems: Both occupy a peculiar space between design and evolution. Are vast farms of crops like corn, rice, and wheat results of blind evolution, or are they products of conscious human design? They are both. The same is increasingly true of entire ecosystems profoundly transformed by human activities, of which agriculture is a paradigmatic example. It is also true of human bodies which, despite their deep and ancient evolutionary histories, are irrevocably shaped by culture and medical therapies and modifications. Design needs evolution as manufactured forms of capital depend on natural capital.

Design and evolution are interacting every day. An assortment of farming methods, energy infrastructures, and international agreements are working with —or against— the evolved patterns of life and growth. How can those interactions be made more productive, more equitable, and more sustainable, all at the same time? Design and evolution are vastly different ways of generating complex systems, and the difficulty of uniting them may be so great that we can hardly fathom the challenges. Learning more about how design and evolution work, separately and in the context of the other, is a fundamental impetus for public investments in basic research and development. Learning how to unify disparate kinds of planetary creativity will be hard, but for both body and planet, it will also be wonderfully worthwhile.

Filed in Editorial Column

2 Comments »

2 Responses to “For Body and Planet”

For Body and Planet Says:
July 12th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
[...] second editorial column is up at Consilience. When it comes to creating new systems, ideas, things, and experiences on [...]
The Outquisition » Blog Archive » Early status Says:
July 13th, 2008 at 11:38 am
[...] overview of what best outcomes mean to me with respect to sustainability, read my 9 July 2008 editorial column. Obviously, the idea of the Outquisition will require deep probing and refinement by lots of [...]

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