Our Global society… like a game of Jenga.

Ever played Jenga? It’s a game with blocks you stack, and then once you are out, you take blocks from somewhere in the stack to keep stacking higher and higher. Like the “flights in one day” illustration, It’s another visual representation I think about in relation to how sophisticated and orderly and built our globalized society is becoming. It speaks to the principle of sustainability

To win, we need to get higher, and higher. That’s the only goal. Do so at all costs. Whoever screws up looses. This analogy is so dead on, for two reasons:  one, our society is predicated on growing. I.e. Gross Domestic Product. We’re not doing well unless it is getting bigger. Secondly, we are so focused on competing with each other that we fail to realize that loosing the game means we all have to start from scratch again… and there is a mess to clean up (well, unless you play with a reward at the end, like looser cleans up… but that doesn’ fit the analogy, so forget I mentioned it).

Do you see the blocks at the top of the stack? They have a pretty long way to fall – there is a lot holding them in their state of ingnorant bliss. One piece of the stack puts the wack out of balance and… well, that is what we are worried will happen to our global capitalistic systems if we remove a peice like the auto or aviation industries which are foundational… pivotal peices of our history that have brought us lattes from another continent etc.

Notice the blocks under the one that caused the crash. These are virtually unaffected. They shake and shudder, but they are not reliant on the rest of the system. There are few places on our planet like that now… but they do exist. See: “Secluded Indonesian Tribe Unaffected By Global Crisis”

This to me, is the only way to avoid the even more serious challenges we face in addition to global financial crisis. How do we pull out of the system? How do we become more self reliant?

There are people and communities in North America that are trying to do this: 100 mile diet, cooperative ventures supported by people that live in the communities in which they operate, electric vehicles, waste recovery, barter system, sharing, recycling, having fun in the back yard or in a community space… there are unique and effective economies developing in pockets. A diversity of them that meet the needs of the people involved in the places where the people are. Economies that are in touch with real, everyday human values like health, leisure, nutrition, community… this is called the social economy. 

In addition to the economic game, we are also playing one with the environment. We build increasingly more technologies, infrastructure fixes (think dikes), pesticides/herbicides and regulations to construct an environmental “order” we can manipulate and control. At what scale can we manage this complexity? How are we to know where the limit is? It is this uncertainty that some researchers believe we are on the verge of truly testing. See the Sustainable Scale Levels Website for more on this (I might post on this specific topic later).

So what do you think? Is our global system engaged in a game of Jenga? And if so, how do we get out of a game that will end in a sudden and destructive way?

From my sphere to yours, here’s to Earth on a Platter.

HB