CONTEXT

At the end of the first decade in the 21st C, it is becoming increasingly clear that the imperatives that have tended to define what might be understood as the ‘cultural and social realities’ linked to place have become somewhat more ambiguous and less defined by the compartmental and specialised thinking that largely emerged in the 19th and 20th Centuries. “Sustainability, climate change and placedness” have entered the contemporary mindset and sometimes they have become buzzwords used to invoke credibility and currency in the context of contemporary innovation. Nonetheless, these concepts are often controversial and contested ideas. For example “sustainable” and “sustainability” – the capacity to endure – are among the most corrupted and ambiguous words in the lexicons attached to various ‘disciplines’ – so much so that in many contexts they have become meaningless clichés.

The 20th C witnessed the wane of the industrial era that once seemed to promise better lives for all. For instance, the part ‘design’, in particular industrial design, was to play in this outcome was never really realised or at least not in the universal way its advocates and champions envisioned. Essentially design practice, and thus designers, saw themselves as key players, heroes of a kind, and at many levels, in the globalisation of the world’s economies. Within this worldview ecology gives way to the ‘the economy’ and relentlessly.

Interestingly, and in contrast, current design practice tends to champion collaborative and cooperative processes and practices as viable alternatives to the concept of the individual as hero that was so evident in the post WW2 industrialised world.

In David Suzuki’s  Legacy Lecture in Perth February 2011 he said, “ Even though without an Ecology there is no Economy, we as a society treat the Economy as if it was more important.” With ‘Climate Change’ and the shifting power bases in international politics and economics, it is increasingly obvious that the presumed norms of the first world in the 20th C are unsustainable'. 

  

In his Perth lecture Suzuki also asked: “What is the intrinsic value of our ecological systems? In our economic system, nature does not have any value unless it can be commoditised. The service that our oceans, forests, mountains, rivers and other natural ecological systems provide is ineradicably linked for our survival in this planet. Yet under our current economic system, these ecological systems have no value in themselves. For example, in today’s and especially tomorrow’s world rich countries may “pay poorer ones not to cut down trees”  and sell them for money.”

Rhetorically at least, what is unsustainable is being acknowledged yet precious little attention is paid to what is affordable in emergent world views; what is possible via evolving cross disciplinary understandings; and just what it is that is at risk within the new ‘eco-crisis’ paradigm – even if such mindsets are blighted with rhetoric and clichés. By way of example, the ecological cum sustainability design paradigm is the one where “eco” invokes ecology rather than economy and where there are implications for designers that many are yet to embrace.

In the First World, or so-called Global Economy, the love of and reliance upon ‘money’ as the measure of all things is striking. Some love the stuff more than God. Some even see it as God’s reward and the measure of one’s goodness and Godliness.

It is imagined that there is almost nothing on planet earth that has the clout to rob us of our affection for money. In a 20th C context it seems that globalised communities became hard wired to the ‘money paradigm’, consumerism, market forces and the relentless exploitation of the planet’s resources in the belief that in the end money will buy anything, be the measure of all things and the ultimate solution to all problems.In the end there seems to be an assumption that the planet will provide – or go on providing.

The lack of money is attributed to bringing about of plagues, pestilence and death – worse still, boredom and solitude. What could be worse than being bankrupt, except for being bankrupt all alone?

In counter to this the now famous Cree Indian prophecy tells us “Only after the last tree has been cut down.Only after the last river has been poisoned.  Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”

Once money was valued against the ‘Gold Standard’  but more recently it would seem that more importantly, money is the standard against which power might be measured. Curiously, and perhaps by no accident, gold is the possibly the most endurable, and the most recycled element, recovered from the earth’s crust.

Even knowledge in the knowledge economy is seen as valueless unless it can be converted to money. Money is the currency of terrorists aiming to disrupt First World supremacy and the borderless corporate world alike. Money is seen as the backbone of almost every political endeavour. Nonetheless, as David Suzuki reminds us, without a sustainable ecology an economy cannot be sustained.

Against this background consumerism needs to re-examine both its raison d’être and modus operandi in order to remain viable and sustainable. Arguably, the world already has enough stuff  – too much even – and increasingly the concept of “economic growth” is revealing itself to be a flawed idea in a world with exponential population growth and demand in a world that has finite resources.

Tasmania, as an island at the edge of this world, and at the periphery, curiously is at the cutting edge of the political, social and cultural discourses that are emerging within this paradigm shift. Given Tasmania's histories, demography, geography and social cum cultural realities – perhaps not uniquely  placed but nonetheless poignantly placed – the island may well be a valuable vantage point from which to consider the questions that are currently arising.

Indeed, in Tasmania communities appear to be willing to assert their cognitive ownership of, and interests in, place – wilderness, cultural landscapes, environments, landliteracy concept – which in turn makes the island something of a social cum cultural laboratory in which contentious   ideas might be tested – and arguably has been for some time.  Tasmania is often cited as an exemplar of a social laboratory of some kind or another in a research context.

Perhaps the primacy, the sacredness, of ‘the individual’ and the notion of the individual leader/innovator/artist/inventor/ as saviour cum hero might well prove to be an unsustainable idea within the new paradigm if it is not already so. Arguably, in order to survive, as a society, indeed  a civilisation, individuals and communities will need to operate collaboratively and cooperatively. Conceptually, and subliminally at least, this is an idea that is already being tested in the search for sustainable ways forward in the context of 21st C realities.