Think low-tech (it's key to our future too)

It's re­ally com­fort­ing to be­lieve we can in­no­vate our­selves out of the path of the en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­nomic hur­ri­cane loom­ing in the con­science. That seems to be the big hope.

Is it yours?

In the face of more and more throat-dry­ing hard facts about how we have been liv­ing a lie, the hard-sell now is high-tech sus­tain­abil­ity, which is re­ally clever be­cause not only are there are good things hap­pen­ing with in­creas­ing ve­loc­ity, but it means an­other shot in the arm for the re­li­gion of com­merce: AND we don't have to ad­just our af­flu­ent lifestyles too much so long as we keep on con­sum­ing. The in­no­va­tors will fa­cil­i­tate our sus­tain­abil­ity and we have to go with it, to trust them.

Hang on a minute.

First, I don't be­lieve com­mer­cially-dri­ven in­no­va­tors alone will get us through this, and I sense that a grow­ing num­ber of you don't ei­ther.

Sec­ond, we all need to at­tempt some­thing that is in­cred­i­bly hard in this sound-bite age of the image-dri­ven so­ci­ety with its tread­mills, trivia and in­her­ent in­se­cu­ri­ties. In­di­vid­u­ally we have to some­how find the time to get into the de­tail of our great predica­ment, to weigh care­fully every­thing that “they” and each and every­one one of us is doing to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence.

Third, the over-rid­ing mo­tive must be sus­tain­abil­ity not profit. A real risk is that we are pas­sive, that we allow the only dri­ver to be eco­nomic.

Not all prob­lems need new so­lu­tions, and now is very much the time for us all to ex­plore low-tech an­swers too, many of which we can take di­rec­tion ac­tion on. Old wis­dom and old ways can teach us a great deal and in some cases can be part of in­no­va­tion as we re­think how we im­pact our world.

That has been very much part of our on­go­ing ed­u­ca­tion here at Mother's Gar­den in The Pri­o­rat; try­ing to find the right path with­out leav­ing last­ing foot­prints, teach­ing our­selves and our chil­dren about the nat­ural world, sym­bio­sis, com­mu­ni­ties work­ing to­gether, shar­ing, prob­lem solv­ing.

The more I learn the more I re­alise how much there is to learn from the past and from na­ture, and the daily chal­lenge is to weave this into a mod­ern life in a sus­tain­able way.

Like the vast ma­jor­ity of peo­ple I use a mod­ern won­der, the world­wide web, to search for fo­rums and knowl­edge in my quest for an­swers. We all know how frus­trat­ing that can be, so let me save you some valu­able time and point you in the di­rec­tion of a sig­nif­i­cant, thought-pro­vok­ing and ac­ces­si­ble blog by Barcelona-based writer Kris de Decker – www.​low​tech​maga​zine.​com.

Take some time and read. And then let's de­bate how we see our world chang­ing and what we need to do as in­di­vid­u­als to make that vital dif­fer­ence. Write to me.