Search for a Lean Alternative - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 520

case here. This is what I call the “better kind of wrongness” domain: improving the wrong
thing only adds more layers of wrongness—a dismal domain. So again, say goodbye to the
desert and the nature we have grown to love.
Now “natural capitalism” is giving pause to our consciences. We may be shifting onto
the right track, but planetary equity stands frozen on another track. By proposing a lean
alternative, we are trying to dematerialize the triumphal march of the social-Darwinian
bent of the capitalist track: the explicit, indeed arrogant, hyperconsumerism we seem to
have fallen into. Consider the projected global human population—8-10 billion people—
and the biosphere's carrying capacity. In this context, the hyperconsumption frenzy
(ignoring more than half the human population, which is a dereliction) seems ungainly and
unrealistic. In addition, hyperconsumption might be detrimental to the aim of potential
transcendence, in which Homo sapiens is and ought to be engaged.
30.2 Lean Alternative
There may not be many alternatives to materialism's often violent void. One way is the
quest for a lean society that pursues equity and excellence. What I call the “lean alternative”
offers an alternative option in face of the hyperconsumption engaging American society as
it pursues and submits to limitless wealth. We are consumers because we exist, but we are
also producers of that which, if we are wise enough to listen to our consciences, transcends
consumption. Leanness—both physical and mental—might give us a more inspiring and
cogent position with which to start. More life is the alternative to more wealth. Segregation
of wealth and power is actually a diminution of life: the pursuit of a “better kind of
wrongness.” A sort of destiny gene seems to be confirming itself, advancing toward
consumerist materialism's probable breakdown. More and more, pursuit of happiness
on such an incline seems to move the hyperconsumer into the corner of dissatisfaction,
redundancy, shallowness, guilt, and loss of meaning. Society has to come to terms with the
three-headed dragon of ignorance, greed, and hypocrisy.
The lean-alternative imperative is as significant in consumerist countries as it is in have-
not countries. In consumerist countries, the lean alternative is needed to abate consumerist
aggression. That is, the have countries should spare the have-nots from hyperconsumption's
ills and excesses, which are the mirages of the have countries. The planet at large would
be the winner.
The inefficient logistical reticulum of our industrialized nation needs to be reformulated
from the ground up. As the logistical infrastructure now in disrepair is obsolete anyway,
we need a serious conceptual reformulation of the whole system along realistic guidelines,
not futilely fighting the ever-increasing congestion of roads, highways, and parking areas
by expanding roadways to accommodate ever increasing traffic, but reformulating the
damaging patterns of our communities, especially our anti-cultural, anti-environmental,
anti-social promulgation of one- to two-story single-family homes. One house or mansion
per family requires a logistical landscape horrendously wasteful and brutally anti-
environmental—the antithesis of greenness.
In the desert, especially, the pursuit of leanness in water use and consumption is crucial.
In their competition with agriculture, suburban and exurban developments present a
dilemma because they are the thirstiest of all human settlements, with private courtyards,
lawns, swimming pools, golf courses, and so forth. Anticipating a doubled or quadrupled