Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
chapter 8
We Have Met the Future
and It Is Green
Every generation needs a new Revolution.
Thomas Jefferson
In this topic we have covered a wide range of topics, with the intention of ex-
ploring issues of process, scientific foundations, and ethical consideration often
not addressed in the typical prescriptive design approaches offered in guidebooks,
including those that advocate green design. We are suggesting the need to opti-
mize among variables and within design constraints so that the collective effect
of design is to improve the future. This is a step beyond sustainability. It is a
transition from the “Me Generation” to “Regeneration.” This view has been
articulated by Richard Tarnas:
It is perhaps not too much to say that, in the first decade of the new
millennium, humanity has entered into a condition that is in some sense
more globally united and interconnected, more sensitized to the experi-
ences and suffering of others, in certain respects more spiritually awakened,
more conscious of alternative future possibilities and ideals, more capable of
collective healing and compassion, and, aided by technological advances in
communication media, more able to think, feel, and respond together in a
spiritually evolved manner to the world's swiftly changing realities than has
ever before been possible.
1
Another sage, Paul Hawken, author of
Natural Capitalism
and the recently
published
Blessed Unrest
, sees a great deal to be optimistic about when taking
into account the growing number of people actively engaging in what he be-
lieves to be the “largest social movement in all of human history,” a worldwide
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