The Meaning of Social-Environmental Sustainability - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 125

Bill's rights, because he operated as an individual out in the country with
little or no defined community and thus without the political power that
accompanies such a social organization. Clearly, such a case is testimony to
the fact that a social organization can serve as easily to promote inequality
among people and protect privilege (and thus injustice ), as the reverse.
It is not an unreasonable stretch to note that cities throughout human his-
tory have nurtured the kinds of social organizations that have fomented
wars, conflict, and political and economic domination of the most egregious
and unjust empires the world has known.
Although cities are often memorialized as the breeding grounds for the fin-
est in human achievements—poetry, music, the arts, great architecture, and
profound philosophical thought—they are also the fountainhead of tyranny,
oppression, slavery, and inequality of all kinds. There are no guarantees.
Today, the simple fact that food is grown in the country and consumed
in the city offers (as does the story of Joe and Bill) a telling metaphor: Real
support for our existence lies in one area and the actual power and control
in another. Capitalism and the market economy would seek to disguise this
reality. City people supposedly support farmers by purchasing their prod-
ucts—rather than the other way around.
Cities and their corporate “henchpeople” finance rural community activi-
ties and socioeconomic health. Cities are touted as providing jobs that are
vital for economic health. It is commonly assumed that environmental pro-
tection in general rests on the financial ability to achieve it, as if it is some-
thing that needs to be purchased. This is all true only within the alienating
and self-centered construct of today's industrial nations and their consum-
erist societies. All good things supposedly spring from a market economy
committed to the growth ethic.
The toxicity of this image is underscored by the recent financial and eco-
nomic meltdown that was perpetrated in and around New York, our biggest
city (a national and world financial center), which has negatively affected
the real well-being of virtually everyone throughout the country. It becomes
more apparent daily, as Wall Street bounces back (while we on Main Street
do not) and continues to accumulate more wealth and power, that the real
upshot of the entire experience is increased inequality and social injustice—
the antithesis of what is required for a sustainable world. Perhaps capitalism
is also the direct opposite of what is required.
These examples and observations, more than anything else, are a comment
on human nature. The gene pool is rich, and humans are capable of all kinds
of instinctual behavior—positive and negative. People are, however, deeply
affected by their institutions; and the challenge, as we see it, is to nurture
the development of political and economic structures that are more condu-
cive to sharing, social justice, and a healthy sense of community than those
currently dominating our lives. But the relationships are systemic and work
both ways in that people both created and can affect the institutions as well.
The process, therefore, must begin with personal awareness.