Friday, June 11, 2010

During the conference Rework the world which ended just a week ago I met the founder of the concept of thrivability. A couple a weeks earlier I bumped into this video where the CEO of 7th generation talked about sustainability. He profoundly announced that “Less bad does not mean good“. A statement that really reverbated within me. In the world there is much talk about doing less harm, reducing your impact and having a small carbon footprint as possible. Even the concept of eco-efficiency which the current Swedish government talks a lot about seems slanted. If we are efficient enough we’ll have no impact at all?

So if we are efficient or managed to reduce our impact enough we would be sustainable. We would be able to sustain ourself. That sounds like a quite miserable existence to me. Isn’t sustainability more about break even rather than the state that we would like to live in?

So last week I met the founder of the concept of thrivability, Jean Russell. In essence she told me that living should be about thriving. About letting relationships grow and about doing good rather than doing less harm. As I see it when we apply these concepts to reality it’s about setting goals. What kind of future do we envision? A future where we thrive or a future where we only manage to sustain ourselves.

In setting the goals we have reached halfways in achieving them.