We are our own worst enemy

Last week, I spoke at a conference that addresses the ways we can build better buildings and do it in a way that means better, more stable business opportunities.  My presentation focused on ways that we can look to nature for inspiration to overcome the obstacles to designing and building structures that have no net negative effect on our quality of life.  Thanks to my friend and business partner Amy Coffman Phillips' help, the audience and I had a great discussion about the opportunities and challenges with improving our buildings.

In our discussion, we identified the largest perceived obstacle to zero-impact buildings...

Economics.

We did not leave it stand at that, however.  Economics must have some basis in reality, so we looked further at some of the underlying root causes for increased cost of buildings that fully support quality of life over those that provide comfort for occupants, but cause quality of life issues for others.  In that analysis, we decided that the availability of materials drove costs up.  This natural influence on prices - the limited availability of materials - gets to the heart of why we have an economy...the distribution of scarce resources.  After that, however, we found that almost all the other limitations had roots of our own making.

Two of these man-made economic drivers present obstacles without easy solutions: first, that we all want to belong to something bigger than ourselves, and second, that we crave consistency.  One could argue - as we did - that although these fall under "man-made" as opposed to "natural" phenomena, in some ways we as humans have these traits as part of our nature.  That said, we also noted that part of the reason these traits form such a rigid economic obstacle comes from the exploration of them by the marketing and advertising complex in our country.  In many ways, the traits themselves do not lead the economics of life-centered thinking to look bad compared with more conventional ideas...but the entrenched marketing of the status quo plays on our desire to belong and to have stability.

Overcoming these obstacles presents no easy task.  In part, we need regulation to force us away from damaging activities and toward beneficial ones.  Also, business can play a role by following industry ethics and being transparent about the effect their activities have on human quality of life.  Lastly, we must continue to expand our definition of community and belonging.  One thousand years ago, we thought in terms of clans and tribes.  Then we moved toward city-states, and eventually nations.  That evolution continues as we seek a more global idea of what it means to have connections with others.  Hopefully, along with this expanding idea of community, we can also expect of ourselves actions that will protect all people.

Otherwise, we may have "good" economic decision making that leads to our collapse.