Continuing Work on Community Sustainability --
Grand Traverse Bay Region

Conclusion of the Salon Series on Local Sustainability

This series on local sustainability which began in August 1997, has come to a close with a final salon on April 27, 1998. On eleven evenings, groups of interested individuals came together to continue conversations focused on many aspects of how a community can work toward becoming sustainable. As we shared questions, ideas, and new insights as well as fears and hopes, we also experienced a growing connection with each other. Along with these deepening relationships, we realized that our ability to consider and change our own behaviors in order to live more sustainably depended on open discussions and support for each other found in these small gatherings. We also identified many important initiatives contributing to sustainability which are already underway in the Grand Traverse Bay Area. Also our conversations identified many challenges and possibilities which if pursued to the point of planning and action could make this area more sustainable.

Following the form of preceding salons, the April 27th gathering began with informal conversation, shared food and then a group conversation around the dinner table about what people's thoughts have been since our last gathering. There were expressions of thanks for these gatherings, concern for personal sustainability, a sense of encouragement by others' actions, awareness of the necessity of personal involvement, and statements of personal behavior change resulting from past salon based conversations, ideas, insights and commitments.

The main topic of the evening was reflecting back on the 10 earlier salons to identify what people liked most and ongoing issues meriting further discussion. Some people spoke of changes they have made in daily life practices in order to live more lightly on the earth (e.g. increasing composting and recycling so as to decrease garbage for landfills, reducing buying, becoming active in local projects to advance sustainability). One person expressed gratitude for the affirmation the group has afforded her in relation to sustainable behaviors she is already practicing.

Hard questions were posed about the relationship between continuing economic growth and achieving sustainability. Part of this discussion included examples in which technologies displaced workers and negatively impacted the environment. Many participants have concluded that there is a serious contradiction between continued economic growth and achieving sustainability. There was wide recognition in the group that many people do not understand nor accept that there can be economic change and improvement without growth. It was recognized that this important possibility will require more community based learning along with local demonstration projects. Several people called attention to evidences of our culture's deep reluctance to acknowledge that growth as we have known it cannot continue if our communities and our planet are to be sustained.

As an outgrowth of the discussion about sustainability and growth, the question was asked "What is meant by the American Dream?" There ensued a very lively, probing exchange about the desire of each generation for their children to have a "better life" and that it has been promoted to mean and accepted by most people that a "better life" is basically more material wealth. One person expressed the opinion that this is a major change and distortion in values and thinking which has occurred since her grandfather's time. Someone else stated that we as Americans have become mainly consumers and that material things define whether life is good or not good.

Later, one person expressed some frustration that the salons have been only about discussion and development of ideas and not about planning for action to bring about change. Others countered that this is precisely the function of salons and that it is these opportunities for serious conversations which attracts people to come. Several participants then shared their experiences of engaging other people outside the salons in conversations about sustainability or of sharing with others current issues of Synapse which has carried articles on this topic. Responses to these initiatives varied from some people not wanting to talk about sustainability to others who were interested, open and grateful to know about the ideas being discussed including the changes which are needed for local communities to become sustainable. One statement may have summarized the thoughts of many of us: "It is just that talking makes clear that there is a lot to be done."

As the final salon in this series came to a close, participants expressed great reluctance to have them come to an end. After discussion the group decided that another salon will be held before August to select topics and do further planning for a series of salons to be held next fall and winter.

Recurring Themes in the Salons on Sustainability

Recently, the authors had the opportunity to present a workshop in southern Michigan on local sustainability as part of a conference focusing on living more simply. Preparing to share with others our observations and experiences from the 11 salons on local sustainability, led us to review the notes taken from each of the salons, to reflect on our personal experiences as participants in these group discussions and to talk with each other about recurring issues, concerns and feelings which we observed and experienced in these salons.

In sharing our perceptions of recurring themes we acknowledge that other participants or observers of the salons would probably identify different themes and might disagree with what we have perceived. Salons are participatory and without detached observers and in focusing on the topic of "sustainability" are dealing with profound and difficult issues in which we are all involved. We offer our perceptions of these themes as part of our effort to reflect on trying to understand, learn and act so as to become less "a contributor to the problems" and more a "contributor to reducing the problems." We hope in doing this to discover more about the journey we and other people are pursuing in these times of immense crisis, opportunity and change. Themes which we perceived in these salons were:

• a struggle between hope/optimism and despair/ pessimism in relation to the major problems faced by our region (e.g sprawl, loss of locally owned businesses) and the planet (environmental deterioration, growing corporate power and economic inequity) and the prospects for achieving changes to improve our communities and other communities throughout the world. There were periodic recognitions that along with the difficult and deepening problems also have come creative and sometimes unpredictable positive changes and sometimes almost "miraculous" actions and examples of individual leadership addressing these problems in creative and effective ways.

• tension growing out of individuals' needs to allocate their energy and time between personal/familial matters and participation in efforts to improve our communities and larger world. This tension is fueled by growing evidence of continuing decline in the natural environment, growing economic inequities with privation and early deaths for many and violence for everyone, increasing concentration of ownership of the media, agriculture, health care and other essential services to communities and other basic changes threatening our communities and even life itself. Also fueling this tension is the reality that over the past decade people are required to devote more hours to their jobs and to face more uncertainty about the continuation of their employment.

• realization of the potential creativity, power and support of a small group to influence and change people's lives. From time to time someone in the group would remind others of the history of important community and societal changes which had their origins and leadership from a small group of people. It seems we were discovering or rediscovering the multiple advantages which come from an inquiring, cooperative group of individuals engaging in open discussion about common concerns and visions for a better future. Doing this affects awareness, knowledge, and behavior.

• concern about our responsibility to move beyond the small salon group to the larger community and questions about how to do this in effective ways. Again and again in our discussions the reality of powerful and distantly controlled societal, political and economic structures were referred to and illustrated. This seemed to magnify the awareness of the need for more and more people seeing the challenges of unsustainable ways of living and becoming committed to working together to reverse these dangerous and destructive patterns. At the same time there was a sometimes stated awareness by at least some participants in the salon that fundamental changes to be meaningful must begin in our individual lives. Doing this models positive and fulfilling ways of living to the people we encounter day-to-day. These changes also can be expressed in our roles as citizens advocating changes contributing to greater sustainability in our communities, country and the world.

• a periodic sense of living in a fundamentally critical period in community and human history. The old ways are having many negative and increasingly threatening impacts and new ways are emerging but are far from clear. Beyond a small minority of people who sometimes feel and often are perceived as marginal, there are all too few articulations of the extent and seriousness of our common problems and the necessity for pursuing fundamental changes (e.g. consuming much less, protecting and expanding common interests as opposed to private interests, disarming, internationally and domestically, as we become more reliant on non-violent, less destructive means of dispute resolution). In the salons there was both a sense of urgency about the future of children, communities, and the environment and sometimes what seemed like avoidance or denial in the face of problems and risks of such a magnitude. On occasion there were assertions or unstated assumptions indicating an individual's trust in larger forces supporting and affirming life and in their being a future which will realize the best in humans including our limits and interdependence with other species and larger cosmic process. Sometimes there seemed to be present an awareness of our needs to realize and accept our interdependencies and powerful potentials even proclivities to do damage to each other and the planet. Though other times this awareness was absent and in its place were dichotomies of "we and they" along with blaming and advocacy of the necessity of adversarial actions.

• awareness of the deep interconnected problems of the natural environment and the economic disparities and related exploitation among groups of humans and a deep desire to take action for change. It seemed that when individuals and on occasion the group perceived this connection it widened and deepened individuals perceptions and commitments to achieve change. Sometimes the desired changes were in themselves or their day-to-day decisions or other longer term, more unquestioned decisions which negatively impact some people and the natural environment.

• importance of place and locality and our responsibility for what happens where we live. Sometimes this was evident in discussions about our connections to the natural world in this place including the well being of all the species including all members of the local human population and the relationships among these species. There was a deep awareness that we are dependent on and responsible for our local place and region of dwelling and its relationship to the larger biophysical, social and spiritual systems with which everything local is intertwined and connected. Occasionally it was pointed out that to a very large degree the natural environment has become an environment seriously modified by people and an environment increasingly shaped by people whether through intentional "management" or unintentional cumulative impacts. Similarly there was an acknowledgment that humans create and maintain social systems including the economy and are responsible for all of its impacts.

• the challenge and necessity to move beyond powerlessness and the roles of victim as we face painful conditions including patterns of domination and exploitation to which we and many, many others have been subjected and to which we sometimes contribute. Cynicism, pessimism, denial and paralysis are all too easy and common responses, but there are other important possibilities for empowerment, creativity, collaboration, redistributing power, and greater sharing to meet the basic needs of the entire human population as well as the other species of our planet, ourselves, other people and the world. This theme was never focused on by itself but emerged from time to time as a sub point of longer verbal statements or as unstated assumptions underlying statements about ongoing efforts to contribute to positive change or the impossibility of contributing to such change.

Other Center Work on Local Sustainability

This series of salons has assisted the Neahtawanta Research and Education Center (NREC) to focus more of its efforts on sustainability in the Grand Traverse Bay Region and to report some of the results in articles published in Synapse (see issues no. 41, 42, & 43). One of these efforts has been for the Center to become involved in The Quality of Life Indicators Project being conducted in the Grand Traverse Bay Region (see Synapse no. 43). An additional outcome is that NREC has submitted to the Kellogg Foundation an invited proposal which, if funded, would support a major priority identified in the salons, i.e., involving many more people in learning about and acting to further the sustainability of the Grand Traverse Bay Area. Specifically the grant would support important new activities including: development of a series of radio programs to be aired on community radio and the Internet; further development of the NREC's web site focused on local sustainability along with more articles in Synapse on local sustainability; development and dissemination of a CD-ROM to public and school libraries to provide data on local sustainability and Quality of Life Indices as well as research on local business ownership; and an evaluation and planning retreat to assess results of the grant funded work and plan for future work.

Our Appreciation for Being Able to Help with the Salons

For the authors, the opportunity to assist Bob Russell and Sally Van Vleck, co-directors, of the Neahtawanta Center in the planning, hosting, recording, and reporting of the salons has been both a privilege and a challenge. We are grateful for the opportunity to have participated with them in this enriching and deepening experience of listening, facilitating, and sharing with such fine earth and community advocates from the Grand Traverse Bay Area. Salon participants courageously looked at a most difficult and compelling issue&emdash;sustainability for the Grand Traverse Bay Area. We feel that from this work our awareness has been quickened, our vision widened, and our commitment to the earth's and community's well being has been deepened. We thank Bob and Sally, Co-Directors of NREC and other members of the Center's Board of Directors for this year of opportunity to serve in the important work of the Center.

Return to the Index of Synapse 44, Summer 1998