Ontology of World Sustainability

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Summary: Ontology is prior to thinking, acting, valuing, all required to discover an authentic sustainability.

Please examine my Statement of Concern as a preface that frames the discussion offered below.

Einstein stated: "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." The philosopher Martin Heidegger expressed the same thought this way: "all saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same time kindred to it." He also said regarding technology on a global scale: "Only a God can save us."

The point is the same: The global crisis and the enabling analysis require the discovery of a consistent and presuppositionless ground capable of supporting a critical re-thinking of sustainability. Countefeit sustainability, shallow reformism, and the outright fraud of greenwashing thrive in the absence of such a grounding. Authentic sustainability required contemplation. In philosophy, this is called ontology and is prior and foundational to knowledge and ethics.

Ontology identifies a tension essential to framing and joining the global crisis and the disabling analysis, which I call "W > E," a type of overshoot in which the load placed on Earth (I = P * C * T) vastly exceeds the carrying capacity of the Earth.


Wayne Hayes, Ph.D. | Initialized: 11/8/2009 | Last Update: 11/12/2009