Choosing a collective path

August 22, 2020 by Fred Allebach

The collaborative group Sustainable Sonoma (SuSo) has adopted the sustainability paradigm’s triple bottom line (TBL) conceptual model. Getting to sustainability means using an inclusive full-cost accounting model to ensure that each of the three integral bottom lines – social equity, economy, and environment – are treated equally. SuSo does this by attempting to create an inclusive table that includes members of local “sectors” that represent the triple bottom line.

This is a sensible, team-playing model, and the hope is that rational people, faced with multiple existential crises and maladaptive behaviors, can lay down sectarianism and consciously choose a collective adaptive path.

 The sustainability paradigm came about because finance and economy had been dominant in public policy-making, and had tended to disenfranchise and discount social and environmental interests.

Through extensive polling and overwhelmingly popular local opinion, SuSo chose Affordable Housing (AH) as its first project. Each TBL sector in Sonoma Valley sees clear reasons why it is in their interests to support AH, which is affordable to people who earn at area median income levels and lower, i.e., the current middle and working classes.

However, what to do and why, identifying causes, and finding remedies lead to tensions among TBL sector actors. There are tensions, because each sector tends to exist in a silo where only certain primary assumptions about how the world works are adhered to. SuSo’s goal is to break down these silos and create a new larger platform.

 Economic siloes center on theories of rational self-interest, competition, profit motive, supply and demand, capitalism, etc. Environmental siloes center on science, climate change, pollution, the value of biodiversity, ecology, overuse of resources, etc. Social equity silos center on ethical principles of justice, inclusion, fairness, no harm to people, collectivism, liberation theology, etc. All see their siloed truths as self-evident.

One self-evident scientific truth is that our collective human system cannot keep growing on a base of finite resources and act as if there is no tomorrow. To address our current unsustainability, we need to corral our economic and social behavior and make these more equitable and adaptive.

 Sustainability could be a bridge between TBL tribal silos. However, getting to the center of the TBL Venn diagram turns out to be seriously hard work because it demands people check their assumed truths at the door, and most who are invested in a program just can’t do it.  Heavily siloed actors don’t respect each other, are full of negative value judgments, and tend to get stuck in zero-sum game arguments with no end.

 Why? Because people don’t easily let go of deep-seated moral views about right and wrong, about how they think things ultimately work and what is most important.

Getting to sustainability demands that siloed actors engage in a difficult process of questioning values they are used to seeing as unquestionable. People have trouble accounting for the interests and perspectives of others. What if we see others’ interests as harmful? Getting to a new center of common truths and facts is hard work. But this is the kind of conscious, reframing, self-determination work that sustainability demands.   

 Uncompromising adherence to siloed truths and received wisdom makes for a lack of ability to co-exist and to adapt to new circumstances. We see this all the time in politics. When we have fundamental differences in values,  and when we all see facts, truths, and history differently, this is a tough relationship hurdle to surmount.

Maybe the best SuSo can do is not expect anyone to really transform their siloed views, but just to align to support whatever can be done together.

 Each TBL silo must have some kernels of truth, and they also probably have falsehoods that could be divested. Only through a desire to be educated, through honest self-reflection and a flexible mindset, can actors even think of moving together to the center of the TBL Venn diagram. The Black Lives Matter movement provides a model of how we might move forward. Siloed actors must reflect on their own values, hidden advantages, and possible shortcomings, and be willing to change to a more viable, bearable, and equitable place.

If your marriage depended on changing the drivers of your behavior, might you wake up and do it? How about for the city, the valley, the county, the state, the country, and the world?