Sustainability means to both maintain and *enhance*. So the conundrum here
is quite obvious. To enhance means and implies also to compare existing
practices to some *benchmark* of operability. And that notion of operability
must derive from some deduction which cannot be found through empirical
comparison or knowledge. There are few controls where antecedent conditions
may be known prior to imposition of a sustainbility management regime. Thus
all notions of sustainability infer only 'making progress towards
sustainability' - otherwise there would be some 'benchmark' or some existing
standard of operability which there is not.....except in neolithic cases.
And these examples are about as meaningful to corporate and state governance
as is the Dodo bird.

The dichotomy between culture and nature cannot be a true dichotomy either
since culture is totally dependent on nature, not vis versa. Humans have
lived on earth for perhaps 3.5 million years. The earliest 'symbolic'
culture existed perhaps up to 40,000 years ago. Thus if humans are no
exactly sure about such primary functions such as *ecological
sustainability*, then they cannot be very sure about any other 'judgements'
which they may deduce from nature.

In fact there are two primary distinctions in life: one is that there is a
world of 'facticity' and (2) there is a world of 'expression'. For those
judgements which are no factical, there is only 'human expression'. That
which is 'consititutive' and that which is 'expression' thus are two
different realms of meaning which are interdependent, but 'human expression'
is dependent on the constitutive which is nature, and facticity.

Aside from most neolithic societies, there are no examples of the modern
form of symbolic culture forming and expressive humans of *maintaining and
enhancing ecosystems* yet in modern history. All civilizations have failed
and damaged their dependent ecosystems to beyond repair or to a point of
nearly complete dis-repair. There are a few minor exceptions of
'civilizations' maintaining ecosystems ( a few in North America) but these
have dissappeared because of the invasion of Europeans with muskets,
disease, alcohol and residential schools ( in short genocide).

The large civilizations are failures of human cultural expression (European,
and middle east) and have only survived by  spreading to dominate new lands
to spoil. The recent decline and fall of the American Empire is only one
example of many in the 7000 year history of ecological distruction.

chao

john foster




----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Perley <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 7:15 PM
Subject: Re: Environmentalism vs Anti-environmentalism: left vs right?