Over the past thir­ty years, con­sumer lifestyle has grad­u­al­ly become over­sized and unsus­tain­able. In the next thir­ty years, pop­u­lar lifestyle will be less about ego and more aligned with nature’s cycles to estab­lish bal­anced ecosystems.

“Anoth­er world is not only pos­si­ble, she is on her way. On a qui­et day, I can hear her breath­ing.” — Arund­hati Roy

Com­mon every­day items, that quick­ly come in and out of our lives, can be realigned with more last­ing prin­ci­ples. In many ways, some of the sim­plest changes are also the most wide­ly effec­tive. The ques­tion of “paper” or “plas­tic” for gro­cery bags is bet­ter replaced by the ques­tion of do you need to bring anoth­er bag into cir­cu­la­tion at all, or can you sim­ply reuse one? Same goes for straws. Paper has replaced plas­tic, but that still accounts for a lot of straws going to waste. Why are straws so impor­tant any­way? Many of the nov­el­ties of mod­ern life have become unnec­es­sary con­ve­niences. In order to cre­ate more inte­gra­tive sys­tems of engage­ment, we can begin to make more con­scious efforts to bet­ter use the abun­dance of resources we already have at hand.

The idea of a closed loop of goods has been around for some time. One exam­ple of main­stream sus­tain­abil­i­ty that doesn’t require a huge shift in per­spec­tive is Patagonia’s Worn Wear. With this pro­gram for keep­ing per­fect­ly-wear­able used cloth­ing in rota­tion, the cloth­ing man­u­fac­tur­er is help­ing out the envi­ron­ment by stretch­ing out the life­cy­cle of prod­ucts that would nor­mal­ly be turned to trash soon­er. As the com­pa­ny rea­sons on their web­site, “the best thing we can do for the plan­et is get more use out of stuff we already own, cut­ting down on consumption.”

“The more you know, the less you need.” — Yvon Chouinard

The world doesn’t real­ly need any more sneak­ers. There’s actu­al­ly enough of every­thing, if only the bal­ance of dis­tri­b­u­tion can reach greater align­ment between sup­ply and demand. As pub­lic dis­cus­sion focus­es more and more around the top­ic of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, humans will increas­ing­ly find ways to redis­trib­ute and con­serve resources to bet­ter inte­grate them­selves with­in the nat­ur­al world.

In anoth­er effort to dimin­ish our col­lec­tive trash, a recent joint ven­ture between Ital­ian health­care group Angeli­ni, and Proc­ter & Gam­ble, the world’s largest dia­per sup­pli­er, set out to inves­ti­gate what to do with the end prod­uct of a $4 bil­lion-a-year dia­per mar­ket. These con­glom­er­ates have begun a poten­tial­ly piv­otal, new pro­gram that looks to recy­cle absorbent hygiene prod­ucts like dia­pers, incon­ti­nence pads, and fem­i­nine hygiene prod­ucts, with a plan to roll out in ten cities by 2030. For 2035–2050+, the company’s vision of prod­ucts and pack­ag­ing con­sists of 100% renew­able or recy­cled mate­ri­als. The prod­ucts being devel­oped from these recy­cled mate­ri­als range from school desks to play­grounds to bot­tle tops. In addi­tion, recy­cled cel­lu­lose can be turned into fab­ric or paper, while super-absorbent poly­mer has poten­tial appli­ca­tions in gar­den­ing, or cre­at­ing flood bar­ri­ers.²⁰

The more that com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als pri­or­i­tize reusing, recy­cling, and repur­pos­ing objects, the more that poten­tial appli­ca­tions will evolve. The most sig­nif­i­cant change we have in mind is recy­cling and rein­vent­ing mate­ri­als that are already in exis­tence and trans­form­ing them into imag­i­na­tive new forms. We believe that pur­su­ing this approach will lead to a larg­er, sus­tain­able tra­di­tion of more con­scious, con­nect­ed, and inte­gra­tive systems.

Let go of our deter­mined fix­a­tion on mechan­i­cal time and oth­er rigid­ly self-ref­er­en­tial sys­tems detached from nature’s cycles. Let go of IQ. Let go of bias and prej­u­diced expectations.

Our most com­mon units of measurement—time, mon­ey, and intel­li­gence —are all in need of revi­sion. The way that time is arranged and manip­u­lat­ed is most­ly in the inter­ests of eco­nom­ic fac­tors. Mon­ey is made up by humans and dis­con­nect­ed from any prin­ci­ple of nature. Glob­al mar­kets are based on feel­ings, pre­dic­tions, and an ever-chang­ing flux of infor­ma­tion. Is con­fi­dence in a debt-based mar­ket real­ly our best option for deter­min­ing wealth? Many impor­tant parts of life can­not be cal­cu­lat­ed and sched­uled. The most sig­nif­i­cant moments in life often hap­pen serendip­i­tous­ly. And, as has been said many times, the best things in life are free. So why are we still mea­sur­ing val­ue in mon­e­tary terms?

Researchers at MIT have pro­posed a redesign of Gross Domes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) called GDP‑B (the B is for ben­e­fit) to include con­sid­er­a­tion of val­ue made by free dig­i­tal goods and ser­vices. As pro­fes­sor Erik Bryn­jolf­s­son explains, upgrad­ing GDP pro­vides a “real­is­tic idea of what cre­ates val­ue in soci­ety and what doesn’t. A lot of dig­i­tal goods we’ll find are cre­at­ing a ton of val­ue…” The pro­fes­sor goes on to say, “It’s not that pro­duc­tion and spend­ing aren’t impor­tant, but they aren’t every­thing. To mea­sure the econ­o­my you need a dash­board with dif­fer­ent met­rics. What we’re mea­sur­ing are the ben­e­fits you get even when you spend noth­ing on the good.”²¹

It’s said that time is mon­ey. This adage cer­tain­ly holds true with­in our cur­rent eco­nom­ic sys­tem. But where do we look for a more secure sense of mea­sure­ment in the absence of cen­tral­ized eco­nom­ic author­i­ties? How long will big banks con­tin­ue to con­trol the flow of mon­ey? Blockchain showed the pos­si­bil­i­ty for cryp­to-cur­ren­cies to trans­form mon­e­tary exchange. The promise of blockchain’s incor­rupt­ibil­i­ty unfor­tu­nate­ly cracked.²² In set­ting up soci­ety for a fair­er future, it feels wise to pre­pare for the inevitabil­i­ty of an eco­nom­ic sys­tem aligned with prin­ci­ples of shar­ing, nur­tur­ing, and impermanence.

The way we mea­sure our intel­li­gence is anoth­er part of soci­ety wor­thy of revi­sion. Over the last decades, IQ has been used to val­i­date racist, sex­ist, and oth­er­wise biased clas­si­fi­ca­tions. A recent study by sci­en­tists dis­proved IQ as a mea­sure of intel­li­gence.²³ They showed that intel­lec­tu­al abil­i­ty occurs along three dis­tinc­tive nerve cir­cuits in the brain guid­ing inter­ac­tions between short-term mem­o­ry, rea­son­ing, and ver­bal agili­ty. In oth­er words, there’s no sin­gu­lar indi­ca­tor like IQ that can real­ly account for a person’s intel­lec­tu­al abil­i­ty across var­i­ous cat­e­gories. Our self-iden­ti­ties do not need to be con­fined into sin­gu­lar assess­ments. Intel­li­gence is real­ly a mat­ter of one’s abil­i­ty to inter­act with oth­ers in the world with grace, care, and effectiveness.

In his book, The Mis­mea­sure of Man, pale­on­tol­o­gist Stephen Jay Gould showed how intel­li­gence is not based on genet­ic inher­i­tance. In tak­ing stock of fair­er mea­sure­ments by which to assess how envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions impact indi­vid­u­als, Gould gave focus to the idea of rel­a­tive fre­quen­cy. This con­cept describes how mean­ing in people’s lives increas­es the more that a par­tic­u­lar action or exchange takes place. For exam­ple, think about how the more that peo­ple smile at one anoth­er in pass­ing, the more pal­pa­bly uplift­ing the net effect of those fleet­ing inter­ac­tions between strangers becomes. You can feel the dif­fer­ent ener­gy that exists in a room when peo­ple are being kind to one anoth­er and how, con­verse­ly, dif­fer­ent that ener­gy is when peo­ple are angry at each oth­er. Gould wrote about the high rel­a­tive fre­quen­cy of human decen­cy he noticed between peo­ple in NYC in the weeks after 9/11.²⁴ With great humil­i­ty, Gould remarked in his book, Won­der­ful Life, an inspir­ing thought about humanity:

“Homo sapi­ens, I fear, is a ‘thing so small’ in a vast uni­verse, a wild­ly improb­a­ble evo­lu­tion­ary event well with­in the realm of con­tin­gency. Make of such a con­clu­sion what you will. Some find it depress­ing; I have always regard­ed it as exhil­a­rat­ing, and a source of both free­dom and con­se­quent moral respon­si­bil­i­ty.” — Stephen Jay Gould

As Gould men­tions, the chance at life that we all receive can be incred­i­bly moti­vat­ing. We are here for the pur­pose of liv­ing. While the inter­pre­ta­tions of what it means to live are vir­tu­al­ly end­less, rela­tion­ships that show respect for life will always con­tribute to an over­all sense of mean­ing­ful participation.