This Sustainable Life

I learned of Alan soon after learning of the Kogi (see below). He lived with and made films of them, among many other documentaries and films. He also works to help preserve their culture and spread their message to help us stop wrecking our environment and selves through the Tairona Heritage Trust, which you can support.

His films about them---From the Heart of the World - The Elder Brother's Warning (1990) and Aluna - An Ecological Warning by the Kogi People (2012)---tell stories and show a culture I consider tremendously valuable. As I live more sustainably, I learn more about cultures that live without polluting and are happy and healthy, contrary to what our culture predicts. They look at us and see we could use help seeing how much we hurt others, ourselves, and our future.

In our conversation, Alan shares his experiences with them, working with them to record their messages, and stories behind the stories that made part of their (and his) message more meaningful.

About the Kogi:

The Kogi descended from Tairona culture, an advanced civilization that flourished before the Spanish conquest. The Carib invasion around 1000 CE forced them to move into the highlands. They moved farther up when the Spanish entered in the fifteenth century. Missionaries tried to influence their culture, building chapels and churches to convert them. The Kogi have remained in their home in the mountains, avoiding the effects of colonization, living traditionally.

The Kogi have no written language yet they practise a philosophy and form of thought that has been pretty effectively destroyed everywhere else by the advance of the modern world. They consider themselves to be the guardians of the Earth and are worried by our attempts to destroy it. They refer to us as Younger brother. Their communities are governed by Mamas, who are always male and their female equivalents, Sagas. They are much more than just leaders. Kogi culture centres on a belief that the material world is the physical trace of a thought-world sustained in "Aluna". Aluna is not just a spirit world but the thinking and acting life force. The role of the Mamas is to mediate between the physical world and "Aluna" to ensure that dangerous and destructive forces are held in check. Maintaining their culture and way of life is essential if life on Earth is to continue for all of us. The Kogi are trying to preserve a world of ideas that was once shared by all humanity but which is now all but lost.

• Alan's first documentary on the Kogi (1990): From the Heart of the World - The Elder Brother's Warning
• His second (2012): Aluna - An Ecological Warning by the Kogi People
• Alan's home page
• The Tairona Heritage Trust, where you can learn about and donate to help the Kogi help us

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Mitzi just returned from the Ukraine War, invited by General Andriy Nebytov from the Kyiv Regional Police. He invited her after reading her piece Human Trafficking on Ukraine’s Border to see this trafficking in person. She saw abductions happening, powerless to act, as traffickers controlled the region.

She describes what she saw. This episode isn't graphic, but sober. We'd prefer to live in a world without what she described, but I believe if it exists, better to know about it than not.

She also shares what we can do to help and how, in particular helping the charity she created.

• Mitzi's home page
• Mitzi's Ukraine charity, ULET Group

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Continuing a long trend of guests sharing partially doing their commitments but not stopping, Stephen comes back for an episode 1.5, not yet his episode 2.

Stephen committed to sharing his childhood family experiences hiking on a path near a family cabin (my description doesn't do justice to his description, so listen to his first episode, 622, to hear his description drawing on his life experiences). As happens sometimes when a commitment depends on other people, their being unavailable meant he couldn't complete the whole things.

He did his part, as he describes in this episode, and he could have declared he consider it enough. Instead, he shares what happened this time, and that he doesn't consider his commitment finished.

He shares what worked, what didn't, the experience of walking solo (and biking there instead of driving).

Genuine, authentic leaders know one's measure of personal success depends not on things outside of your control. You succeed if you perform to your potential.

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• My book: Leadership Step by Step
• The Science article I mentioned: Limits to economic growth
• The article showing humans lived to a modal age of 72: Longevity Among Hunter- Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination
• Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning Wikipedia page
• The Calvin and Hobbes page showing defenestration
• The Not Just Bikes video channel
• Low Tech Magazine

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We started talking about Michelle's commitment to avoid scrolling on vacation. She did. It sounds like it was both no big deal and something worth building on.

We had intended to keep the recording to under thirty minutes for scheduling reasons, but the conversation kept staying too interesting to stop. We talked about addiction, how big a difference small differences can make, the difference between Portland and Vancouver in culture, how to change culture, living off the grid, and what stays with you when transitioning back.

• Coincidentally, a story of hers appeared in this week's New Yorker: When Summer Becomes the Season of Danger and Dread
• Michelle's book: Beloved Beasts

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I think Jay's commitment may be the first where I participated and we had a blast!

You may remember he committed to kayaking on the Hudson. He invited me to join. As you can see from the picture, I did, and we kayaked together. We shared about the experience.

Note the change in our conversation and relationship from last conversation to this one. By last conversation we had spoken several times to set up the call, then you could hear our recorded conversation. Then hear how things changed just spending time in nature, in a way suggested by his values. That the Hudson by Manhattan isn't wild like, say, the mouth of the Amazon doesn't change that acting on our environmental values opens us up and connects us. Mainstream culture has isolated us so much and cut us off from nature, we don't know what we're missing.

We're talking about applying this experience to the Queer Liberation March team to help make keeping the event clean fun and enjoyable, not an obligation but an opportunity. Stay tuned!

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Nadeem contacted me as a listener to suggest Abdal Hakim Murad as a guest, as I hadn't hosted any Muslims on the podcast by then. I learned a lot and enjoyed meeting Abdal, plus Nadeem and I stayed in touch. When Janet Allaker's first episode with a listener went well, I invited Nadeem to be a guest. He loved the opportunity. I think we both enjoyed the conversation. If you're a regular listener, you'll get to hear another voice from your position.

You'll get to hear another listener's views on sustainability and this podcast. Nadeem cares enough to act, though not as much as me. He listens to This Sustainable to ground him and inspire more sustainability work. We talk about what motivates him, religion, family, Norway, and of course do the Spodek Method.

I think you'll find some similarities and differences in his approach and stick with the podcast.

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Regular readers and listeners know my passion for cleaning my local park, Washington Square Park, and how my heart breaks at how we abuse this sliver of a vestige of nature, especially the mornings after the Queer Liberation Marches of the past two years.

As an organizer, Jay didn't have to respond to my request, but he did. By the end of this recording, you'll hear us talk about reducing waste next year. We begin by talking about the evolution of the pride marches from when he started attending in the 1980s. He describes them becoming more corporate, less participatory, but most of all, controlled by the cops, not necessarily helping the march. The cops often seem like they're just dominating parades; all New York City parades, not just this march. As a New Yorker, his description struck a chord. His split with the older march sounds almost heartbreaking.

Then we talk about the mess attendees created. I point out that nearly everyone identifies ground and waterway waste as sanitation issues, but I see them as too-much-supply issues. We talked about collaborating to reduce the waste people bring and buy at the event. For decades, if people brought things to marches and parades, they didn't leave plastic garbage behind. If they did, not nearly in the quantities of today.

It may not seem fair for people to have to decline buying trinkets and bottled water when they just want to have fun, but attendees before cheap, abundant plastic enjoyed parades as much as today. I expect there will be more fun if we communicate to next year's attendees to refuse disposable anything.

We also did the Spodek Method and you may be able to tell from the picture I used how it went before you listen to our second episode.

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I answer my first listener questions. If you have questions on topics I write about, like leadership, sustainability, sustainability leadership, sidchas, habits, academia, physics, podcasting, and so on, contact me.

This episode's questions:

1. Hi, Joshua, in the winter months of this year, in New York, in your flat, will you use heating or blankets?
2. Can you describe a time when you struggled with a decision about a polluting act? To give an example of what I mean from my own life, as you know I'm trying to reduce my car use. To go to my modern jive night requires car use (no suitable public transport and too far to walk in dark). So I've wrestled with giving it up but decided I didn't want to because of all the benefits to me. Can you think of an example like that in your life? Perhaps something that you couldn't find a less polluting alternative but didn't want to give up

I referred to my episode with Stephen M. R. Covey.

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I came across John from listening to one of his podcast's season, Seeing White, about the development of whiteness as a race. I listened to the whole series, which I found fascinating and provocative. Then I discovered another season, Men, covering another topic important to me. I invited him to be on the podcast, then I learned from him the most recent season, The Repair, is on the environment.

We start this conversation talking about systems and approaching the topics above through a systems perspective. With such topics, with which everyone connects intimately, meaningful communication about them becomes personal. John shared his evolution beyond his expectations, challenging his identity even to himself. I comment how openly he shared about himself, which must have taken a lot of courage. From another perspective, I think his, I think he felt compelled to share.

He shared how his ongoing research into race and these other systemic issues keeps revealing how baked in to American society inequities are. No one can escape them. He also talks about our widespread willful motivated denial. There are commonalities to my views on sustainability, so I bring them in.

We could have filled hours and I feel we just got started, but he'll be back for more episodes. His experience with nature was touching.

• John's podcast Scene on Radio
• John's TED talk, The lie that invented racism

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