Hey there,

recently, there has been lots of (urgently required) talk about sustainability. In this context, I thought about what I could personally contribute – and quickly fell for the idea of sustainability through mindfulness. However, I would first of all very much like to discuss the idea and if it has any potential, maybe present the idea as an impulse presentation or something like that. Now, since this is quite a complex subject (compare below), I’d very much appreciate any company along the ride. And that’s why I’m hereby officially asking any of you who are interested to provide input, critique, or to discuss sustainability in general. Maybe we can even create a sustainability taskforce gathering ideas and concepts to get stuff going from a practical hands-on perspective. And I especially require feedback, why things might not work out as easily, as I imagine them from an idealist point of view. After all we’re not only talking sustainability; we’re also talking money. And that’s precisely where I totally lack any traces of skill. So I’m especially calling out for the team on this one!

If you’re not familiar with the term mindfulness apart from minding the infamous gap when entering London’s subways: what precisely does mindfulness refer to? Over the past millennia, the concept has been present in many religions and has recently been picked up again by modern psychology. In all these contexts, the term refers to a state of mind, in which we try to observe without judging. This goes both ways – outwards and inwards and ultimately enables us to get a clearer view on our surroundings and the context of our own actions. Thus, mindfulness enables us to make more rational and, most importantly, more empathetic decisions. At least in theory – haha. Sure thing, we’re only humans after all – and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But at least we can try to become even nicer beings after all from time to time, can’t we?

Now, why is this even necessary? After all, we’re all grown up humans, who know how to get their affairs straight, right? Well … not always quite so. At least, that’s what some prominent people throughout history thought and made some proposals on how to deal with the issue. Jesus for instance believed, that people needed faith in a god and to follow a certain set of rules in order to become better human beings. Mohammed. Admittedly don’t know much about him, yet, he seemed to pursue similar ideas. The Buddha, otherwise know as Siddharta Gautama by civil name. In my opinion, he became the first modern psycho therapist two and a half thousand years ago. And immediately started off with treating himself. And finally, every host to modern psychology -, relaxation – or live-optimisation courses offers a set of well defined concepts and techniques to deal with the human mind. If you try to mindfully make up your mind (pun so intended!) and analyse and compare these ideas, you quickly realise, that they all agree in one thing: If we want to become better persons, we should not try and achieve this goal by basically just sitting around and waiting* – but rather by using some set of tools for the mind. Whether it be faith and subordination to a greater idea or getting straight down with psychological exercises is just a matter of taste here, in my opinion.

One of these tools which I very much like, is mindfulness. Thus, I strongly believe that in order to really live sustainability, it has to come straight from the heart and not just be done as something that one just has to do along the way. And in order to achieve this, really re-connecting with nature in a context of a globally expanding economy seems like a legit idea, right? At least, the typical modern human is said to be sort of disconnected from the natural world and, for my part and many others, even spends 8 hours straight down every working day in front of their computer. Thus, I believe (don’t pin me down on this, I just I merely believe this and clearly state so), that we do loose quite a bit of our intuitive understanding of nature and our relation to it as a species. In this context, I’ve learnt, that the Buddhists differentiate between knowledge and wisdom. Here knowledge indicates a rather rudimental theoretic understanding of something, while wisdom refers to a deep intuitive understanding, that transcends knowledge. And as for nature, I believe, we’re mostly on the knowledge level here. And that’s alright. We’re humans after all, we already agreed on that before. But we need to change that. Now.

Final thoughts to finally leave you with: The guy giving his great keynote speech on sustainability in our first big cluster meeting (unfortunately forgot his name) labelled it “Nachdenklichkeit statt Nachhaltigkeit”**. I would so very much like to pick that idea up again and see, where we can go with this! Because I strongly believe, that once our mindsets are good and noble, many other things just fall into place naturally. If you respect nature, it would seem an absurd idea to dump your waste there, right? Only that things are a bit more complicated on a global scale. So complex, that a recent philosopher introduced the term “hyper objects”. Youtuber Michael (from Vsauce) even made a video on it and developed some fascinating ideas how psychology can help get the cow off the ice for the planet. Go check it out if you’re interested, it’s a great watch:

TLDR; if you wanna join me in collecting, discussing and presenting ways to get from knowledge to wisdom level (POWER UP!), please, please, please, join the party and PM me 🙂

Greetings

Christoph

* Gosh, that was quite a hard pill for me to swallow back at the time. My ego, of course, did not and still does not really want be observed with rational precision. Haha, but from time to time, I now get the old bugger to listen to my rational ideas with increasing frequency. So there’s at least some light at the end of the tunnel.

** Pun that only works in German but roughly translates to “self-reflection instead of sustainability”.

Title pic source: pikisuperstar on Freepik