The Transition to Sustainability

Bryan Good
Sustainability Studies student

My journey down the path of sustainability is a sandwich with a book by Joel Salatin called “Folks, this ain’t normal” as the meat-filled center. In the introduction, Joel reflects on how life in America used to be. He speaks of how and why a teenage boy working on a farm
would never dream of being up at 2 o’clock in the morning to cause trouble. The young man would be to tired from working hard the previous day. He speaks of animals being raised in a natural environment as intended and treated like animals and not commodities. The animals were cared for, loved and respected. A far cry from how they are seen and treated today.

The book, “Tools for the Transition to Sustainability” lists some tools that are needed in
order for society to achieve sustainability:
1) Visioning – basically means imagining what you want versus what you’ve been taught to
want.
2) Networking – a group of people who share a common interest in some aspect of life, who keep in touch, often by meetings. They encouragement, respect and support each other.
3) Truth Telling – Lies distort and lead people down unnecessary paths thereby wasting their time and energy. A system will function effectively when all are speaking truth.
4) Learning – means to go slowly and try things out, test hypothesis and collect data on results to evaluate recent choices.
5) Loving – Humanity must come to love the idea of leaving their offspring a healthy, living
planet.

These are all intended to help a person recognize that there are often changes required
in one’s thinking to bring about a heart and mind open to sustainability. My experiences with Unity Gardens have showed that this is their passion. The vision that Sara has is profound. I see the main garden as becoming a permaculture. That is, a permanent environment in the making with the intent to bring an area to a place of being able to completely sustain itself. I also see the intent to (knowing Sara’s heart) make it an education system on how to build a sustainable piece of land.