What can we agree on first…1. that we want to create comfortable niches. 2. That we don’t want to soil the bed we sleep in.

The debate begins over what “comfort” means and this is subjective. Our culture comfort factor in the US is particularly high at the moment. A recession seems to be a good remedy for this. A good conversation about what it really means to be comfortable, could be a useful thing in this day and age.

The debate continues with the argument of what’s our tipping point in terms of “soiling” our environment and therefore what kind of limits we need to design our habitation to. Where to begin…..?

Though we may never agree, the more we understand, the better decisions we can make in relation to making a good life.

Paul makes the case, and I agree, that when we look at the above two issues, we need to make radical change to avoid soiling our beds and to be “more” comfortable by using less. (maybe I expanding that last one?)

One of the issues that is tricky in the debate over whether buildings are to disconnected from nature, is this subjectivity thing. Some people like the idea of a techno future. I find the writings of Freud and Yung on this matter fascinating. Yung believed so fervently that the human psyche could not process technology well, that he regularly practiced cooking food over a fire. While this may be quite absurd to the efficiency engineer, it is very interesting food for thought.

Of course we’re creating niches for ourselves, in order to provide for basic needs and decencies. But unlike the rest of nature, we’re not relying on current solar income, we’re not using closed-loop processes and we’re not seeing to the health of natural capital and ecosystem services. We’re incredibly inefficient in providing for our fundamental needs – then we compound that error by larding more onto our built environment than can possibly bring us any genuine welfare. Thus, the difference between what we’re doing and what we need to be doing is profound – far more than we’ll resolve with a bit of “tweaking.”

Certainly none of us wants to be seen as advocating “freezing in the dark.” But I don’t think we want to be tepid advocates of sustainability, soft-pedaling the profound changes we need to make. I honestly believe that about 90% of what we need to do to move toward sustainability will lead to genuine increases in our happiness, health and prosperity – after we’re well underway, we’ll ask ourselves why we took so long.

At any rate, that was the underlying message I read in Paul’s post – but your comments are making me consider other points I hadn’t considered. Thank you!

Comfortable niches. How comfortable? Maybe too comfortable? — careful, because now we are headed toward Reagan’s characterization of all that we are about as “freezing to death in the dark” — i.e. not comfortable enough… for some.

Eventually we will be forced to evaluate how much comfort we really need. I am actually looking forward to that…… though I expect there’s going to be quite alot of precious indignation from the pews.

It’s a very interesting time to be alive – what we do in the next 20 years could very well determine humanity’s fate for the next 3000. We’re being called upon to be the very best people we possibly can be. Yet we have to deal with the world as it is right now, with all its weirdness, imperfections, majesty and wonder.

Fortunately, we have some good models to study: there have been cultures more oriented to being “gardeners, farmers and arborists” than conquerers. Their architecture has usually been vernacular, attuned to a specific place, and, above all, reverent. We have better technology than they did, but we’ve used it mainly with the “conquerer” mentality. If we can combine reverence with technical mastery, long-term thinking with short-term dirt under the fingernails, we might just yet succeed at making a world that would be really, really great to live in.