I’ve been thinking a lot about sustainability versus efficiency.

I want to be sustainable instead of being efficient.

The drives towards efficiency has produced so many unintended consequences. Efficiency is an emblem of the industrial age. How do I get out of an industrial way of seeing the world - which is to create the highest quantity of output regardless of social, environment, or emotional costs?  I can now see that being super efficient in my work has not served me well in other areas of life - such as my sleep, health, or sociability patterns. I don’t want to be efficient anymore. I want to be sustainable. 

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 So we’re post-industrial now -  we’ve entered a digital age where the economics of scarcity no longer apply. Doesn’t that mean that I too should no longer think of myself as an efficient being? 

But I fear that I’ve taken on the iterative condition of the digital age without question - have I internalized on some level that I’m infinite? 

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The rules that governed fixed production models no longer apply because scarcity is no longer a physical limit - it has to be artificially created through legal instrastructures and cultural myths. 

SO what conditions do I need to create to make myself realize that I am a scarce being? There is only so much of me to go around and there are only so many hours in the day. Send myself to life rehab? Enroll myself in some meditation program? Do more yoga? Sure all of those could work - but I’ve seen friends go through this time and time again and at the end of the day it doesn’t always work in the long run. If we don’t somehow figure out what is the psychological trigger within ourselves that make us want to work like crazy, then all of our attempts to make ourselves more balanced aren’t sustainable. 

The scary thing is that a lot of these psychological triggers go back to things that have happened in our childhood. That’s pretty scary. REally - still - are they with us?  I am not sure if I want to go there, but I need to. 

I want to figure out the internal conditions that I need to create to be at peace with myself. I started reading Codependent No More.  Something that’s really stuck out to me - our obsession to overwork comes from some internal insecurity. I’ve never thought of myself as an insecure person - at least in my adult years. But the more I read, the more I am beginning to see that I am - it’s just that I manifest my insecurities in ways that are seen as totally functional. Oh and another thing that’s emerged from reading this book for me is this idea of responsibility - that often times we end up feeling so responsible for our loved ones that we often transfer this sense of responsibility into our work lives. That’s pretty heavy. 

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We often hear that we are in the post-modern age. Modernity is a cultural condition that embraces the concept of linear progress, whereas post-modernity has moved beyond the nieve belief that a singular pursuit of progress is possible. Post-modernity embraces the social condition of unlimited options. We are in an age where we reject rationality, we have unlimited choices. Anything we want to know is online - data-sets are being freed from the confines of archives - it’s all being digitized and once you have access to it all you can do whatever you want.  

What does this way of thinking about the world do to our minds? Now that we can do ANYTHING - we’re post-human, post-spirit - post-everything - we should be able to do it all  now that we have unlimited choices - esp those who are educated and have had priviliges that most of the world only hears about on television shows. 

Now that all possibilities are up for grabs, what social mechanisms guide us to to finding peace amid all the choices in our lives? 

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 Sustainability - what will that mean for me this summer? I want to create more organic conditions to guide me instead of artifical conditions. This means that I have to chill on the caffeine, internets, and thinking. 

1.) I will sleep when I’m tired. 

2.) I will eat when I’m hungry.

3.) I will dance because I want to move.