Sustainment however, a term coined by Australian professor Tony Fry, implicates a new way of being, a paradigmatic shift in lived experience. Sustainment is the realistic cousin of sunstainability. We know that if something is worth doing, it's going to take effort'. Well unsurprisingly this rings true for saving the planet and all of our scrawny necks. gulp.
There are numerous aspects to working towards 'sustainment' which is by no means a certainty which deals mainly with the question of whether we want a nice future or a nasty dystopian one. Not a lot of people, in particular those with power to change things, are thinking holistically about a future for human beings so what's happening instead is an incremental evolution of the same- no one person or evil organization are calling the shots.
The book Design as Politics
by Tony Fry is a good way to read more into the important topic of sustainment. By many accounts 'sustainment' is a topic of personal survival as much as it is a collective approach. It is an approach of individuals working individually within a collective which shares a certain 'consciousness' about the realities of living now.Technology is something which has become ubiquitous is everyday life. It shapes and forms the way that most people in the west live these days but this is not something new for human beings in general. It has been happening since the first caveman smashed together some rocks to get a spark and some sharp tools.
There has been a belief since the beginning of The enlightenment which has run through the industrial revolution that somehow technology is going to save the day (with regards to population and environmental crisis). However technology creates as many problems as it solves so it can't be expected to be the silver bullet.
In the culture of sustainment, we welcome a new approach to technology which recognises how it shapes us as well as we use it developing a critical attitude to everyday use of technology. Just as we have learnt to curb our base natural instincts, we now need to learn to curb our naturalised technological instincts.
A list of ways to curb our naturalised technological instinct.
- Walk to the shops, instead of driving
- Look in a book instead of using the internet
- Write on paper instead of using a laptop & printer
- Go to the barber for a wet shave instead of using an electric razor
- Get rid of your television
- Go outside to check the weather instead of looking on TV
- Ask people for directions instead of using your iphone
- Swim in a river or lake instead of a swimming pool (don't swim alone)
- Grow your own vegetables (links to resources) or get a book out of a library (link to book on growing your own food in the city)
- Play music instead of listening to it on your ipod - join a choir
- Go round to someones house instead of texting them
- Handwash some clothes
- Experiment with storing some foods outside instead of in the fridge
- Fashion food yourself instead of buying packaged food
- Drink water instead of tea
- Brew your own alcohol using these natural methods
- Don't buy the latest version of this or that technological device
- Buy less clothes, buy better quality clothes that last longer and are better fit for purpose
- Try to work out ways of not 'dwelling' in the conventional sense - e.g. instead of getting a mortgage for your average flat or house work out a much more exciting and sustainment friendly way of dwelling- consider that this might require a complete change in lifestlye and consider that how a lot of us currently 'dwell' is a product of how a lot of us 'work' (clue: a lot of us only sleep in our flats / houses).
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