Growth

I got to thinking about our strange relationship with growth.  There are many times where growth is good and where it is bad.  But what is strange is how the definition of growth is interpreted.  I had a few thoughts.
I guess the simplistic way to look at it is that we want good things to grow and bad things to stop.  So then it gets down to what you define as good and what you define as bad.

For instance - corporate growth?  Is that good or bad?  If the company is mindful of its impact on the environment and is responsible to its employees and the communities in which it operates, then more of that kind of business is a good thing.
If the company is just growing to earn more profits at the expense of environmental and human health - then maybe that growth isn't such a good idea.

One way that people in business look at growth is to grow market share.  Simplistically this means that the pie of market is already at the size that it is going to be.  Say 10 million people all buying the product for a dollar.  So when a company grows they can either find more pie, which in this example is not an option, or they can take pie away from their competitors.  To me this type of growth within the sustainability world makes the most sense.  We already know we are in a finite world, so we can't really grow the pie anyway.  So why not have the more socially and environmentally responsible companies take away market share from those who are not doing those things.  This way there is growth, but there is growth towards a more sustainable model.

OK then one day all of the companies in the world, all of the products that get used are all sustainable - do we still have growth?  Probably, but growth is not constant it goes up and down so there will be growth to come out of dips.  But really I think WHAT is growing is going to change.

For instance - when we talk about personal growth, we aren't talking about things perse, we are talking about emotional experience, understanding and realizations.  These aspects of personal growth are what make life easier to live, to understand and to appreciate.  Really it is what makes people happier.  And this circles back to growth of "things" is not making us happier.  So how can we take that ideas of personal growth and incorporate them into business?
Maybe one day I will pay a company for the privilege of growing and sewing my own shirt.  What I am purchasing is acquiring the personal growth of the experience to learn a new skill set.  Buying experiences is one option.  But one thing is the world doesn't have enough resources for it to remain the same as the growth in stuff we know today.

Taking off my blinders

I feel like I have a good balance with the amount of travel I do for my job. A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days in Cambodia and also in China. I visit factories to review their working conditions. I love this aspect of what I do because I feel like I get an insight into another part of a country that I would not see if I were only traveling as a tourist.
These workers in these factories are often considered the working poor, these jobs often pay just the minimum wage, or unfortunately often below minium wage and have long hours. Factory work is really hard and mundane and yet these people are the core of the global manufacturing industry which in turn produces all of the things we get to buy.
I find when I am in Asia I see the world a little differently than when I am at home. This is because culturally we are different and it gets magnified when you have a country that thinks slightly different about some things. And yet there are some things where we are all the same.
You get anyone talking about their friends or family people react the same - they all have eclectic stories, or when you see a child and smile at them, they smile back. And globally we think we can continue to develop and grow forever.
My role is to look at sustainability - how we can learn to live on this finite planet. I live in a country of 350million people and to find balance here is very tricky. But what happens when you have a country of 1.3 billion people who are trying to bring themselves out of a developing country lifestyle - how do you incorporate sustainability.
It feels overwhelming when you drive for hours and see nothing but sky rises and sky rises - knowing that people live and work here. And that they have a right to live and work there.
I am a big supporter of not throwing rocks while living in my glass house, so I don't want to focus on what China is or isn't. But rather focus on what this means for us. The idea of infinite of resources does not exist - and we are seeing that with increasing prices of global commodities. So how are we going to protect ourselves as the storm grows with a global sustainability crisis. The urgency grows when I leave the nice confines of grocery stores, heat and plumbing and see that the rest of the world lives very differently than we do. We have a lot father to fall.