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Last night I read a column at StarTribune.com that got me thinking again about our idea of what sustainability is and how we share that idea with others.

The disappointment in this column is author Katherine Kersten’s failure to make clear that sustainability will never lead to tyranny. Unfortunately, a great opportunity was lost to really clarify some definitions. Specifically, her sloppy follow-up on her question of the actual meaning of “sustainability” created all the room in the world for misinformation and holes in reasoning.

Institutions can usher in tyranny, but the very nature of tyranny is unsustainable. So to blame any tyrannical outcome on sustainability is a lapse in the understanding of what sustainability is, or worse, a manipulation and politicization of a quite innocuous word. It is a condition of harmony that will look very different where ever it is achieved. But the outcome of fairness, health and prosperity in both ecological and social terms is constant and clear. It could be thought of as an invisible condition. We don’t look at the rain forests, for example, and say, “I wonder what program made this forest work so well for so long?” It works so well because the forest, like humankind, is made up of an incredibly complex and wide range of interdependent components. And all of those components built the forest themselves from the ground up, over many years, by establishing relationships that create and enforce the prosperity of the whole.

Any deliberate attempt to modify an existing system can potentially lead to “tyranny”. Kersten’s article brings up that important consideration as a whole, but poorly communicates (in fact seems to spin with a very clear bias against the idea) that sustainability is at its heart a holistic and natural beast that naturally abhors a tyrant and will always defy control. A state of sustainability will not be reached by programs or legislation, at least not purely. The replacing of a few bad practices with new ones (CFLs in every light fixture in the capitol building, mayoral decisions to stop purchasing bottled water, bike paths, green spaces and public transportation, etc.) will only go so far. Sustainability must be ushered in by the people who will benefit from it. It is the institutions who must make sure they do not stand in the way. If the institution is knowingly or unknowingly withholding human rights education, environmental education, or education in general from the people it “serves”, then the institution is standing in the way of a self-sustaining system, and tyranny is already set.

Put another way, it is unsustainable for an organization to create a “strategic goal” of sustainability that attempts to live and breath on it’s own. In that form, the outcome is dependent on the fickle funding and typically limited vision of those at or near the top of that organization. Sustainability is an invisible achievement that is created over time by a constituency of people and institutions alike that are driven by a sense of fairness and compassion that shapes their perspective on the environment and social justice.

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