Thinking Like A Mountain

“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.”

~Aldo Leopold

If sustainability can be viewed as success (whether financial or ecological) over a given period of time, then it would seem the term is plagued by a certain amount of ambiguity. While success is extremely difficult to define in both commercial and scientific endeavors in and of its self, the matter is complicated by an incomplete view of the time function with which it is incorporated. While Albert Einstein said that time is irrelevant and Benjamin Franklin said that time is money, then it would seem that our generation has incorporated both paradigms. We have defined success as a matter of fiscal prosperity, while becoming increasingly shortsighted with regard to our progeny and the decades that lie ahead. Without an appreciation for the future, the concept of sustainability is essentially futile. In an effort to combat the anthropocentricity that plagues the human condition; Aldo Leopold argued that we must to learn to “think like a mountain,” and realize we are merely a moment in the spectrum of natural time. It is with this paradigm that the sustainable movement moves forward in an effort to ensure our footprint is commensurate with our weight.

http://www.eco-action.org/dt/thinking.html