Discussions of Sustainability Are Empty Without the Concept of “Connecting”

I write a great deal about practical matters: the installed cost/Watt of PV, the list of heavy metals we find in coal, what we may want to do with off-peak wind, and so forth.  These are measurable things, and, as such, provide the possibility of right and wrong answers.

But there is an entirely different dimension to the conversation we need to be having about the environment and sustainability, i.e., the degree to which we care about one another, our ability to connect to our fellows on some sort of emotional or spiritual level.

When the Pope enraged most of the Vatican the other day by suggesting that the church’s hierarchy has “spiritual Alzheimer’s,” he was essentially saying that it had forgotten that it needs to connect with humankind.

I’ve always loved this artistic representation of the concept of connecting with one another, done by Tom Chambers, master of photo-manipulation.