First Principle -10 Principles For 100 Mile Design- By JC Scott

1. What if we lived and behaved as if we planned to stay here? What would we do differently?

This expression about planning to stay here (in our communities and on the earth) was raised at Living Future 2012, The Living Building Symposium held this May by the Cascadia Green Building Council in Victoria, BC.

There was an expression made popular in the 1960’s, “Be here now!” which talked about living in the moment, being aware of who you are, where you are and what environment and social circumstance you were in at that precise moment.  Be here now was a call to snuff off the burdens of past thinking and conversely too much living in the future.  To be totally aware of yourself in the moment, a western adaptation of eastern philosophy.

Today we are seeing the downside of immediacy thinking with quarterly reports driving business, instant gratification driving consumerism and four year terms being the longest political time frame for addressing even the most serious issues of our day.

The results of this ‘be here now’ thinking are potentially disastrous despite the good intentions and actual benefits of total self awareness.  Because what we have created is a dirty nest, a planet on which we are living for today with little regard for the long term, for the mortgage term of our existence on earth as humans if you will, in which we simply are not living here as if we plan to stay but rather as if we have somewhere else to go after this party ends.

Does the end result of your planning and activity produce results that would pass review of permanence, durability and sustainability?  Do you in fact act as if you plan to stay here?