Relationships, Values, and Boundaries

Chapter 4. Relationships, Values, and Boundaries

I have frequently been asked if I am optimistic about the prospects for achieving sustainability. My standard response is that I am not optimistic, but hopeful.  By hopeful, I mean that I believe sustainability is possible. I believe we have the potential to create a sustainable global society if we have the collective wisdom and courage to do so. However, I don’t think achieving sustainability will be quick or easy or even an eventual certainty. Over the years, I have concluded that the greatest challenge to achieving sustainability is developing and sustaining positive relationships with each other and with other living and nonliving things of the Earth.

Relationships

At one point during my public speaking years, I made a series of presentations related to “The Economics of Happiness.”[i] I shared quotes of some of the early neoclassical economists concerning the uniqueness of economic relationships. In describing the “economic man,” Philip Wicksteed wrote, “As soon as he [the economic man] is moved by a direct and disinterested desire to further the purposes or consult the interests of particular ‘others’… the transaction on his side ceases to be purely economic.”[ii] In other words, economic relationships show no preference for any specific person. If a relationship is personal, it is no longer purely economic. Early economists understood that economic relationships are inherently impersonal. Alfred Marshall wrote that economies are limited to providing only the “material requisites” for well-being itself, not even ensuring well-being. Earlier economists understood that money can’t buy happiness.

In my presentations on happiness, I quoted studies that confirmed the limited ability of economies to provide happiness. Happiness depends not only on material well-being but also on the quality of personal relationships, within friendships, families, and communities, and a sense of purpose and meaning in life. People in today’s complex societies need money to meet their basic material or physical needs. But whenever people in societies give economic relationships priority over social and ethical relationships, they eventually diminish rather than enhance their quality of life. Their overall well-being may increase until their basic material needs are met, but beyond that point, their loss of social and ethical well-being will more than offset any further gains in economic well-being. They eventually suffer mentally and physically from loneliness and depression, no matter how wealthy they become.

The United States is a prime example of the consequences of prioritizing economic growth over social equity and moral justice. In 2000, political scientist Robert Putnam documented the decline of “social capital” in the United States since 1950 in his landmark book, Bowling Alone.[iii] He described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social interactions that had once formed, educated, and enriched American lives. He documented declines in physical and mental health and decreases in the civility of society that paralleled increases in social disconnectedness. He argued that the strength of a democracy depends on the quality of social engagement among its citizens. Democracies depend on people caring about and being willing to care for each other. We are seeing the consequences of the loss of social capital in the current social incivility and political divisiveness that threaten democracy in America.

The relationship problem has not gotten any better since Putnam’s book in 2000.  In 2023, the Surgeon General of the United States issued a public health advisory, citing recent studies indicating that about one in two Americans are experiencing chronic loneliness. He pointed out that “loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death... And the harmful consequences of a society that lacks social connection can be felt in our schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished.”[iv] The U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was twice as high in 2000 and ten times as high in 2022 as in 1950. As the economy has continued to grow, American society has become increasingly disconnected, and loneliness has become a public health crisis.[v] The logical consequence of economic prioritization and social isolation is societal dysfunction.

The U.S. is not alone in this regard. Studies of economic and social statistics from nations around the world have concluded that social equity and justice have a greater positive impact on societal happiness and well-being than income or wealth.[vi] Even the wealthier people tend to be happier in nations with greater social and economic equity. Wealthy people also suffer from loneliness and isolation in socially disconnected societies. Their economic needs are met, but they suffer from a lack of personal relationships and a sense of purpose, other than making money. [vii]  The sustainability of life on Earth does not depend on continuing economic growth, but on the sustainability of economic, social, and ethical relationships.

It has taken me a long time to appreciate the value of relationships. When I was in the first grade, I was so bashful that I put my head under my desk to recite the alphabet. I didn’t want anyone to see me talk. I eventually overcame much of this insecurity and found the courage to strike up conversations with people I didn’t know. I forced myself to speak in public, even when I was shaking with stage fright. Eventually, I became comfortable meeting new people and with public speaking.

Early in my business and academic careers, my relationships became instrumental, or a means of getting something I wanted in return. Whenever I attended a business or academic event, I would limit my conversations to people I thought might be of benefit to me. Over time, however, I learned that relationships have value well beyond anything I might receive in return. They filled a void I had felt since I was a child. I now look forward to meeting and talking with people, without regard to whether I will ever see or talk with them again. I am still not great at it, but I understand the intrinsic value of personal relationships.

When I began my self-education on agricultural sustainability, a book recommended by several people was Holistic Resource Management, by Allan Savory.[viii]  I began to understand that the difference between managing industrial and sustainable organizations is about relationships. Holism is the realization that wholes are more than the sum of their parts. The “more than” emerges from relationships among the parts. Savory claims that the greatest mistake of modern society is the way people make decisions. The tendency is to try to understand and manage systems by breaking them down or reducing them to their component parts. The emphasis is on understanding and managing the functions of specific parts of systems rather than understanding and managing relationships among the functions or parts of systems as wholes.

I often used the example of a television screen to illustrate the importance of managing relationships. The technology has changed, but the images on television screens are still different arrangements of pixels made up of red, blue, and green subpixels. If television images were separated into their component parts, the screen would be filled with solid red, green, and blue bars of varying width, depending on the colors in a particular image. Such images would convey very little information and be of very little value.

However, collections of red, blue, and green dots are arranged spatially on screens to create images, in living colors. And when those spatial arrangements are rearranged sequentially, the images move and come to life on the screen. The sounds accompanying television images are sequential arrangements of individual sound waves of different frequencies, wavelengths, and amplitudes. The images and sounds are arranged spatially and sequentially to create performances and stories that entertain, educate, motivate, or trigger emotions that bring laughter or tears. It’s all a matter of arrangements—of relationships. The same is true of sustainability.

Those who hold the conventional worldview of sustainability embrace the reductionist approach to science and organizational management. They tend to focus on specific ecological, social, or economic problems or questions of sustainability without recognizing the problems that arise from dysfunctional relationships within and among the economy, society, and nature. They fail to recognize that ecological and social problems are a logical consequence of economic extraction and exploitation, or that economic problems are a natural consequence of ineffective governance, which is a symptom of dysfunctional social relationships.

Those who hold the shallow worldviews of sustainability tend to see the world as composed of collections of components and ecological, social, and economic systems. They are more likely to understand the significance of relationships, but still rely on a reductionist science to inform their decisions and actions. They also tend to focus on trying to solve ecological problems without recognizing that ecological sustainability is inseparable from economic and social sustainability.

Whereas the worldview of deep sustainability views the Earth as an ecological, social, and economic whole made up of smaller ecological, social, and economic wholes, which are made up of still smaller wholes, and so on, down to the smallest elements of matter and energy. The sustainability of life on Earth depends on the sustainability of relationships among the multitude of holistic systems that make up the whole of the Earth, the universe, and beyond.

Deep sustainability is an emergent property of integrally connected living systems. It does not exist in natural ecosystems, societies, or economies but emerges from the relationships among the ecological, social, and economic components of living systems. The challenges of sustainability cannot be met by simply focusing on specific ecological, social, or economic problems, because today’s problems are symptoms of dysfunctional relationships among economies, societies, and Nature. Relationships within natural ecosystems, societies, and economies are important, but primarily because relationships within systems affect relationships among systems. Sustainable living is a matter of managing ecological, social, and economic relationships.

As we now know from our life experience, a society that becomes preoccupied with economics as the solution to its problems ends up with a degraded and polluted natural ecosystem and an epidemic of loneliness and depression.  However, a society preoccupied with social relationships ends up with poverty and hunger as well as a degraded natural ecosystem. And, a society preoccupied with ecological relationships ends up in social isolation and economic deprivation. Sustainability depends on forming and sustaining mutually beneficial relationships within and among natural ecosystems, societies, and economies.

Values[1]

In my book, Sustainable Capitalism, I included separate chapters on Managing the Moral Economy, Managing the Public Economy, and Managing the Private Economy.[ix]  However, in my later book, The Essentials of Economic Sustainability, I avoided using the terms social economy and moral economy. I wanted to emphasize that social and ethical values are fundamentally different from economic values and cannot be accurately expressed as economic values. I felt that suggesting social and ethical values could be brought under the conceptual umbrella of economics gave the impression that they were a subset of the economy and thus diminished their independent significance and importance.

I have always acknowledged that economic relationships can have social value and social relationships can have economic value. People can also benefit economically and socially from their ethical or faith-based relationships, and may benefit spiritually from economic and social relationships. However, I didn’t want to imply that the value of social or ethical relationships can be fully captured or expressed in terms of their associated economic values. I see this mistake frequently, as when social capital is measured in terms of economic efficiencies or reductions in “transactions costs” made possible by harmonious personal or social relationships. The potential to “do well financially by doing good” is also touted as a strategy for addressing environmental and social problems. Reducing the value of social and ethical relationships to their associated economic worth suggests that the challenge of sustainability could be met by simply assigning appropriate dollar and cent values to social and ethical relationships. This is not only untrue, it is misleading.

Natural Capitalism, for example, was a best-selling book that provided an estimate of the economic value of global natural resources.[x] The authors suggested that if the negative impacts of economic activities on natural resources were internalized and reflected in the costs of production, the economic incentives would be sufficient to ensure ecological sustainability. Numerous comprehensive studies also have been conducted to estimate the “true costs” of food. The ecological and social costs of food production are not reflected in the cost of production, and thus do not affect the economic decisions of food producers. A report commissioned by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated the non-market cost of global production at $10 trillion—about 10% of global GDP.[xi]

Such estimates are important because they reveal economic costs to society and nature that are not reflected in markets and thus do not affect current economic decisions. However, such studies do not reveal the social and ecological costs of economic decisions and their consequences. For example, the lifelong cost of health care and under- or unemployment of a teenager suffering from diabetes caused by a diet of cheap junk food does not include the physical and mental costs of a lifetime of suffering and the social costs on the kids families or the moral impacts on a society that allows this needless suffering to continue. 

Motives for decisions and actions matter as much or more than the immediate consequences. Philosophers have long debated whether motives are more or less important than consequences.[xii] Some philosophers, including Aristotle and Kant, concluded, or at least suggested, that motives don’t matter, or at least don’t matter as much as consequences. Others argue that motives have importance, regardless of their consequences, and that motives are in fact inseparable from their consequences. For example, anthropologist Gregory Bateson argued that the basic purpose of development is to propagate or spread the ideas that motivate the process of development. In other words, the purpose of actions is not only to bring about specific consequences but to spread the ideas among others and motivate future actions.[xiii]

For example, a culture of economic materialism is reinforced by individuals or corporations that ignore social and ecological costs and benefits or limit their environmentally and socially responsible actions to situations that provide an economic incentive. If an alternative action promises a greater economic return, they will take it, regardless of the ecological or social consequences. Individuals and organizations that prioritize social and ethical values over economic self-interests, on the other hand, help create a culture that strives toward ecological and social integrity, regardless of the short-term consequences. If the consequences of specific actions are not consistent with their expectations, they don’t abandon their social or ethical values. They keep trying to find the economic means of expressing their social and ethical values. Motives matter.

The different motives for individual and organizational decisions and actions are illustrated in Figure 1. The layers of the cake in this illustration reflect the motivations for management decisions. The top layer and center core of the cake represent three kinds of economic motives for individual and organizational decisions, including business decisions. The top layer represents decisions that are motivated solely by economics or by the economic bottom line. The second layer of the inner core represents decisions that have social and economic consequences and may be motivated primarily or solely by either economic or social interests. This is the “social economy.”

The second layer in Figure 1 represents decisions motivated by societal benefits, including friendships, families, communities, and nations. The outside ring of the second layer includes decisions motivated solely by societal interests. Decisions with both economic and societal consequences are included in the inner ring of the second layer. As indicated previously, this is referred to as the social economy. In addition to the social costs of economic decisions, many economic activities, such as employment, also create social benefits for communities and societies. Personal relationships are also often formed among those who work together. When employment opportunities are lost, communities and families suffer, socially as well as economically. These social costs and benefits may or may not be significant considerations in management decisions.

The bottom layer of the cake represents decisions that are motivated by morality or a sense of ethical responsibility for stewardship, guardianship, or caretaking of society and nature. The outer ring of the bottom layer represents decisions that are motivated solely by a sense of moral responsibility, such as those of religious or philanthropic organizations. The inner core of the bottom layer represents decisions that may be motivated primarily or solely by either economic or ethical values. This layer is referred to as the moral economy, where economic decisions are tempered by a sense of ethical or moral responsibility. The motivations of businesses managed for sustainability are depicted as the inner core of the bottom two layers of the cake in Figure 1—the social and moral economies.

The middle ring of the bottom layer, the moral society, represents the decisions of individuals and organizations that are motivated by a sense of morality and social responsibility. This is the realm of public administration or government. In matters of government, elected representatives and administrators should strive to make decisions that reflect their ethical or moral sense of what their government should do to benefit society as a whole, including those who may or may not share their moral values. Individuals or businesses that use government to serve their economic interests, or to impose their moral values, or lack thereof, on others, are motivated neither by morality nor social responsibility but by narrow individual self-interest. Motives matter most in managing or governing for sustainability, regardless of the consequences.

The basic characteristics of values associated with economically, socially, and morally motivated decisions are shown in Table 1. Economic relationships are instrumental in that they are means to ends rather than the goals or ultimate objectives to be achieved. For example, profits provide money for hiring workers and acquiring new technologies as a means of increasing productivity. Economic investments are made with the expectation of receiving something of greater economic value in return. However, when returns on economic investment are monetary, the returns have no value other than the value of whatever money can be used to acquire, either immediately or at some time in the future.

Economic value is impersonal in that economic relationships or transactions are not dependent on the specific persons, businesses, or “others” involved. To the extent that a relationship is personal, it is non-economic because it is not motivated solely by self-interest.  People who work for businesses may have personal ties that result in economic benefits for themselves and their employers, but the personal value of their relationships is non-economic. Businesses that are managed for the economic bottom line buy from suppliers that offer the lowest prices, pay their employees only as much as necessary, and sell to customers that will pay the highest prices for what they have to offer, without regard to the specific persons involved in the various economic relationships and transactions.

Finally, economic value is individual in that economic benefits accrue to the individual enterprise or business, not to families, friendships, communities, or societies in general. An aggregate economy is nothing more than a collection of individual economic enterprises and organizations. Positive relationships among workers, suppliers, and customers of businesses may create social and moral values that contribute to the sustainability of the community and society. However, relationships have no economic value other than what they contribute to the economic bottom line of the business. Relationships among individuals, businesses enterprises, or organizations that make up an economy have no economic value beyond whatever they may contribute to the economic efficiency of business relationships and transactions of individual businesses. A strong economy is important to profit-maximizing businesses only to the extent that the economy contributes to their individual economic bottom lines.

Social values differ from economic values in that social relationships are reciprocal, rather than instrumental, personal rather than impersonal, and the outcomes are shared or communal rather than individual. Social relations are reciprocal because there is an expectation of receiving something of personal value from social relationships. Unlike economic contracts of legal obligations, however, there are no specific expectations regarding when, how, or how much social value a friendship, membership, or citizenship will yield in return. Anything of economic value associated with a social relationship is part of the social economy. However, the social relationship will have no economic value because social returns are specific to the persons or individuals involved.

Unlike economic relationships, social relationships are personal rather than impersonal. Social values arise from friendships, families, communities, and societies in which there is a personal sense of belonging. Since personal relationships exist only between specific individuals, social values are not transferable to different individuals. A person cannot buy or sell a friendship or sense of belonging. Since social relationships cannot be bought, sold, or traded, they have no economic value. Within friendships and families, the individuals typically know each other intimately, and their social relationships have a major influence on the quality of life. Close personal relationships among employees of businesses and between employees and suppliers or customers may be very important to their quality of life. However, such relationships have no economic value because they cannot be bought, sold, or exchanged.

Close personal relations, such as those in friendships and families, are characterized by sociologists as thick-trust or thick-reciprocity. Less personal relations, such as those who identify personally with communities, societies, or nations, are referred to as thin-trust or thin-reciprocity. Regardless of whether thick or thin, if a relationship is social, rather than economic or ethical, there is a sense of personal connectedness or belonging. If there is no sense of personal connectedness among family members, employees, or community members, there is no social family, collegiality, or community, instead are merely collections of individuals.

Within communities and societies, the individuals may be only casually acquainted or perhaps just share some common attitudes or aspirations, but their sense of belonging may nonetheless be significant. For example, socially responsible taxpayers willingly pay taxes with no specific expectation of what they will receive in return, other than the expectation that if they contribute to society, then society, through government, will reciprocate in some way at some time in the future. Socially responsible businesses pay taxes, rather than attempt to avoid paying taxes, for similar reasons. They also respect laws and regulations rather than attempt to circumvent government oversight or restraint. They understand that businesses benefit in many ways from a socially responsible government.

Finally, social values are communal rather than individual because they accrue to friendships, families, collegialities, or communities as wholes rather than to the individuals involved in the relationships or transactions. A family is an emergent property that arises from the relationships among its members. If there are no meaningful relationships, there is no family—only a collection of individuals born or raised in the same household. Whenever the relationships change, the family changes. Likewise, a community, professional organization, or corporate collegiality is an emergent property of the relationships among unrelated individuals who share a sense of fellowship or belonging. The essence of the whole emerges from shared attitudes, interests, obligations, and aspirations. Those who do not share a sense of belonging are not part of the social group, regardless of where they live, meet, or work.

Moral values are different from economic and social values in that they are universal, rather than individual or communal; altruistic, rather than instrumental or reciprocal; and spiritual, rather than impersonal or communal. Altruism refers to selfless acts that benefit others with no expectation of receiving anything of economic or social value in return. Moral acts are altruistic because they are guided solely by what a person believes is right or good. There is no expectation of receiving anything for themselves or anyone they know, other than the sense that they have done something they should do. Altruism is not limited to religious or charitable contributions of time or money but includes anything that is done without expectations of receiving anything other than a sense of satisfaction in return. Religions and charitable contributions often are not purely altruistic but instead means of acquiring something of economic or social value and thus part of the moral economy or moral society. The moral values of such relationships have no economic or social value because they are neither instrumental nor personal.

Moral values are universal rather than individual or communal because acts of altruism contribute not only to the well-being of communities and societies but also to the betterment of humanity and the whole of the universe. What is right and good for the people a person knows is right for those they do not know, including those of future generations, and for the whole of the Earth. Moral relationships are spiritual or psychological because a person’s perceptions of what is right and good ultimately come from their sense of connectedness with some higher order of things, or their sense of absolute reality or God.

Moral relationships are not limited to relationships between specific persons or persons in general but also include relationships between people with their natural environments. Relationships with the other living and nonliving things of nature—the whole of the Earth, the Universe, and beyond—are moral. Thus, the extraction of natural resources to meet human needs and the disposal of biological and chemical waste into the natural environment have moral consequences, regardless of the motivation. Moral responsibilities to conserve natural resources and protect the natural environment are not solely responsibilities to help secure the well-being of other people of current and future generations, but are also responsibilities of humans as caretakers of the other living and non-living things of the Earth.

The values that characterize social and ethical economies are also shown in Table 1. In the social economy, benefits and costs accrue both to the individuals and communities. Relationships in the social economy may be both instrumental and reciprocal, in that there may be expectations of economic benefits as well as social value from a relationship. People may prefer to do business with friends and neighbors, which results in both social and economic values. While the economic expectation may be impersonal, with dollar and cent values, the social expectation may be personal, with values that depend on the specific persons involved in the relationship.

The motivations, relationships, and consequences that characterize an ethical economy or economic ethic reflect economic and ethical values. Individuals may benefit economically from actions that are motivated primarily, if not solely, by altruism. In other words, they would make the same decisions if they got nothing of economic value in return. The benefits of decisions in the ethical economy accrue both to the individual decision-maker and to their communities, societies, and beyond. Relations in the ethical economy are both impersonal and spiritual, in that decisions are motivated by an ethical sense of purpose but rewarded both economically and spiritually.

The characteristics of values realized from an ethical society or a social ethic, which are not included in Table 1, result in both social and ethical values. To the extent that personal relationships reflect the ethical values of the individuals involved, benefits from the relationships will create both social and ethical values. In cases where individuals compromise their ethical values to accommodate their social preferences, the social benefits are offset by ethical costs.  The motivation for relationships may be both altruistic and reciprocal, as in the case of the moral economy, if reciprocity is not a condition of the decision but occurs nonetheless.    

Economists generally contend that social and ethical values can be expressed as economic value, or have an economic equivalence. The concept of “contingent valuation” or willingness to pay is one of the more popular approaches to assigning economic values of resource conservation, environmental protection, and other ecologically or socially motivated decisions or actions.[i] While contingent valuation may provide useful estimates of the economic benefits of decisions or actions that also have social or ethical costs or benefits, they do not measure the social or ethical costs or benefits.

For example, if someone is asked how much money it would take to bribe them to end a friendship, the answer would provide an assessment of the economic value of the friendship, at least to them. It would also provide some indication of how much money the individual thinks it might take to compensate for having one less friend. However, economic value is determined by how much money someone is willing to pay for something, not simply by how much someone is willing to accept for it. A true friendship cannot be bought, and therefore it can’t be sold, and thus has no economic value. A bribe to end a friendship also would not reflect the social value of the loss of the relationship to the other individual involved in the friendship or to the larger network of friendships that constitute their community. Social and ethical decisions affect the whole of society, including those of the future, not just the individuals who make them.

In addition, those with more money logically would be willing to pay more than those with less money can afford to pay for the same environmental and social benefits. However, it is illogical to suggest that a willingness to pay more means that environmental and social responsibility is of greater ethical and social value to wealthy people than to poor people. Does the fact that poor people’s children are rarely, if ever, kidnapped and held for ransom mean that poor people love their children less than wealthy people? It is logical for people with more money to have more influence on market economies because economic values in market economies reflect scarcity, not basic human needs—material, social, or spiritual. Social and ethical values simply cannot be measured in dollars and cents.       

Regardless, those with the conventional worldview rely primarily on the economy for the motivation, benefits, and relationships needed to move toward sustainability. They rationalize that whenever natural and human resources become sufficiently scarce and thus sufficiently valuable, today’s social and ethical values will be transformed into economic values. It will make economic sense to protect nature and society when they become economically valuable natural and human resources. Impersonal markets will then allocate the resources more effectively and sustainably than if they were allocated by social or ethical values. In the meantime, we simply need to internalize the nonmarket or external economic costs being imposed on nature and society and let the markets determine how best to protect and preserve them.

Those with the worldview of shallow sustainability rely on the social and ethical economies for the motivation, benefits, and relationships needed for sustainability. They rationalize that if individuals and businesses simply took advantage of opportunities to profit economically by catering to environmentally and socially conscious consumers, there would be sufficient economic motivations for sustainability. They overlook the fact that consumers who create such opportunities must prioritize ethical values over social and economic values. Also, relying on economic incentives provides opportunities for deceptive and fraudulent relationships that maximize profits and minimize progress toward sustainability. Those with a shallow worldview of sustainability focus on the consequences of actions rather than the motives or intentions. They fail to understand that the future of humanity ultimately depends on a culture of sustainability—on motivations as well as consequences. 

That being said, opportunities do exist to benefit economically from using scarce resources more efficiently, reducing waste and pollution, developing substitutes for nonrenewable resources, and doing many other things that make today’s economy “less unsustainable.” While actions that increase the resourcefulness of the economy are logical and necessary for sustainability, they are not sufficient. A sustainable economy must be resilient and regenerative, as well as resourceful or economically efficient. Resilience and regeneration both require investments that will provide economic returns for future generations but have little if any economic value today. Economic value is the present value of something to an individual consumer or investor. One dollar today has more economic value than the promise of a million-dollar payoff in some future generation. Meeting the needs of all today will depend on social value as well as economic value. Meeting the needs of the future will depend on an ethic of sustainability.   

Those with a deep sustainability worldview understand that sustainability is ultimately a question of ethics and morality. There is no economic value in doing anything for the sole benefit of someone else, and there is no possibility of economic value in doing anything for the benefit of those of future generations. The person who makes the decision will not be present in future generations to realize any economic benefits. There is no social value in doing anything for future generations because there is no possibility of receiving a personal benefit from someone we can never meet. We can receive social benefits from making investments from which our children may receive benefits, but beyond the generations of those with whom we have social relationships, there is no possibility of benefiting socially from decisions essential for sustainability.

Sustainability depends on people, as societies and humanity, being willing to make purely ethical or moral decisions to care for each other and the Earth, with no expectation of anything of economic or social value in return. These are the values that motivate decisions and actions toward deep sustainability.

Footnote: Substantial portions of this section on values are taken directly from: Ikerd, J. Business, Management for Sustainability. Sustainability 2024, 16, 3714. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16093714 .

Boundaries

As I began to think more deeply about sustainability, I began to understand the importance of boundaries: physical, ecological, social, and economic boundaries. Physical boundaries define the elements and structures of solid materials, liquids, and gases. Boundaries also define the cells, organs, and bodies of living organisms—plants, animals, including humans. Social boundaries define friendships, families, communities, and societies. Economic boundaries define individual proprietorships, corporations, and economies.[ii] All elements and entities on Earth are defined or delineated by boundaries that give them their form or structure, which distinguishes them from all other entities or beings on Earth. Relationships among entities or beings take place across their boundaries.  

Life itself depends on relationships across a particular kind of boundary. All living organisms are composed of cells, including single-cell organisms. These cells are defined by biological boundaries called membranes. These membranes have a specific characteristic essential for life. They are semipermeable or selective in what they allow to enter or leave the cell. The membranes of healthy living cells allow beneficial elements from the outside to enter but keep potentially harmful elements out. After the cells have extracted the usefulness from elements allowed in, they excrete the rest as waste. They keep out elements and excesses of elements that would be toxic to the cell and keep in elements and quantities of elements essential for life.

Nutrients are drawn into a cell and the wastes are excreted through the process of osmosis. Osmosis is a term for the diffusion or movement of molecules that takes place through semipermeable or selective membranes or boundaries. Diffusion is a consequence of the tendency of natural systems to tend toward entropy. There is a natural tendency for things in nature to remove gradients, including differences in concentration, and to move from higher to lower levels of concentration.

If the concentration of an element outside a cell is greater than the concentration inside, there is a natural tendency to equalize the concentration by diffusing elements into the cell. Likewise, if the concentration is higher inside than outside, the tendency is to equalize the concentration by diffusing elements out of the cell. However, the cell boundaries are selective in what they allow to move in and out. The life of a cell depends on the selectivity of the boundaries. In the absence of selective boundaries, cells would have no means of rejecting or excreting toxins or retaining enough nourishment to support life. 

The same basic principles and processes of life apply at all levels of life and living. Living organs and organisms also have boundaries that define their identity. Boundaries define the heart, lungs, and brain of mammals. Plants have leaves, branches, stems, and roots that define them as distinct plants. Animals have heads, arms, legs, and torsos covered with skin that defines their bodies. Plants and animals are selective in what they eat or absorb, specifically what substances or kinds of nourishment they allow into their bodies. They are also selective in what they excrete as waste. All living organs and organisms are selective or discriminating in their relationships with their environments.

Life is ultimately dependent on the energy released from the elements ingested and digested. Digestion involves breaking or dissolving the boundaries of ingested cells to release the energy stored inside. The lives of the ingested cells are sacrificed to sustain the living organism. If the boundaries of organisms were impermeable and let no energy in, the organism would have no access to the energy necessary to support life and would starve. If the boundaries were completely permeable or didn’t exist, the organism would dissolve into a formless, lifeless slime and then into dust. Healthy living organisms can use some of the ingested energy to continually renew and regenerate the cells that make up their bodies. Once an organism dies, however, there is no way to reconcentrate and store new energy to support life, and no means of releasing it if it were restored. Life depends on the continual diffusion of energy across selective boundaries.

The selective nature of plants seems to be instinctive or automatic, although plants respond differently to the same food sources or incentives under different environmental circumstances. Animals, including humans, also seem to be genetically inclined to prefer certain kinds of foods and to find others objectionable, but also have the ability and agency to make intentional choices—humans in particular. Living organisms also have the ability to reproduce and to regenerate their species. However, whenever the selective boundaries of living organisms are breached through age, illness, or disease, they may starve, be poisoned, get sick, or die. The health and sustainability of life on Earth depend on the selectivity of physical boundaries.

Families, communities, and societies are defined or delineated by social boundaries rather than physical boundaries. Social boundaries are less stable and well-defined than physical boundaries, but nonetheless exist, and are critical to the sustainability of human relationships.  Relationships within families, communities, and societies differ from relationships among families, communities, and societies because of social boundaries. Family members share genetics and/or life experiences that cause, or allow, them to relate differently to each other than to those outside the family. Families are selective in who they allow into the family circle and who they keep out, or in some cases, expel.

Families can have a variety of structures: nuclear, single-parent, same-sex, adopted, step, childless, grandparent, and extended. As with all healthy living systems, family boundaries must be semipermeable or selective. Families must be open to bringing in and accepting new members through births, marriage, and through formal or informal adoptions into the family circle. But they must also discourage or reject individuals and outside influences that threaten the health, well-being, and integrity of the family. Once the bonds that hold families together are broken, they may be difficult or impossible to restore. Families are defined and bound together by selective family boundaries.

Organizations have selective boundaries. Social organizations have requirements for membership that are designed to encourage people who are willing to accept their missions to join and discourage those who will not. Businesses have selective boundaries that define the extent to which they depend on other businesses for capital, labor, and other factors of production, and which factors of production they control or create within the organization. They are also selective in determining what they produce for sale and what they keep for themselves.

Organic farms are examples of highly selective business organizations. Standards for organic government certification of organic production allow the use of naturally occurring organic substances but prohibit or strictly limit the use of synthetic substances, including synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. This typically results in somewhat higher costs of production, which limits organic markets to those who are willing and able to pay premiums for organic products. Some organic farmers are even more selective, in attempting to limit their production inputs to those provided directly by nature—sun, air, water, soil, and biological organisms that are on their farms. To the maximum extent possible, they depend on the dependability of nature for their productivity. To the extent that their selectivity limits productivity and increases costs, they also limit their potential customers by depending on nature for their productivity.

The boundaries of communities and societies have the same basic characteristics as family and organizational boundaries. Communities are defined by physical or geographic boundaries for political purposes, but social communities are defined by shared interests and a shared vision for the future of the community. There is a sense of personal connectedness and of common interests and concerns shared among those within a community that does not exist for those who are outside the community. As communities of interest grow larger and meld into societies and nations, the sense of connectedness and common interests among their members diminishes. The sense of reciprocity becomes “thinner.” At the national level, all that’s left may be some shared sense of patriotism; at the global level, only a shared sense of humanness. However, there is still a sense of “us” involved in relationships within social boundaries and “them” in relationships with those outside the boundaries.

Social boundaries—including families, communities, states, and nations—must be selective or semipermeable.  On occasion, when including this or similar statements in my presentations, I have been accused of being xenophobic, racist, sexist, homophobic, ageist, or otherwise unfairly discriminatory. I understand the accusations given the history of humanity and today’s cultural and political environment. Decisions regarding selections and exclusions should never be based on the groups with which individuals may be identified, such as ethnicity, nationality, gender, race, sexual preference, or age.

Treating an individual as if they have the stereotypical characteristics of a particular group is discrimination and is morally unacceptable. Treating individuals differently based on their unique characteristics is not discrimination but selectivity. Communal or social selectivity should be based solely on the characteristics of the individual. Anyone should be welcomed into a community who can be of social or ethical benefit to the community, or can benefit socially or ethically from the community. Boundaries should keep out those who would exploit and extract, and should welcome those who will help regenerate and renew, either by helping or being helped. Selective boundaries are essential in sustaining positive social relationships. In sustainable societies, people would choose to live in communities and nations where their uniqueness is of greatest value, to them and their communities, and the boundaries would be informational or cultural rather than physical or regulatory.

Being an economist, I focused my early boundary presentations on the economic boundaries essential for sustainability.  I pointed out that to consolidate the land on small farms into large farms to achieve economic efficiency, the fence rows, or boundaries, that once defined separated fields had to be removed to accommodate large, specialized farm equipment that could extract more economic value or useful energy from the land. Those fence rows not only maintained a diversity of cultivated crops among the fields but also sustained the ecological diversity of plants, animals, insects, and other living things that thrived in the fence rows. Boundaries helped maintain the biological identity of fields as distinct living ecosystems. As its boundaries were removed, farms lost their resourcefulness, resilience, and regenerative capacity. Relationships between farms and farmers became extractive and exploitative.

Farms grew larger by consolidating smaller farms into larger farming operations. This meant the economic boundaries among farms were removed, again to extract more economic value from the farmland. Consolidation of ownership and control meant that some farmers and farm families had to give up farming and seek off-farm jobs. The off-farm employment opportunities were often rare in farming communities, so farming communities suffered both economically and socially when the economic boundaries separating farms were removed. Agribusiness corporations were then able to breach the economic boundaries of rural communities through vertical integration or control of production, as well as agricultural processing and distribution. This gave corporations control over previously independent farming operations, removing social and ethical constraints to exploitation.

By the time of the farm financial crisis of the 1980s, thousands of rural communities had been stripped of their sovereignty by large agribusiness corporations that controlled local farming operations. They were no longer able to choose who or what they welcomed or refused entry into their communities. The agribusiness corporations gained enough economic and political power to exploit rural resources and extract economic value from rural communities, leaving communities unable to resist further exploitation or restore their usefulness to local societies. The social and cultural wealth of rural America was lost to outside economic exploitation because they were left unprotected by boundaries.

The same extractive process has been employed in all sectors of the U.S. economy and industrializing economies globally. The industrial strategies of specialization, standardization, and consolidation of control are very efficient means of extracting useful energy or usefulness from natural and human resources, meaning from nature and society. However, industrialization devotes little if any energy to renewal and regeneration, accelerating the tendency toward entropy. Industrialization requires weakening or removing the selective economic boundaries that allow individual economic enterprises and economies to conserve and protect their natural and human resources from exploitation.

Corporate consolidation removes the boundaries that once defined distinctive independent businesses. Unrestrained “free-trade” removes the selective economic boundaries that once defined distinctive independent national economies. As economic organizations and national economies specialize, standardize, and consolidate into larger economic entities, they lose their distinctive forms, structures, hierarchies, and differences; they inevitably move toward entropy and the loss of ability to create anything useful or of economic value to society. The sustainability of human life on earth depends on the restoration and preservation of selective economic boundaries.     

Those who hold the conventional worldview of sustainability see boundaries as obstacles to be removed to facilitate the extraction and exploitation of natural and human resources. They believe the key to sustainability is to continually increase the efficiency of the extraction and exploitation of useful energy for nature and society. They advocate the imposition of industrial economic development strategies in those parts of the world where local resources have not been fully exploited and export industrial pollution from developed nations to those parts of the world that are less polluted or have fewer resources to exploit. They propose preserving less exploitable parts of nature as if nature is somehow separable from industry. The conventional worldview is that science and technology can sustain humanity without boundaries. They fail to realize or care that by accelerating the destruction of form, structure, hierarchy, or differentiation, they are accelerating the process of entropy. They are systematically destroying the living Earth.

Those who hold the shallow worldview of sustainability take relationships and boundaries more seriously but still tend to view the world as separable and reducible to components and sectors. For example, the ecological footprint is a widely referenced measure of ecological sustainability that uses embodied energy in assessing ecological carrying capacity.[iii] They rely on science and technology to find means of living within the carrying capacity of the Earth. The planetary boundaries framework is another popular attempt to identify limits to the impacts of human activities, beyond which the Earth’s environment may not be able to self-regulate.[iv]  The goal is to reduce human impacts to sustainable levels.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are more consistent with deep sustainability.[v] First, the SDGs are goals rather than boundaries or limits. Second, the goals include social equality and economic equity as well as ecological integrity—the essential dimensions of sustainability. Kate Rayworth’s Doughnut Economics model probably comes closest to deep sustainability among popular economic models. Donut Economics accepts the United Nations' designation of planetary boundaries as the outside ring of the donut within which sustainable economies must function.[vi] The inside ring, the hole of the donut, is defined by minimum levels of basic economic and social needs that must be met by sustainable economies. The area in between the inner and outer rings defines “the safe and just space for humanity.”

Unlike deep sustainability, however, Donut Economics treats maximum levels of ecological degradation and minimum levels of public safety and social justice as constraints within which humanity must function if it is to be sustainable. Economies naturally tend to maximize production and profits within legal or allowable constraints. This means economies would tend toward maximum allowable ecological degradation while providing minimum allowable levels of public safety and justice. This tendency is evident in today’s industrial economies.  Deep Sustainability, instead, strives to optimize ecological, social, and economic dimensions of well-being in the pursuit of human happiness.

Decisions and actions guided by deep sustainability would move away from the planetary limits to increasingly resilient, regenerative, and resourceful natural ecosystems and move away from minimum levels of safety and justice to higher levels of social, ecological, and economic well-being. For the socially responsible member of society, laws against robbery and murder are not constraints to their actions but identify actions that they would like to minimize or eliminate from society. In matters of sustainability, motives often matter more than consequences, as explained previously. The donut model also implicitly assumes that social and ethical values define gender equity, social equity, political voice, and peace and justice on the inner ring of the donut. However, there is no explicit distinction among economic, social, and ethical values, and perhaps most importantly, no recognition of the necessity for an ethic of sustainability.    

The good news is that deep sustainability is not about living within limits but realizing the potential for a life of purpose, a life of flourishing and happiness. Deep sustainability doesn’t view ecological, social, or economic boundaries as limits but as guidelines for sustaining mutually beneficial relationships with each other and the Earth, much as a high body temperature is not a limit but an indicator of human health. Deep sustainability is about the seemingly infinite potential to improve the social, ethical, and even economic value of life on Earth through continual advancements in the art and science of relationships.

The racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse communities in the future world of deep sustainability will share a common ethic of sustainability and a common commitment to ensuring that the needs of everyone in the community are met without diminishing opportunities for those of future generations. The ability of everyone in the community to contribute to the mission of sustainability, including the young and elderly, will be recognized and honored. The elderly will have information, insights, and wisdom to share with the young, and the young will have energy, enthusiasm, and imagination to share with the elderly. Those in the so-called prime of life will have the capacity to contribute to, as well as benefit from, relationships with both young and old. There will be no involuntary social isolation or loneliness. Everyone will have a right to choose when, how, and with whom they relate personally, but no one will be left to suffer from isolation or loneliness.   

If we continue to pursue our narrow, individual self-interests through our relationships with each other, as well as with the Earth, eventually we will destroy the willingness or ability of the Earth to sustain humanity. Sustainability is a matter of relationships, specifically, mutually beneficial economic, social, and ethical relationships. The relationships have distinct characteristics of human value that are essential for a sustainable quality of life. Relationships among humans and between humans and the Earth are not predetermined by nature but are relationships of choice. The sustainability of life on Earth depends on our ability and willingness to choose wisely.   

End Notes:

[1] John Ikerd, “Economics of Happiness in Food and Farming,” Presented at Miami University of Ohio, Oxford, OH, October 2007, https://ikerdj.mufaculty.umsystem.edu/presentation-papers/sustainable-economies/economics-of-happiness-in-food-and-farming .

[2] Philip H. Wicksteed, The Common Sense of Political Economy, (London: Routledge, 1933, original copyright, 1910), 173-74.

[3] Wikipedia contributors, "Bowling Alone," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bowling_Alone&oldid=1184941973 (accessed November 25, 2023).

[4] U.S. Surgeon General, 2023, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation; The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community”, https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf

[5] Statista, Gross domestic product of the United States from 1990 to 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/188105/annual-gdp-of-the-united-states-since-1990/

[6] Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate E. Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, May 2011. 

[7] Tim Jackson, Prosperity without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow 2nd Edition, Routledge; 2nd edition (December 5, 2016).

[8] Alan Savory and Jody Butterfield, Holistic Management, ‎ Island Press; Third Edition, Third Edition, Third (November 10, 2016)

[9] John Ikerd, Sustainable Capitalism, Kumarian Press, Bloomfield, CT, 2005, Chapter 2. 

[10] Natural Capitalism, Paul Hawkin, Amory Lovins, and Hunter Lovins, US Green Building Council; First Edition (October 12, 2000)

[11] Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations, The State of Food and Agriculture 2023, https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cc7724en .

[12] Steven Sverdlik, Motive and Rightness, Oxford University Press, 2011, Reviewed by Garrett Pendergraft, Pepperdine University, Notre Dame, Philosophical Review, https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/motive-and-rightness/#:~:text .

[13] Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecological Mind, University of Chicago Press, (1972) p. .

[14] Wikipedia contributors, "Contingent valuation," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Contingent_valuation&oldid=1177369748 (accessed December 10, 2023).

[15] Fritjof Capra, The Science of Sustainable Living, Anchor; First THUS Edition (January 6, 2004)

[16] Wikipedia, “carbon footprint,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint

[17] Rockström, Johan; Steffen, Will; Noone, Kevin; Persson, Åsa; Chapin, F. Stuart III; Lambin, Eric; Lenton, Timothy M.; Scheffer, Marten; Folke, Carl; Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim; Nykvist, Björn (2009). "Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity". Ecology and Society. 14 (2): art32. doi:10.5751/ES-03180-140232.

[18] United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ .

[19] Wikipedia contributors, "Doughnut Economics," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doughnut_Economics:_Seven_Ways_to_Think_Like_a_21st-Century_Economist&oldid=1150672010