Introduction: Sussing Out Sustainability

     As we sit down to write this, the introduction to the second issue of Hawk & Handsaw, the world has just learned about the death of Arne Naess. A mountaineer, activist, and philosopher, Naess was perhaps best known as the progenitor of the deep ecology movement.

     Naess first articulated his notion of deep ecology in a brief article entitled, "The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movements: A Summary." Summary is the operative word here: At just a few pages long, the piece provided only a thumbnail sketch for what would later become an entire school of philosophical thought. But even with its brevity, "The Shallow and the Deep"succeeded in revolutionizing the way we approach environmentalism.

     In his essay, Naess introduced what he called the total-field image. This idea insists that there is no me and you, no us and them--at least ecologically speaking. Instead, we exist within a knotted solidarity. All decision making, therefore, must be based on the kind of holistic thinking that privileges integrated relationships and planetary diversity. That means not favoring one species (including our own); it also means ridding the world of caste systems in favor of egalitarianism and self-sufficiency. By adopting this mindset, Naess insisted, we could achieve an ecological equilibrium that might sustain the planet—and all of its occupants.

     Naess wouldn't use the actual word "sustainability" until much later, but his commitment to global equality was very much present when members of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development coined our modern use of the term in their Brundtland Report. Completed in 1987 and eponymously named, the report investigated "Our Common Future." Like Naess, it praised integrated thinking. It also urged world leaders, corporations, and citizens to embrace systems that allow for development in the poorest nations without compromising the well-being of the planet.

     Inadvertently or not, the Brundtland Report also created a movement.

     Indeed, "sustainability" has already become a defining buzzword for a century still in its first decade. Media outlets now staff sustainability reporters and experts; so too do many of the world's leading businesses. There are sustainability institutes, sustainable degree programs, and sustainable stock indices. Factor in the sustainable architectural firms, sustainably produced goods ranging from toothbrushes to dog biscuits, along with the sustainable technologies that allow us to warm our water or drive from point to point, and it's easy to believe we are entering the Sustainable Age.

     But what does that mean?

     The Brundtland Report was refreshingly specific in its treatment of global sustainability. It mandated clean drinking water for all people, along with the right to secure food and sanitation. It considered environmentally efficient energies, the crisis of urban overpopulation, and a renewed commitment to the planet's threatened species and places.

     What the commission omitted from this report, however, is the nitty-gritty: life in the field; reports from the ground. Sustainability as a theoretical concept is something most of us can embrace. Sustainability as a way of life can be much trickier. Will we have access to these innovations? Can we afford them? Do we have the ingenuity to make them for ourselves? Answering these and other questions in the affirmative requires us to be a little--if not a whole lot--creative. Sometimes that means getting crafty: making rain cisterns out of disused industrial equipment, learning to spin wool, or even making art out of decaying infrastructure in a city like Detroit. Other times, it can entail eating local or buying second-hand. Sustainability can also mean reorienting your entire worldview: questioning your value systems or rejecting some of your most cherished rituals.

     No matter how large or small, these acts of creativity deserve some collective contemplation. With that in mind, then, we chose to dedicate this entire issue to answering the question, "what is creative sustainability?" We began by asking a wide variety of scholars, practitioners, and students to define the concept for themselves. As you might suspect, answers ranged as widely as the respondents. In spite of these differences, however, all responses shared several key ideas: creative sustainability demands a new way of thinking--one that flies in the face of consumer-driven ideology, military-industrial complexes, and reductive policy. Creative sustainability demands hard work from its participants--work so hard, in fact, it might seem daunting, if not altogether impossible. And yet, for all of that struggle, our respondents also emphasized one important truth: creative sustainability is absolutely necessary.

     The contributors to this issue of Hawk & Handsaw flesh out answers to our question in their own ways. Several ask hard questions about the way our humanity--and all its contrivances--complicates global sustainability. Is technology distancing us from our environment? Can we really coexist with the wild world? Other contributors look to the most local of all systems--a family's shared history--for answers. Some celebrate the way everyday behaviors can be acts of social revolution. A few consider large-scale changes in their lives, while others wonder if such things are even possible.

     Just as provocative is the treatment of creative sustainability offered by our visual artists. Many of the images in this issue complicate our expectations; they take the unexpected turn. Vehicle tracks etch gestures in the landscape, and a white burst of coordinates is graphed onto dark space. There are lumber piles painstakingly rendered into woodcuts, and lists on scraps of paper reconfigured in clay and honored in extraordinary detail. Names in a telephone book are connected and transformed by beams of color, daring us to ask about the connections. The images in this issue raise other questions, too. Why is that knocker attached to a tree limb? Who lives there or is trying to enter? What happened to those clothes hanging above the flood?

     None of the art in this issue offers a single answer or agenda: instead it drops us off in the vicinity of something interesting and leaves it up to us to figure it out. This is the work of sustained and inspired attention. And it demands us to ask questions of ourselves, too. Through the images and words represented in this issue, we can come a little bit closer to our own definitions of a sustainable life--a personal ecology that is both real and deep.

     That's exactly what Arne Naess was after. And so it seems fitting that we pay him a small tribute in these introductory pages.

     Naess had reason to despair when it came to sustaining our planet. Born in 1912, he witnessed firsthand two world wars, the rise of nuclear power, and an explosion both of human population and natural resource depletion. Faced with the added problems of the 21st century, then, Naess admitted he didn't have much faith in our generations' ability to make good use of what remained in our world. Still, he was no fatalist. Instead, he saw hope just over the horizon: In another century or so, he predicted, humankind will have finally learned how to embody sustainable ideas. Mastering that lesson will be what is required for us to lead our planet "back in the direction of paradise." And once there, Naess concluded, our descendents will finally discover the joys of an abiding--and truly universal--solidarity.

     Let's hope he's right.

                                                                       -The Editors