Sustainability Essentials | Futurs.org

Letter of James 2:14-18.
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?
If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day,
and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?
So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
Indeed someone might say, “You have faith and I have works.” Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

Lettre de saint Jacques 2,14-18.
Mes frères, si quelqu’un prétend avoir la foi, alors qu’il n’agit pas, à quoi cela sert-il ? Cet homme-là peut-il être sauvé par sa foi ?
Supposons que l’un de nos frères ou l’une de nos soeurs n’aient pas de quoi s’habiller, ni de quoi manger tous les jours ;
si l’un de vous leur dit : « Rentrez tranquillement chez vous ! Mettez-vous au chaud, et mangez à votre faim ! » et si vous ne leur donnez pas ce que réclame leur corps, à quoi cela sert-il ?
Ainsi donc, celui qui n’agit pas, sa foi est bel et bien morte,
et on peut lui dire : « Tu prétends avoir la foi, moi je la mets en pratique. Montre-moi donc ta foi qui n’agit pas ; moi, c’est par mes actes que je te montrerai ma foi.

pp20-21
[…] we are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take colective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations.
p22
Now that there is competition to traditional institutional forms for getting things done, those institutions will continue to exist, but their purchase on modern life will weaken as novel alternatives for group action arise.
p47
[…] prior to the current era, the alternative to institutional action was usually no action. Social tools provide a third alternative: action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive.
For the last hundred years the big oranizatinal question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses commpeting in a market. This debate was based on the universal and unspoken supposition that people couldn’t simply self assemble; the choice between markets and managed effort assumed that there was no third alternative. Now there is. Our electronic networks are enabling novel forms of collective action, enabling the creation of collaborative groups that are larger and more distributed than at any other time in history. The scope of work that can be done by noninstitutional groups is a profound challenge to the status quo.
The collapse of transaction costs makes it easier for people to get together - so much easier, in fact that it is changing the world.
pp133-134
There’s an increasing amount of evidence, in fact, that specific parts of our brain are given over to making economically irrational but socially useful calculations. […]relying on nonfinancial motivations may actually make systems more tolerant of variable participation.

Page numbers are from paperback edition - Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition (February 24, 2009)

“Because of our enormous per capita consumption of resources, we can say that THE WORLD’S WORST POPULATION GROWTH PROBLEM IS HERE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” says Professor Al Bartlett

No More Land To Conquer

No More People To Enslave

No More Nature To Pollute

What Now ?

Dès 1969 avec sa série sur « Les derniers rois de Thulé », Jean Malaurie analyse avec un humanisme rare et inspiré, et une extraordinaire lucidité, une problématique aujourd’hui malheureusement mondialisée : l’absence totale de respect de la part des civilisations dominantes à l’égard des minorités, et le défi que cela représente pour les élites de ces minorités, forcées de s’adapter en quelques années.

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