“In the biological sense, a business cycle is sustainable if it does not produce any waste“. Consequently, we can say:
No Waste!
The aforementioned definition of sustainability was given by Klaus Töpfer during a conference in the early summer days of 2012. At the same conference, he said a few more things that seem important to me.
Change Produces Knowledge. Knowledge Produces Change.
Perhaps this is an explanation for the high acceleration that seems to take place in our time. The “age of information” makes knowledge available for everybody at ever higher speed. Consequently, we can change our world faster than ever before. In doing so, we again generate a lot of new knowledge. And so on, and so forth…
Now the question might arise: how can we escape from this vicious circle? We might wish to minimize the change and the acceleration happening in our individual and collective lives through more knowledge?
But is that really what we want? Maybe the acceleration is what we desire, like a drug that provides us with “never ending fun”?
I think it makes sense to spend a little time thinking about this.
RMD
(Translated by EG)