No Impact Man

Colin Beavan wrote a book about his one year experiment in trying to be “No Impact Man”. The book highlights his attempts at living a more sustainable life by attempting to avoid the production of waste, avoid motorized forms of transportation, eating locally produced foods, minimize energy consumption, along with some other interesting efforts.

During the year, he came to some insights about our society that relate to my last post on sustainability and how it relates to being a servant-leader. What follows is an excerpt that points out the need for a servant leadership type philosophy in our institutions to be implemented by us.

On the street, people tell jokes. They say excuse me if they bump into each other. They help each other. Our institutions don’t reflect our human kindness. We allow our corporations to focus only on profits. We allow political institutions to focus mostly on reelection. We must insist that our institutions reflect the full truth of the humanity they are supposed to serve. We must, in our roles within those institutions act the same way we would act when we find an old person crossing the street.

As individuals – as product designers and accountants and CEOs, for example – we all make crucial decisions that affect the world. We cannot wait for the system to change. We individuals are the system.

We need to pick a new model of engaged citizenship and realize the way that we live affects everyone around us. We need to find new ways to take up and assert our responsibility. We need to take “participatory democracy” to a new level, where we don’t just vote for the leaders who will bring us the culture we want, but where we take responsibility for making the culture ourselves.

And what we get in return is the feeling of a life fully lived, in a world where we are not victims of the system but leaders of it. Where we choose instead of inherit. Where we stride purposefully instead of sleepwalk. Where we are the true masters of our destiny.

Visit the No Impact Man Blog for more on Mr. Beavan’s insights.

Sustainability in our lives and our institutions is essential to becoming the masters of our destiny.