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Although it has been reported that over 300 definitions of ‘sustainability’ exist, the capacity to continue into the long-term is a more-than-adequate way of describing what the word means. Naturally, some people may not agree with this simplified definition because every discipline that has a stake in sustainability sees it from its own perspective and assumes that its approach is the best. Environmentalists tend to look at sustainability from a carbon emissions or a ‘green’ angle, others like to place it under the heading of ‘corporate social responsibility’, and so on. Ironically, the end result desired by most groups is virtually identical and involves long-term continuance in one form or another, but I’m getting ahead of myself. This is a business book, which means that understanding sustainability from a business standpoint requires developing an awareness of what the words ‘long-term’ encompass before analytic thought does its (necessary) reductive work. Rather than building up from particulars to generals (the empiricist method), one must begin with generals — an intuitive wisdom of the logic behind thinking in the long-term, what it entails, and why it’s important. It’s difficult to gain an understanding of sustainability by focusing on one area (see the diagram below). The problem with this approach is that once a few facts become clear it’s tempting to believe that they possess an independence all their own and to rest in them and believe that they are the foundation of what is being sought (theologians call this ‘idolatry’). Dividing the world into parts is something we all do to ease understanding, but in doing so something is always devalued and what is diminished is often an awareness of and contact with that which can only function as a whole.
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