Will architects be leaders?

So, here at this sustainable design summit, we're in a session where different groups are posing ways that we can respond to mass consumption. The suggestions aren't bad ones, but they're small steps, and I think they are generally steps that have low-cost for the people doing them - whether low financial cost, or low behavior-changing cost, or low social costs as far as how you are viewed by others.

Now, as you all know, I'm a radical thinker - but not yet a radical doer so much. I like to propose crazy, very break with the norm measures, but I haven't followed through yet with a lot of that. So maybe small goals would be better, because they'd be more achievable even if the impact was negligible. My excuse, for those curious, is that there aren't enough people to join with me in making these changes; not so much because there aren't enough people to have an effect as that I want people around me to support me and help keep me in line when I want to be lazy. Basically making up for my need for affirmation and my lack of discipline.

So maybe I have no right to make the critique I'm about to make. I don't know if I should put it out, because my hypocrisy makes it hard to take it seriously. I guess folks can ignore it if they want ... but I do still think it's true, even though I'm not following it yet.

The speaker just before this group discussion section said that we're like alcoholics when it comes to consumption. He suggested that this group was kind of like an AA meeting, where we're all admitting to what we've been doing and trying to support each other in changing it.

Now, I don't know much about AA, since I'm not an alcoholic and don't know many folks who've gone through it. But my impression has always been that you have to stop drinking, not just commit to drinking less. Same with many of these other addictive behavior groups - except in cases like eating, or sex, you're expected to stop your behavior, frequently cold turkey. With the ones where you don't stop completely (or can't, because as in the case of eating you would die), it seems like you're expected to either engage in the behavior under some very structured circumstances, or find a substitute to wean you off the behavior. But the goal with an addiction isn't to just be less addicted; it is to cease addictive behavior, and in the early stages by putting as much distance between you and the behavior as possible before. Only after a period of long abstinence and reconditioning can you really be considered strong enough to be around the behavior without reverting to your addictive patterns, and only very rarely can you engage in the behavior again, at all, ever. I'm simplifying, but I think that's a fairly accurate picture. (If I'm wrong, people who have more experience, please tell me.)

We are consumption addicts. Addicts, not just folks with bad habits. We have a problem with serious psychological underpinnings, and we have highly destructive behaviors that are extremely difficult to change. These behaviors are so addicting, so powerfully seductive, that I think we are only fooling ourselves if we say that we will break with this addiction by slowly, incrementally being less bad. We need an intervention, and probably a serious amount of counseling, in order to make a radical lifestyle change.

Too few of us recognize this and accept it as truth. Too many of us make excuses and try and be better in small, almost meaningless bits without addressing the core sickness we have. We are lying to ourselves to make ourselves feel better and to ignore the real situation we are in. We are trying to keep one foot in gross overconsumption and injustice while placing a toe in sustainability, and then wanting to say that we're leading or participating in change.

The profession of architecture is certainly doing this, at a time when we need real leaders. We need people to stand up, buck the system, refuse to accept feel-good compromise. We need folks who don't care about being soothing or political, who are willing to be hard and to pose difficult questions and get reviled and get thrown out and be unloved. If we wait until sustainability is popular and then do it when it's a good marketing tool, we are just followers who join right in the greenwashing of a broken system.

That's my first impression - and again, I know I speak as an addict with needle in hand. I'm sure someone will comment and tell me I'm full of it. I guess I'm trying to process the sense of frustrated possibility that these meetings always bring out in me, and seeing if I can find a new reaction after drilling through that. I believe that there is an opportunity for hope, not just despair.