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Have you ever wondered what makes life great? Here are my answers in a short script, which includes your invitation to join some adventures in sustainable variety, or SustaVariety.
Have you ever wondered what makes life great? (my answers in a short script)
This is a post I shared on my personal blog, but it’s perfect for here too. —David
I don’t know about you, but I can get tired of even the most beautiful and special things. I think this is probably true for most people.
I’ve lived in beautiful places like Boulder and Vail in Colorado, both of which I appreciated less over time. I’ve taken truly special photos, put them on my phone as the background, and gotten tired of them. I’ve made awesome art I loved and grew less fond of it, and seen amazing, historically important art in museums that started to bore me over time. I’ve listened to great music too much and cared for it less and less. You get the drift.
This is why I think differently when I see houses by the beach, or in the mountains, or some other amazing place. I’ve realized, yes, it would be great to live there for a while, but I would not want to live there for the rest of my life, or even for too many months or years. So I would not want to pay the high premiums people pay for houses in those places! For the same reasons, I avoid collecting expensive art, as I would get tired of it so quickly.
This line of thinking also probably implies I would get tired of being wealthy!
The thoughts in this post are yet more arguments for variety. And when you think about variety for a while, you’ll probably realize what you want is sustainable variety. At least that’s what I realized. This means finding ways of living over weeks, and months, and years, that give you variety you don’t get tired of! I don’t want kinds of variety that are like beautiful and special things that I get tired of. I want varieties of variety, and I want that to be sustainable, so I stay engaged and have the potential to keep being engaged. I think probably one of the best ways to get sustainable variety is to also pursue sustainable proximities. I think the two go together. Although that’s another topic, for now, here’s more on what I call the sustainable proximities approach at http://proxthink.com/ways/sustainable-proximities.php.
If some of this rings true, you might be a bit of a variety person. You might want to join us here on varietypeople.org.
I watched a documentary recently called “Happy.” It included a really wonderful section about cohousing in Denmark.
This cohousing seems to increase the variety in people’s lives. For example, they only have to cook dinner once or twice a month because everyone helps with the cooking. This frees up, one respondent said, about two hours every day for her.
One of the kids there also mentioned that it’s great to have more adults around. For example, if they get hurt, it doesn’t matter which adult helps, and there are more adults likely to be able to help.
They didn’t say this, but it’s likely the kids get a wider variety of parenting, growing up with a more diverse perspective. It’s also likely that if one parent can’t help them with something, another one probably can.
The main mother they interviewed said she had lived in the cohousing for 6 years, and would happily live there 6 more.
Here’s a story about a cohousing community in California that has been going for 20 years!
If you want to get to sustainability, you’ve got to make it pleasurable for people.
A sufficient amount of variety in life is pleasurable, even highly pleasurable. Luckily, variety and sustainability go hand-in-hand, in part because they share one important thing in common, and that thing is diversity.
So if we encourage variety, reward ourselves with and for variety, and build systems which support and enhance variety, then we get to sustainability. And how did we get there? By making it pleasurable.
Of course jobs, work and markets often demand that we do the same thing over and over. And of course, some people are perhaps born specialists — they just love a prolonged focus in an area or subject of expertise.
But I have a feeling that many people would like more variety than they get. Actually, it’s more than just a feeling. I’ve worked in many different industries and markets, and met many different kinds of people. It’s my impression that many of them specialized because they had to, rather than they wanted to.
Personally, I like doing several different things. I like thinking, painting, and writing, but also building, creating new projects, and working with people. I also like variety in areas like recreation, socializing, and daily activities.
I think part of the problem is the way our society is organized, so it’s the fault of no one person or group. Rather, it’s the system. And systems are things we can change. I’ve thought a lot about this, and I believe the changes needed involve more proximity thinking. But understanding proximity thinking involves taking some time to learn about the ProxThink framework I developed. Part of the framework is a sustainable proximities approach, which involves relating not only to people and group efforts (like businesses, organizations, clubs, governments, etc.), but also to proximities.
Briefly, a proximity consists of elements related or potentially related to a situation, in physical, mental and other ways. But instead of going into all that here, I’ll point you to two links, at the end of this post.
However, keep the following basic idea in mind: a greater focus on creating and maintaining viable proximities allows more variety within those proximities. This contrasts with how markets focus more effort and attention on individual elements like people and businesses. And given current systems, this makes some sense. In the absence of ways to relate to proximities, it’s not surprising people focus on themselves and their own business. However, with networks, we have the ability to monitor and relate more directly to proximities, and the sustainable proximities approach provides ways to do that. So together, networks and the sustainable proximities approach provide ways to relate to proximities. Don’t worry if this kind of thinking doesn’t come naturally at first. It can take a little getting used to. My hope is that by building some working examples of this approach, it will become more natural and obvious. This Variety People site may become one of those working examples. In cultivating variety, we relate to proximities.
For a general introduction to ProxThink, see the main site:
http://proxthink.com
Here’s an introduction to the sustainable proximities approach:
http://proxthink.com/ways/sustainable-proximities.php
We know that diversity helps sustainability. Bio-diversity. Crop diversity. Etc.
What is the definition of diversity? “Showing a great deal of variety.”
So being a variety person can help you be more sustainable. And, being a variety person can help the people and contexts around you be more sustainable.
Do you agree? Why? Examples?
Variety People 
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