Technology consultant, entrepreneur and thrivability theorist Jean Russell joined Jerry Michalski's August 3 Yi-Tan Conference Call for a conversation about thrivability as a conceptual replacement for sustainabilty. After that talk (which you can hear via the above link), I asked Jean to join me in a brief but enlightening Worldchanging interview.

Jon Lebkowsky: Let's start with the definition of thrivability I found at http://thrivable.wagn.org/wagn/Nurture, that it's "our path out of unsustainable practices toward a world where all people have a high quality of life, a voice, and a nurturing earth supporting them. Using whole systems approach, it demands that we evolve our way of being together, of collaborating, so that our collective wisdom and action bring forth a flourishing world and thriving life."

What's the origin of this definition, and what led you to start thinking about "thrivability" vs sustainability?

Jon Lebkowsky, of Fringeware fame, just wrote an insightful piece on Life Inc and its underlying premise.

At WorldChanging.com

There’s no doubt that corporate form really has been foundational in organizing our perception of the world, more deeply generation after generation, and it’s not surprising that global citizens of developed and developing nations organize their thinking around those patterns. When we talk about “developed” and “developing,” we’re talking about corporatization — the extent to which the corporate model has taken hold, or you might say has colonized a particular locale.

more…

Doug Rushkoff had set out, as he told me in an interview on the WELL, to write one kind of book -- "about money as a medium, and the way centralized currency and corporate capitalism were accepted as given circumstances of business, rather than inventions of particular people at a particular time."

Rushkoff, who's made a living as a writer, thinker and speaker who tries to step outside culture and see more clearly the patterns and processes at work, was ready to question fundamental assumptions about money and economies, and look for solutions to problems we all sense but barely understand -- cycles of boom and bust, polarization of economic and political thinking (which are inherently linked), and how commitment to abstract concepts can make humans less human. Also how people can unthinkingly (or other-thinkingly) accept and follow cultural notions that actually undermine sustainable futures.