Hello and welcome to my first post. By way of introduction, my name is Gareth Hewer. I'm a 24 year old professional working in the field of legal publishing. My background, however, lies in history, and particularly the history of philosophy. It is through my work in this field, as well as my ever growing preoccupation with politics and economics, that I have become interested and engaged in matters of sustainability, and I have set up this blog with the purpose of communicating my views and observations on matters directly, or indirectly, related to this concept. It is also a chance for me to play around with some ideas I hope to employ in the future as I plan to undertake a PhD and a subsequent career looking at the role of sustainability in public policy.
The best place to start would be with my definition of sustainability. I will paint this is in deliberately broad brush strokes both because I do not wish this definition to be rigid, and also because I wish to emphasise that I intend to use this space as somewhere to comment on a very wide array of matters. This blog is as much about educating myself as it is a means of sharing my ideas. I also truly believe that sustainability can form the necessary foundation of an ethical philosophy that can be applied to the individual, as well as to society.
We can begin by saying that sustainability is an abstract universal concept centred on the idea of not adversely or unnaturally affecting by human agency an equilibrium upheld through either superficial (i.e. man-made) or pre-existing laws (the laws of nature). This therefore includes sustainability as it is popularly known: the need to address any environmental impact by offsetting it with a corresponding and equal environmental good, or that an action should be environmentally neutral or beneficial. It is also an ethical principle involving a conscious acceptance of the vital importance of curtailing and combating mankind's ongoing destruction of natural resources for the purpose of short term economic gain. I will take this principle and concept to be one of the fundamental assumptions of all subsequent ideas communicated through this blog, and it will be my ability to adhere to this that ultimately defines its success. Furthermore, the concept can be applied more widely to the ethics of human interaction, and can help to regulate our behaviour towards one another. For this reason, the principle of sustainability can also be applied to matters like political decision-making, as well as economic systems, and impinges on questions of both personal and public liberty.
Naturally, this leaves us with a rather extensive subject matter and gifts me a lot of leeway in what I choose to address. But, to give you some idea, I intend to write widely on logical philosophy and its relationship to ethics and metaphysics, as well as other academic disciplines, the history of the concept of sustainability and its exponents in history, sustainable politics, sustainable technologies, the role of rhetoric in debate, food sustainability, and sustainable economics. These are just a few matters that are currently keeping me occupied, but I will not be strict in keeping to these fields.
Of course, a great part of my purpose here is to encourage meaningful debate, and, whilst I hope to shed light on certain issues, I am not an expert in all the matters I will be covering, nor am I a scientist, economist or political commentator, so I welcome any guidance, suggestion, and criticism provided it is in the right spirit.
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