I’m often inspired by people in my life. Sundiata Soon-Jahta is one of the people who inspires me. He’s the founder of Grow Dialogue. He’s in the business of helping people build sustainable relationships. He’s a thinker and this post contains many of his original thoughts. He planted many of the seeds that led to this blog and I’ve used his ideas as a springboard for my own. I want to make sure I give him credit.
In my first post, where I told you what I plan to do here, I mentioned the types of relationships I will discuss.
personal relationships without romance or sex
personal relationships involving romance and/or sex
relationships with peers & professionals
relationships with the environment
That is one way of classifying relationships. There are other useful ways to classify and discuss relationships. For example, from a sustainability standpoint, we are all connected and therefore, every human on the planet is in a relationship with every other human as well as with the environment. These are examples of macro relationships. Did you know that southeastern parts of Canada have major problems with acid rain caused mostly by pollution that was produced in the United States? This is a poignant example of a macro relationship that is not at all sustainable.
Micro & Macro Relationships
Micro relationships are the connections we experience directly firsthand. These are our personal and professional relationships that we experience in our day-to-day lives. Our friendships, romances, and associations all fall under the category of micro relationships.
Macro relationships are connections that we may not experience directly, but we feel their effects in various ways. Sustainable macro relationships cannot exist without sustainable micro relationships because each micro relationship is a component and building block that supports and impacts the collective macro relationships.
Hopefully this analogy can provide a little more clarity: Your body is made of cells. Those cells communicate with each other, exchange materials with one another, and affect each other directly, especially the cells that are in close proximity. These are like our micro relationships. But cell activities in one part of your body most certainly affect cells in other parts of the body. What happens in your pancreas can and will affect what happens in your kidneys; what happens in your heart greatly influences what happens in your lungs. The relationships between the individual cells (micro) impact the relationships between communities or systems of cells (macro).
Now look at the graphic below.
“Cell” represents each person
“Tissue” represents the relationships you engage in with high-frequency, in close proximity (micro relationships)
“Organ” can represent your neighborhood or a specific community
“Organ system” can represent your city, state, region, or country
“Organism” represents collective humanity and Earth itself
In this way, we can see there are levels to macro relationships. The “larger” the macro relationship, the more relationships reside within it and therefore affect it. You can see the complexity involved.
Let’s continue with the above example for more clarity. When relationships between cells become unsustainable, such as in the case of cancer cells replicating uncontrollably, the local tissues are damaged, which in turn damages the organ. This leads to malfunction of the organ system and can harm the organism as a whole. Problems within the body can always be traced to cell dysfunction. I hope this helps you see how our larger, planet-wide sustainability problems are often caused by unsustainable micro relationships between individuals.
Harmonious micro relationships can and do lead to sustainable macro relationships.
Classifying Macro Relationships
Most of time, I will focus my writing on building sustainable micro relationships. Sustainable macro relationships are extremely important, but they are also giant and complex. Using the analogy I used in the last paragraph, it feels like our ecosystem is currently in the beginning stages of organ system failure. What is the root cause of this failure? I happen to think the cause of our macro relationship problems is the way we interact in our micro relationships. Connections that represent micro relationships include:
Familial — family
Platonic — friends
Romantic & Sexual — lovers
Professional — colleagues, coworkers, peers
There are other important relationships that may not fit exactly into the above categories. One example is neighbor relationships. You’re in very close proximity to your neighbors, but you may not consider your connection with them to be platonic, romantic, or professional. And although the distance between you and your neighbor might be small, this doesn’t mean that the frequency with which you interact is high. I would probably put neighbors in the Professional or Platonic category depending on the frequency and closeness of the relationship. The categories above can and do cross over; one relationship can fit into multiple categories.
What about micro relationships with the environment? Those also exist and are important components of the larger macro relationship that will be discussed in future posts. But a key difference is that our relationship with the environment is one-sided, unlike our relationships with each other. The planet gives to us and we take. Anything we “give back” to the earth is in service of ourselves. Earth was here for over a billion years with no life and it still existed. Nothing we do to the environment will “hurt” it. When our relationship with the planet is unsustainable, we are the only ones to suffer. The beautiful, dynamic orb that is our environment does not need us. It’s going through its own evolution and we are just part of its journey. It was here long before us and will be here long after us.
Micro relationships with Earth are still important because the more each of us builds sustainable micro relationships with the planet’s resources, the more collective strides we take toward environmental sustainability and the survival of our children and all our descendants. In this way, I like to think that my micro relationship with Earth belongs in the Familial category.
It’s logical to infer that if humanity’s micro relationships with Earth and with each other are not sustainable, and micro relationships are the building blocks of macro relationships, then the path toward global sustainability is to work toward making all of our micro relationships more sustainable. That is my position.
The best way to serve our environment is to build more sustainable relationships with each other.
What do you think about the classifications of relationships I have offered here? Do these categories resonate with you? I encourage you to reflect on the relationships in your life while we work together toward making all of them more sustainable.