image by Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha

We’ve talked a lot about Bright Green thinking on The Sunny Way, but I don’t know if we’ve ever really defined what it is. Here’s how Worldchanging founder Alex Steffan explains it:

“In its simplest form, bright green environmentalism is a belief that sustainable innovation is the best path to lasting prosperity, and that any vision of sustainability which does not offer prosperity and well-being will not succeed. In short, it’s the belief that for the future to be green, it must also be bright. Bright green environmentalism is a call to use innovation, design, urban revitalization and entrepreneurial zeal to transform the systems that support our lives.”

As I’ve followed and participated in the Bright Green movement, I’ve noticed that it’s very focused on material changes—designing better, building better, living better. Worldchanging and other Bright Green resources do a great job describing what a Bright Green society might look like, but I wonder, what does it mean for a person—with thoughts and emotions and decisions to make—to be Bright Green? How does a Bright Green person see and operate in the world?

Bright Green suggests a people-positive worldview, one in which we see ourselves as flowerings of nature rather than a scourge upon it, with every right to be here. No “Mankind is a virus” stuff allowed.

It also suggests a subtle understanding of our place in nature.  It’s true that we are incredibly powerful; we have altered the Earth more than we could have ever thought possible. But we must also recognize our limits; we can’t just make a new planet out of nothing. As an intelligent race who is already playing with big forces, we are responsible for learning how to work with those forces in a helpful way, but we can’t assume we have the ability to alter the forces of nature themselves. As Stewart Brand put it, “We are as gods, and may as well get good at it.”

This is a big change—most of us think of ourselves as a tiny and insignificant drop in the bucket, or as a doomed and inherently flawed race that will never get its act together. Still others see humanity as God’s chosen ones, and the Earth as our dominion. In some ways, they are right! But we have to be humble and recognize our limitations as we grow into our power. Right now, we’re like a gangly kid going through a growth spurt, flailing around ungracefully. We still have some growing up to do to fulfill Brand’s statement.

So what exactly do we need to develop? Everything: Humility. Integrity. Intellectual rigor. The ability to listen. Flow state. Honesty when dealing with others and when looking at ourselves. Clear thinking. Ego-free communication. Transcendence of gender conditioning. Physical and emotional strength. Skills for living with fewer fossil fuels. Willingness to experiment and fail and succeed. The ability to not take everything personally. Understanding our continuity with each other, the Earth, and the entire universe. Caring more about the big picture than we do the thoughts and desires of our local little selves.

All of this development is necessary, because we need to be strong and smart and clear-headed and responsible to complete our task—creating both a new worldview and a new world. And of course, we’re not in training: we both prepare and act as we go. The path and the goal are the same.

Of course, changing the way we look at the world and pushing ourselves to grow are a lot more difficult than writing a check to the Sierra Club or stepping up our efforts to recycle. But the Bright Green future we want means an enormous shift of material reality, and in order to make it happen, we have to make a correspondingly enormous shift inside, to get our minds and hearts around the Bright Green worldview.  If we want a clean, just, intelligent future, then we need to become clean, just, intelligent people. We must become Bright Green from the inside out.