MINDING YOUR OWN BUSINESS

	Introduction
Risk & Investment	Wealth & Power	People & Communities
Sustainability & Relationships	Industrial Estates or Work Parks	Uniformity or Diversity

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5. SUSTAINABILITY & RELATIONSHIPS

Any audit would be multi-dimensional and reflect real change in a way that figures such as Gross Domestic Product never can. The "material base" would be seen as the community's ecosystem and the emphasis would be on living within and sustaining it, rather than seeing it solely as providing the potential to increase wealth. It would also include the skills available to the community and there would be a premium on using those skills to the benefit of both individual and community. Paradoxically, for most people, that would mean avoiding the extreme specialisation that is so typical of "work" in the money economy, developing instead a broad mix of talents that would lead the individual towards a greater realisation and acceptance of themselves as complex, multi-faceted organisms.

The third major switch in emphasis would be away from roles - the doing of a more or less proscribed task in a more or less proscribed manner - to relationships in which outcomes will have to be negotiated between one or more parties. It is an altogether messier, less absolute approach to life, inherently less arrogant than the life threatening certainties of the institutional world.

Assumptions would be tested and a greater flexibility in responding to the ups and downs of life would develop. More time would be spent discussing and resolving differences both between individuals and groups. Differences of opinion would be valued and minority views listened to because they would help clarify thinking and contribute to a creative and constructive decision-making process to which everyone could ultimately subscribe.

As a result, the skills of "listening" and of helping people to see themselves and others would be at a premium and the level of "maturity" within the community as a whole would rise; a community that is more sustainable both in the short and longer terms because it would be capable of adapting in life enhancing, rather than the life threatening, ways.

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