Article originally published in Seafood Seafood Ecosystem

Through generations of mismanagement and lack of understanding, our oceans have suffered greatly. Some refer to this as The Tragedy of the Commons. Healing the harm done to the oceans and encouraging good stewardship of this resource as a “Commons” is the goal of the Seafood Ecosystem. The oceans can be healed from this crisis. By combining input and governance from the seafood industry with modern industry-based consensus and open-source software best practices for innovation, the Seafood Ecosystem will create a dynamic and evolving foundation extending our vision to ocean regeneration and market growth.

"It's not dark yet but it's getting there." —Bob Dylan, Time Out of Mind  

As we move into the next decade, alarm bells have sounded too late to solve the oncoming climate catastrophes we are about to face. At the same time, we are in the most transformative era in history, as the old systems collapse, we can still look to the human spirit and ingenuity to attempt to steer us away from the most tragic outcomes.

The 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services one of the most sweeping (and startling) on the state of the planet's natural systems, based on thousands of scientific studies and authored by hundreds of international experts offers a very bleak assessment for our future.

The assessment estimates that current extinction rates could be up to hundreds of times higher than at any other point in the past 10 million years. At sea, a third of marine mammals, reef-forming corals, sharks, and shark relatives are on the brink. Life on land isn't faring any better. Humans have significantly altered three-quarters of the earth's land area, leaving more than half a million species without enough habitat to survive. Around 40 percent of amphibians are in jeopardy, and some of our most charismatic species—giraffes, grizzly bears, and right whales—are in dire need of our help. Others, such as the Caribbean monk seal, Spix macaw, and northern white rhino are either already gone or clinging to existence in captivity.

Ecosystems are complex, adaptive systems comprised of multi-dimensional information sources that grow, evolve, and co-evolve. Ecosystems are also paradoxical in that all of their complexity can be boiled down to simple rules that drive them. Observing the nature of ecosystems, we are creating new approaches to solving large, complex challenges by tackling their underlying components. The Seafood Ecosystem, specifically, looks to solve the challenge of our planet's deteriorating oceans and the ever-present concern of food safety.

The History

The origins of what has now become the Seafood Ecosystem started slightly over 10 years ago. I had recently left a job as Solutions Director at TBWA\Chiat\Day, Apple Computer's advertising agency where we were tasked with developing the company's enterprise infrastructure without using the standard Microsoft solutions. This was challenging at the time and we increasingly became aware of the high value of open-source software. I then met Harvey Newman, an Interfaith Minister at a United Nations event and together we began to advocate for the high value and potential of open-source software and culture.

We then met two amazing individuals Pete Seeger and Andrew Harvey. First, we met author Andrew Harvey at a United Nations meeting where he introduced his approach to Sacred Activism, Andrew's inspired approach led Harvey and me to form the Transformative Communities website as a consultancy focused on technology and social development in a living universe.

At the same time, we became involved with the NYC Friends of Clearwater. For those unfamiliar with the effort, Pete Seeger, folk music legend and environmental activist, in despair over the pollution of his beloved Hudson River, built the Sloop Clearwater in 1969 "a boat to save the river." One magical night we traveled to Beacon, NY to participate with the Beacon Sloop Club having a barbecue with Pete and Toshi Seeger where we collaborated on the WaterPathways.org website, A Transformative Water Activism Community.

Original handwritten markup by Pete Seeger to the WaterPathways website focusing on the people.

 

The world is further off course than ever from meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement and averting climate catastrophe as the divide between countries' pledges and actions continues to grow.

But all is not lost. In 2016, Julia Barnes a 16 years old learning for the first time that the world's coral reefs, rainforests, and fisheries are expected to disappear within her lifetime bought a couple of cameras, learned to dive, and set out on a mission to expose the biggest threats facing the ocean. She released the award-winning Sea of Life documentary in 2017. This reflects the notion Pete Seeger expressed nearly 10 years ago that "folks" are the ones who can make a difference. If we can strive to support individual efforts like Julia Barnes, it would add up to a huge collective effort that can truly make a difference.

Progress needs to be made in this area because our oceans sustain all life on Earth. Mankind is only starting to understand what has been done by generations of unchecked human activity. While ocean acidification, temperature rise, and deoxygenation might only be the beginning of what we face, we are confident that new and innovative technologies can combat these ecological threats. Humans will continue to do what they do, but we need to them smarter. This can only be done when they have the right tools available to them. We are leading the charge for the creation and adoption of the necessary technology and software to bring the oceans out of crisis and into a phase of regeneration.

This year the Seafood Ecosystem will be rolling out our core technology platform, an open-source traceability network, and we will continue collaborating with the seafood industry providing standardization and innovation. 

For several weeks, I have been receiving calls from friends and colleagues regarding their reactions to the Netflix documentary, “Seaspiracy”. I am being called as they know that I spent from 2004-2018 in founding, promoting, and seeking market changes that would drive for greater sustainability in the seafood sector with my co-founding the company, CleanFish, fish you can trust®.

I had been asked by a dear friend to consult for a sizeable national seafood importer and distributor that was considering making a change in its market approach. The owner of the company assembled his senior team to meet with me in January 2004. The owner’s orientation to any sustainable practices was, essentially, no existent. He had heard there was a newly emerging ‘green’ trend in some food markets that was gaining a premium. There was interest in the color green if it brought the premium, not in the practices which would require him to make changes.

My look into the seafood sector through Q1 of 2004 proved to me how utterly disastrous the seafood sector was in its toll on our ocean ecosystems, habitats, and species. I was well aware of the decades of science warning, and warning, and warning us of the dark horizon of Climate Change. I thought of my children and their emerging families, and I decided to drop my consulting practices and start a seafood company. The senior salesman in that commodity company heard something in my presentation that sounded to him as a spark for the kind of changes he was beginning to see as essential for the future of our seas, and he joined with me in starting the company. His name is Dale Sims, and his experience, his patience with me, and his strategic insights into the seafood sector were valuable beyond measure in the launching of CleanFish, fish you can trust®.

What I was most struck within my delving into the seafood trade was the unspeakable level of waste in the wild fisheries on a global level. We looked into some of the more profit-offering species and found that the worldwide practices just assumed that you would be willing to work in markets with Slave Ships…yep, slaves entrapped in horrific conditions. And the low consideration to human life onboard these ships was a mere suggestion of the levels of throw away life ethics toward the animals living in the ocean.

By-catch, the term for fish caught in nets and long-line trawling systems of catchment would bring on deck shocking levels of sea life that were not the target species for maximum profits to the ship’s owners. So, that level of life force taken from the sea would be separated out and thrown back.

Sports fishers know well the ethics and wisdom of enjoying wild stream fishing that will catch fish, unhook a caught fish, and release it quickly back into the river or sea. It’s called catch-and-release. You may catch and keep one or two fish to bring home. You will release others as you know well the days of open limits to wild fish are limited if you want to go fishing tomorrow; or feel your children will have this adventure available to them.

Industrial slave ships and other illegal (oh, and, yes, even legal) floating fish factory ships can capture unspeakable tons of by-catch and toss it back, dead, or soon-to-be-dead from the harm and trauma of these ships harmful gear which scoops up whole ecosystems and draws out grotesque levels of lifeforce often dragged in nets for hours to maximize volume catches, only to throwback as much as 20X or more of the fish not of the targeted high-value catch that ship will bring to port for sale. Read this again. For a single pound of wild shrimp, a commodity commercial trawling vessel may haul out of the water as much as 10-20 pounds of other fish, most of which will be discarded and left to rot in the sea. Those catching the fish may be similarly left to rot for years and years on board ships unpaid and facing a fate that may as likely find them being tossed as inconsequential life overboard in their futures.

Horrible, terrifying…what are we to do? No one approaching a fish counter looking at a filet on ice of clean-looking white fish would pay for products of such practices…Yet, how are we to truly know if we are doing just that?

We live in an age of information, of amazing levels of data, of big data connecting us with information and a scale of data flow that was unimaginable to any former society, or marketplace. Yet, we look at this white fish on the counter, and ask only, “Is this fresh?”. When was the last time you walked into a wine store and said only, “I’d like some white wine”; and took home whatever we were given? In California, the wine sector producers have learned to take themselves and their products out of the realm of jug wines sold as I bought them in college in the 1970s by the gallon. California wine vineyards looked to France, and realized that there could be more to marketing and selling wine than turning out mixed blends of whites and reds labeled “Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino” wines in gallon and half-gallon jugs. Restaurants transitioned from, “Would you like red or white wine with your meal?”; to handing you a wine list that would name the county or province of origin; name the winery and appellation of the source; name the vintage and some of the highlights your palette might prefer…all at elevated levels of premium value due to the demand for transparent information on the source, even the practices, and terroir of the soil. You came to learn and want to learn more about the region that could produce such different pairings with your food. The entire wine regions of California, and now of Oregon and Washington, and New York and Virginia, have enhanced their lives and lifestyles and…

Knowledge is power. Knowledge of so much of our food systems, most certainly of our seafood systems remains far too shrouded. I found the majority of shopping market seafood counters had staff who knew next to nothing about what they were selling. I have asked waitstaff in restaurants where the fish on their menu was from? Was it farmed? Where was the farm located? What were the practices of the boat, even what gear used for that wild fish on the menu? After sending the waitstaff server back to the kitchen twice, as “the Atlantic” is not doing the job I am asking the chef to take on. My children look embarrassed, the server looks at me and may even say, “come on, give me a break”. We are not very accustomed to getting basic information about our food. The food systems have set up expectations such that you are a pain in the butt for wanting to know much of anything…Yet, what has our seafood sector, or our general food systems done to prove themselves trustworthy?

Want to make a change in all this? Ours is a Consumer Economy. Start by asking questions, educating yourself, and empowering yourself to buck this enormous and mostly imperious industrial food giant system so willing to dwarf our intentions to eat food that is good for us, and for our planet. In a Consumer Economy, we have the power. Yet, we can only exercise that power by asking questions. Good companies will know or will get that information for you once they realize you are serious. Good companies also know that you will tell others not to return to that counter, or café, or eatery, if they will not, after a few well-meaning exchanges, answer our questions.

Seaspiracy does not shock anyone in the seafood industry, I assure you. Those companies seeking to move away from such planet burdening practices are hurt even more by this lack of information flow to their customers and consumers. Our focus on learning more about our food, including most certainly seafood, will drive the changes we want. Knowledge is power. There are better players out there willingly rethinking how to adapt to all of this. You have come to learn so much more about the wines you prefer, right? It is we who actually do vote with our forks for the world we want, every day.

Only if we use our power will we see the world change toward how we want it to be. So, be smart about how you are exercising your vote. And, then, do it. You get to make this vote count multiple times each day. We vote with our forks, our chopsticks, our fingers. Do it. Vote.

Materialism conveys a value-system and a world view that puts material values and the means to attain them above every other concern: the limitation of our planetary resources, the countless constituents, our dependencies on the fabric of our world, our ecosphere, and the vital importance of moral values and spiritual skills for the integrity and operability of society.

Materialism is the globally dominating culture that permeates and dominates every other culture, conviction, and people, no matter what geographic, ethnic or historic origin they have.

Materialism is the main force driving human beings to consume and destroy the physical world, our basis for existence and development, and the main motivator for ongoing disunity and fragmentation among the peoples of the world. Its practice renders humankind increasingly weak and unable to survive and thrive as a species.

“Materialism drives us to consume and destroy our world,
while rendering humanity increasingly fragmented and weak”

The value and attraction of material resources is directly derived from their intrinsic feature to be limited. To attain something limited leads inevitably to the necessity to compete against others who desire the same limited resources. This has profound consequences to society.

Due to this limitation of material resources, throughout human history individuals and societies have primarily been concerned with their physical survival - which first depends on their ability to attain and command material resources and services, as well as the possession and consumption of material resources and services themselves - in short material values.

Since this condition has dominated human societies for ages, material values have been at the top of their value systems. On the other hand – for the last centuries, most societies have managed to satisfy their material needs on a continuous basis but with no corresponding transcendence beyond material values.

The opposite has happened - the for every individual justified objective "secure your material means" has become "maximize your material wealth", and as such the possession and consumption of material values has not only remained the dominating value, but has become an end in itself.

Systemic Assessment: dynamics and trajectories promoted by materialism

As any human culture is a body of values, rules, and behaviors and dictates how society interacts amongst itself and within its societal and natural environment. To understand its impact on our world, we need to make a systemic assessment of its features what promotes or inhibits materialism.

“Our world is a fabric of dependencies – our world is one”

What is that societal and natural environment? Our familiar approach is to distinguish – that is to differentiatecomponents in terms of gestalt: we refer to the earth, to elements and raw materials, to continents and oceans, to animals and plants - and to human beings building all kinds of groups, societies, and nations around the world.

But when we look beyond gestalt, we see that all these countless components are connected through dependencies and relationships, immediately and mediately, together constituting an overall system of interrelated parts, our one world.

This one world not only is a fully integrated structure, it is also ruled by dynamics, some merging order and stability, others causing disorder and disintegration.

Since our world is inhabited with life forms constituting a biosphere, these dynamics are not solely incidental, subject to the elements and to elementary forces. The biosphere overall is a system capable of maintaining itself in an everchanging environment. Life forms process energy and material compounds in order to maintain the individual self where possible, and to adapt, when necessary to maintain the collective kind.

Paramount is a biosphere’s ability to establish with part of its planetary environment the ecosphere, a system in which the flow of energies and materials is organized. This is a network of circular pathways – such that life can be supported. This life support system is indispensable for its constituents.

No one life form dominates this life support system: every life form at the same time benefits and serves as part of the continuous cycle, thus contributing to its stability. Any life form developing towards dominance brings imbalance, destroys its support system, and perishes. The more diverse the constituents of life are, the more nurturing relationships exist, the more stable is the overall system, the higher its resilience and buffer capacity against adverse events and processes.

“Materialistic culture ignores the need for integrity and oneness”

Such is the natural and societal environment – the systemic context – in which hour materialistic culture has been cultivated – and amplified within the last 200 years of industrialization. When observing our world, we can identify the following features, dynamics, and tendencies inherent with materialistic culture:

Materialism is characterized by its main feature – the master-rule “maximize your material wealth”. In humans, this rule dominates all other rules, defying limitation or moderation.

This leads immediately to the second main feature, the means to maximize one’s material wealth – that is anything that helps attain and wield power. The spectrum of means to attain power is very wide and diverse – beginning with an individual’s titles, status and position to an organization’s ability to emerge as a monopoly or to a nation’s armed forces.

More subtly, power in service of predatory competition underscores every narrative that justifies to discriminate, exclude, and suppress people and groups of people - prominently visible with the treatment of women and people of color.

“Materialistic culture promotes racism”

Wealth and power come together in a mutually amplifying loop, the primary loop of materialism: the more wealth, the more power can be attained – the more power, the more wealth can be accumulated.

This self-enforcing feedback loop is operating in a context of limited resources, and consequently leads to predatory competition, however subtly or visibly evolving. Its result is a widening gap between a disenfranchised majority and a privileged minority.

“Materialism promotes aggregation and inequality – without limit”

A culture of materialism shapes the objectives, values, and behaviors of society: the maximization of material wealth, as well as in aggregating and wielding power, is condoned and outward success is applauded and rewarded. Failure is pitied and perceived with suspicion. The attributes of a successful life, respectively a failed life, are defined and promoted accordingly.

Since it is human nature to want to be a respected part of society, the majority of us engage in that game. When someone does not apply the rules, whether he is unable or refuses to do so, he or she is not at the center of societal respect but at the fringes of society.

And the ugly loop continues. Attributes like dominance and assertiveness are valued; attributes like being self-centered and ruthlessness are deemed essential. Virtues like empathy and compassion are identified as weaknesses and any relevant body of moral values are considered detrimental in any situation calling for competition. Moral values are relegated to interpersonal settings such as family and domestic partnerships.

The complaints are endless – and a desire for impactful positive change is what the majority of society is crying for, like air for lungs or light for our eyes.

This needs changing: this materialistic culture of reductionist and short-term thinking. We must see beyond our consumercentric world which sees utility and joy in a product but care little where it comes from and where it goes after its use.

As producers we care about revenue, costs and profit but not the negative impact our business activities have on this world. Wehave the greatest difficulty in seeing the side effects and ignored long-term costs to society and environment. As our world numbers countless and delicate interrelated components, this blindness to dependencies, consequences, and long-term dynamics is already altering and destabilizing our planet.

Lacking perception and consideration are the basis for lacking emotional engagement: we cannot feel empathy and compassion for something we neither see nor understand. Without that, we do not care – and act accordingly: operating with incomplete perception, consideration to imperil our future.

Here we have another prominent self-amplifying loop, the secondary loop of materialism: damage and deterioration motivate response with aggression, desperation, enmity, and retaliation – leading to an escalating cycle with progressive discrimination, fragmentation, and disintegration of society, as well as destruction of the physical and ecological environment. The secondary loop of materialism is progressing destruction and disintegration.

“Materialism promotes destruction and disintegration – without limit”

When we consider how human culture in general operates, how in a circular relationship culture emerges from society, and at the same time culture shapes society, and when we observe how materialist culture specifically operates as outlined in this article, we can only conclude that materialistic culture puts us in grave danger.

“We need to prioritize humankind and our common good
over the maximization of individuals’ material wealth”

Conclusion

Besides the certainty that our ecosphere may already be on an irreversible path to disaster – our ability to rethink our actions and our assumptions to come up with needed changes will determine our fate.

For humanity to prevail, we need to promote our awareness for the role materialistic culture plays, need to develop and embrace what is beyond our material life, and establish a new culture – a culture that prioritizes humankind and life over the maximization of any one individual or group’s material wealth.

Originally published on viablemankind.org, March 1, 2021