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The Triple Bottom Line Looked Like Progress
Three circles. Equal weight. Find the balance.
It got sustainability into the conversation. But it created three problems:
- **It's static.** Nature operates in cycles, not balanced states.
- **It's flat.** Real systems are nested and hierarchical—The economy exists within society, society within the biosphere.
- **It's incomplete.** Where's the temporal dimension? Where's the cycle of creation, growth, decline, and regeneration?
Most importantly, it never answers the fundamental question—
**What are we actually trying to sustain?**
THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM
Sustainability ≠ Sustainable Development
This matters more than you might think.
**Sustainability** is about maintaining—sustaining the conditions
that allow life to continue.
**Sustainable Development** is about growth—economic development
that theoretically doesn't deplete resources.
They're fundamentally different goals.
But decades of conflation mean most organizations think they're
"doing sustainability" when they're actually optimizing for
continued growth with less environmental damage.
Less bad isn't the same as actually good.
Less harmful isn't regenerative.
The confusion in language creates confusion in strategy.
A FRAMEWORK BASED ON NATURE'S GEOMETRY
THE TACTICAL TETRAHEDRON™
The tetrahedron is the first structure in the universe.
Four faces. Six edges. Four vertices.
Perfect stability. Fractal scalability.
It's not just different geometry. It's a different question.
**THE BASE FACE: SUSTAINABILITY**
The foundation everything rests on.
Not "being sustainable" as a company goal.
But sustaining the conditions required for life on Earth.
This is the meta-goal. The non-negotiable.
Everything else—your business, products, growth—
exists on top of this base.
**THE THREE TEMPORAL FACES:**
- **Creation** - How things begin and emergE
- **Growth to Maturity** - How they develop and flourish
- **Aging to Death** - How they decline and return
Nature operates in cycles. Your framework should too.
**THE SIX ENERGETIC TRANSITIONS:**
The edges between faces aren't just lines—they're interfaces
where transformation happens.
Where energy flows.
Where intervention points exist.
**THE FRACTAL PROPERTY:**
Zoom in or out.
The same logic applies whether you're assessing a material, a product, a business unit, or
an entire industry.