We can’t wait anymore – we have to reach sustainability as soon as possible. That state’s Sebastian Hachmeyer in this debate article.
Many scholars and scientists of environmental and sustainability studies have proposed so many answers on the question of how to mainstream the issue of sustainability. It became the goal of development and with regard to its necessity of mainstreaming it is nothing to worry about.
Reaching the goal of sustainability requires a transitional phase that is mostly unsustainable. But due to smaller steps we can reach the very end of the success story of sustainability. Whether you define it as goal or as transition from an unsustainable present to a sustainable future, at the end it turns out that it is a purely religious and modernistic point of view. It shows how close modernity and its approaches are to religiosity and eschatology.
Towards a goal and an endpoint we have to struggle upon a path of barriers and difficulties. But once reached the end, there might be a perfect state of what we belief in: heaven, nirwana, classless society or sustainability. We see similarities with what we call religiosity. According to Zygmunt Bauman the modern type of travelling is the pilgrimage. And if we think about it in terms of reaching a perfect state at the end of a success story of our beliefs (eschatology), than it is quite obvious to do so.
The success story is apparently a story of suffer, threats, uncertainty, unsustainability and terror, but at the end we sail in very quite and kind waters. The Christianity searched for the messiahs to lead unknown followers to the truth of living. In the sake of modernity there is a group of people replacing that image: scientists. They are providing the knowledge orthonormal people do not seem to have.
Sustainability is a question of unknowing the truth. In accumulating more specified knowledge about nature, society and its relations we hope to find an answer. And it turned out that we have nowadays even more messiahs as before locking for it in different divided disciplines and categories with different insights and truths. Giving the honour of mobilizing people itself is not the problem, as far as we give this special honour in the hand of everyone. But what is the problem within this analogy?
Sustainability as goal and transition is purely modernistic. But what defines modernistic values? They are only proposals we have to run after. If you ask me if we reached modernity in the sense of achieving what was proposed before, I definitely would disagree. It is not a phase of time. It is the very cultural concept of proposal and achieving. So how to achieve the proposal of sustainability? Within the field of theories of transition towards a more sustainable world you can identify mainly two basic levels, where to start; individual or societal, personal or institutional.
This is the very basic question. We change the people that change the institutions, or we change the institutions that change the people. Both implies apparently a moment of authoritarian regime. You trespass the head and thinking pattern, the sovereignty and autonomy. It does not really matter weather you achieve it with violation or harmony. The transition implies another fact we should think about.
It is the fact of starting at a point unliked and changing towards a point liked. There is no way of abolishing the guidelines of the old system while creating new ones within it. So what brings people to move. How can you mobilize people? Can you reach it with force, ethics or violation? I try to find another analogy to express my thoughts in a different manner: If I organize a birthday party and I force you to come and celebrate with me, or set up an ethic that celebrating parties is right and friendly towards a better living together, would you do that? I think your answer would be no, although you might think that is ethically correct.
Of course you would not come because you know that I also would have organized a party with bad popular music. I do not know exactly how to organize a good party, but I try it with the knowledge I might have. But what I definitely do not know is how to mobilize people. So how to do that? If you want people to come to your party, you have to invite them. The same with sustainability.
Sustainability should mobilize people through inviting them to think divergently and critically. But it also has to invite people to be in action. Sustainability should provide the climate of possibilities to join. If we see people doing stuff in a different manner, more people are eager for changing. And this culture of creating space and possibilities should be implemented in public education.
Sustainability is an invitation to think and act differently in ways nobody has thought before. In changing guidelines and creating a platform for creating new ones, new blueprints for a more equal society. We have to find another communication apart of catastrophes and terrors provided by the mass media and supported by environmentalists, because people emotionally close up. The Marcusian big refusal should be considered in a positive way, rather than a negative: Send people invitations to refuse old guidelines and the culture of eschatology.
We have to reach sustainability now! Everyone should be our new messiah towards refusing old guidelines and patterns of thinking through creating divers space and a platform for other possibilities. Send invitations, because this is how to mobilize people! But always question yourself if being equal simultaneously means being sustainable.
Sebastian Hachmeyer
International student of Human Ecology at Lund University and an active member of Hållbart Universitet.
