5. From sustainable counter-hegemony towards sustainable hegemony

5. From sustainable counter-hegemony towards sustainable hegemony

1. There is no blueprint for a sustainable hegemony.

We have no idea what a future sustainable hegemony or sustainable society will look like.

There simply is no blueprint and trying to work one out is futile. It is bound to fail.

No one has ever written a blueprint for the current hegemony or society nor has there ever been a blueprint in the past that was penciled down in advance and then realized. No ideological, philosophical or religious blueprint for the future has survived the confrontation with reality. Not one has ever materialized.

Blueprints are like castles in the sky: it may seem like a useful tool that provides people with a direction but the end station itself will not be reached. As is often the case, "the journey" is more important than the destination. We can, at best, present some high level ideas of what a sustainable hegemony could possibly entail, but no-one knows in advance whether things will pan out this way.

2. In a sustainable hegemony, thinking sustainably happens automatically.

What is initially a conscious exercise becomes automatic after a while. The sustainable choice is no longer something we, as individuals, social organizations and institutions, have to think about but something we choose naturally. An obvious choice. The normal way of thinking. Common sense.

3. In a sustainable hegemony, we act sustainably by nature.

To act sustainably means that we realize as many activities as possible as sustainably as possible.

Work is sustainable. Travel, eating, shopping, studying, coming together, partying... are all sustainable activities.

The prefix “sustainable” has become superfluous: “acting sustainably” has simply become “acting” .

When we do things sustainably, routines and automatisms emerge which in turn influence our thinking. Sustainable thinking and acting thus reinforce each other.

4. In a sustainable hegemony, force of habit is naturally sustainable.

Thinking and acting sustainably is made easy as work and leisure will inherently be sustainable. As a society, we will simply no longer accept being unsustainable.

As we become more sustainable, everything around us becomes more sustainable as well. The easier sustainable living and working becomes, the more difficult finding unsustainable options becomes. As strange as it may sound today, in a future sustainable hegemony, we will consider many of our current unsustainable activities as absolutely absurd and alienating.

5. In a sustainable hegemony, we will still interpret sustainability differently.

Sustainability is not a straitjacket that applies to everyone in the same way and to the same extent. We will have to fit it within the reality of each individual, each social organization and each institution.

Sustainability is diverse by nature. There is no sustainability bible that can tell us how we should live and work sustainably. How we flesh out sustainability (as individuals, social organizations, and institutions) will be different tomorrow compared to today. After all, sustainability yesterday was also different from today. Sustainability will continue to evolve: even in a sustainable hegemony, it will not be static.

Diversity and plurality remain a necessity, also within a sustainable hegemony.

CHAPTER 5 | From sustainable counter-hegemony to sustainable hegemony

Within a sustainable hegemony, we think and act sustainably by nature. Doing so is evident and common sense, although we will continue to interpret sustainability in various ways.

What a sustainable hegemony or society will look like exactly, we do not know, as there is no blueprint. But what is a foregone conclusion, is that a next hegemony must be a lot more sustainable than what we have today.

Our future will be sustainable or it will not be much of a future.

Positive or negative sustainability

We can look at living and working more sustainably in a positive as well as a negative way.

• In a positive interpretation, sustainability stimulates us to set up new, sustainable initiatives together that make life more enjoyable and richer. • A negative interpretation sees sustainability primarily as something that is imposed on us from outside that hinders us.

Still, a sustainable hegemony that we as citizens help shape, contains all the elements for a positive, rich and full life together with others.

Communicating vessels

Thinking and acting often are communicating vessels but not always. Think about it: even though many of us already consider sustainability to be important, at the same time, many of our activities are still very unsustainable. So thinking and acting certainly do not always complement each other.

That’s because many other factors come into play as well: maybe the sustainable alternative is too expensive or too difficult to realize, perhaps you do not know where to begins as others around you are not yet acting in this way and you do not want to feel the outsider of the group, maybe there are other conflicting expectations or obligations or motivations that play a role as well...

By setting up new social organizations, sustainable options become more tangible, achieving concrete results is facilitated and social cohesion is forged fueled by our desire to achieve goals together.

Within such new initiatives and organizations, sustainable action becomes a lever that stimulates sustainable thinking.

Few things will influence sustainable thinking as profoundly as acting sustainably.