Glimpsing Paths: Being and Acting in Times Of

Editor: Markus Nyström Assisting Editors: Rose Dumas, Mark Wilson Layout and Design: Joel Lindberg Illustrations: Hanna Andersson (p. 25, 42), Christian Williams (p. 77), Justin Makii (cover, p.102), Markus Nyström (p. 8) Editorial Committee: Markus Nyström, Rose Dumas, Mark Wilson, Tatiana Sokolova, Kristin Fol- lis, Brian Palmer, Petra Hansson Published by Cemus/CSD Uppsala Uppsala University and Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences Villavägen 16, 753 36, Uppsala, Sweden [email protected], www.csduppsala.uu.se ISBN: 978-91-980391-1-5 Contents Foreword ........................................................................................................................................5 Aspire Sources of Hope and Meaning......................................................................................................10 Ulrich Nitsch Schrödinger’s Cat .........................................................................................................................18 Henrik Karlsson Balancing a Regional Difference ...................................................................................................19 Peter Ambros Art as Activism, or The Art to Discern Subtle Differences .............................................................23 Tatiana Sokolova Motion A Thousand of Lakes, or My Miraculous, Magnificent Metamorphoses ........................................28 Tatiana Sokolova 1812, 1912, 2012 – Three Moments in the History of Industrialism ............................................30 Alf Hornborg Allyway ........................................................................................................................................41 Bob Axell Sands Of Time .............................................................................................................................42 Bob Axell Worth Green Economy: The Art of Sharing a Planet with Future ............................................................46 Carl Schlyter When a Woman Goes Forward No Men Go Backwards ...............................................................59 Felix Peniche The Challenge of Overcoming Economic Rationality ...................................................................62 Mark Wilson Tackling Uncertainty – Resilience and Social Capital ...................................................................68 Markus Larsson Doing Less to Save the World .......................................................................................................75 Christian Williams Wild When The Trees Have No Leafs ...................................................................................................82 Bob Axell Forests, Technoscience and the Future: Some Thoughts about Visions and Challenges .................85 Christer Nordlund, Erland Mårald & Ola Rosvall Have My Back ..............................................................................................................................97 Nell Ray Valuing Lives – an Essay about Eating Meat .................................................................................99 Sara Löfqvist Why It Is That Sometimes I Am Dancing ...................................................................................102 Tatiana Sokolova Usefulness The Elephant in the Room: How the Power of Change Is Surrendered .......................................108 Robert Österbergh The Coin of the University – Methods for Questioning Within Higher Education and Means to Active Student Participation .......................................................................................................113 Johan Gärdebo BusinessImprove .........................................................................................................................118 Markus Nyström The Five Key Principles of an Education for Sustainability .........................................................124 Erik Edquist The Young Sustainability Enthusiast Contemplating Sustainability of the Young Self .................131 John Hu Thanks .......................................................................................................................................135 Visual contributors .....................................................................................................................136 References ..................................................................................................................................138 Foreword here is no such thing as a value-free narrative. No writing can ever be divorced from Tvalue. Depending on one’s frame of reference, the same thing can be described in innumerous different ways. An oak tree can be a living creature with whom you have a relationship and history, a dead resource awaiting effecient use in the global economy, or an anonymous number in an ecologist’s equation. Each narrative has its own premises – unspo- ken decisions about what to include and what to exclude, what is to be regarded as impor- tant and what is not. The same is, of course, true for sustainable development. Sustainable development is alternatively framed as mainly a cultural, political, technological or even economic issue – or, as all of the above. That there are no narratives divorced from value is not the problem. But when access to forums of debate and decision making – media of different sorts, political institutions, university boards, etc. – is uneven, it becomes problematic. The power of definition tends to dictate not only what (or sometimes who) we should see as the problem, but also what solu- tions can be regarded as credible. This book grew from these insights. In the spring of 2011, the idea of creating an open forum for debate on sustainable development in the form of a book started to take form. The idea was to allow anyone to contribute on the theme of being and acting in times of (un)certainty, with the diversity of contributors being an explicit goal. The theme itself was designed to emphasize that the crises humanity is facing – climate change, economic reces- sions, revolutions, failed climate negotiations, peak oil, etc. – does not merely have effects on politics and technology, but also has emotional, psychological and cultural impacts. We wanted to open up the debate on where our societies are heading to these, in a way, more personal narratives about how it is to be alive in these times – alternatively pictured as on the verge of global collapse, and as the glorious result of human progress. Cemus being a part of Uppsala University, we knew, of course, that the book – even though it was open to anyone to contribute – would include primarily contributors from the university sector. We also knew that the majority of its readers would be academics. This insight laid the foundation for another aspect of the diversity of this book, namely the diversity of forms of expression. The book was open to any form of expression that could fit comfortably between the covers of a book – a sort of freedom that is rare in the context of university publishing. Just like interdisciplinary research can reach new kinds of understand- ing, so, we hoped, could an “interform” book lead to synergies and new perspectives. In the end, we received a lot of material to work with and we needed, therefore, a way of making the decisions about what would go in the book and what wouldn’t that reflected the ideals of diversity. An editorial committee was therefore put together, with student-, research- and Cemus representatives, which would together decide on the book’s content. The book is divided into five general sections; aspire, motion, worth, wild and usefulness. Compiling and working with the different contributions, these sections slowly took shape. Each section represents themes, forms and foci of a great variety, but with something more or less obvious holding the different chapters together. This is a book with a unique and ambitious aim. Sometimes profound and heart-warm- ing, sometimes challenging. Either way, inviting. Dive in. Markus Nyström, editor ASPIRE 8 What should we aspire to? Are there reasons do be hopeful? What does it take to make us act? Sources of Hope and Meaning Ulrich Nitsch is a retired professor in environmental communication, now living in the countryside in southern Sweden. Born in Leipzig in 1938, he lived his first six years in Nazi-Germany, a country at war. The experience taught him to be suspicious of authorities, conscious of the individual’s own responsibili- ties, and aware that societies “can go totally astray”. What he sees as the most urgent issue at hand is the prevailing inequity in the world: “no ifs and buts, our first priority should be to assure a descent life for every child born on Earth.” The kind of hope I often think about is, I believe, a state of mind, not a state of the world […] life is too precious a thing to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily, without love, and, finally, without hope. – Václav Havel, Esquire, October 1993 e have many reasons to feel uncertain about the future. And many reasons for de- Wspair. I will not dwell upon them to any depth in this text. Instead, I want to explore sources of hope and joy which are crucial for maintaining our motivation to work for a bet- ter world. I will describe sources of hope and joy stemming from my own personal experience and from thinkers who have analyzed the characteristics of modern society, and offer promising suggestions for a change towards a positive future. The Joy of Participation

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