Week 16: Culture and Sustainability- Utopia as the key to sustainable prosperity. A legitimate solution or a mere hope?

Source: Worldbuilding Stack Exchange. (2019). Is a Utopia worth it?. [online] Available at: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/124917/is-a-utopia-worth-it [Accessed 8 Mar. 2019].

Utopia as the key to sustainable prosperity. A legitimate solution or a mere hope?

This blog post shall provide insight to the topic of culture and sustainability which was covered in class during week 6. Below I discuss the connection which culture has with sustainability by exploring the validity of Levitas’ argument on Utopias. Levitas (1999) claims that envisioning our future society in the form of a Utopia allows individuals to take a step towards achieving sustainable prosperity through imagining what could be. I oppose this by exploring Jackson and Smith’s article which highlights the need to adapt consumptive practices in order to achieve a sustainable lifestyle, a theory which spans beyond just that of imagining a utopia. I conclude by stating that Utopia’s may be a useful tool to help humanity take a first step towards sustainability but it is most definitely not enough by itself. But first, one must expand on Levitas’ view to better understand the scope of the argument.

In ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish: a utopian ethic for a transformed future’ Ruth Levitas (1999) introduces the concept of Utopias as a means through which contemporary society can take a step closer to achieving sustainable prosperity. More specifically she characterises it as a ‘process’ (Levitas, 1999) that allows individuals to attain a metaphorical distance which supports their ability to abstract oneself from the present, the issues in contemporary society, and image an ideal world without them. To support this, she draws on Andre Gorz’s definition of utopias as concepts that ‘provide us with the distance from the existing state of affairs which allows us to judge what we are doing in the light of what we could or should do’ (1999).  To add to this view however, Levitas illustrates that utopias also ‘encourage[s] us to think differently, systemically, and concretely’ (1999). They allow us to envision an ideal world free of strictures. In Levitas’ (1999) theoretical vision, utopias are essential in being able to achieve sustainable prosperity as they unlock the potential of human imagination.

To bring forth a critical perspective, however, I must draw attention to the inherently optimistic tone of Levitas’ vision. What becomes of this essential step towards sustainable prosperity provided that an individual is content with their means of being at the present time? Or what becomes of this optimistic vision provided that an individual has given up hope by cause of the scale of environmental degradation and in result refuses to envision an ideal world? Or, even worse, what if the belief that such formulation of utopias in one’s mind is the sole responsibility of the individual and in result one fails to act upon their vision? Will this not only lead to stagnation?

As Jackson and Smith (2018) highlight- the prospect of sustainable prosperity ‘call[s] for quite radical changes not just in people’s attitudes but in their behaviours, practices and lifestyles’ (2018). Contemporary society as Jackson and Smith (2018) portray it, is one intrinsically linked with the need to consume which allows individuals who operate within our society to delineate themselves as superior, to achieve their ambitions and to differentiate themselves. Merely imagining a utopia where one is not dependent on depleting resources will not change society’s reliance on consumptive practices. Jackson and Smith (2018) propose that consumption practices and lifestyle change can only be achieved provided that governmental policies adopt an understanding of the inherent social needs that lie behind consumption practices. They propose that ‘simplistic attempts to exhort consumers to change their behaviours and lifestyles, without taking account of the complexity reviewed here, are almost certainly doomed to failure’ (Jackson and Smith, 2018).  One can apply this notion to the obtainment of sustainable prosperity, which showcases that the imagining of a utopia is evidently unsatisfactory to shift contemporary society from a wasteful consumptive one to a prosperous and sustainable one.

To conclude, therefore, the notion of utopias may prove a beneficial first step to achieving sustainable prosperity in certain scenarios but it should, however, not be taken as the sole means through which to do so.


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Bibliography

Levitas, R. (1999). WHERE THERE IS NO VISION, THE PEOPLE PERISH: A UTOPIAN ETHIC FOR A TRANSFORMED FUTURE. Bristol University.

Gorz, A. (1999) Reclaiming Work: Be- yond the Wage-Based Society, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 113.

Jackson, T. and Smith, C. (2018). Towards Sustainable Lifestyles. The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Economic Behaviour, pp.481-515.

Worldbuilding Stack Exchange. (2019). Is a Utopia worth it?. [online] Available at: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/124917/is-a-utopia-worth-it [Accessed 8 Mar. 2019].