Mr.Welzer, at the sustainability forum initiated by Werner Lampert in Langenlois in autumn 2016, you advocated dropping the term sustainability. Why did you do that?
Harald Welzer: Because sustainability is not a positive term. The message behind it is actually: we have to change something so that things stay the way they are. And that is unattractive - it is already the way it is. If you want to change something, you need a positive image of the future. But we don't have one. For example, we need to talk much more about the attraction of a car-free city or reduced working hours. Draw an attractive new world. And if this results in fewer cars on the roads, less consumption or fewer emissions, then something is being done for the sustainability goal, although perhaps a different primary benefit is in the foreground.
Achievingthis goal will probably require a broad-based movement. But how do you start it and what should it ideally look like?
Welzer: A movement exists when its concerns are shared by different social groups. Social movements are never a subculture. The women's movement, for example, becomes strong when men find it reasonable. The labor movement becomes strong when there are capitalists who think it is good. You can't achieve that with a term like sustainability. You fall asleep as soon as you even hear the word.
Whatdo you find so disturbing about the concept of sustainability?
Welzer: It is used for everything - sustainable economic growth, sustainable investment and so on. The term is actually dead. And it has never really lived. Something completely different resonates when I say "sustainability" compared to the word "revolution" or "sex", for example. We simply have to become funnier. A sustainability movement, whatever it is called, must not be as fun-free as it has been for the last 30 years. It's not about morality or a new monasticism. It's about looking at life from a different perspective: What is actually good about sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll? After all, having fun is not a bad thing.
In your FUTURZWEI foundation, youcollect positive counterexamples to the capitalist economic and cultural system. Are there any projects that have particularly impressed you?
Welzer: A lot. I recently read the book by the young woman who invented the "Original Unpackaged" supermarkets. These are supermarkets where the goods are no longer packaged. Milena Glimbowski is 26 years old. Reading her book was so interesting because she describes in detail how incredibly stressful and crazy it was to turn her idea into reality. Constant financial problems, the recurring fundamental question of whether it was even feasible. But she knew right from the start why she wanted to realize her project. Because, in her opinion, it is simply better to consume differently and therefore do without certain things.
How doyou assess the future of our society from today's perspective?
Welzer: (laughs) There are always two levels. If you look at the world on an abstract level, you will say: For God's sake, it's all terrible! It's getting worse and more hopeless by the day. The other side is our own personal state of mind. And compared to a seamstress in Bangladesh, we should be ashamed to say that our lives are bad.
Doesthat meanyou have hope that something can be achieved after all?
Welzer: If your life is good, you have the opportunity to do something, to change things. On a personal level, the question can only ever be answered by saying that it's more fun to change things than to leave them as they are. And in this respect, I am optimistic. In global terms, I am pessimistic. But there's a nice saying: it's too late for pessimism.
About Harald Welzer
Prof. Dr. Harald Welzer (born 1958 in Bissendorf near Hanover/Germany) is a social psychologist and sociologist. Welzer is co-founder and director of the non-profit FUTURZWEI Stiftung Zukunftsfähigkeit and co-initiator of the "Open Society". He teaches at the University of St. Gallen and the European University of Flensburg. He is the editor of futurzwei. Magazine for Future and Politics. Harald Welzer's books, including "Selbst denken: Eine Anleitung zum Widerstand" (2014) and "Die smarte Diktatur: Der Angriff auf unsere Freiheit" (2016), have been translated into 22 languages.
