Deep Sustainability Utopia

This final chapter synthesises some of the key messages of the book by addressing sustainability as utopia. Not as some kind of blueprint utopia, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, but as a compass, as a persistent mentality that synthesises past, present and future. Utopias are not about ‘what works’, but they are about radical alterity, about transcending the world as we know it and about confronting common sense. This same type of utopia, however, builds on the praxis of anticipation and regeneration that are driven by hope, while hope is also fuelled by these attitudes. Regeneration is an attitude that anticipates sustainable futures of planetary well-being and peace. The chapter also associates the efforts of anticipating the future with blueprint utopia or anti-utopia, and anticipation for emergence with open, emancipatory utopia. From the philosophy of Ernst Bloch, Emanuel Lévinas, Zygmunt Bauman and Luiz Guilherme Vergara, emancipatory utopia is also concrete, while open-ended, unlike the anti-utopian trend of realistic utopianism. The sustainable future this book envisages, however, is not a ‘good place’ but a ‘no place’; i.e. a compass, an orientation. It is, therefore, work in progress, unfinished, as indeed are concepts, the universe, ourselves and any engaging, creative dialogue.