WORKSHOP: Complexities of the Global and EU Challenges

(November, 2023)

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Students in the course Challenges of Globalization, together with Dr. Rene Suša, a member of the EU-GlobalAct team, explored the complexities of global and EU challenges. They investigated how our understandings of sustainable development are embedded in socially conditioned desires and expectations of continuing our way of life as we know it, and how these desires and expectations shape and limit our abilities to envision possibilities outside established patterns.

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Rising temperatures and extreme weather events observed globally suggest that humanity's efforts to halt climate change have been largely ineffective. The year 2023 is set to be the hottest on record (possibly even surpassing the 1.5°C threshold), and in the future, it may be remembered as one of the cooler years of this century. Unfortunately, climate change is not the only global challenge we currently face. Wars, on a scale and in forms we have not seen in some time, have resurfaced. Given an increasingly uncertain social and environmental future, it is perhaps unsurprising that the health of the global population, both physical and mental, is also compromised.

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In such circumstances, how can we maintain our composure and focus on issues essential for our long-term collective survival without wasting energy, time, and resources on pursuits and modes of thinking that no longer serve us? This is just one of the many questions raised by these conditions, often marginalized in public discourse.

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Virtually all modern societies, regardless of their political orientation, are built on a model of infinite (sustainable) economic growth. It is no longer a secret that this model is physically incompatible with the reality of a finite planet. Nonetheless, the model of infinite growth continues to dominate our daily lives, regardless of its costs and consequences, as it offers the deceptive promise of the lifestyle of an average middle-class member of Western societies to all the inhabitants of this planet. However, knowing that this promise is unattainable because our planet cannot sustain the burden of supporting 8 (or more) billion Western-style consumers, why can’t we abandon it? Why do we persist with it, and what responsibility do we bear in this? Who pays the price for our (slow) learning, and how can we address systemic-structural privileges in a way that brings about real change, not just cosmetic fixes? How do we move towards a future that is not merely a continuation of the current world but opens up possibilities that we cannot yet imagine?

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At workshop we addressed these and related questions, which do not have simple or unequivocal answers. Questions related to climate change and the paradoxes of sustainable development will be discussed within the context of a broader understanding of the functioning and structure of modern societies. We explored how our understandings of sustainable development are embedded in socially conditioned desires and expectations of continuing our way of life and living as we know it, and how these desires and expectations shape and limit our abilities to envision possibilities outside established patterns. We discussed the components of the house of modernity (more on this in the attached article) and the four denials that significantly influence how we perceive and experience our shared present and future: 1) denial of systemic violence and our participation in it, 2) denial of planetary limits, 3) denial of our role as part of the planetary metabolism, 4) denial of the depth and extent of the problems we face. The aim of this seminar is not to provide answers or solutions to global climate and other challenges, but to present intellectual tools and aids that allow us to pose more complex and difficult questions without fostering feelings of helplessness, apathy, guilt, shame, or paralysis.