Cultures of sustainability and the aesthetics of the pattern that connects Sacha Kagan * Institute for Theory and Research on Culture and the Arts (IKKK), Leuphana Universita ¨t Lu ¨neburg, Scharnhorststr. 1 D-21335 Lu ¨neburg, Germany 1. Sustainability and culture 1.1. Sustainability Sustainability is most often described as the triptych of social justice, ecological integrity and economic well-being [1]. However, one may prefer an alternative interpretation pointing at the triptych of biodiversity, cultural diversity and human well-being. One of the fundamentally innovative characteristics of the concept of sustainability is that it calls forward a whole range of apparently paradoxical reconciliations: reconciliation of normative and so-far supposedly ‘positive’ science, reconciliation of the economy with the ecology, reconciliation of matter and culture (i.e. society, technology and environment), and reconciliation of intra-generational and intergenerational justices (i.e. the needs of present generations across the planet and the needs of future generations). Sustainability is a young concept for an age of hypercomplexity, where challenges of increasingly globalizing economic exchanges as well as cultural exchanges are combining with the challenge of interconnected global and local ecological and social crises. Confronting this complexity implies an approach of systems, i.e. anthropo-systems within ecosystems, across space-scales from the local to the planetary, and across time-scales from the short to the very-long term [2, pp. 15,16], [3] and [4]. 1.2. A cultural change The question of a possible global mindset change emerges from the challenges posed by the introduction of the search process of ‘sustainability’ in many spheres of private and professional life in recent years. Beyond the current fashion in public discourses and policies across the world, abusing the adjective ‘sustainable’ for all sorts of strategic purposes, the search for sustainability reinforces rising concerns about the civilizational path of the ‘developed world’. It comes as no surprise that, for example, the current president of the French Republic, opportunistically recycled Edgar Morin’s expression ‘‘politique de civilisation’’ [5] in his policy discourse in early 2008. 1 A diffuse feeling is emerging of a wide-scale discrepancy between, on the one hand the development-path followed so far, and on the other hand a Futures 42 (2010) 1094–1101 ARTICLE INFO Article history: Available online 14 August 2010 ABSTRACT Contemporary developments around the search for ‘sustainability’ offer an insightful approach to the question of an emerging global mindset change. In its cultural dimension, the search process for sustainability fosters a paradigmatic shift in world views and ways of life, breeding a sensibility to the ‘‘pattern that connects’’ (as coined by Gregory Bateson). ß 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: kagan@uni.leuphana.de. 1 Edgar Morin is the leading French intellectual in the research on ‘systems thinking’ and ‘sciences of complexity’. His intellectual influence is however much stronger in Central and South America than in France, where resistance is strong against his beyond-Cartesian approach. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Futures journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/futures 0016-3287/$ – see front matter ß 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2010.08.009