To be published in: “Defining Sustainability” (ed. Arizona State University, Art Museum) Living Sustainability Arnim Wiek School of Sustainability, Arizona State University “What can I do for sustainability?” My wife Katja and I just wanted to get away for a couple days, hiking in the mountains, breathing fresh air, sleeping in, having good food—and no discussions about sustainability. We thought even sustainability enthusiasts deserve a break once in a while. We underestimated the enthusiasm on the other side of the breakfast table. “School of Sustainability? Yes, that’s very important! We’ve started to recycle more … and my husband has changed some of our light bulbs …” So, here we go again …: “Well, sustainability is not so much about recycling and light bulbs …” – “It’s not??” – “Actually, it is also about recycling and light bulbs, but it goes deeper. It has to do with the core of our society: how and what we produce, distribute, and consume, what we value and feel responsible for, what we are willing to risk, and what we envision our heritage to be—in short, how we live our lives now and in the future.” “This is an interesting perspective … but it seems quite complicated. What can I do for sustainability?” and the conversation continues. People are becoming more and more interested in sustainability, most often in honest attempts to “do the right thing.” Interest has grown, but the debate has also been filled with simplistic assumptions. Catchy phrases and fast recipes circulate and solidify inaccurate perceptions of sustainability. One prominent simplification reduces sustainability to a single one of its components, be it new environ‐ mentalism, economic sustainability, or social equity. On the contrary, sustainability is about linking and balancing all of these components. Similarly misleading is the promotion of sustainable technologies, which focuses on “green,” “clean,” “carbon‐ neutral” technologies under the assumption that new technologies are an adequate response to contemporary sustainability challenges. A more sophisticated, namely academic misrepresentation is “soft sustainability,” which suggests that self‐ regulation and incrementalism will suffice to reach sustainability. Another one claims that sustainability is a never‐ending process rather than a state we could ever hope to achieve. The common denominator of all these oversimplifications is the self‐deceptive belief that we can continue along the same, old paths that led us here and still reach the new goals of sustainability. Simply put, that does not work.