Though our time frame and scale were limited, my group’s action project gave me insight into the process of collective deliberation and action and it inspired me to dream of a healthier world. The challenge of coordinating our schedules to meet outside of class and the extra time it took to create plans for a project which we were all excited about, rather than making decisions autonomously, gave me a small taste of what it would be like to organize action in a larger group. Though consensus-seeking and cooperation are fulfilling, I have a better understanding now of why it is so challenging to organize people around issues like sustainability and climate justice. Still, this did not dash my hopes for a movement towards a society with less environmental impact. In fact, my group’s action project combined with readings like Active Hope made me want to adopt a more optimistic and grateful attitude. Like the authors of Active Hope, I believe that this type of mindset will help us find peace in the face of our mortality; and following the tenets of terror management theory and the arguments Oelschlager presents in “History, Ecology, and the Denial of Death,” this peace would help us lessen our environmental impact (as we would not feel so compelled to dominate the Earth) and to be more open-minded towards people with different belief systems, making our interpersonal relationships healthier.

I leave our course content and my group’s action project with the takeaway that rekindling community relationships will be an important factor in our ability to respond effectively to the ecological destruction we are causing. In a less individualistic society, people will feel more secure and grateful, and they will feel more responsible for people other than themselves. This will motivate people to change their individual behaviors to be more sustainable. Also, scaling down our industries and supply chains, giving greater support to local small operations, would reduce emissions. It would also reduce consumption and cultivate a more circular economy overall because people would be more careful with their resources if they were in close proximity to both the “inputs” (plants, animals, etc) consumed and the waste generated by their consumption.

Though our generation may be less religious, terror management still influences our choices. We can turn that into positive action. Let’s take advantage of this peak of systemic unsustainability to make a change.

It was hard to choose a photo that represented everything I talked about here, but I settled on this image of a piece of a sustainable city. I love the idea of community gardens for several reasons–to scale down the food supply chain, to provide a space for community interactions (and just a place to be in public for free), and to bring us nearer to the cycle of life and death.

The Worm at the Core discusses symbolic immortality as an aspect of terror management. When confronted with the knowledge that they will one day dies, one of the methods individuals use to mitigate the resultant terror is to attempt to either construct something they consider part of their identity which will outlive them or integrate themselves into a larger system and to integrate this system into their identity.

If one were to examine the actions of Otto von Bismarck, his actions in pursuit of establishing a unified German nation could be viewed as a form of symbolic immortality pursued resultant of his interpretation of Russia as an existential threat to the German states, and thereby part of his identity. In this sense, Bismarck wanted Germany, as a nation and a culture, to outlive him.

With this understanding of symbolic immortality, it is easy to interpret the Utopian Futures project as strongly related to symbolic immortality. Within the construction of a society unhindered by economic, moral, strategic, and military issues/interests, the components of that society emphasized withing the group are likely the aspects of society we would seek to utilize as a symbolic immortality project. Whether by establishing a more efficient and efficacious method of enforcing social norms or establishing equitable access to resources, these are aspects of society which, though they may not be considered possible to implement, are aspects of our individual utopianism we would see outlive us.

Given the limited time available for the action project presentations, it was not feasible to include more than a handful of the elements we consider essential to a utopia. Whether selected because we viewed them as the most important, whether personally or to our imagined society, or the most feasible, re-examination of our choices is doubtless to lead to introspective analysis of what we consider important and how we determine this worth. What, for instance, does it reveal about us if we choose to present a normative shift away from the use of relative gains as a metric of benefit instead of addressing a source of inequality such as the protectionism within trade, which, unaddressed, may continue to affect our imagined society?

Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen after his resignation in 1890

The Upside of Down mentions the current trend towards isolated study when it comes to formulating solutions for improving our global conditions. However, the damage created by humans was created collectively. Individuals, corporations, and irresponsible waste across industries, all contributed to the current global warming crisis and vast inequality. However, a solution to this collective issue will not effectively come out of individuals working in their respective disciplines. It is essential to formulate an ecosystem that promotes an interdisciplinary approach with collaboration across fields and sectors. 

I was able to realize this through the Utopian action project. We were only able to fully execute our vision for a more optimistic future by collaborating with each other in a supportive environment. Everyone in our group came from different backgrounds, ethnicities, majors, etc., and were all able to provide our unique insight into creating our own utopian society. This aligns well with the systems theory discussed in the first weeks of class. Donella Meadows claims that “systems often lack sufficient information flows”. This lack of information may be one of the fundamental pain points of our current system. Information gaps can be easily addressed through open communication and the synthesis of ideologies.

 We can only fix our current societal system by working internally instead of looking to external solutions. Humans often deny their dependence and integration with nature. Oelschlager claims that our model “denies the connection between human beings and the natural world”. This is an extremely pertinent source of further issues that complicate our system. We attempt to look at technological shifts that depend on external solutions which only sets off more feedback loops. We must look even deeper and more internally on both an individual and societal level. I believe that contemplative practices and a strong welfare state may help fuel us in the right direction.