Toward Global (Environ)Mental Change - Transformative Art and Cultures of Sustainability

The global crisis of unsustainability is not only a crisis of the hardware of civilization, it is also a crisis of the software of minds. The search for a more sustainable development in the ‘developed’ world has, so far, been focusing too much on hardware updates, such as new technologies, economic incentives, policies and regulations, and too little on software revisions, that is cultural transformations affecting our ways of knowing, learning, valuing and acting together. The cultural software is, nevertheless, at least as much part of the fundamental infrastructure of a society as its material hardware.

We need a global (environ)mental change, that is a transformation process to affect the many relationships between our minds and their environments. There are several environments to the conscious mind, such as the subconscious, the shared culture(s) and the natural environment. They are not all just environments, but also part of our minds. This is a bit like a hologram: Each part of the hologram contains some information about the whole. Each human mind echoes elements from its environments, and is connected to them in many ways. Global (environ)mental change will highlight complex interdependences and will teach us, not to be afraid of these complexities. This requires a movement away from our culture of unsustainability which is hindering our grasp of these interdependences.