Sustainability Is Social Complexity: Re-Imagining Education toward a Culture of Unpredictability

Abstract Research on sustainability must take into account both the need to create a sustainable world and the urgency of undertaking a radical rethinking of our approach to planning and foresight that encompasses a full understanding of the ineludible unpredictability of the complex systems we are dealing with, which can only come about through long-term inter/multi/transdisciplinary educational processes. Those calling for a “culture of sustainability” need to become aware of the systemic and relational dimensions that characterize all processes and dynamics of reality and of the ecosystems we are endeavoring to inhabit. What this signifies is that a culture of sustainability is a culture of complexity. Complex systems are exclusively living systems, whose intrinsic unpredictability cannot be managed, predicted, or controlled by technology. The misleading idea that technology is our only pathway to sustainability is part of the “great mistake” we are making today: the belief that the solution to every contemporary problem is an accelerated combination of digital and technical skills, obtainable through a predominantly applicational form of education based on simulation, velocity, and connectivity, which teaches competences and know-how rather than stimulating what is so direly needed today: the capacity for reflective knowledge and critical thinking. Keywords: sustainability as social complexity; hypertechnological civilization; culture of complexity; automation vs. autonomy; great mistake; unpredictability of complex systems; radical rethinking; inter/multi/transdisciplinarity