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The Sustainable Self: A Personal Approach to Sustainability Education

Article  in  Journal of Education for Sustainable Development · March 2012

DOI: 10.1177/097340821100600122a

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Why the lonesome sustainability cowboy won't save the planet

Let's finally ditch our illusion of the autonomous individual

The Sustainable Self: A Personal Approach to Sustainability Education. By Paul

Murray. London, Washington, DC: Earthscan, 2011. 272 pages.

Review by Rolf Jucker

I must openly admit that I am a bit dumbfounded that anybody should these
days still believe in that old illusion of the autonomous self which, with a bit of
good will and a decent training manual in hand, will change the world for the
better. But this clearly seems to be the approach by Paul Murray in his recent
book The Sustainable Self (not to mention that the title in itself is a
contradiction in terms).

When I first took the book into my hands I was already a bit worried because of
the title and the subtitle, which promises a 'personal approach' to sustainability
education. I was intrigued because I reckoned it would be a wonderfully subtle
and subversive treat if the author superficially bought into the current
infatuation with the self, our egos and then showed that this approach is clearly
untenable, on multiple levels: biological (our physical self wouldn't survive for a
single day if it were not for the dependence on the outside world in form of air,
food, bacteria, etc.), social (humans literally die if they are deprived of inter-
human relationships), mental (there is no such thing as an independent
autonomous mind: for it to work – despite the protestations of the
constructivists – we are totally dependent on the constant food provided by our
senses, as Iain McGilchrist has so wonderfully shown in The Master and his
Emissary).

In other words I hoped that Murray would make an important contribution to

the sustainability education discussion by showing – maybe on the back of
Gregory Bateson's insights – that the notion of an autonomous self is, in a
systemic understanding of the world, probably one of the most fatal illusions of
the Western World and its worldviews and ideologies. The very idea that we are
autonomous individuals is in fact one of the underlying reasons why we have a
sustainability crisis, because it blinds us to the fact that we are not
independent of the world and people and nature around us, but indeed utterly
dependent on them.

Yet I was wrong. Murray rekindles the old myths – so much an integral part of
the American Dream – that the burden for changing the world to the better lies
with the individual. The book is over large parts simply a sustainability-focused
version of all the popular self-help books, which flooded the market coinciding
with Margaret Thatchers' announcement in the 1980s that there is no such
thing as a society. He pretends, just as popular management manuals, that
with a decent set of instruments, tools and skills anybody can change the
world. All you need is positive thinking (get finally rid of those disempowering
negative thoughts you always had about the financial sector, or the oil
industry, or Cameron), a few doggy manipulative techniques such as NLP
(Neurolinguistic Programming – very popular in religious sects for brainwashing
 people into believing any old fairy tale), a superficial knowledge of what
sustainability might mean and off you are.

Murray throughout the book talks about thinking, mental attributes, internal
perception, beliefs, values etc. I reckon that Murray is right in his assumption
that there is quite a bunch of people out there who still need to get a handle on
this, and in these cases his book might even be helpful. But my point is: that’s
not where we are going to win the sustainability game. Just read this
astonishing statement from the end of the book: “Although external forces can
seem more difficult to negotiate, it is only in rare cases that we will find that we
really are being externally blocked or undermined.” (p. 236) I would dearly like
to live in Murray's world because mine is different: in my world there are power
structures as well as economic and political interests which prevent very
skillfully any personal and social change that might move our society into more
sustainable waters. In my world human beings are social beings which are
more dependent on their peer groups, working environments, upbringing,
social conditioning and marketing/PR, tradition and so forth than they are free-
floating individuals which are so strongly willed as to be able to implement
their ideas about a sustainable life without problems or resistance. In my world,
there is something like history which can show us with almost brutal clarity that
lasting change that really challenges the power elite – and a sustainable world
is not imaginable otherwise, because it is not compatible with current
economic, political or social structures – is incredibly hard to come by and is
certainly never achieved by individuals, but only by social movements. In other
words, there is an almost naïve lack of systemic understanding about power,
politics, social relationships and economics in the book.

There is just one nagging doubt in my mind: because it is so blatantly obvious

that this old trick to put all the responsibility for saving the world on the
individuals' shoulders, so that we all keep busy with our self-improvement
classes and programs while the powerful corporate state can carry on minding
his own business and plundering and destroying our planet, this must surely be
my mistake. I must have totally misunderstood Murray.

a) I hope that other readers can show me where I have gone wrong.
b) Which trick of the trade of the lonesome cowboy have I missed which will
nevertheless ensure a sustainable future?

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