Abstract

In the face of climate emergency, the matter of enacting change is no longer deferrable to the future. As wasteful human lifestyles need to change, a number of different approaches rooted in sentiments of guilt, denial, anger and flight, fail to enact real change. Based on the assumption that the future is a future of scarcity, the question is how to create a spirit that allows scarcity to be viewed as an opportunity.
Analyzing and discussing different approaches that represent coping-mechanisms for an omnipresent crisis, none of the aforementioned approaches seems to have proven most successful so far. Based on modes of solutionism, control, moralisation, and ignorance, all existing approaches fail to produce the necessary spirit for positive change, and instead, perpetuate problematic behaviours and deepening polarization and antagonism. As a conclusion, the attitude to changing needs to change. Instead of considering the scarcity ahead being based on suffering and inconvenience, it ought to be approached through pleasure.
Considering the potential of collective approaches, this work proposes an approach of creating collective pleasure in scarcity, as a base for the creation of a collective spirit to change. Functional objects based on a materiality of scarcity, therefore, create pleasurable moments that encourage togetherness as a first step towards breaking down borders and reducing antagonism. As well as communicating their inherent values, by embracing pleasure in scarcity they create a needed spirit for a novel way of life that embraces change as an opportunity, instead of fearing it.

Continue reading: http://pleasureinscarcity.com