Avoiding the Risk of Ritualization

In some parts of the world, Sunday, the 21st of September, was "exhaustless"—namely 'World Car Free Day'. For instance, Brusselleers enjoyed a day of bicycle-riding as an area of 160 km2 in the Belgian capital was closed to motor transport from 9AM to 7PM. In Hungary, people could ride on trains for free just by showing their automobile licenses.

As the current debate around sustainability gets hotter, we witness more and more initiatives being taken to raise awareness. Besides the 'Car Free Day' mentioned above, we have a 'Buy Nothing' day, an 'Earth Hour', and who knows what else? (You're welcome to add what you know under Comments)

However, it is always a valid question whether all these 'holy' days of sustainability do any concrete good. Do they really help change our traits? Or are they just about doing the 'in' thing nowadays, when none of us wants to be left behind in the trendy game of being green? These were some issues touched upon also by a research project named "Energy Futures", carried out by a trio of interns at Interactive Institute.

The outcomes of this research were several scenarios with which the interns foresaw a future where sustainability and being green had totally translated itself into a religion. One could see the obvious link between those scenarios and today's designated-days of being green.

To provide an example, one of those scenarios included a day of covering your electronic devices with tape; in another one people would send a red smoke out to the sky as an almost-tribal ritual. They might look too-fictitious to you, but looking at the facts above, this kind of a future could be much closer than we think. It is up to us who claim to be working towards a positive future, to avoid the risk of ritualization—by aiming for deeper change in traits, instead of trying to affect moods/even behaviours for the short term.