Controversy

Of course, we don’t know how the global society will be able to deal with the complex challenges, such as climate and democratic change, the exhausting of resources or equality of opportunity and distribution.

But we do know that we will only discover what our opportunities for the future consist of, and which “Great Narrative” our possible future may describe, if we succeed in communicating trans-culturally and trans-disciplinarily – and developing moderated forms of conflict and controversy. We cannot allow this participatory, controversial communication to be mollified or channelised by moral appeals for moderation (Paulo Freire).

That kind of communication will; in terms of the issues it raises for the participants and stakeholders it selects, and the balance between spontaneous upsurge and long-term persistence that it develops; have to display a sufficiently flexible level of intelligence. The central communicative competence of the drivers, activists and visionaries in the search and the movement involves the sparking and fruitful design of controversy.

In context

We search for the starting point of the learning of communication of the subject: the individual, the promoter, the stakeholder, the institution, the region, the nation…Empowerment for the subject. Additionally we dissociate from the communication and marketing strategies without any context. Communication without context serves to foster acceptance. It is often top-down and full of non-transparent self-interest

Participatory communications is understood to be a deliberative process of perception and realization, the formation of intention and the arriving at decisions, and finally their implementation. For that purpose, participants require resources and public space – resource justice.

With irony

The communications of sustainability is a deliberative cultural technique. It uses the “Great Narrative” with metaphors, irony, controversy, participation, curating, re-editing, and ready-made reduction through intention. Irony is a promoting force that compels us to successively try all forms of disrespect, and to express impertinence.

And in dialogue

The communication of sustainability is a dialogical skill, a common language. If two eyes see together, a new dimension is created. The precondition for a common language is the recognition of the competence and perspective of the other, the relative isolation of the own, and the ability to deal with open questions and with the reality of not having any answers yet. This capability trains the capacity to perceive; its methods are those of reserve, and the pause for true reflection.

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