"Hedonistic Sustainability"

Bjarke Ingels is the head of the architectural practice Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in Denmark.  His firm is an international phenomenon in the architectural design world.  His ideas for designs are bold and clear.  He conveys his ideas in a very effective, easy-to-understand fashion, but not condescending or patronizing to the general audience of his work.  He inserts wry humor to every point he makes.
(Watch his TED talk:  http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/bjarke_ingels_hedonistic_sustainability.html)

He proposes what he calls the "Hedonistic Sustainability".  I personally agree with what he is attempting to say in regards to sustainability.  Sustainability in the building industry is commonly - and unfairly - associated with high cost and design restrictions.  What Ingels wants to say is that sustainability can be great fun: fun for the stake holders, and fun for the designers as well as the users.

This emphasis on fun or pleasure as a prime standard has some limitations.  For example, for the people deeply involved in the oil industry, it would not be so fun to think about sustainability.  In Canada, many people are making extreme amount of money by means of Tar Sands Mining at the cost of devastating the pristine boreal forests.  Boreal forests are one of the largest greenhouse gas absorbing natural mechanisms that exists on the planet. Enormously vast swaths of this precious and beautiful forest land are turned into toxic wast lands for the Tar Sands Mining operations (http://www.ted.com/talks/garth_lenz_images_of_beauty_and_devastation.html).  The tricky thing is that it is not only the corporate executives that benefit from the Tar Sands Mining operations.  Many otherwise low wage workers come to work at the tar sand mines and earn a decent living.  Being sustainable in this context means nothing else than stopping the operation, and that would be no fun for those earning a good living from the tar sand mines.  Common sense tells us, however, that it is quite clear what is the right thing to do.

In many cases, fun can be the solution.  Yet it cannot be the ultimate standard.  When "fun" and "right" conflicts, what does common sense tell us to do?

The issue becomes a fascinating topic when we compare two books that explore two extremes.  In '1984', George Orwell warns about a society of absolute control.  However, in 'Brave New World' Aldous Huxley warns of a world devoid of standards.
Social critic Neil Postman provides a piercing insight in this very topic in the foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death.  He writes:

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World,they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us."

We are familiar with the fear associated with the world of '1984'.  We do not want limitation to our freedom, and we want to control our lives to avoid pain and gain as much pleasure as possible.  That is why 'Brave New World' and its message is all the more relevant.  We are so fiercely running away from '1984', we sometimes forget that we might be going too far in the opposite direction.  We only focus on the problem of pain and how we could avoid it.  The bigger problem is, in fact, that there is weariness at the end of pleasure.  If we only wish for the pain to end and imagine that pleasure or fun is the ultimate goal, and in the end achieve all the fun and the pleasure we seek and become weary of it, that would be a truly tragic ending, because in pain you at least have hope of relief; in the weariness of pleasure there is no more hope to pursue.
Famous British writer and intellect G. K. Chesterton says, "Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain.  Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure."

I would like to propose a slight modification to the new paradigm in sustainability: I propose a "Sustainable Hedonism", or maybe it would be better to called it "Sustainable Joy"!
How we achieve a sustaining joy, and by what means we do so is something we all have to figure out and share.
If you have an idea that works, please let me know!