Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chuang Tzu. Soon I awaked, and there I was, truly myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things. --Chuang Tzu
The third movement is to experience transdisciplinarity as transformation. We must be willing and able to drop personal borders and the defense of expertise. We must listen, struggle, and take the time for mutual learning and openness, to confront questions of scientific technique and ethics, issues of both environmental and social sustainability, and commitments, practices and values of a personal nature. We must have a willingness to be changed, to no longer the be the person we have always been, just as the way the world has always been (at least for the length of our lifetimes) has to radically, at the root, change.
Sustainability is not, and cannot be, the sustainability of the current status quo, environmentally, economically or ethically. In these regards we know we are in a cul de sac. What is to be done is a complete and thorough transformation, a transversal and transgression of all the old divisions, disciplines and dogmas that have bound us and driven us to this impasse. It begins with the personal, public and pedagogical changes we have begun; we just need to develop this beginning into an ethos of transdisciplinarity.
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