#1020 Acting and Sustainability

Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What does sustainability mean in connection with acting? That’s the question we explored in Room #1020 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Action.” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…

Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.

A very good morning to you all. Today we continue with acting and sustainability, under our overarching theme of action. What does sustainability actually mean in connection with acting? We want to look at that more closely today — how might we integrate sustainable actions into our everyday lives, roughly along those lines. I’m genuinely curious what impulses and thoughts you’ll bring in, maybe examples we can use to work through this together, so we can generate insights collectively through exchange and dialogue. As always, you’re warmly invited to join and step into the conversation. And the room is recorded the whole time and published afterward, so joining means you’re okay with that, just as a reminder. I already see our first request — let me bring them in. Good morning, what are your thoughts on this topic?

Good morning to the round. Trigger alert, heads up! Good morning to you. First, I find this fascinating, and I’ll start with terminology — which terms we actually use, because I was genuinely surprised. The first definition I found for “sustainable” was “having a strong effect over a longer period of time.” Interesting, I thought — if you read that literally, “having a strong effect over a longer period of time,” we’d first need to agree, are we using “sustainable” the way I’ve used it up to now, as a positive word, sustainable meaning positive change, positive action — or also negative action? Because if we left it at “having a strong effect over a longer period of time” as the definition of sustainable action, then it would also be sustainable if I left my car running in the underground garage all night, for weeks, for months. That certainly has a strong effect over a long period too. Then I kept digging — that’s the first definition you get, and I suspect the second one you’ll follow up with is that sustainability is a principle of action in resource use, that preserves the natural regenerative capacity of the systems involved, especially in living systems and economic systems, and that the word comes from the English “sustainable,” which roughly means to endure and to bear. And, from what I found, it was first used in forestry, which makes a lot of sense actually — you can only harvest as much wood from a forest as naturally regrows. What I’m genuinely curious about, and I’d love to share this personally too, is whether I consider myself a sustainable person or not — also fascinating, and I haven’t found a topic that’s so contradictory, depending on which questions you ask, as this one. I’m looking forward to this room with you all.

Wonderful, thank you so much, and that already shows it’s necessary here too to look closely at the terminology together and agree on what we actually want to talk about today, or what facets there are. Let me add one more definition — there’s also one from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, which says: sustainability, or sustainable development, means satisfying the needs of the present in such a way that the possibilities of future generations aren’t restricted. Maybe we can bring that in too. Our other friend has joined as well, let me bring them in, and then we can draw the cross-connections together. Good morning!

Good morning to you and everyone in the room. You’ve both thrown me a stick or two to fetch there. On your first one — going into sub-definitions isn’t really my aim today. But your closing statement, that there’s a lot of contradiction in this topic, I’d agree with, and I’d like to let that stand as it is, because I think that might even be a target for today’s room — to pin that down specifically. The second stick came from the subtitle and the introduction — if I’m recalling correctly, what can our acting do for sustainability. And that was the trigger for me, because — and I hope this has landed for everyone by now — we’re talking about a topic complex that requires a globally coordinated solution, and that naturally, and here’s the bridge to today’s subtitle, requires very specific ways of acting from us. That closes the bridge for me. But the first question that opens up is, what’s the relationship between these two dimensions? We know the saying, does it even matter if I sort my recycling, it all ends up dumped on the same pile somewhere anyway. So this divergence between a global aspiration on one side, and the specific implementation in our own acting on the other. And now I come to terminology, or the second point you mentioned at the end — the definition. Let me stay with what is, for me, the primary global authority on sustainability on our planet right now, the UN. And the UN was actually the founder of the term sustainability, back in the mid-2010s, I believe. Let me quote the UN’s definition, which I consider directional for everyone else too: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Taking that definition, I dove into it and identified three problem areas on that level — or challenges, to put it a bit more neutrally, since it doesn’t have to be a problem yet. The first level I’d assign to complexity. In this one sentence we have two different target variables: the aspiration to meet the needs of today, of the present generation, but also, at the same time, not to compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. So essentially, for the status quo we’re talking about needs, but for the future status quo, we’re talking, first and foremost, not about needs but about the abilities necessary to meet those future generations’ needs. And the connecting point for me right there, in that interpretation, is a topic we’ve had often in these rooms — that’s a classic field for me, for meta-learning and future skills. That’s exactly where I’d set my meta-reference for those two topic areas. So, the second level of complexity, or of essence — and here I come back to your introduction — is that we clearly have responsibility, both on the individual side and on the global side. And out of those areas of responsibility naturally come different presets, different foundations. And now let me step away from the individual level and say, we have these 17 defined sustainability goals that sustainability has been broken down into — but what are the essential input parameters needed to fulfil them? And that’s where I land, essentially, on the worst-case level of complexity: if it’s a global problem, then we have a challenge on the cultural level, on the political and political-systems level, especially democracy versus autocracy and similar; we have a challenge on the intellectual level, and specifically on the education level; and of course we also have a challenge on the technical level, because — not meant as a value judgment — there’s a gap in technical status between so-called developing countries and highly developed countries, for example. Sorry that took so long, but my intention wasn’t to make anything sound negative from the outset through this kind of framing. No, for me this is a genuinely essential topic, not least because it touches my favourite subject, education. But I think, across all the other topics we’ve covered here in the past, we’ve learned that alongside a clear terminology — making explicit which dimensions we’re actually talking about — is an essential precondition for demanding specific responsibility from each individual. And that’s always responsibility, on this topic, tied to acting, from the very start. Thanks, sorry it took so long, and I’m looking forward to a constructive dialogue.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And it’s lovely how clearly that also shows there are these different levels. We talked yesterday about self-responsibility and responsibility, and now, in this third week, we’re really opening up these levels explicitly — from the individual all the way to this broader societal, global dimension, to make those connections clear on a larger scale, so to speak. So I love that we’re now looking at these connections directly through the lens of sustainability, across the different levels. Would you like to come in here too?

I’d love to. You used a lot of terms there, and let me try to pick up seamlessly from what you both said — I’d like to bring the term back to myself, to us, before we talk about society, and pull out the words “responsibility” and “awareness.” I said at the start that I’d found a lot of contradictions on this topic. And I found them because, for me, it always matters which questions we ask. The first question I put in was, are Germans sustainable? I wanted to know if we’re a sustainable country. 68 percent of Germans say, yes, we act sustainably. That’s not bad — if you asked me, am I sustainable, I’d say, yes, I am sustainable too. 68 percent consider themselves sustainable. Then I thought of another question, a control question: how often do Germans buy a new phone, on average — and please be honest with yourself here. The answer was, a new phone every 2.5 years. So then I asked myself, from my own experience, does a phone actually break after 2.5 years? If I’m honest with myself, no, it doesn’t break after 2.5 years. But we find, and this is the first example of responsibility and awareness, when I buy a new phone, I need more storage, a better camera, maybe the battery isn’t quite as fast anymore — I find a dozen reasons. And then I asked, but the real question is, am I sustainable? And 68 percent say yes, we act sustainably, but don’t actually act sustainably, because they then find their own justification for throwing away a phone after 2.5 years. The second term I found, where sustainability gets used in advertising, I found really wild — I got curious about cars, how sustainable are cars. Same thing, you have to ask the right questions, I’m not comparing different technologies here, but I found a leasing company’s website with the slogan, it’s very sustainable to lease a car. Interesting. Their reasoning: if you lease a car, it can be rented out multiple times. Makes sense, I agree, that’s exactly right. At the same time, I ask myself, who actually leases cars? Cars get leased by companies. I don’t know anyone in my circle who’s driving a used lease car. All lease cars are new — meaning every car that comes in as a company lease vehicle after three years isn’t a used vehicle being rented out again, it’s a brand-new vehicle. So then I ask myself again, is that sustainable? And you can approach basically any topic this way — building that awareness and responsibility is always about asking, questioning, and reflecting. And I noticed that sustainability in particular has become one of those buzzwords, one of those catchphrases that gets used constantly. This morning I’d love to sell myself as a very sustainable person, a very likeable, sustainable person, but I have to admit, my first contribution today has actually been proving I’m not sustainable. Let me share one more piece of information I find fascinating — we’ve said water is one of the resources that’s like gold, one of the most important resources we have on this planet. I love drinking coffee more than almost anything. One kilogram of coffee needs 18,800 litres of water. I can’t manage to drink my coffee black — I skip the sugar, but I always drink it with milk. One cup of milk needs about 132 litres of water — that’s the water used to produce the milk. And one litre of milk needs about 700 litres of water, once you factor in everything, the pasture, the feed and so on. So, to follow up on my own provocation about not being sustainable — what actually changed in my behaviour, to give an example of where I’ve taken on self-responsibility, once these numbers became clear to me, both with the phone and with the coffee: I reduced my coffee consumption from eight cups to two. I now enjoy two cups of coffee in the morning, and I will and want to stick with those two, I don’t want to give them up. With phones, it’s now the case that I use mine for at least four to six years — for me, the calling function is the most important part, and maybe my saved photos. After about six and a half years, buttons genuinely stop working and they’re no longer repairable. My behaviour has changed there, but I still discover plenty of areas in my own life where I notice I’m not acting sustainably. And what was said about education and upbringing — first I have to become aware that I’m not sustainable. Then I ask myself, where am I willing to take on change in the process. And change doesn’t always mean all-or-nothing — reduction can also be a form of change for me, on the path toward sustainability.

Wonderful, thank you so much. What you brought up has sparked so many thoughts for me. First, on that survey point about how Germans assess themselves as sustainable — 68 percent isn’t a bad number as such. But, as we’ve discussed before, it’s worth differentiating carefully around statistics, surveys, research results and so on, really looking closely and distinguishing properly. Because ultimately, a survey like that is just a survey of people’s own self-assessment. It’s a statistic collected on the basis of what I think, what I want to answer — and it has nothing to do, initially, with whether that’s actually true. Which is why it’s not surprising that when you add further questions, as you did, you suddenly get numbers that make you ask, can we really let that first number stand as it is? I think that’s a nice example showing that we always need to handle statistics like this carefully — looking closer, questioning them, checking what exactly was actually measured and what the numbers really say, or don’t say. That’s one thing I wanted to note. The second thing, since you mentioned coffee this morning, let me build a bridge here too, because something really interesting happened with us in the last few days — in an exchange with my son, who’s been preparing something project-style and has been engaging very intensively with animals lately. He came to me and asked why we even have things like zoos, where we look at animals, regardless of whether it’s in a building or somewhere like the Opel Zoo in Frankfurt, which is huge — but ultimately they’re all enclosures where the animals aren’t actually in their natural habitat. And he made the observation, imagine if animals did the same thing to us — put us in cages or enclosures to look at us. I don’t think we’d find that very funny. And from there we ended up in a conversation about things like eating animal meat — how does that actually work for animals, when do they hunt, especially the carnivores. And from there we also got onto eggs and milk in that context. And especially since you just mentioned milk with your coffee — it’s not just about how much water is used in production, but also things like how animals actually have to be kept or bred. Not many people think about the fact that a cow essentially has to be constantly impregnated, artificially inseminated, to keep her pregnant, in order to actually get milk throughout the whole year — all the way to looking at lifespan, for instance. They could normally live around 20 years, but due to how we keep them, they live about five. Genuinely dramatic when you look at the numbers like that. Just wanted to throw that in as an impulse too, an example from our own exchange. And I see our other friend wants to say something, so let me hand it over.

Thank you. Can you hear me? Can you all hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Wonderful, thank you. Building on what was just said, my spontaneous reaction to that survey you mentioned was — maybe the first question should have been, and here we’re back at our favourite topic, what is sustainability actually? And I don’t mean the 17 sustainability criteria that now stand worldwide as implementation goals, but simply, on the meta level, the specification that when we talk about sustainability, we’re talking about three essential areas, not just ecology — and in my experience, if you ask people, including in my own circle, the first word that comes up is always the environment, environment, climate, food. The two other aspects are the economic aspect and the social aspect. And what would have interested me first is whether these different, let’s call them battlefields, since they’re definitely interconnected and influence each other positively and negatively in specific ways — whether they’re even transparent to begin with. Before I can draw an experience of how to handle something, I first have to understand what it’s actually about. And your phone example is actually quite instructive there, in terms of how institutions are approaching this topic and trying to assess its complexity. There’s a clear sustainability goal, among those 17 defined sub-goals, that I’d place this under — sustainable consumption and production patterns. So the label’s already there — you can breathe a sigh of relief, you’re acting sustainably, because your position, your current approach to handling technological innovations, is heading in the direction of sustainability, I’d conclude. And because of that, on the very top level, in a global problem — not unusually for such a topic — what’s missing for me, as in some other positions, is one thing: fundamental awareness-raising and grounding through knowledge, through factual knowledge — what are we even talking about, to what end are we doing this, why are we doing this, and for what purpose. And your dialogue, or your son’s input, is such a good example of that for me — do the basic work on fact and structure definition, because a young person like that thinks it through and arrives at completely different connections and ideas that we, in our biased adult world, can’t even imagine anymore. That, for me, is the core work that needs to be done — and to wrap up, it needs to be done by every single one of us. That can be a meaningful contribution from us to this global problem — challenge, sorry. Thanks for listening.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And I think what becomes clear here too is how, and at what point, this entanglement of acting and sustainability connects with today’s question — what does sustainability mean in connection with acting, and then broken down further, how can we integrate sustainable actions into our everyday life — so really considering both levels. Because of how we’re shaped by the media, we automatically tend to think of sustainability on that global level. But if we look at acting itself, we’ve established that acting always has effects, consequences, a price attached that I pay in some form — not necessarily monetary. So it’s worth making that meaningful connection, in terms of understanding, or building awareness, by looking at the individual level first, to then see how we can lift that to the meta level, both globally and structurally. And if we say every action has effects, consequences, a price and so on — let me bring up an example again, even if it’s not the first thing you’d think of. We’ve picked up the Clubhouse example a few times in past rooms, that there was an update which led to a lot of thinking, looking at various possibilities and options.

And what I underlined very clearly in that context was not simply becoming active, but also thinking through possible effects, thinking in scenarios, weighing options against the backdrop of various relevant aspects. And then we introduced a test phase — first one episode, then we expanded it from one episode to a whole week, with loops of reflection along the way, drawing conclusions, then making decisions again. And the eventual decision was to continue on the X platform for now. And what was the intent, or the reasoning behind that approach? Because a switch like that has effects — it’s an action with consequences, and it comes with a possible price. That’s why we didn’t just act, but went through various considerations, weighing things up. And we can transpose that whole approach, in principle, onto all kinds of everyday situations regarding our own acting, and look more closely at that process, to lift it up to a certain meta level, abstract it, and see how it might transpose onto that global, societal perspective. Would anyone like to follow up on that?

Gladly.

Interesting that you mention that — let me bring in a new term. Thinking about sustainable acting toward society, I also found sustainable acting within a partnership. And that’s not just the partnership I have with my own partner, it’s also the partnership I share with you, and with our friend here, and with all of you in this room, when it comes to acting sustainably. There, terms like communication, open and honest communication, respect came up — we agreed on that too — finding shared values, and resolving conflicts or differing opinions constructively. And what’s also really important, which holds for a partnership both with my own partner and here in this club with you, is planning the future together sustainably, for society, because we think about the future together, including topics like financial stability, career goals, family planning, personal conflict resolution and so on. So what we do here every morning is, for me, very sustainable, and has a huge impact on my life.

Wonderful, thank you so much. Would you like to follow up on that too?

Yes — specifically on the last remarks, building the bridge over to how the Deep Talk Club itself operates. That was, for me, and I interpret it this way, the missing link. My own earlier remarks were about knowledge, information, and communication — namely presenting facts transparently and making them comprehensible for others, so they actually know what they’re talking about. Your comparison to how the Deep Talk Club works is the missing link there, because it also demands a competence — not knowledge competence, but methodological competence. How do I approach this? And for me that goes right down to the micro level — if a young person asks me, tell me about the zoo thing, and why — answering that question requires, in my view, fact-based knowledge, setting aside individual judgment for a moment, but also a methodological competence to convey that to a young person in that case, in a structured way. And that, I’ll repeat myself, was the missing link for me, to the overall contribution we each need to make in our own environment, and for ourselves, in ongoing reflection — what we need to have at our disposal, knowledge and methods. And one more thing, building on what was said — I did some research, though I think we’ve touched on sustainability before, a while back. Asking people on the street is one thing, but there’s also, I can’t paste a link here unfortunately, maybe that’s on me not knowing how, a fairly recent evaluation from the Federal Statistical Office that surveys the status of each of the 17 different sustainability goals. It’s called “Sustainable Development in Germany, Indicator Report 2022.” So you can form a reasonably objective picture of where we currently stand on our sustainability goals. Just wanted to add that as information. Thank you.

Wonderful, thank you so much. You have the option to post that — if you click the little speech-bubble icon in the bottom right, should be visible on your phone, you can share the link with us there, it works like a chat function, visible to everyone. Would you like to follow up too?

Yes, gladly, and I’ll go directly off what was just said — about factual knowledge, then the complexity of facts, and then a really important point that occupies us every day, whenever we read the media: the conscious omission of facts. The first thing that came to mind for me on sustainability and acting is that I wanted to prepare and read up on ecology — comparing cars, is a petrol car more sustainable than an EV. And I found that the complexity of the facts isn’t enough to answer that question with a clear conscience in the short time available. Because a lawyer always says, it depends. And that’s exactly it. Instinctively, I’d have immediately said, an EV is more ecological, more economical. But then there are calculation models from the ADAC that show it only becomes true from around 117,000 or 120,000 kilometres — and then I ask myself, do I know anyone with an EV that’s driven 120,000 kilometres? I don’t want to argue for or against EVs, or for combustion engines. I just want to make clear, our friend says the facts, the knowledge we have, are necessary to be able to act sustainably. But the complexity of the facts is so vast that I always end up seeing what I want to see, finding what I want to find, and sometimes getting contradictory information for my own brain from one and the same organisation — say, a major automotive association — depending on, as you put it so nicely, which survey, and depending on the speaker’s intention, meaning depending on which direction they want to steer me with their knowledge of the facts, consciously or unconsciously, and in doing so, consciously or unconsciously leaving out facts, which then, consciously or unconsciously, leads me toward acting in one direction or another.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And if we step up one level here, under our overarching theme of acting, we’ve talked about action competence before, and that term came up again today too — let me bring in the definition from the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education, to reintroduce some terms we’ve already used. Action competence is the individual’s ability to behave appropriately, thoughtfully, and in an individually and socially responsible way in professional, societal, and private situations — and then we have the various components under that. We’d looked at self-management as an aspect of action competence, and gone into various deeper areas from there. Ultimately, whichever area we pick up, whether it’s methodological competence, subject competence, self-management competence, social competence and so on, it becomes very clear that we’re really talking about the overarching — and someone already built that bridge today — this meta-learning, these future skills we’ve needed in the past too, but now against the backdrop of specific developments, including technological developments like AI, which make it harder, for example, to distinguish fake news from facts, and so specific new forms of competence become necessary, to look again at what’s actually needed, how we handle certain things — on one hand acquiring knowledge, expanding skills and abilities, and at the same time, given the flood of information out there, being able to distinguish what I can actually use as fact-based information and what I probably shouldn’t. Which means we’re moving into an area that’s becoming more challenging — we’ve talked about this in past rooms too — we used to have things like primary and secondary literature, we used to have to do research to check whether we could rely on a source or not. Then the internet came along, knowledge became accessible in every area, regardless of whether we could leave our own country or travel or not, but we still had to be able to tell information apart, research it and so on. And now AI is arriving, producing videos that look damn real, and the better AI gets at that, the harder it becomes, probably almost impossible, to tell real from fake. So what does that actually mean, on the level of action competence and the overarching meta-competencies we need as key qualifications and future skills, how do we handle this kind of information, to then be able to act on it again?

Let me answer that question directly, the one you posed at the end and during your remarks — what do we need? We need your competence, in a lot of people’s heads — adult education, first and foremost. That’s the first thing. Adult education, and now the second position, you might know this one, I’ve said it before — education begins with the education of the educator. And the learning that follows from that is, for me, a reciprocal process. The insight that whoever is in the role of teacher also finds themselves, in relation to the learner, in the role of learner too. And that’s actually a meta-level above the requirement of purely conveying fact-based knowledge and mastering the method of conveying that knowledge. These two things — the role-understanding of a teacher toward a learner — because that isn’t based purely on factual knowledge, but reaches significantly into personality structures, or is shaped by them.

Thank you. Wonderful. And that makes clear how relevant the term lifelong learning is in this context on one hand, but also that it doesn’t just mean starting to learn very young and continuing into old age — but precisely this aspect you raised, that the role of teacher is simultaneously the role of learner. So we’re back at that Socrates quote, the more I know, the more I know that I don’t know. Everything circles back around here, and it becomes clear how interwoven it all is fundamentally, and it also makes clear that it doesn’t make sense, in quotation marks, to stir up or favour something like a generational conflict, in the sense of, the young only want this, the old only want that. The example I brought up earlier, with my eleven-year-old son, shows how unbelievably deep these exchanges can be, where the teacher learns too, looks in wonder at new questions we might never have arrived at ourselves, is astonished at how an eleven-year-old can formulate questions like that and what he thinks about, and takes that as an incentive to research eggs and cows and milk together online. And that shows how important this aspect is — that every generation, every age, matters in exchange, in dialogue, to together make new experiences, generate insights, and keep questioning things — especially things, and here we’re back at unconscious bias, that we’d never question because they’re so self-evident to us in one place or another, and to be brought into that irritation simply through someone else’s question, regardless of their age, to think about certain things, and then transpose that onto all kinds of situations, private, professional, or societal.

Would anyone else like to follow up here?

You were a bit quicker, go ahead, I’m not the moderator, I’ll just mute myself.

Okay, let’s have you go first then.

Thank you. I’ll keep this brief — another essential contribution, I think, that each of us can make, and here we’re back at my favourite topic, terminology. You may remember, or know from the mainstream media, that there’s currently a post making the rounds from an influencer complaining about having had to work eight hours, which led to a huge backlash and so on. But what I mean, and I’ve already tried this once with a LinkedIn post, let’s stop talking about a generational conflict in the future, and start talking about a generational opportunity instead. That would be a small, but I think essential, contribution toward seeing the topic from a different angle.

Thank you for letting me go first. Wonderful, thank you so much. Would you like to add to that?

Back to framing and wording again. I want to hug you both — I’ve written down everything you both said. I already know what my main conversation topic will be this weekend with my partner, who works in a school. It’s about exactly this — we Germans complain, we complain a lot, and we especially complain about our education system and our schools. And then you often hear the answer you also hear in political contexts, there’s nothing I can do, I alone can’t change the system. And then I try to motivate my partner — you don’t even need to. The system doesn’t need to change first. What was said, education begins with the education of the educator, with raising awareness, with the learner’s own attitude, saying, I am a learner, through exchange, through wording. That’s something we can start with immediately, we don’t need to wait for a change in the law — anyone who wants to, anyone who wants a society working together instead of against each other, can start with that, by questioning things, by working on themselves. It begins with upbringing, and it’s not just about needing to change the system from the top, which is certainly necessary in certain areas too, but it’s also about — and I notice this often — how we always retreat from responsibility, saying, there’s nothing I can do, and by doing that we’re shirking responsibility. But we’ve also said many times in these rooms, if everyone manages just one percent of change in their own everyday life, sustainability or societal change, just one percent — the whole of society doesn’t need to change overnight, but if everyone moves one percent in a new direction on certain topics, life already becomes much, much more liveable and pleasant. Thank you for your contribution, that we start with wording, with reframing terms, and my favourite line of yours today, already a highlight: education begins with the education of the educator.

Wonderful, and let me build a bridge here too.

You’re unmuted, by the way.

Sorry about that.

And, wonderful, this bridge with framing and wording, and it’s a lovely example, that instead of generational conflict, speaking of generational opportunity — and this framing, reframing words differently, plays an important role here too, I think, in terms of what we take away from today’s room. We picked up a term, mentioned earlier, that’s become a real buzzword, a trend word: sustainability. Maybe, especially against the backdrop of the discussion we’ve had and the aspects we’ve raised, not looking at sustainability purely from, say, the ecological angle, but both on a small and a large scale — coming back to the original question, what does sustainability actually mean in acting, both on the individual level and the extended level, individually in relation to myself, in relation to interpersonal interaction, relationships, relationship management, in relation to society and so on — what can we hold onto here, on this level, to round today off nicely?

Let me try, and the direct answer, what we can do, what everyone can do — I’ll stick with this — is constructive communication, discussion, mutual exchange. Because sustainability, this comes through clearly and unambiguously from the definition, is a process that concerns existing generations in different roles, and future generations. And to arrive at a mutually agreed, coordinated process, you need coordination, and so we’re back at communication. And I’d already laid out what role we, the leading generation right now, so to speak, who bear particular responsibility for the economic aspect, the social structure we live in, and of course very much for the ecological consequences too, need to take on, actively take on, within that communication — to listen, to try to understand, to convey to the other person that they’ve been understood, and from there arrive at a shared way of acting. The overarching framework, again, you know it by now, is that education begins with the education of the educator, and requires knowledge, factual knowledge, and requires a toolbox of methods. That, for me, would be the big overarching frame for today’s topic that we’ve discussed, and one that carries a lot of added value, for me at least — I hope for you too. That was more or less already my closing word. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Would you like to follow up too?

Gladly. I’ve said this repeatedly over the last few days, I always come back to my two favourite words, because they fit any topic: together, not against each other. And building on what was just said — the hardest thing for me to learn was that understanding doesn’t automatically mean agreement, because for automatic understanding, or agreement, further processes are needed on my end. But the basis is simply this: do I listen to the other person to understand, or to respond? And if we listen to understand, that doesn’t automatically mean we’re signalling agreement. Together, not against each other. Have a wonderful day, everyone.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And as I already announced yesterday, we have more topics in preparation this week, building toward one of the aspects I didn’t get to at last Sunday’s digital campfire — a level I’d like to open up with you all this coming Sunday, under the heading “Action 3,” so to speak. And against the backdrop of what we discussed today, we still have the aspect of innovation, which I’d like to open up tomorrow — acting and innovation, that’s what we’ll look at. How does acting foster innovation and progress, that’s the question we’ll explore tomorrow, before slowly building the bridges toward acting and learning, and then acting and education. And we’ll also look again at acting through non-action, to have laid the groundwork, so to speak, for the various aspects at play here, so that at the digital campfire, under this heading “Action 3,” we can also pick up the aspect of the X platform — specifically things like freedom of speech, hate speech and so on. And against that backdrop, the bridges we’ve prepared, and the aspects we consider relevant, we’ll pick those up again and discuss the whole thing in relation to X and X Spaces together with you. I think that’ll be a genuinely fascinating aspect too, taking X, in this case, as an example, and against the backdrop of everything we’re preparing, looking at how what happens on X can be embedded into this construct, in quotation marks. And what advantages and disadvantages we might see, what might be worth viewing critically, and on the other hand, what opportunity might lie beneath it all. I’m genuinely, genuinely curious about that. So, I’m looking forward to continuing with you all tomorrow at 8, with the topic of acting and innovation, and curious which direction our rooms take over the next few days, and what insights we can draw from bringing these topics together, this Sunday at the digital campfire. With that, I wish you all a wonderful day today, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow at 8, here at Deep Talk. Until then. Ciao.