Paper short abstract:

This will follow shortly, thanks.

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary myths can be understood as value-laden assumptions that create an experience of the world (Ongaro and Laws 2022). For example, David Graeber described the origin of the myth of the barter system as the founding block of Adam Smith’s theory of the free market and modern economics in general (2011). Based on ethnographic data collected in northeast Poland, this paper deconstructs the concepts of newness and continuity and asks about their role in significant social, political, and technological transitions. By analyzing the interplay between the two concepts, first, in the historical context of Soviet-led, post-Second World War creation of “new people” in the “reclaimed territories” in the former East Prussia, and secondly, through the drive to change the values people hold about energy to achieve low-carbon scenarios (International Energy Agency), moral ideals that are an integral component of transformations come to the fore. Identifying and eliminating behavioral challenges to arrive at a certain type of future can be achieved through technological solutions that are supposed to bring them about (Pink et al. 2023). The focus on behavior, approached from a metaphysical footing, presumes that in any given moment, “only the present exists while the past and the future are unreal” (Ringel, 2016:196). This “unreality” is an invitation to view future-making as myth-making. Keywords: energy transition, values, behavior, myth, future-making