The thought, energy, and resources (capital, labor, creativity, and so on) directed towards resolving the major problems facing our interdependent world continue to be largely motivated by competition between separate entities primarily devoted to their own interests (corporations and nation-states among others). However, at the same time, there is an abundance of energy targeted towards building more cooperative and just relations. The focus and creativity of many of these initiatives are some of the most heartening aspects of these times.
Most initiatives aiming to solve world problems focus on material solutions. Considering the material focus of the centuries-long era we are transitioning out of, this is not surprising. There is less recognition of the need to transform the spirit and quality of relationships, aspirations, and perspectives that are driving the problems.[1]
The understanding that the evolutionary crisis we are confronting as a species is essentially a spiritual crisis has been steadily growing in recent decades. As Otto Scharma from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology notes, ‘You cannot change the system unless you change the mindset or the consciousness of the people who are enacting that system. The real question is, how do you do that?’ [2]
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, agreed to by all nations, are sometimes thought of as erring in their focus on quantifiable material targets – missing the deeper changes needed in consciousness and drawing attention away from the critical question, ‘How do you change established mindsets?’
The SDGs essentially bridge from the materially focused spirit of the present towards something new. Without some grounding in the mindset of the past governments, major sectors of business and industry, professional bodies, and local authorities (the power centers of modern societies) would never have considered them as anything other than aspirational and visionary, and would certainly not have endorsed and engaged with the goals to the extent that they currently do.
The new, and some would say ‘spiritual’ or (as the UN puts it, ‘transformational’) element in the Goals is that they are interdependent. In other words, it is a whole-systems approach to human development and addressing the problems of humanity, centered on understandings of the rights and freedoms of all human beings, alongside a recognition that the Goals apply to both the local and global levels. They equally seek to address challenges in poor and wealthy areas. This integrated approach is leading nations and peoples to the fundamental realization that the Earth is One and Humanity is One – and the problems we face require us to think and plan from that perspective.
It is also worth noting that there are goals and targets aimed at a transformation of values, such as Goal 12 to ‘Ensure Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns.’ This requires widespread public changes in understanding what is valuable and desirable. It has led, for example, to the German Federal Government’s National Programme for Sustainable Consumption, aiming to ensure that consumers have a wide choice of environmentally friendly and socially viable products and services.[3]
Agriculture, food production, and distribution are being transformed by local and global problems of hunger, health, biodiversity loss, environmental pollution, and the growing divide between extreme wealth and extreme poverty. They are also being transformed by a whole-systems vision. While changes are happening at a far slower pace than many would like, these are areas where a new spirituality of wholeness and integration is beginning to have a significant impact.
From an Ageless Wisdom perspective, the interdependent crises of hunger, poor nutrition, and environmental devastation reflect a need to transform the quality of relationships within the human family and between the various kingdoms of nature. But as Scharma asks – how do we do this, and do it at scale, when it really requires an ability to think and participate in life from the perspective of the soul or Buddha nature? Through the lens of eight ‘Acupuncture Points for Social Transformation’ (including Soil, Food & Climate Justice; Consumption and Planetary Wellbeing; and Governance and Democracy), the Presencing Institute operates a wide range of laboratories with participants from around the world experimenting with techniques to transform ‘underlying operating systems from ego-system to eco-system awareness.’ [4]
Pioneering farmers, nutritionists, and thinkers from a wide variety of indigenous, spiritual, and ethical backgrounds have, for decades, been evolving approaches to agriculture focusing on the quality of food produced and on care for and love of the natural world. Their discoveries are now beginning to have an impact on national and global plans for a more sustainable and regenerative approach to agriculture. One of the most influential leaders in this is the Rudolf-Steiner-inspired Biodynamic Agriculture movement, highlighting that agri-culture ‘is not only about cultivating farming land, processing and trading good food, but also about the development of humans and the earth.’ The Biodynamic Federation Demeter International, headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany, represents 36 national organizations with over 7,000 farmers in 65 countries.[5] As Harvard Divinity School scholar Dan McKanan points out, the whole environmental movement has been ‘enriched by anthroposophy’ to the extent that biodynamic farming is now a major player in the organic movement.[6]
Based in the Egyptian desert, SEKEM is inspired by anthroposophical thinking. Working with an overall vision of establishing an ‘Economy of Love,’ it includes a network of biodynamic farms, trading companies producing organic and biodynamic products, a Waldorf school, and a community school for children from disadvantaged groups, as well as the Heliopolis University for Sustainable Development. When the founder returned from Austria to his homeland of Egypt in 1975, he was inspired to establish a program for social, cultural, and spiritual renewal, blending Steiner’s ideas with Islam and ancient Egyptian thought – the name Sekem means ‘vitality from the sun.’ [7]
Perhaps the most notable example of an emerging spiritual consciousness impacting approaches to Sustainable Development Goals on food production, nutrition, and poverty eradication is the Conscious Food Systems Alliance – ‘a movement of food, agriculture, and consciousness practitioners’ convened by the UN Development Programme. Membership includes a diversity of groups like Food Sense Wales – aiming to influence how food is produced and consumed in Wales, the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organizational Development, Ghana – bringing indigenous perspectives to community development work, and Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, Sweden – ‘a world-class sustainability center for research, teaching, and impact.’ Alliance members share a goal of ‘supporting people from across food and agriculture systems to cultivate the inner capacities that activate systemic change and regeneration.’ Transforming food systems, the Alliance suggests, requires work ‘not only on policy, research, and project implementation, but also on the inner drivers of individual, collective, and institutional behaviors.’ [8]
From small local groups to major initiatives at a global level, there is today a growing sense of global responsibility and a well-honed will to think and act in terms of the well-being of whole systems. §
1. BBC Radio 4, Shared Planet (1 October 2013)
2. The Conscious Food Systems Alliance, Transforming Food Systems from Within
3. BMEL, National Programme for Sustainable Consumption
4. u-school, Acupuncture Points
5. Biodynamic Federation, Demeter
6. D. McKanan, Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism. University of California Press, 2018, pp. xv – xv
7. Sekem
8. The Conscious Food System Alliance
