Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview

We cite these quotations at the outset of this introduction as they provide the right tone for what we set out to do. The book draws deeply from spirituality as a universal human experience and understanding, a secular spirituality, and not from religious creeds or doctrines. The policy thinking moves beyond the traditional linear reductionist and deterministic world view to a more systems approach which includes human intuition and inner knowing.

Humanity is currently plagued with several well documented global-level crises such as climate change, rising air pollution, decreasing forest cover, massive species extinction, challenges of migration and displacement, poverty and inequality, gender inequality, and overall poor health and wellbeing. These problems have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic which revealed severe fault lines in the current public policies and in the economic and social systems we have in place. For the last two centuries, since the first industrial revolution, our development model equated happiness with material prosperity and economic ‘growth’. It measures progress in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and to some extent in terms of human development dimensions. Public policies are also designed, implemented and evaluated based on this model in all sectors including health, education, economics and sustainability. However, this development model fails to seriously consider the social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. By constantly emphasizing this old paradigm of growth, we as a society have created complex policy problems for which we cannot easily find solution. It is time for a change. A change that is urgent and revolutionary and not only at an individual level but at a cultural level. A change that is sustainable and all-inclusive. A change that needs to come from inside and out and that which supports the wellbeing of oneself, others and the planet.