Objectives for the
Conversations & Dialogues at the Conference
Main Objective
- To re-cast contemporary global concerns and issues in the language of spiritually-engaged sustainability [or sustainable future(s).
- To review and learn from the “business-as-usual” approach to sustainable development and its impact on human societies, nature and our common future
- To explore orientations, experiences and futures of sustainability (moving away from the hegemony of mainstream technological or economic points of views)
- To explore, encourage and share a development logic of Being (within a nature-oriented cosmology) and not simply a growth logic of Having or material possessiveness (translated as demand)
- To explore notions including gross national happiness (GNH) or well-being, spiritual quotient, spiritual capital, “green deen”, mindfulness, interconnectedness, servant leadership and many more that have come into contemporary usage, and that offer spiritually-engaged sustainability new ideas, new scenarios of imagination and a new language
- To explore new conceptions of personhood, community, nature and their deep inter-connectedness (i) to foster friendship across age, gender, ethnic communities, religious affiliation and regions; and (ii) to conceive a world from deep inter-connectedness
- To promote the systematic study of spiritually-engaged sustainability and its dynamic global institutionalisation