Section Homepage
Rationale & Concerns
Nat/PMA/2012/Penang
Where Are We Today?
The world has certainly benefited from the mainstream economic development path. It is a development path we are all directly or indirectly implicated in. In our everyday life, we partake in its benefits, pleasures and conveniences. Sometimes we even feel invincible, technologically 'improving' the world to fit our conception of an ideal habitat or lifestyle to serve our needs, wants and desires. The glittering images and range of dramatic choices in the world we have created endlessly seduce us...We like to think we are gods! The luxuries it promotes for our consumption have framed our idea of the Good Life in a Consumerist Utopia, Here and Now. And when confronted with negative consequences here and crises there of taking this path of ever-increasing, blind material consumption, we creatively take recourse to the invented concept of “sustainable development” to kick the crisis further down the road. And continue our "business-as-usual" attitude/orientation. Can we continue with this?
“Business-as-Usual” Sustainable Development Is Unsustainable
Although sustainable development has become a household term, ironically, the prospect of a sustainable future appears to be fading ever more rapidly today. Though the idea developed out of a genuine concern for the negative impacts of mainstream economic development on the environment, reminders are increasing by the day that human interference in the ecology and life processes are having dire consequences, across time and space. Our excitement about our achievements aside, the biosphere is under serious threat like never before. Clearly, all life is threatened.
Tragically, despite the fact that the world is set on a path towards recurring disasters and destruction – sometimes silent and invisible, sometimes loud and dramatic – the response to these unambiguous signs that modern economic development is fatally flawed has been to pursue more of the same. A host of creative economic and technological solutions have emerged in pursuit of one aim: to allow continued material growth in a 'new framework' regardless of the colossal negative impacts on our biosphere.
So far, mainstream sustainable development has failed to deliver the right results because the focus has been on maintaining the logic of material growth. In the main, it has been “business-as-usual”. A finite Earth just cannot be matched with the infinite desires of humanity. And as Mahatma Gandhi succinctly said, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” This is greed with an acute myopic disorder !
As a result, the Earth and human societies have been pushed to the brink of disaster...followed by more disasters, both natural and “man-made”. The future that we were so careless about 50 or 100 years ago is today our present and it poses a huge ecological and social challenge. This challenge has become a trans-border issue and inter-generational reality. It cuts across space and time. Human civilization is in crisis because of all-round unsustainability.
There is a growing need to re-think development, and more so now, sustainable development, an idea and practice that held out so much hope for so many for so long...It was the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, it is turning out to be a mirage.
In the search for a more sustainable world and experience, there is a need to take a closer look at our rich histories and discover the many pregnant futures that are conceivable and possible. Essentially, we need to look into the traditions of the indigenous peoples of the world, to nurture feminine cultures (modeled on Mother Earth), to dialogue and celebrate religious worldviews and 'world-feels', to invest in alternative non-invasive, non-polluting technologies, to acknowledge multi-verses and the many pathways to the future and to address the growing trends to trans-form – not change – the human agenda in all areas of its expression. In short, we need to consolidate, network and move the human agenda forward.
Concerned persons from all walks of life in various parts of the world have made enormous efforts to conceive and practise development that intellectually and emotionally goes beyond the “business-as-usual” notion of sustainable development. By deeply looking into our cultures and cosmologies and mindfully designing our futures, we can find pathways to a development that the world -- including the scientific and business communities -- is waking up to: a spiritually-engaged sustainability.
Spiritually-Engaged Sustainability: The Way Forward
People understand and engage with spirituality in many different ways. It is the basis of religion (not the other way round), religiosity and religious institutions. It animates religious life. It offers us an understanding of our place in the 'larger picture', our intimate dependent connectedness to the larger cosmos, to each other and to the 'transcendental'. It offers us a cosmological point of view. It gives us a sense of wonder and awe at Creation and its creative processes, and evokes humility in our Being. It encourages love and compassion as a sustainable state for all to live together in dialogue, peace and harmony...now and for the future. It is rooted in permanence, where we engage with the world by Being, not by 'Possessing' or ‘Having’. In a sense, it actively totalising and experiential.
Spirituality encourages a way with non-materialism and ‘non-materialistic development’, offering a different understanding and experience of engagement, achievements, accomplishments, ownership, involvement and adventure. The inner core of spirituality radiates an awareness of all-round sustainability -- our engagement with all living and non-living things, our personhood, our choices, our social and technology design drives, and our place in the universe (or an universe of multi-verses). To have a spiritual experience is to mindfully see ourselves in deep interconnectedness/ interdependence, to engage with the universe (or an universe of multi-verses) from that totalising perspective and to act from that self-consciousness.
This focus is beginning to dawn on many and is shaping the discourse around the world in various fields. It is a sure pathway to wean us from the “business-as-usual” approach to sustainable development, to re-cast the imperialistic profit-motive to one that grows a humane economy, to move away from monologues to dialogues to 'multi-logues', and to free us from structures of educational/learning short-sightedness that produce 'products' for the exploitation-based economic system to forming people who authentically care.
But in order to take this difficult path, we need to break away from our usual modes of thinking and feeling and being driven by crude materialistic worldviews and lifestyles of the Good Life in a Consumerist Utopia. For this pathway to shape our everyday life, the future generations and human civilization, we need not only to expand its presence as a culture of thinking-feeling-emoting, or Being, but also as a culture of creative, self-conscious institution-building, promoting sustainability-spirituality realities (or multi-verses) at the local and global levels.
The “business-as-usual” approach to sustainable development offers the world more discussions, debates, reports, technologies … and more disasters. Sadly, it offers a mindset to transform our disasters into commodities, camouflaging and consolidating the profit-motive, yet again. We talk about change because it is convenient. What we need to do is to trans-form, to change rules, to productively upset status quo and set ourselves a new direction. We need an approach to sustainability that is influenced by spirituality i.e. a spiritually-engaged sustainability, which gives us a chance to offer future generations a life of creativity, growth, dialogue, harmony and authentic adventure with the universe and its fellow beings.
The world has certainly benefited from the mainstream economic development path. It is a development path we are all directly or indirectly implicated in. In our everyday life, we partake in its benefits, pleasures and conveniences. Sometimes we even feel invincible, technologically 'improving' the world to fit our conception of an ideal habitat or lifestyle to serve our needs, wants and desires. The glittering images and range of dramatic choices in the world we have created endlessly seduce us...We like to think we are gods! The luxuries it promotes for our consumption have framed our idea of the Good Life in a Consumerist Utopia, Here and Now. And when confronted with negative consequences here and crises there of taking this path of ever-increasing, blind material consumption, we creatively take recourse to the invented concept of “sustainable development” to kick the crisis further down the road. And continue our "business-as-usual" attitude/orientation. Can we continue with this?
“Business-as-Usual” Sustainable Development Is Unsustainable
Although sustainable development has become a household term, ironically, the prospect of a sustainable future appears to be fading ever more rapidly today. Though the idea developed out of a genuine concern for the negative impacts of mainstream economic development on the environment, reminders are increasing by the day that human interference in the ecology and life processes are having dire consequences, across time and space. Our excitement about our achievements aside, the biosphere is under serious threat like never before. Clearly, all life is threatened.
Tragically, despite the fact that the world is set on a path towards recurring disasters and destruction – sometimes silent and invisible, sometimes loud and dramatic – the response to these unambiguous signs that modern economic development is fatally flawed has been to pursue more of the same. A host of creative economic and technological solutions have emerged in pursuit of one aim: to allow continued material growth in a 'new framework' regardless of the colossal negative impacts on our biosphere.
So far, mainstream sustainable development has failed to deliver the right results because the focus has been on maintaining the logic of material growth. In the main, it has been “business-as-usual”. A finite Earth just cannot be matched with the infinite desires of humanity. And as Mahatma Gandhi succinctly said, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” This is greed with an acute myopic disorder !
As a result, the Earth and human societies have been pushed to the brink of disaster...followed by more disasters, both natural and “man-made”. The future that we were so careless about 50 or 100 years ago is today our present and it poses a huge ecological and social challenge. This challenge has become a trans-border issue and inter-generational reality. It cuts across space and time. Human civilization is in crisis because of all-round unsustainability.
There is a growing need to re-think development, and more so now, sustainable development, an idea and practice that held out so much hope for so many for so long...It was the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, it is turning out to be a mirage.
In the search for a more sustainable world and experience, there is a need to take a closer look at our rich histories and discover the many pregnant futures that are conceivable and possible. Essentially, we need to look into the traditions of the indigenous peoples of the world, to nurture feminine cultures (modeled on Mother Earth), to dialogue and celebrate religious worldviews and 'world-feels', to invest in alternative non-invasive, non-polluting technologies, to acknowledge multi-verses and the many pathways to the future and to address the growing trends to trans-form – not change – the human agenda in all areas of its expression. In short, we need to consolidate, network and move the human agenda forward.
Concerned persons from all walks of life in various parts of the world have made enormous efforts to conceive and practise development that intellectually and emotionally goes beyond the “business-as-usual” notion of sustainable development. By deeply looking into our cultures and cosmologies and mindfully designing our futures, we can find pathways to a development that the world -- including the scientific and business communities -- is waking up to: a spiritually-engaged sustainability.
Spiritually-Engaged Sustainability: The Way Forward
People understand and engage with spirituality in many different ways. It is the basis of religion (not the other way round), religiosity and religious institutions. It animates religious life. It offers us an understanding of our place in the 'larger picture', our intimate dependent connectedness to the larger cosmos, to each other and to the 'transcendental'. It offers us a cosmological point of view. It gives us a sense of wonder and awe at Creation and its creative processes, and evokes humility in our Being. It encourages love and compassion as a sustainable state for all to live together in dialogue, peace and harmony...now and for the future. It is rooted in permanence, where we engage with the world by Being, not by 'Possessing' or ‘Having’. In a sense, it actively totalising and experiential.
Spirituality encourages a way with non-materialism and ‘non-materialistic development’, offering a different understanding and experience of engagement, achievements, accomplishments, ownership, involvement and adventure. The inner core of spirituality radiates an awareness of all-round sustainability -- our engagement with all living and non-living things, our personhood, our choices, our social and technology design drives, and our place in the universe (or an universe of multi-verses). To have a spiritual experience is to mindfully see ourselves in deep interconnectedness/ interdependence, to engage with the universe (or an universe of multi-verses) from that totalising perspective and to act from that self-consciousness.
This focus is beginning to dawn on many and is shaping the discourse around the world in various fields. It is a sure pathway to wean us from the “business-as-usual” approach to sustainable development, to re-cast the imperialistic profit-motive to one that grows a humane economy, to move away from monologues to dialogues to 'multi-logues', and to free us from structures of educational/learning short-sightedness that produce 'products' for the exploitation-based economic system to forming people who authentically care.
But in order to take this difficult path, we need to break away from our usual modes of thinking and feeling and being driven by crude materialistic worldviews and lifestyles of the Good Life in a Consumerist Utopia. For this pathway to shape our everyday life, the future generations and human civilization, we need not only to expand its presence as a culture of thinking-feeling-emoting, or Being, but also as a culture of creative, self-conscious institution-building, promoting sustainability-spirituality realities (or multi-verses) at the local and global levels.
The “business-as-usual” approach to sustainable development offers the world more discussions, debates, reports, technologies … and more disasters. Sadly, it offers a mindset to transform our disasters into commodities, camouflaging and consolidating the profit-motive, yet again. We talk about change because it is convenient. What we need to do is to trans-form, to change rules, to productively upset status quo and set ourselves a new direction. We need an approach to sustainability that is influenced by spirituality i.e. a spiritually-engaged sustainability, which gives us a chance to offer future generations a life of creativity, growth, dialogue, harmony and authentic adventure with the universe and its fellow beings.
The Conference is conceived as a platform for the collective voice of the people who have been engaging in such modes of thinking-feeling-acting. It will explore ways out of a world that creates/promotes strangers, enemies and exploiters and promote a world of friends and friendships, influenced by a deep sense of interconnectedness. Engaging participants in structured and meaningful conversations and dialogues, the Conference aims to offer opportunities for all, novice or experts, to imagine, negotiate and co-create a world of worlds that all can own, build and promote together....across time and space.
