Mapping Inner Developers, Spiritual Ecologists, Wisdom Seekers & Practical Philosophers
Hello and welcome to Rewilding Philosophy, your newsletter about ekoPhilosophical health for our times. This is an exercise in mapping the space around inner transformation, not a complete map. A more comprehensive map exploring the synergies between inner transformation and socio-ecological change was developed within the “A Mindset for the Anthropocene” project at the Research Institute for Sustainability Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, which I was part of until 2021. The map is an interactive database for exploring the global network of people, initiatives, organizations, publications, and other resources that link the cultivation of mindsets with socio-ecological transformation efforts. This idea seemed reasonable when it emerged in 2016/17. However, the sheer number of projects, people, and publications has made it very challenging. So today's article focuses on the historical development and sentiments surrounding these topics rather than on individual groups and people.
With the Inner Development Goals Summit in Stockholm last week, which had 1,500 participants in person and several thousand online, I came to think about what this topic has become and evolved into over the past decade.
While ten years ago, inner transformation was a marginal topic in the sustainability context, it has now become acknowledged as a central piece of the puzzle.
The argumentation for an inner transformation goes something like this: To truly regenerate, we need to change not just our infrastructures and systems but also ourselves — individually and collectively.
While inner - as opposed to - outer transformation are not clearly defined, the inner dimension commonly addresses the intra-subjective elements, such as worldviews, mindsets, paradigms or values. In contrast, the outer dimension commonly refers to “events” such as technologies, policies, or infrastructures.
The importance of inner transformation is supported not only by the late systems scientist Donella Meadows, who stated that changing underlying mindsets and paradigms is the greatest leverage for change, but also by spiritual traditions over millennia.
“The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.” William James
In Eastern traditions like Buddhism and Taoism, for example, inner peace and harmony are seen as integral to living sustainably within the natural world. In the West, Stoicism and other philosophical schools emphasize personal virtue and self-discipline as foundational for societal well-being.
This was followed by the Romantic movement in the 19th century which reacted against industrialization with transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau arguing for the importance of nature and personal spirituality as a response to the social and environmental dislocations brought by rapid industrial growth.
Since the mid-20th century, the Human Potential Movement linked personal development to societal change. Thinkers like Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers emphasized that self-actualization is crucial for personal fulfillment and positive social impact.
The environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s highlighted how inner attitudes toward nature affected ecological practices. The Deep Ecology movement, for example, which was founded by Arne Naess, posited that true ecological sustainability required a transformation in consciousness to recognize the intrinsic value of all living beings.
In the last decade, since I entered the picture, spiritual ecology has emerged, integrating spiritual and ecological awareness as pathways to tackle global challenges. Advocates like Joanna Macy describe the Great Turning as the shift from an industrial growth society to a life-sustaining, third revolution of human times.
Over the past decade, sentiments around inner transformation have diversified. Although the following points are not strictly sequential, they have emerged and gained prominence in this approximate order:
Mindfulness was a significant entry point for connecting inner and outer change, gaining serious academic study and public interest, thus allowing inner transformation for sustainability discussions.
Another prominent discourse around the inner dimension has been around relational approaches, with which I mean a relational, complex-systems lens, which helps address the challenges of our time. In the discourse around regeneration, the need for such a living systems-view of life is foundational. This debate is closely related to the work on values and our human-nature connection, as well as on integrating indigenous wisdom traditions.
A further development is around psychological wellbeing and trauma and the acknowledgment that people are not only traumatised due to the unbelievable volume of challenge and hopelessness, but also how trauma has caused the troubles we are facing in the first place.
Another field is in metamodernism, especially through the work of Hanzi Freinacht and “the Listening Society”, in which the authors express the need for a shift of the inner towards becoming more evolved, metamodern human beings. In fact, in metamodernim human development is one of the key drivers towards that development. The metamodern person comes with a different set of values and a plurality of perspectives that neither, traditional, not modern or postmodern people expressed before, such as sincere irony, or informed naiveté.
At the latest since John Varvaeke’s excellent YouTube series on wisdom, the need for wisdom has been pointed out by many people in different forms and disguises. According to Vervaeke, a cognitive scientist and philosopher, wisdom is essential for navigating the complexities and uncertainties of today’s life. He believes that wisdom is critical for helping us as individuals and society in general to address the modern "meaning crisis," wherein traditional sources of meaning have lost their influence, leading to feelings of alienation and disconnection. Wisdom, so he argues, allows people to make well-rounded decisions by considering emotional, moral, and practical dimensions. Where this wisdom comes from is addressed differently by different people. Many have started to lean towards indigenous wisdom as a promising source. Others rely more heavily on western wisdom traditions, such as stoic wisdom.
"To be wise is to move with the world. It is to be oriented in a certain way and to be in relation with the world's ongoing rehearsals of itself. It is the intensity of a field materializing as a body-in-movement. In this sense, wisdom is not a thing to be had, not a property governed by systems of ownership and identity, and not an achievement per se. Moreover, communicability is not the heart of wisdom: as a nonverbal autistic child might sense, as a murmuration of starlings might intuit, as a flowering plant bending to the glory of the sun might already know, there are other ways for the eloquence of wisdom to move things that have nothing to do with speaking.
But perhaps the most inviting insight gained by reframing wisdom as ecological relations and embodied attunements is that we are suddenly faced with a simultaneous revitalization of stupidity - not as lack, not as evil, not as deficiency, but as that which boundaries wisdom in its flows. That which gives it shape, without which wisdom would make no mark upon the world. If wisdom is orientation, and if orientation invites directionality, then wisdom is not a totalizing grasp of everything - but imperviousness to specific directions in order to touch the world and be touched in return." Bayo Akomolafe
Practical philosophy, including ekoPhilosophy, relates mostly to the second and fifth points (around relationality and wisdom). Though practical philosophy focuses less on the end goal (wisdom) but rather on the process, akin to the German saying “der Weg ist das Ziel” (the path is the goal).
When writing this article, I initially wanted to add names to these sentiments but realized I couldn't do justice to the growing number of people, projects, and publications. This increase is a positive sign. If anyone feels inclined to re-approach such a mapping, I would love to collaborate on a project within IPeP. If you're interested, please reach out to discuss potential funding.