RETHINKING GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT

Contrasting Doctrines of
Development

Human-Centered Development
and
Integral Development

Human-Centered Development:
Man’s supremacy and domination over
nature.
The rest of nature exists for human
good.
Everything acquires its value from its
utility to man.

Human-Centered Development:
Human well-being as the supreme good and
primary purpose of development.
The rest of nature as resources to be exploited to
human ends.
Materialistic – little regard for ethical values,
such as humaneness, sustainability, etc.
Success of development measured in quantitative
terms – usually monetary.

Integral Development:
The well-being of the entire community of life systems .
Interdependence, interrelatedness, interpenetration of
all things – human and non-human.
Mutual-enhancement.
Inherent right of non-human beings to exist & flourish.
Integral human mode of living within the larger
community of life systems.
Human well-being is best served in the context of the
well-being of all other Earth components.

Integral Development:
Planetary-consciousness – thinking and acting
within the context of the whole Earth.
All life-supporting economic and non-economic
actions – sensitivities toward all of nature.
Mutually-enhancing ways of producing,
consuming, living, relating.
Ecologically-sustaining, humanly-fulfilling,
socially-inclusive criteria of success and
progress.

Here’s a selection of provocative insights, intriguing
perspectives, and alternative proposals brought together
to encourage and expand meaningful public and global
conversations on ways to:
 Restore and maintain harmonious, mutually-
enhancing human presence with non-human members
of the Earth community.
 Strengthen the Earth’s capacity to continue to support
human and non-human life into the infinite future.

“The work of the future will be friendly toward the
environment and will accept the environment’s friendliness
toward us; it will be interdependent rather than competitive
and bellicose toward other humans; it will not exaggerate
individualism or jingoism or nationalism, but will have a
planetary worldview about it; it will not be about
controlling the environment; it will not fall into the fallacy of
an infinitely expanding mode of thinking about a finite
reality, namely the Earth and its gifts to us; it will not
succumb to economic determinism; it will look for its values
and its creativity beyond technology alone.”
-Gregory Bateson (Paraphrased by Matthew Fox)

“While humans do have their own
distinctive reality and unique value, these
must be articulated within a more
comprehensive context. Ultimately humans
find their own well-being [sic] within this
context. To consider that one is enhanced
by diminishing the other is an illusion.”
-Thomas Berry

“We need to reinvent the human within the community
of life systems. … In our efforts to reduce the other-
than-human components of the planet to subservience
… we have brought the entire set of life systems of the
planet, including the human, to an extremely
dangerous situation. Radical new cultural forms are
needed … [to] place the human within the dynamics of
the planet rather than place the planet within the
dynamics of the human.”
-Thomas Berry

“But shaping the [planetary] future … is
not something that can be accomplished by
solitary individuals working alone.
Therefore, it is necessary to consider which
social institutions are most likely to
sponsor positive actions, and how we can
develop more of them.”
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Nature reveals itself to us as a system
in a perpetual state of transformation. …
Everywhere in nature we see effort.
Why should its generative or preservative
action be stopped in man?”
-Lecomte du Noüy

“To build a sustainable civilization
we must learn how to foster global
partnership culture, self-organized
enterprises, and intricate, intelligent,
committed communities protected by
community-serving hierarchies.
Nothing less will do.”
-Robert G. Dyck

“The more we come to grips with our true nature as
humans and our place in the harmony of nature, the
more socially and ecologically responsible we are
likely to become. … The more socially and
ecologically responsible we become, the less
acquisitive, the less consumption-driven, and the less
adversarial we are likely to be. Of course, the less
acquisitive and the less consumption-driven we are,
the better for a finite Planet Earth and for posterity.”
-Efiong Etuk

“What we need is to explore our
beings, our heart and soul, our
inner selves, the causes of the
violence in which we engage.”
-Matthew Fox

“The way [forward] is through an overarching moral
and ethical system of values (metavalues) that
transcends the values within and differences between
various groups, be they hunters, conservationists,
corporations, or ethnic groups. … Once these
metavalues are accepted and expressed in thought and
action and are shared with others of like spirit [we
become] part of the transpersonal actualizing
brotherhood of mankind.”
-Michael W. Fox

“Mankind is on the threshold of a new stage in its
development. We should not only promote the
expansion of its material, scientific, and technical
basis, but, what is most important, the formation
of new value and humanistic aspirations … since
wisdom and humaneness are the ‘eternal truths’
that make the basis of humanity.”
-I. T. Frolov

“The necessity to unite with other living
things, to be related to them, is an
imperative need on the fulfillment
of which man’s sanity depends.”
-Erich Fromm

“[We are] faced with challenges that may well
imperil civilization as we know it. The old
solutions and procedures for dealing with
political and social problems no longer appear
to work. Hope seems to lie in beginning to seek
new creative solutions, new approaches and
breakthroughs for the global dilemmas we now
face.”
-Willis Harman

“Because of the interconnectedness of the
modern world, questions about development can
only be answered within the context of some
picture of a viable global future. … Development
is unlikely to be a matter of continued
exponential growth of GNP; a fundamental
departure from that path seems likely.”
-Willis Harman and John Hormann

“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the
health of our children, the quality of their education, or
the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our
poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of
our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It
measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our
wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our
devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short,
except that which makes life worthwhile.”
-Robert Kennedy

“Sustainability is a central value, and calls
for flexibility and mutual accommodation
among people, as well as between people
and their natural environment.”
-Ervin Laszlo

“Our present educational and social
failure to recognize new bases of
human relationships must change
if we are to survive.”
-Ashley Montagu

“What we do to the world’s body, we do
to our own. We are not master’s of this
world, we participate in its life.”
-Thomas Moore

“Our bodies reflect or participate in
the world’s body, so that if we harm
the outer body, our own bodies will
feel the effects.”
-Thomas Moore

“Our species … must ask itself where it wants to go
and what it wishes to accomplish. The inquiry into
what we are up to, what we can or should do with
ourselves and future generations, should
undoubtedly come first, if for no other reason than
because without an overall design our frenzied
activities can but give rise to colossal disorder –
which is precisely what is beginning to occur today.”
-Aurelio Peccei

“Unless individuals, groups, and nations can imagine,
construct, and creatively [devise] new ways of relating
to these complex changes [in the world], the lights will
go out. Unless man can make new and original
adaptations to his environment as rapidly as his
science can change the environment, our [civilization]
will perish...[and] international annihilation will be
the price we pay for a lack of creativity.”
-Carl R. Rogers

“It is not possible to use the techniques and
philosophies of the mechanistic paradigm to
heal the effects and devastations of that
paradigm. … Reductionism can certainly be
helpful in fixing our cars, but it has not
proved very helpful in facilitating our
understanding of ourselves, our world,
or the relationships therein.”
-Anne Wilson Schaef

“Until and unless we develop a new life-
style which is compatible with the real needs
of human nature, with the health of living
nature around us, and with the resource
endowment of the world … [the crisis] will
become worse and end in disaster.”
-E. F. Schumacher

“Everywhere people ask: ‘What can I do?’
The answer is as simple as it is
disconcerting: we can, each of us, work to
put our inner house in order. The guidance
we need for this work cannot be found in
science or technology.”
-E. F. Schumacher

“How long would we continue to
worship at the alter of economic
growth, accepting as unfortunate,
but accepting nonetheless,
the damage to the integrity of
creation?”
-Michael Schut

“One thing we no longer need to be told is
that we are in the throes of an appalling
crisis. … [T]he message is quite clear: our
entire way of life is humanly and
environmentally suicidal.”
-Philip Sherrard

“The ultimate goal of development is
not simply higher incomes, longer life
expectancies, or higher literacy rates,
but rather the capability for people and
communities to realize their full
responsible and creative potential.”
-John G. Sommer

“How can we make the quality of life,
rather than open-ended economic
growth, the focus of future thinking?”
-Charlene Spretnak

“The major error of the last century
has been the assumption that a total
society can be organized upon an
economic motive, upon profit.”
-Frank Tannenbaum

“Whether we examine capitalist free market notions or
Marxism as we have known it, whether we look at
liberalism, welfare statism, or at traditional theories
of Third World development – all of them seem less
and less relevant as events outrace our theoretical
formulations. …It is time to put our most passionately
held assumptions under the microscope. We may find
that they no longer correspond to the emerging
reality.”
-Alvin Toffler

“Humanity has the ability to make
development sustainable – to ensure
that it meets the needs of the present
generation without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet
their own needs.”
-The World Commission on Environment and Development

Planetary Sustainability of Man and Nature:

Interconnected, interrelated world in
which:

Daunting Ecological Imperatives:

New ways of being and living that are:

RETHINKING GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT

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