The Economics of True Sustainability

Here they are - the elements of truly sustainable economics that have been purposefully hidden from us. Happily, the principles of this new economics are simple, and understandable in plain English, and profoundly more beneficial than what we've had.

The "economics" we've had is corrupt. It intentionally skews our information, vision, and decisions - and leaves us with a despairing sense of what we can achieve. True sustainability requires a very different economics. And what is emerging has an amazing power, beauty, and ability to transform our lives.

Love, death, illness, trauma, birth - all take us to a world swirling with emotion, power, nurture, and deep knowing of ourselves and others - reminding us of what is missing in economic-life. It makes us supremely aware of the limitations of our conventional linear-rational-mental world. Our hearts are powerful, and core to our existence. They generate our values, goals, dreams; our sense of meaning, comfort, and support. They need inclusion in our decisions.

Most of our true wealth is composed of these very intangible deeper aspects of our lives. What do we feel if our children were gunned down in their classroom. What do we feel experiencing love and being loved, feeling we are of value to others, knowing we have something to contribute? Friendship, peace, security, health, adventure, joy, passion? Joining with others into richer untouched possibilities.

All these put our trivial conventional everyday concerns into true perspective, and deepen our connections and awareness of others. It's time to stop excluding these core dimensions of our lives from the decision-making processes of "economics".

* The Economics of True Sustainability can give us at least ten times better performance of equipment and institutions, revealing we have enough resources and energy to make the whole world a success.

* It embraces ecological systems, material and energy resource limits, life-force energy.

* It successfully includes, rather than excludes, the vital "unquantifiable" core aspects of life such as values, life goals, and the sacred, restoring them to visible and attainable aspects of our culture.

* It burrows to the hidden core dysfunctionalities of our culture - violence, rage, alcoholism, drug use, crime, abuse, apathy, failing schools. It shows these are mere symptoms of a single "disease of the spirit" caused by ignoring the deeper needs of our lives. And it shows direct means of resolving those problems.

* It shows how to meet the needs of all life as vital to our survival and well-being.

Truly sustainable economics gives a whole new identity to our lives. It creates an amazing economics based on compassion and sharing, not fear. Ending poverty, starvation, and battles over resources is just the smallest part of this economics.

We've seen enough of the results of greed. It's time to put economics in service to creating the best world we can imagine – for all.

This is about more than just better efficiency. Such "savings" are almost always spent for other things, rather than transforming our lives.

The value shifts of this new economics can be implemented rapidly and inexpensively.

This book provides tools to meaningfully incorporate these "unquantifiables" into economics and our lives. It includes concrete and award-winning examples of how this shift has been occurring and affecting economics at local levels for 30 years and how it can be globalized.