Resources & Blog

Very thrilled to share this Kosmos Journal special issue on Politics of Being featuring an interview of Christiana Figueres by Emelina Corrales, as well as contributions of Thomas Hübl, Arthur Dahl, Gary Malkin, May East, and Grandmother Ejna Jean Fleury. Read it all here!

This paper was aimed at being part of a collective book on the Politics of Being, where representatives of different wisdom traditions engaged professionally in a specific social issue would share their perspective on how to best address it. I am very grateful to Arthur Dahl, a governance specialist with a long career in the […]

Here are some notes on my latest adventures including at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, a road trip on Lakotas’ sacred territories, at the Inner Development Goals summit in Stockholm, and a contribution to the book The Great Upshift. You can read the latest politics of being newsletter here.

When I was a child, my grandmother found another one of her grandchildren stomping on ants he found below a rock. She got upset, told us: “Come here around the fire and pay attention, I have something to ask you: What do you think would happen if our winged relatives would suddenly disappear?” For children […]

What a pleasure to see the Politics of Being on Mexican TV! And to take it to the conclave on Sustainable and Resilient Communities of the Civil Society Engagement Group for the G20 (C20) – presided by spiritual leader Amma, as well as at the Beyond Growth conference organized by the European Parliament in Brussels. […]

Education Rather than filling brains with knowledge, the purpose of our education system should be to support the awakening and actualization of children’s true being. It should help them to grow as authentic human beings—in all their dimensions: physical, emotional, aesthetic, moral, intellectual, and spiritual. While it is traditionally feared that the focus on individual characters […]

Governance Democracy needs to evolve beyond its current form of “adversary democracy”, in which political parties compete for power, spurring polarization and paralysis. This implies a deepening of democracy through greater citizens participation – through a more direct, deliberative and digital democracy, integrated to representative democracy – a better balance between competence and popular control, […]

Economy Our economic systems need to be redesigned to ensure the satisfaction of everyone’s basic material needs and support the expression of our full potential – including spiritual, artistic, or cultural content and experiences, as well as care works – within ecological boundaries. All the current economic institutions need to evolve to serve this vision, […]

Justice The dominant paradigm of retributive justice builds upon and strengthens our instinct for retaliation, while the practice of restorative justice allows all those involved to cultivate human values and qualities such as understanding, deep listening, compassion, healing, inclusivity, courage and responsibility Restorative justice is based on a non-adversarial process involving all stakeholders through dialogue, […]

Nature The required paradigm shift in the way we consider and relate to our planet – as a sacred living entity, of which we are part – is best embodied at the policy level by recognizing the rights of nature, which is already occurring in many countries. Recognizing the rights of nature questions our unlimited […]

Food and Agriculture Eating is a sacred act through which we renew ourselves and connect to Mother Earth and the hard and loving work of many people. A “planetary health diet” could support both human and planetary health, which are inextricably connected. The way we eat is fundamental not only for our physical health but also […]

Such a wonderful conversation with Deepak Chopra, who appreciated very much the Politics of Being and wants to support it. “Anyone who is interested in preventing our collective consciousness sleepwalking to extinction should read this book. It is a very important, practrical treatice, […] a wonderful book.” “If it reaches a critical mass, we could […]

Health This holistic vision of health should inform the redesign of our healthcare systems and public health policies. A new paradigm for health is needed from one based on sickness, whose increasing costs for an aging population appears unsustainable, to one centered on prevention and well-being, in which societies support individuals is taking care of […]

Work and Organizations Evidence is growing that values-driven organizations as well as more decentralized and adaptable organizations based on trust, empowerment and the development of human socio-emotional capacities – sometimes called “Teal organizations” or “liberated companies” – are particularly suited to thrive in complex and uncertain environments. These organizational models are usually rooted in a […]

Childhood and Family Childhood well-being is decisive in building not only our capacity to flourish, but also to contribute positively to our communities. Thus, investments in childhood well-being can generate very positive returns for society, as evidenced by scientific research. Any wise politics should consider this a national priority, something done by Jacinda Arden, New Zealand’s […]

The Politics of Being is a deep but not ethereal vision. It offers concrete actionable policy recommendations in many sectors, almost exclusively based on existing examples.  We can start implementing it today if we choose to do so. In this series, we will share every week some inspiration and thoughts about what implementing the Politics […]

Here is this year’s final newsletter update, including the recent news that I have signed a contract for Politics of Being with the French publishing house Robert Laffont!

Last week I was invited to participate to the 9 th Global forum of the UN Alliance Of Civilization in Fez, Morocco. I moderated and spoke at a panel on the culture of peace with: – Mr. Anar Karimov, Minister of Culture of Azerbaijan who presented their project “peace4culture” – Mr. Valdis Zatlers, Former President […]

Check out our newsletter for what happened during the North America tour… these are great times for the Politics of Being with many promising developments!

On September 18th, I had the privilege to meet integral philosopher Ken Wilber, at his home in Denver for what became an exciting non-stop 5-hour conversation. A legendary and friendly moment in his panoramic flat, where I briefly felt at the top of the world with him. I wanted to share some excerpts of this […]

From the book chapter: An Evolutionary Crisis The third famous spiritual teacher who perceived humankind’s ongoing spiritual evolution came from the Western world. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was a French scientist, philosopher, and Jesuit priest. His study and work as a paleontologist and geologist led him to reflect on the evolutionary process of the universe, from primordial particles to […]

From the book chapter: An Evolutive Crisis The second spiritual teacher to announce the spiritual evolution of humankind was the Indian political leader, poet, and evolutionary philosopher Sri Aurobindo. Born in Calcutta, India, in 1872, he moved to England at the age of seven and lived there fourteen years. He studied at Cambridge, where he gained extensive knowledge of […]

From the book chapter: An Evolutive Crisis Baha’u’llah—“the glory of God” in Arabic— was born in 1817 in Persia. He was the founder of the Bahá’í faith, which is estimated nowadays to have between five and eight million adherents spread throughout the world. He was a follower of Siyyid Mírzá `Alí-Muhammad, a young man who, in 1844, claimed to be […]

From the book chapter: An Evolutive Crisis The general belief in humankind’s capacity to evolve spiritually has been most prominently emphasized by some spiritual teachers across different traditions. While some readers might think that these spiritual teachings can take us away from a rational, grounded, and practical political thought that this book intends to develop, I offer them […]

In the next 4 weeks we will be sharing every week a post on this theme, as an invitation to pause and appreciate the teachings of prominent spiritual teachers that have announced this evolution. The need for inner transitions and cultural evolutions are now recognized by mainstream organizations like the IPCC or UNDP. Let’s recognize […]

From the book chapter: Life The long-held view within the Western world according to which humans distinguish themselves from nonhumans through particular cognitive and moral abilities is now falling apart. According to ethologist and primatologist Frans de Waal, “It is time to stop running after a human specificity. In my life, I have probably seen some twenty-five proposals on […]

From the book chapter: Nature “This declaration was drafted in 2010 during the World’s People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in which thirty-five thousand people and delegations from more than a hundred countries participated. The declaration affirms that: “We are all part of Mother Earth, an indivisible, […]

From the book chapter: Life   According to French anthropologist Philippe Descola, the ontological separation between humans and nonhumans and the opposition between nature and culture historically only developed in the Western world, it has recently spread like a disease over the rest of the planet. The environmental crisis is a cultural crisis: it is […]

An excerpt from the book chapter: Being as the New Paradigm “This human transformation, this change of story we are calling for, is something I get to hear and see every day here in the Plum Village Mindfulness Practice Center through many individual examples. People come here and often quickly relate to what is written on the main […]

An excerpt from the book chapter: Being as the New Paradigm “The many scientifically demonstrated effects of meditation inform us of the changes in attitudes and behaviors inner development can help promote (see chapter 9). We may also consider the testimonies of the most spiritually advanced people that have walked this earth to clearly understand the direction that spiritual […]

En excerpt from the book chapter: Economy “By allowing all beings to receive everything they need, to offer all they can, to become all they are, we can prompt human, social, and environmental regeneration and set up a dynamic of authentic mutual enrichment. With the objective of being, all the system changes from competition and scarcity […]

An excerpt from the book chapter: Being as the New Paradigm “This idea of making inner development the center and goal of societies and politics has already been expressed in different ways. From a spiritual point of view, the Bahá’i religion considers development an organic process in which “the spiritual is expressed and carried out […]

“I propose throughout this book a marriage of wisdom and science. Scientific knowledge per se cannot determine what we should strive for, the values we should hold, and the desirable direction of our societies’ evolution. Hence we have lost our ways in the blind pursuit of economic and technological development as ends in themselves. We need wisdom to guide our […]

An excerpt from the book: “How would a more spiritually advanced civilization be governed? I personally believe it would be based on the simple insight that all our problems come from within us, from our minds and hearts, and can be solved by us. That is why such a civilization would partner with evolution and […]

An excerpt from the book: “Political leaders play a critical role in the evolution of our societies’ values through their example and how they guide our imagination, direct our attention, and frame the debate. Like institutions, they can harness the worst or the best of people to conquer and hold on to power. “Here and […]

The war in Ukraine calls for exceptional mobilization. As for racism or sexual harassment, it is time to say clearly once and for all that we can’t tolerate any war on Earth, that whoever engages in war will find humanity united against him. We urgently need to reject the culture of war and domination that […]

From the free excerpt of the book available here : “This book intends to share in a simple, clear, and robust way the rationale, vision, and potential policies for making the fulfillment of all beings the main compass for politics, what I call the “politics of being.” I hope to bring to the policy level […]

It is time for each nation to reconnect to its own wisdom to redefine its own vision of the good life and chart its unique path toward fulfillment. American sociologist Ronald Inglehart has shown that “sociocultural change is path dependent and cultural heritages are remarkably enduring.”[1] As each nation follows its own development path and […]

Nations can find their way out of our social and environmental crises in their traditional wisdoms, which usually express their own version of the story of interbeing. Unlike the Western emphasis on individuality, they tend to emphasize our relational nature, as well as our belonging and responsibilities toward a community. In their RIO + 20 […]

Our nations lost their ways as economic development became an end in itself rather than a means to live well. Economic production measured in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which since its invention in 1934 has been the main metric to assess the development of nations, is now widely recognized as a broken compass […]

Blog – an integrative framework How can we unify a diverse movement that is not yet aware of itself around the need for a new development paradigm focused on being? My ambition with the politics of being is to propose an integrative framework that can accommodate all relevant claims and initiatives. I have mapped the […]

As we grow aware of the systemic nature of our problems, everybody talks about the need to shift our paradigm. In books or reports dealing with our current global issues, you will often find this quote from Albert Einstein: “You can’t solve a problem with the ways of thinking that created it.” In my professional […]

Only by flourishing can a tree sustain itself, the birds, the bees and the whole ecosystem it is part of Let’s first have a look at the definition of sustainable development. While its objective of meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” is valid, […]

Part 3: the professional journey In 2003, I started to work in Mexico in the microfinance sector. It showed me that a beautiful idea conceived for the greater good could easily be transformed into an instrument of exploitation by corrupt minds and systems. The same technology can be used to help people come out of […]

Part 2: the scientist’s journey  As I really wanted was to work for the Earth, from 2007 to 2013 I did a PhD in (ecological) economics. I studied the Costa Rican national program of economic incentives for forest conservation (“payments for environmental services”). This PhD thesis taught me two main things. First, by looking through […]

Part 1: the spiritual journey Why did I write this book? Why did I spend so much time over the last ten years researching, meditating upon and writing this book proposing a new development paradigm focused on “being” instead of “having”? In brief, my spiritual path, my thought as a social scientist and my professional […]