Home

About Us

What We Do

Conceptual Foundation

Contact

Mental Development and Growth
and the Environmental Crisis

Changing how Traditionally and Today we Understand
and Manage Human Existence and Development, Through Education
and Training in Mental Development and Growth

How traditionally and today we understand, organize and manage human existence and development contradicts, conflicts with and falls short of the natural conditions of existence and development and our role and responsibility in them. It leads to the persisting and growing human, social and environmental problems, difficulties and crises we face around the world today.

The mental health crisis consists of persisting and growing mental health problems - mental disorder and instability, doubt and confusion, uncertainty and insecurity, feelings of fear, stress, anxiety, frustration and depression, and subsequent substance use, abuse, addiction, overdose and suicide. They affect everything we do and we engage in, in all areas of human activity, in all sectors and at all levels of society, in private and in public life, in business, government and government services, in civil society, community and family. They affect how we understand and conduct ourselves individually, how we relate and interact with each other, and how we deal with the world around us, with nature and the natural environment.

The social problems include competition, conflict and confrontation, greed, corruption, exploitation, domination, marginalization, poverty and starvation, racism, injustice and inequality, a growing gap between rich and poor, social disorder and instability. The environmental crisis includes climate change and global warming, pollution of air, soil and water, rivers, lakes and oceans, the introduction of millions of synthetic compounds into the natural environment, the loss of biodiversity, the destruction of ecosystems, and the exploitation of renewable and non-renewable natural resources beyond nature’s regenerative capacity. It is leading to changes in nature that in the long-term will render the natural environment of the Earth uninhabitable for the human species.

The answers and solutions lie in changing how we understand and manage existence and development to understand and manage them, existing in and as part of a constantly changing and transforming natural world, in an environmentally sustainable, socially equitable and individually secure and peaceful way, within the natural parameters, the boundaries and limits of human existence and development and our role and responsibility in them set by nature.

It involves:

• Changing understanding and managing existence and development from the top down and from the outside in, to understand and manage them from the ground up and from the inside out. Understanding and managing existence and development from human-created beliefs, views, values and conventions down to the natural conditions of existence, from the collective down to the individual, and from the world around us to the self. Instead, we need to understand and manage them from the ground up, at the level of the natural conditions of existence, beginning with the individual, starting with the mind, the inner mental life and the mental self.

• Changing understanding and managing existence and development in an externalized, fragmented, generalized and disconnected way in the abstract, to understand and manage them in a holistic way, a differentiated, but integrated, connected and related way, in their essence, in depth and detail.

• Changing understanding, organizing and managing human existence and development in the collective, to understand, organize and manage them individually, in cooperation with each other.

• Changing considering and understanding the conditions of existence and our role and responsibility in them in the abstract, to consider and make sense of our experience of them.

• Changing establishing a sense of self, order and stability, clarity and coherence, certainty and security externally, in the collective, in the world around us, to establish and maintain them individually, internally in the mind, through individual mental work and effort. Changing from trying to create the ideal external conditions of an ordered, stable, secure and predictable world around us, to establish and maintain the necessary internal mental conditions. Changing from meeting our non-material mental needs externally in physical-material terms, to meet them in non-material ways in the mind through individual mental work and effort.

• Changing understanding and managing human existence and development through understanding and managing the world around us, nature and the natural environment, to understand and manage our existence and development within existing and changing external conditions.

• Changing the primary focus from quantitative physical-material, to qualitative mental development and growth.

• Changing traditional socializing education and training, to education and training in mental development and growth. Shifting the primary focus from socialization into established socio-cultural beliefs, views, values, conventions and practices, to education and training in mental development and growth. Developing the knowledge, the understanding and the mental faculties, to understand and manage existence and development individually, in cooperation with each other, beginning with the mind, the inner mental life and the mental self, within the natural parameters, the boundaries and limits of human existence and development and our role and responsibility in them defined by nature.

That is, through education and training in mental development and growth changing how traditionally and today we understand and manage the fundamentals and essentials of human existence and development, and shifting the primary focus from quantitative physical-material to qualitative mental development and growth. To understand and manage existence and development, existing in and as part of a constantly changing and transforming natural world, in environmentally sustainable, socially equitable, and individual secure and peaceful way, within the natural parameters. (For a more detailed discussion . . .)

 

___________
© 2019 Institute for Human Conceptual and Mental Development. All rights reserved. No material from this site may be used in part or in whole by any other publication or web site without the written permission of the Institute for Human Conceptual and Mental Development.