The unseen inner dimension of systems change and sustainability

Lack of attention to the psychological and cultural dimension of systems is widespread – but inner factors are fundamental to global crises like climate change and the approaches we require to tackle them

• “The inner dimensions of sustainability and systems transformation are endlessly overshadowed in high-level policy discussions by material priorities, yet are fundamental in creating and perpetuating our current crises. From the rise of consumerism fuelled by materialist values and evolutionary impulses to the fragmentation of collective identity and the innate biases steering our perceptions and political behaviour, inner factors are constantly at work, subtly pulling the levers of our external world. This arena of mindsets was described by the influential environmental thinker Donella Meadows as the “deepest leverage point for change”.”
• “our inner lives are routinely manipulated by commercial and political interests, which shape public opinion and consumer behaviour in ways that contribute directly to our polycrisis”
• “The elements of the ‘inner’ often missing from systems thinking can be understood in two broad categories. First, we risk forgetting the role of paradigms or systems of meaning in shaping societal structures and behaviour. Core cultural narratives about the world are typically experienced as reality itself – leading, for example, to blindness within individualist societies to the interdependence of all life and the complexities of our changing world. Second, we require better awareness of the transient subjective states and enduring psychological traits – such as cognitive biases and threat responses – that drive behaviour and influence ‘meaning-making’ at individual and collective levels, and the transformative capacities of heart and mind that can be cultivated to support resilience and collective action, and shift foundational attitudes over time.”
• “In many ways, foundational to failing societal systems is a particular system of thought, with its origins in the European Enlightenment. This dominant mindset, rooted in the embrace of empiricism, reductionism and rationalism, has driven modern scientific advancement, bringing extraordinary material comfort to large parts of the world. At the same time, it has shaped over centuries a mass culture of alienation and exploitation on a planetary scale, setting human civilisation on a trajectory for collapse through its failure to comprehend the needs of complex living systems.”
• “To choose, design and enact effective, collective solutions at the scale and complexity called for by the current moment requires not only interrogation of the mindsets that shaped our predicament but also understanding of our innate, often latent capacity to transform them.”
• “With these factors in mind, what we need is not a shift away from emphasis on material solutions, but rather a holistic reimagining of systemic change strategies: a dual approach to shifting the visible, external structures of society and the invisible, internal landscapes of the human mind and heart.”