{"id":69574,"date":"2026-01-08T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T07:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=69574"},"modified":"2026-01-16T12:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T11:54:09","slug":"sustainability-as-the-art-of-becoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/sustainability-as-the-art-of-becoming\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustainability as the Art of Becoming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After decades of political programs and economic strategies, efforts toward sustainable development are in crisis. Caught between greenwashing and global climate challenges, people around the world are searching for a holistic orientation. In 2025, the World Goetheanum Association, the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum, and many partner organizations met at Sekem in Egypt, where a new understanding began to take shape: sustainable development as a process of inner and outer transformation, as the art of becoming, where nature, culture, society, and spirituality come together.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The concept of \u201csustainable development\u201d is overused, underdefined, and often misunderstood. Sustainable development is not a nice-to-have, a reporting requirement, a tool for manipulation, or a Western invention. It explores the question of humanity\u2019s and the Earth\u2019s becoming\u2014a question that anthroposophy is deeply interwoven with. After 50 years of institutionalized use and a poor reputation due to greenwashing and empty words, the call for an integration of inner and spiritual dimensions into the concept of sustainable development as an emerging meta-discipline is growing louder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Global Upheaval\u2014A Turning Point in Time<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In 2025, something that had been brewing beneath the surface for a long time came to pass: a so-called turning point. A geopolitical upheaval changed the world order, accompanied by massive rearmament and a new focus by governments on national self-interest. In this climate, NATO states decided to allocate five percent of their gross domestic product to defense. This happened despite eight decades of intensive efforts to promote universal human rights and global responsibility, and despite initiatives such as the WWF, Rachel Carson\u2019s ecological wake-up call, Greenpeace, the Club of Rome\u2019s report \u201cThe Limits to Growth,\u201d and the Brundtland Report \u201cOur Common Future.\u201d The turning point seems to be pushing aside everything that generations have achieved in terms of ecological and social insight. To say that it came as a surprise would be to ignore the signs that had long been visible\u2014and yet it came as a shock to many.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This change especially shook the social, green, and pacifist movements that have been growing since the 1960s. Ingolf Bl\u00fchdorn, a sociologist from Vienna specializing in social sustainability, even postulates that this \u201ceco-emancipatory project\u201d has ultimately failed due to its own inconsistencies and because it didn\u2019t reach the whole of society\u2014the project remained exclusive. As a result, people and organizations working with socio-ecological challenges and sustainable development are more or less forced to realign their understanding of this discipline and their tools for transforming society.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Portraits of participants at the World Goetheanum Forum 2025 in Sekem. Photo: Samuel Knaus<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The Three Pillars of Sustainable Development<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Sustainable development is not a new concept. Even in ancient Greece, guiding principles such as \u201cKnow thyself,\u201d a call to develop one\u2019s inner self, and \u201cNothing in excess,\u201d a reminder to bring our relationship with the world into balance, were already in place. Much later, in 1801, Alexander von Humboldt, the younger brother of Wilhelm von Humboldt and a close friend of Goethe, warned of the destructive greed of humankind, which not only threatened the Earth but could potentially even conquer other stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rudolf Steiner added another trailblazing chapter. In view of the growing power of capitalism and technology, he conceived the idea of the threefold social order: freedom in the spiritual life, justice in the social and legal life, and fellowship in the economic life. For Steiner, nature was the basis of all economic activity\u2014a perspective that even at the time touched upon the core elements of what we now understand as sustainable development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the world population quadrupling since 1945 and the strain on the Earth caused by human activities, sustainable development was finally institutionalized. Three main pillars were established worldwide: ecological, social, and economic. The guiding principle was \u201cto meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.\u201d<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> To date, this is the only generally accepted definition. There are around 200 other academic definitions that have not achieved comparable acceptance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Vision of Sustainable Development<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Ibrahim and Helmy Abouleish, together with many others, founded the Sekem Initiative and Heliopolis University for Sustainable Development in Egypt with a clearly stated orientation on sustainable development. Their approach was radical and visionary: they separated human and cultural development (guided by freedom) from the traditional social pillar (guided by equality). This was because justice in legal life and freedom in the cultural and spiritual sphere need to be valued independently and equally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This gave rise to four pillars of sustainable development, supplemented by Rudolf Steiner\u2019s social threefolding: the ecological pillar (nature as the basis of human activity), the social pillar (guided by justice), the cultural pillar (guided by freedom), and the economic pillar (guided by solidarity). On this foundation, after almost five decades of pioneering work, Sekem was awarded the UN Environment Programme\u2019s \u201cChampion of the Earth 2024 Prize\u201d and the \u201cGulbenkian Prize for Humanity 2024,\u201d two of the world\u2019s most prestigious environmental awards.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Left: The three pillars of traditional sustainable development [\u00d6kologie, Soziales, Wirtschaft: ecology, society, economy] (Felix M\u00fcller, 2014). Right: Sekem sustainability flower.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Expansion to the Spiritual Dimension<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The World Goetheanum Forum in Sekem gave rise to a new perspective on sustainable development, one that encompasses the spiritual dimension. The inner and individual source of spirituality now stands at the center of Sekem\u2019s sustainability flower. According to the participants, every external development needs an inner life, conscious training, and spiritual anchoring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, the ecological pillar was reorganized. It now forms the supporting foundation for \u201csocial relations\u201d (guided by justice), \u201ccultural and human development\u201d (guided by freedom), and \u201ceconomic value creation\u201d (guided by love and solidarity). Nature is thus understood not only as one of four equally valued pillars but as the foundation upon which all the others are built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, the sustainability flower has been expanded to include the comprehensive dimension of \u201cspiritual and cosmic sources\u201d\u2014a level that, according to environmental activist Paul Kingsnorth, has been largely lost in modern Western societies and whose absence is leading humanity to the brink of disaster. This expanded view also includes topics such as accompanying old, dying social structures, acknowledging historical shadows, and developing spaces of consciousness and communication skills in situations where human dignity is violated. A long-standing indication of this new approach can be found in Rudolf Steiner: \u201cIn pain, our Mother Earth solidified. Our mission is to spiritualize her again, to redeem her, by transforming her through the strength of our hands into a spirit-filled work of art.\u201d<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This creates an appropriate anthropocentrism\u2014a positive image of human beings as co-creators of the Earth and of the Earth as the substance of our destiny. Sustainable development thereby progresses from a political or economic goal to an \u201cart of becoming\u201d that combines external activity with inner training and spiritual responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n

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First graphic of the new narrative, visualization: Priska Lang<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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The Publication<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In November 2025, a compendium titled On the Earth We Want to Live: Anthroposophy\u2019s Contributions to Sustainable Development <\/em>was published. In it, seventy-five co-authors explore the question of how anthroposophy can contribute to sustainable development in its practical implementation. Twenty-three scientists and twenty-six enterprises share their perspectives. In addition, an expansion of the current understanding of sustainable development is developed, in which the inner and spiritual dimensions of sustainable development are specifically examined. The initiative proceeds from the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum and is anchored in the Section\u2019s Department for Sustainable Development. The work is published by Springer Nature in its World Sustainability Series, one of the world\u2019s leading scientific publishers with almost 200 years of history. One of the aims of this work is to build bridges between the discourse and specialist areas of sustainable development with anthroposophy, its global movement, and the Goetheanum as an Independent Institute for Spiritual Science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Available as a free eBook\/PDF or for purchase as a hardback:<\/strong> On the Earth We Want to Live – Anthroposophy\u2019s Contributions to Sustainable Development<\/a> <\/em>edited by Johannes Kronenberg and Edith T. Lammerts van Bueren. World Sustainability Series (Cham: Springer, 2025)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Translation <\/strong>Joshua Kelberman
Title image <\/strong>Portraits of participants at the World Goetheanum Forum 2025 in Sekem. Photo: Samuel Knaus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After decades of political programs and economic strategies, efforts toward sustainable development are in crisis. Caught between greenwashing and global climate challenges, people around the world are searching for a holistic orientation. In 2025, the World Goetheanum Association, the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum, and many partner organizations met at Sekem in Egypt, where a new understanding began to take shape: sustainable development as a process of inner and outer transformation, as the art of becoming, where nature, culture, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9284,"featured_media":69470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8838,11740,8845],"tags":[11738,8798,11741],"class_list":["post-69574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-time-issues","category-sekem--wga-forum-2025-en","category-social","tag-ausgabe-50-2025-en","tag-deepening","tag-english-issue-3-4-2026"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}