Every­where good peo­ple are work­ing hard to do good by oth­ers. Do not be dis­cour­aged by the big­otry that con­tin­ues to sur­face. Our cur­rent eco­nom­ic and social sys­tems are show­ing us what is in most need of change.

Our pri­ma­ry sys­tem of social orga­ni­za­tion under free-mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism is out­dat­ed and decom­pos­ing. The effects of this sys­tem are becom­ing cat­a­stroph­ic, espe­cial­ly in rela­tion to cli­mate change. The dam­age is dan­ger­ous­ly close to becom­ing irre­versible. Accord­ing to the World Wildlife Fund, pop­u­la­tions of ver­te­brate animals—like mam­mals, birds and fish—have declined by more than half over the last 50 years.²³ A recent UN report tells us that as many as one mil­lion species risk extinc­tion in just the next few years due to human activ­i­ty.²⁴ Our imper­a­tive is to con­front this real­i­ty with hon­esty and cre­ativ­i­ty. We can still reverse this hor­rif­ic trend. How­ev­er, the impe­tus for solv­ing this cri­sis must not be sole­ly its affect on our species, but rather an under­stand­ing of how mag­nif­i­cent and nec­es­sary all species are to the fab­ric of life.

Any sys­tem that demands per­pet­u­al growth by way of the extrac­tion of lim­it­ed resources is fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed. The cur­rent tech­nolo­gies we take for granted—like our iPhones or Kindles—are built on the backs of peo­ple sub­ju­gat­ed to cru­el work­ing con­di­tions,²⁵ and are enmeshed in a cycle of debt and exploita­tion. The symp­toms of our cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal boom include anx­i­ety, addic­tion, and obliv­i­ous­ness. This arrange­ment needs seri­ous revi­sion, if not com­plete replace­ment. We have to become more open to alter­na­tive modes of oper­at­ing indus­tri­al­ly, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly, and societally.

Inno­va­tion means cre­at­ing with the com­bi­na­tion of one’s mind, heart, and hands, and rec­og­niz­ing how one’s work relates to the greater fab­ric of life. Does that work bring about help or harm? Inno­va­tion is at its best when it fol­lows the prin­ci­ples and pat­terns of life’s dynam­ic sys­tem through cre­ative prob­lem-solv­ing. As indus­tries focus on paths toward sus­tain­abil­i­ty and plan­e­tary well­be­ing, we can all bor­row a page from Patag­o­nia whose com­pa­ny mot­to is, “Build the best prod­uct. Cause no unnec­es­sary harm. Use busi­ness to inspire and imple­ment solu­tions to the envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis.” We can, and must, most cer­tain­ly fol­low this exam­ple of con­scious cre­ativ­i­ty far into the future.

We must ampli­fy the ener­gy of those work­ing in the ser­vice of col­lec­tive improve­ment. We can all act as agents of change. The des­ti­na­tions ahead will be all the brighter in due course.