ABSTRACT
One cause for the present unsustainable state of the world is our failure to fully recognize the complex nature of the world and act accordingly. We desperately wish to keep our societal machinery running and pouring out everything we need from all the spigots of the economy. Sustainability has produced much "progress" compared to the state of well-being that existed at the time of the Enlightenment. But progress has been measured by sets of generally quantitative, disparate metrics that fail to capture the holistic qualities of life. By other measures, real human progress on a systems scale has not been so great. Flourishing and other similar qualities emerge from the working of the system as a whole and cannot be described by any reductionist set of rules. Sustainability-as-flourishing could come much faster if we moderns would put spirituality back into the place it belongs and deserves.
