All living systems show patterns that enable them to regenerate or renew after a disaster. For instance, soil depleted from years of growing monocultures can regain fertility by being managed holistically, using livestock to restore the degraded land and regenerate new life in the ecosystem.
Similarly, the?Capital Institute's 8 Principles of Regenerative Vitality?can be used to design and build stable and healthy economic systems that align with living systems for long-term sustainability and resilience.
Simply stated, the universal patterns and principles nature uses to build stable, healthy, and sustainable systems throughout the real world can and must be used as a model for a new design of our economic system and the financial system that fuels it.
Let’s examine one of the 8 Principles:?Views Wealth Holistically. True wealth is not merely money in the bank. It must be defined in terms of the well-being of the whole, including people and planet. This requires harmonizing different types of wealth or “capital” (an economic term) beyond only financial and material wealth to include social, cultural, experiential, and even spiritual capital. All these forms depend on natural capital, which sustains all life, including our economies. Critically, the whole is only as strong as its weakest link.?
For this week’s #WithLifeWednesday, we invite you to reflect on what it means to view wealth holistically:
?? What experiences do you have with the various forms of wealth or capital, such as cultural, relational, spiritual, natural, or experiential?
?? Is there a difference between your experience of one type of capital and another?
?? How do you value these different types of capital personally and in a broader context?
?? What insights can you draw about our current economic system from how different types of capital are, or are not, valued or viewed as wealth?