Our societies worldwide are drowning in Mr Global policies and plans about sustainability. Sustainable energy. Sustainable economies. Sustainable organizations. Sustainable cities. Sustainable systems. But during a recent keynote for an international audience of scientists, economists, entrepreneurs and public thinkers, I started somewhere else.
With us, the ever so much 'sustainable' human being!
Systems exist to serve people. Or at least: they should. And when systems lose their human measure, become increasingly controlling or place more pressure on people than they can sustainably absorb, something fundamental begins to shift.
That is where Human Sustainability begins.
“Systems derive their legitimacy from their service to human beings. Not the other way around.”
— Ronald Heister
Sustainability Begins With the Human
I was invited to speak about Human Sustainability before an international audience of scientists, economists, entrepreneurs and public thinkers.
At conferences like this, the conversation often centres on systems. Government policies are examined in detail. Economic and scientific models are debated. We discuss why a system works, why another one doesn't, and what the consequences may be. All of that matters.
But standing there, I thought it might be interesting to take the conversation in a completely different direction.
What if, for a moment, we stopped putting the system at the centre?
Not because policy doesn't matter. Not because science doesn't matter. And certainly not because we don't need functioning economic, technological and social systems. But because we sometimes seem to forget why we created those systems in the first place.
For me, the more fundamental question is not whether the human being can continue adapting to the system. It is whether our systems allow human beings to flourish. That changes the perspective.
An economy does not have a life. An organization does not lie awake at night. A scientific model does not lose trust, become exhausted, experience fear or question the meaning of what it is doing. People do.
Yet when something begins to go wrong, we often ask how people can become more resilient, more productive, more adaptable and better able to cope. I wanted to turn that around.
Does the system still serve the human being?
The reaction in the room was fascinating. Part of the audience seemed unsure what to make of it. Others immediately recognized what I was trying to say and responded positively to me, afterwards. The response itself illustrated the point.
We have become so accustomed to discussing how systems should function that putting the human being back at the centre can suddenly sound like a different way of looking at the world. But that is precisely what I mean by Human Sustainability. Not a world without systems. A world in which we put them in their place.
“Systems derive their legitimacy from their service to human beings. Not the other way around.”
— Ronald Heister
How sustainable is the human being inside the system?
In organizations and societies, we can already observe signals of pressure. Burnout. Declining trust. Polarization. People losing a sense of direction. Teams becoming exhausted. Decision-making becoming increasingly defensive. People looking at the same reality but experiencing it in fundamentally different ways.
We tend to treat these as separate problems. Human Sustainability asks us to look at what connects them.
Systems should serve people
This is also where Human Sustainability differs from the idea that people simply need to become more resilient so they can cope with ever more demanding systems. But that is not the point.
If a system continuously exhausts the people within it, the answer cannot simply be to teach people to tolerate more. We should also question the system.
Does it still serve the people for whom it was created? Does it respect human dignity? Does it create conditions in which people can function sustainably? Or have efficiency, control, technology and institutional logic gradually become goals in themselves? Human Sustainability puts that relationship back in its proper order.
The human being is not there to sustain the system. The system is there to support the human being.
That does not remove personal responsibility. On the contrary. Systems are shaped by human choices, and sustainable change also asks something of us individually. It asks whether we can remain sufficiently aware and internally stable to observe before we react, distinguish fear from direction and take responsibility for the choices we make.
From reaction to direction
This part of Human Sustainability also became personal for me. Sustainable change also begins with the ability to stand firmly within yourself. To observe before reacting. To remain capable of choosing direction when circumstances around you become increasingly complex. That personal turning point is part of the foundation of the work I do today.
It is why Human Sustainability is not only about protecting people from dysfunctional systems. It is also about human agency. Who are you when familiar structures change? What remains when external certainties disappear? Can you still distinguish what matters from the noise around you? Can you act from responsibility rather than fear? And can you contribute to systems that serve human beings rather than gradually reducing human beings to functions within those systems?
Making Human Sustainability practical
Human Sustainability cannot remain a philosophical idea.
That is why we have been developing a framework and instruments to make the human dimension of sustainability more visible and actionable.
A call for a new professional discipline
This work also raises another question. Who is responsible for the human dimension when systems become increasingly complex?
We have engineers for technical systems. Data architects for digital systems. Financial specialists for economic systems. Governance, risk and compliance professionals to monitor organizations.
But accelerating complexity may also require professionals specifically trained to recognize and protect human sustainability at decision-making level
Human Sustainability is the forgotten sustainability
That was ultimately the central argument of my keynote.
Human Sustainability is not a rejection of systems, technology, progress or transition. We need systems. We need technology. And many of the structures around us will inevitably change. But systems should remain instruments in service of human life and human dignity. The more complex the world becomes, the more important it is that we do not lose sight of that relationship.
And that brings us back to where the lecture began. Not with the system. With the human.
The sustainability question we have overlooked for too long is not: how do we create more sustainable systems?
But:
Are the systems we create making human life more sustainable, or are we increasingly asking humans to become sustainable for the sake of the system?
For me, that distinction changes everything.We created the systems
There is something strangely powerful about the word system. We speak about the system as though it arrived here by itself and now determines how the rest of us must live.
But who created it?
We did.
Every organization, institution, market, policy and structure around us was conceived, built and maintained by human beings. And if something we created no longer works, or no longer produces the world we want to live in, we can change it.
Sometimes that means influencing the people who design policy or lead institutions. Sometimes it means redesigning an organization, changing a process or simply refusing to continue something that no longer makes sense.
But for me, it also begins at a much more individual level.
Through my work with people in deeper states of human consciousness, I have come to see the human mind and spirit as far more powerful than we normally allow ourselves to believe. We are not only participants in reality. We participate in creating it. What we think, believe, fear, choose and act upon helps shape the reality we experience and the world we create around us.
That changes our position. We are no longer only asking somebody else to change the system.
We begin with ourselves.
And then imagine what happens when many people begin doing that at the same time. When they stop automatically accepting what no longer works, become conscious of their own creative power and start choosing differently.
Systems that once appeared immovable can suddenly begin to move.
Perhaps that is what real transformation requires: not another system imposed from above, but a different state of mind from which we begin creating from within.