About Global Academy

For 30 years, Global Academy Foundation has collaborated with leaders, their organizations and alliances to develop meaningful innovations and concrete change. Together we co-create movements that are becoming the new mainstreams in sustainable business and socio-economic development, in integrative medicine and holistic education, in revitalizing democracy and innovating individual and co-creative leadership.

An Emerging Regenerative Civilization

Throughout all sectors of society, even today a new civilization is being co-created by countless people and organizations. A dynamic, ever-evolving mosaic integrating traditions and innovations from around the world and throughout time is gradually taking form. It is pragmatic, and at the same time sourced in the depth of human inspiration and aspiration, gradually harmonizing our inner maturation with our actions in the world. While this emerging paradigm is still far from being predominant, the concrete solutions it already offers to some of our most pressing problems point to the fact that a wiser, more humane, and dynamically sustainable civilization is not only possible but already under way.

Large-scale transformation requires people to see that another reality is possible.

The media regularly reports about these positive developments, ranging from systemic changes like the ‘greening’ of the economy to individual acts of human creativity and compassion. But mostly it does so as if these were hopeful, yet disconnected islands within the discouraging ocean of bad news. The ‘news’ generally doesn’t portray the broad, systemic, interactive nature of these phenomena. That may not be surprising. It took me more than two decades of active engagement across sectors and continents to both conceptually understand and viscerally get that all these specialized movements of societal and personal transformation are really one and the same emergence of a new civilization, which we could call the regenerative civilization because it benefits all societal and economic stakeholders as well as nature.

One of the reasons why it may be difficult to perceive the fundamental unity of this evolutionary process is its decentralized nature. No single person nor institution invented or leads it. It has millions of active contributors who, each in their areas of specialization, play a unique role in its distributed leadership — co-creating its innovations. This living process constantly evolves, deepening our insights and improving our implementations. It has no predetermined end point, and no dogma, allowing instead ongoing discovery and development. Yet, even as this new civilization evolves in apparently non-linear and at times incomprehensible ways, it appears to have an inherent directionality — the ongoing maturation of our consciousness and its translation into values and behaviors, technologies and institutions.

This emerging civilization balances and integrates both ancient and new orientations — towards peace and justice; creative rather than destructive power.

The characteristics of this emerging civilization balance and integrate both ancient and new orientations — towards peace and justice; creative rather than destructive power; the courage to stand up against abuse and domination, and for partnership and compassion; love and forgiveness; fairness and freedom, including that of information, education as well as faith and other non-harmful preferences. It is based on equal rights and responsibilities for the whole, social as well as environmental sustainability, including renewable resources and restorative technologies. It harmonizes individual and multi-cultural diversity with co-creative integration, and facilitates transparency and authenticity, psychological healing and spiritual awakening — all of which are mutually enhancing, like the multi-colored facets of a sparkling diamond.

This list goes on and on — healing the calluses that close our hearts and inspiring our minds to make the possible happen. I summarize these characteristics with the term ‘regenerative’ which we share with an increasing number of movements and which I understand to be the realization and implementation of our true human potential. This pragmatic wisdom benefits from, yet takes us beyond the ages of industry, information and knowledge into sustainable yet dynamic forms of wise living.

~Walter Link, Chair, Global Academy Foundation

Excerpted from our book, “Leadership is Global”