Nurturing Connected Consciousness in the Anthropocene: Addressing Calls for Cultural and Spiritual Transformation as a Path to Personal, Collective, and Planetary Health

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce this Challenges Special Issue: “Nurturing Connected Consciousness in the Anthropocene: Addressing Calls for Cultural and Spiritual Transformation as a Path to Personal, Collective, and Planetary Health.”

This Special Issue addresses the need for deeper exploration of the human condition in addressing the mounting global challenges of the Anthropocene. At this critical moment in human history, it is important to promote and reimagine more intentional spiritual relationships with ourselves, others, and the natural world—recognizing that so many interconnected threats to “people, places, and planet” ultimately stem from erosion of these emotional connections.

“The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation” James (Gus) Speth, environmental lawyer and advocate.

In most societies there has been a progressive shift towards value systems that promote material wealth, power, fame, and status, at the expense of more meaningful life goals such as personal growth, learning, loving, giving, and caring for others. This is associated with major social trends towards greed, narcissism, anti-social behavior, fragmented communities, growing inequalities, unhappiness, physical and mental ill-health, disconnection from nature, with increasing exploitive and extractive attitudes to the environment.

Tackling large scale destruction and despair requires a spiritual and cultural transformation—a paradigm shift towards more mutualistic worldviews and a higher level of planetary consciousness which recognizes and celebrates connectivity, interdependence, and co-creation. Empowering emotional connections that speak to the heart of shared humanity, may inspire change in more powerful ways than with logic alone. This requires more collaborative spaces to overcome the academic apartheid that separates the sciences, the arts and humanities, culture, and spirituality. It also calls for open-minded, heart-centered activities that elevate “reverence for life” alongside more academic analyses to formulate more holistic perspectives.

It is our hope that this Challenges Special Issue will help contribute to cultural and social changes needed to support flourishing of people, places, and planet. We invite contributions that explore efforts to promote awareness of our interconnectedness, and nurture love, kindness, empathy, resilience, wisdom, restraint, and hope grounded in action. This may include examples of the ways in which enhancing personal growth, emotional intelligence, and spirituality may build more pro-social communities inspired towards collaborative action in the interests of people, places, and planet. It may also include examples of efforts to promote cultural change through creativity, imagination, mindfulness, deep listening, community circles, art projects, storytelling, earth-based spirituality, and other spiritual practices. We welcome efforts to assess qualitative, quantitative, or other experiential measures of personal or collective impact. We also welcome more philosophical explorations, creative contributions, and associated reflections into these issues, including a wide variety of cultural perspectives.

Dr. Heidi Honegger Rogers
Dr. Mona S. El-Sherbini
Dr. Sara L. Warber
Guest Editors

Knellee Bisram
Cindy Xie
Guest Editor Assistants

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Challenges is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Please note that all papers in this special issue will be published free of charge. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• value systems, worldviews, attitudes, mindsets, materialism, indigenous knowledges, traditional cultures, grassroots initiatives, belief systems, cultural change, co-creation, social change, behavioral changes, tipping points, collaborative emergence
• spirituality, emotion, imagination, creativity, inspiration, empowerment, self-awareness, connected consciousness, mindfulness, wisdom
• connections between individual and collective well-being, planetary health, connectivity of systems on all scales, ecology, interdependence, connections between mental and physical health
• efforts to promote fundamental positive elements of humanity, such as love, hope, kindness, compassion, respect
• efforts to promote positive actions and caring for others and the world, reciprocity, mutualism, connectedness, appreciation, humility, empathy, mindfulness and compassion, connection to nature, nature-relatedness
• strategies to promote community cohesion, art, creativity, community initiatives, community circles, narrative medicine, deep listening, spiritual practices, change narratives, reciprocity, mutualism, storytelling
• evaluating strategies for potential benefits for individuals, communities, and environments