Over the last two and a half centuries, developing economies have been accorded the highest priority globally. While this has dramatically improved living standards and the quality of life for billions of people and numerous countries, it is not capable of coming to grips with the world’s most life-threatening problems, most notably the environmental crisis, vast inequalities in income and wealth, wars over land and resources, and conflicts between diverse people and countries. To address these issues, a new global narrative is essential, one grounded in the ideas, knowledge, and contributions of numerous cultural scholars, historians, and practitioners. This is needed to make the transition from developing economies – which is a one-stage process based primarily on specialisation, partialism, and inorganic, mechanistic, materialistic, and market-driven activities – to cultivating cultures as a two-stage process mainly based on holism, the natural world, ecology, permaculture, horticulture, and organic, people, and species-driven activities, as well as harmonising and overcoming crucial polarisations and divisions during the second stage of this process. Through the cultivation of all the diverse cultures in the world and reconnecting with your own culture and the cultures of others, it is possible to experience a “paradise on earth” by drawing on all of humanity’s knowledge and understanding of cultures and using all the diverse technological techniques and digital devices that are available for all people and all countries in the world at all ages and geographical levels.
Keywords: development, economies, life-threatening, transition, cultures, narrative, harmony, balance, reconnecting.