Healthy Sustainable Living
A New Human Story to co-create a healthy and sustainable future
Humanity depends on more than our own individual and social success — we also depend on the health of our species, our planet, and the evolutionary processes that sustain all life. Too often, we lose sight of that deeper dependence.
We succeed brilliantly with one hand, while we generate destruction with the other.
Our Present Human Story has traditionally taught us to build successful lives — as individuals, families, and societies. But this story largely fails to value and care for our whole Species, the Planet, and the Evolutionary processes that our lives also depend upon.
Consequently, we may temporarily succeed, but often unknowingly exploit and harm the larger life-support systems necessary for our continued existence. The destruction we cause to these deeper levels of reality frequently contributes to the Sixth Great Extinction now unfolding on Earth. This “success + destruction” approach — where humans thrive but our life-support systems suffer — reveals the fatal flaw embedded in our Present Human Story.
A New Human Story is required for us to both succeed and survive. This new story values and positively serves all six levels of reality: Individual, Social, Species, Planet, Evolution, and Spiritual. Only when we care for and live in integrity with the whole of reality can we co-create a healthy sustainable future.
▶ Start Here: Watch the Foundational Video
This video introduces a choice: continue the success + destruction approach of our Present Human Story, or learn to value and serve the health and sustainability of all six levels of reality with our New Human Story. This latter approach is the only path to a healthy sustainable future.
I’m Tom Bougsty, Ph.D., a psychologist who has been contemplating this challenge since awakening to our limited view of reality at the first Earth Day in 1970. I realized that we must learn to live in integrity with reality as a whole, if we intend to both thrive and survive.
Everything on this website — the five steps below, my books, and the HumanityStream+ presentations — grew out of that long contemplation. I have finally, and hopefully not too late, organized my understandings and new coping strategies, so we can responsibly co-create a healthy sustainable future that benefits us by also benefiting the whole.
A Practical Path Forward: Five Steps to a New Human Story
Step 1 — Watch the Foundational Video. See the video above to learn about the New Human Story and how to live in integrity with the six levels of reality.
Step 2 — Develop Healthy Living as an Individual. Expand personal awareness and daily practices to develop a healthy individual life. Read more →
Step 3 — Develop Your Social Nature. Extend healthy personal living into healthy relationships with family, community, and society. Read more →
Step 4 — Integrate Your Spiritual and Human Natures. Explore the Oneness with Reality Meditation to deepen your awareness of your spiritual nature and its relationship to the whole. Read more →
Step 5 — Explore Videos and Presentations. Explore additional material on human development, consciousness, healing, and the New Human Story. Read more →
As a complement to these five steps, read my two books: Transform the World into a Healthy and Sustainable Future and Healthy Sustainable Living: A Vision for the Future of Humanity.
What Readers Are Saying
About Transform the World into a Healthy and Sustainable Future:
“This deeply intelligent book is wonderfully comprehensive and helpful. It combines scientific understanding of our evolved human nature with a profound exploration of our spiritual possibilities … this is a beautiful book.”— Rick Hanson, Ph.D., author of Resilience and Buddha’s Brain
“Breathtaking in its scope … and thrilling in its vision. This book becomes a lifetime companion — a friend and a guide for humanity’s journey to adulthood.”— John Steiner, Bridge Alliance co-founder
“I am thrilled with the brilliant scholarship of this … powerfully original … and profoundly insightful, relevant, and timely book.”— James O’Dea, author of Cultivating Peace
Join the Conversation
Healthy Sustainable Living is meant not only as a body of ideas, but as practices for living. As you apply the New Human Story in your own life, I’d love to hear how it unfolds for you — please share your feedback, questions, and experiences.
Working together, we can accelerate our progress in meeting the greatest challenge facing humanity: how to co-create a healthy sustainable future.