Twelve Principles to Guide a Long-Overdue Paradigm Shift

If human behaviors are associated with climate change, it relates to how we consume, entertain, travel, do business, relate to “natural resources”, to ourselves and to each other. The authors posit that human behaviors are but the visible tip of the iceberg, sustained underwater by a voluminous mass comprised of our values, beliefs, assumptions, the anchors of our identity and shared paradigms. They trace back the history of a shared paradigm that has become dysfunctional and introduce the Sustainability Mindset Principles - a scaffolding to address the complexity of the paradigm. This paper describes how the dysfunctional paradigm can be brought back into balance by developing neglected aspects of a Western-Northern worldview that has been shaping our behaviors for centuries. By naming these aspects, the authors propose a language to incite the readers’ imagination of what is possible. Naming creates reality.