Neo-humanism and COVID-19: Opportunities for a socially and environmentally sustainable world

TL;DR

This paper advocates for neo-humanism, a cultural shift emphasizing well-being and social relations over economic growth, to foster a sustainable and resilient society capable of better handling crises like COVID-19.

Contribution

It introduces neo-humanism as a new cultural movement grounded in quality-of-life evidence, proposing a shift towards social and environmental sustainability to improve resilience against global crises.

Findings

Prioritizing well-being benefits environmental sustainability.

Enhanced social relations promote collective action and health.

Societies based on neo-humanism could better cope with pandemics.

Abstract

A series of crises, culminating with COVID-19, shows that going Beyond GDP is urgently necessary. Social and environmental degradation are consequences of emphasizing GDP as a measure of progress. This degradation created the conditions for the COVID-19 pandemic and limited the efficacy of counter-measures. Additionally, rich countries did not fare the pandemic much better than poor ones. COVID-19 thrived on inequalities and a lack of cooperation. In this article we leverage on defensive growth models to explain the complex relationships between these factors, and we put forward the idea of neo-humanism, a cultural movement grounded on evidence from quality-of-life studies. The movement proposes a new culture leading towards a socially and environmentally sustainable future. Specifically, neo-humanism suggests that prioritizing well-being by, for instance, promoting social relations, would benefit the environment, enable collective action to address public issues, which in turn positively affects productivity and health, among other behavioral outcomes, and thereby instills a virtuous cycle. Arguably, such a society would have been better endowed to cope with COVID-19, and possibly even prevented the pandemic. Neo-humanism proposes a world in which the well-being of people comes before the well-being of markets, in which promoting cooperation and social relations represents the starting point for better lives, and a peaceful and respectful coexistence with other species on Earth.