ted to the long-term goals to be pursued, the social
structures required, the implications for development of principles of
social justice, and the nature and role of knowledge in effecting enduring
change. Indeed, such a reexamination will be driven to seek a broad
consensus of understanding about human nature itself.

Two avenues of discussion open directly onto all of these issues, whether
conceptual or practical, and it is along these two avenues that we wish to
explore, in the pages that follow, the subject of a strategy of global
development. The first is prevailing beliefs about the nature and purpose
of the development process; the second is the roles assigned in it to the
various protagonists.

The assumptions directing most of current development planning are
essentially materialistic. That is to say, the purpose of development is
defined in terms of the successful cultivation in all societies of those
means for the achievement of material prosperity that have, through trial
and error, already come to characterize certain regions of the world.
Modifications in development discourse do indeed occur, accommodating
differences of culture and political system and responding to the alarming
dangers posed by environmental degradation. Yet the underlying
materialistic assumptions remain essentially unchallenged.

As the twentieth century draws to a close, it is no longer possible to
maintain the belief that the approach to social and economic development
to which the materialistic conception of life has given rise is capable of
meeting humanity's needs. Optimistic forecasts about the changes it would
generate have vanished into the ever-widening abyss that separates the
living standards of a small and relatively diminishing minority of the
world's inhabitants from the poverty experienced by the vast majority of
the globe's population.

This unprecedented economic crisis, together with the social breakdown it
has helped to engender, reflects a profound error of conception about
human nature itself. For the levels of response elicited from human beings
by the incentives of the prevailing order are not only inadequate, but
seem almost irrelevant in the face of world events. We are being shown
that, unless the development of society finds a purpose beyond the mere
amelioration of material conditions, it will fail of attaining even these
goals. That purpose must be sought in spiritual dimensions of life and
motivation