Excert from the 2020 Challenge Report
Achieving the World We Want by the Year 2020
The 2020 Fund is a philanthropic platform committed to accelerating progress toward a sustainable world. It is hosted at the King Baudouin Foundation (KBF) United States, Inc., which is affiliated with the Brussels-based KBF.

'If the universe is conscious and alive at the foundation, then we are the product of a deep design intelligence that infuses the entire cosmos. A living universe has generated a living Earth from which conscious, living human beings have emerged who can look back at creation with wonder, awe, and curiosity. If life is nested within life, then it is only fitting that we treat everything that exists as alive and worthy of great respect. We shift from feelings of existential isolation to a sense of meaningful connection with the entire community of life, both present and future generations. The focus of life shifts from a fascination with high-consumption lifestyles (intended to provide both material pleasures and material protection from an indifferent universe), and toward sustainable and simple ways of living (intended to connect us with a purposeful and living universe of which we are an integral part).

This idea of a living universe is expressed through the scientific discoveries of the “new
physics” and through society. Less than a hundred years ago, Einstein thought that the universe was a static, unchanging system no larger than our galaxy. Today, we know that, as physicist Brian Swimme explains, “The universe emerges out of an all-nourishing abyss not only 15 billion years ago but in every moment.” It is an integrated system in which everything in the cosmos is a flowing movement that arises with everything else, moment by moment, in a process of continuous regeneration.m Turning from science to society, national surveys in the United States indicate there is a shift in perception underway that is congruent with this changing view of reality. Here are examples of the shift that is underway:

• A 1975 survey of U.S. adults found that 25 percent had the “sense that all the universe is alive.” Contrast that finding with a 1994 survey that found that 55 percent of Americans considered nature to be sacred or spiritual. In another survey that year, one-third of the respondents reported having had a “mystical experience,” including a sense that “love underlies all things” and other qualities congruent with a living universe.

• The business literature is filled with articles and books viewing organizations as living and learning systems. For example, Tachi Kiuchi, past chairman and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric America, suggests: “If we ran our companies like the rain forest, imagine how creative, how productive, how ecologically benign we could be. We can begin by operating less like a machine and more like a living system.

The paradigm shift from a dead to a living universe transforms the human story. We move from a secular journey in a fragmented and lifeless cosmos without apparent meaning or purpose, and into a sacred journey through a unified and living universe whose purpose is to support the emergence of self-organizing beings and communities at every scale.