Relationship Restoration and Community-Based Income: Towards Sustainable Societies

Two defining features of our age are a psychosocial crisis and an ecological crisis. Addressing the former may be the key to addressing the latter. One concept that appears to contribute to our psychosocial crisis is psychological woundedness. This paper highlights intergenerational emotional neglect as a major source of woundedness and contends that healing from emotional neglect is almost impossible to achieve without help from others. Relationship restoration is identified as a key aspect of improving the human condition towards a partnership society and away from domination, a crucial challenge to addressing our ecological and psychosocial crises. Community-based income (CBI) aims to build the skills to heal emotional neglect and create relational and restorative communities based on a social investment approach, particularly long-term investment in people. CBI is a model in which participants are paid an income for any activity the community deems eligible, such as caring for people of all ages, study, work experience, and/or helping with community projects. CBI aims to build restorative and compassionate communities, based initially on addressing woundedness.