The historical, critical, and scientific thinking faculty of humans made them the best survival specialists. Resilience and rebuilding for sustainability and innovation will be the next phase of human evolution. You may remember that homo sapiens is the only surviving species even among our ancestors and cousins. What then, made the homo sapiens progress and survive even in this pandemic? The dinosaurs that preceded humans were big and powerful with complex features based on fossil records. However, they became extinct without sound reasons. Their disappearance happened not because of the Anthropocene or human interventions. They lacked or lost the evolutionary path of complex brain development and consciousness which is unique only to humans. It is not complexity but consciousness that matters for survival and growth.

It is identified that homo sapiens first appeared 300,000 years ago in Africa. However, the human cognitive revolution occurred between 70,000 to 30,000 years ago. It allowed homo sapiens to communicate at a level never seen before in language. As far as we know, only homo sapiens can talk about things we have never seen, touched, or smelled. Indeed, humans also evolved through the geosphere and the biosphere, but they entered into the noosphere, the evolutionary state dominated by consciousness, the mind, and interpersonal relationships, as thinking animals. Eventually, they created religions, myths, legends, and fantasies as products of the human brain.

Humans live in two worlds. We live in the real world of trees, animals, birds, etc, – the phenomena and simultaneously we live in the imaginative and materialistic world of stories, fantasies, ideas, philosophies, religious beliefs, morals, judiciary, banks, etc. Without creating such imaginary entities, humans feel empty and meaningless. The brain is the source of learning, creative, cultural, social, and emotional pursuits. We survived and continue to survive because of the power of the imaginative brain and consciousness. All human progress so far in the world has developed first in the human brain and consciousness. Our consciousness has the capacity to think and has the capacity to know that we are thinking. In other words, we are conscious and at the same time, we are aware of our consciousness – ie. Conciousness².

Human consciousness has had exponential growth in the last 75,000 years. For example, human survival instinct made us cultivate food in cooperation with others. Humans started to think about the future and made plans to preserve food for famine. The capacity to cooperate in large groups also made humans grow organically and systematically. The epigenetic or non-genetic traits acquired by humans through thousands of years helped the formation and complexity of the brain and all progress resulted from this. Inventions, innovations, scientific and technological advancements developed due to critical thinking. The past 7,500 years of homo sapiens’ progress seems linear but the growth of the last 500 years has been exponential. Even though critical thinking, inventions, scientific studies, and futuristic vision allowed humans to become the leaders and stewards of evolution, excessive human intervention (Anthropocene) resulted in global warming and the destruction of the environment and the ecosystem. However, the recent development of vaccines within 9 months is a great achievement and an example of humans as survival specialists who have a high potential for cooperation to save the planet, the ecosystem, and the species from mass extinction.

The author introduced a new concept, ‘Bionomics – Economics of Sustainability, for the first time in this book because of the contemporary context of economic reflection to reimagine the world after the COVID-19 pandemic and the demand for a study of economics from the perspective of the sustainability of ecology and humanity. Bionomics is a quadruple bottom line for sustainability, which is a developed version of the triple bottom line model, giving emphasis to 4 Pillars of development – Environmental, Social. Economic and, Techno-scientific. This fundamental reflection is representing 4 P (1) the Planet – save it, (2) the People -engage with integral growth 3. Prosperity – make it with reasonable profit but affordable to all 4. Plenitude of resources – creating an abundance of resources through science and technology and making it accessible, available, and accountable to society. The author added for the first time the ‘4th Pillar’, plenitude in the discussions on sustainable development. In line with the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), Bionomics is a systemic and organic economic ecosystem that fundamentally provides importance to the conservation of the ecology and the survival of the planet and mankind. Bionomics proposes a “New Ethics of Freedom and Responsibility” towards the Other, who may be your neighbour, a person far and near, who you may never see, the global society, the planet, the universe, nature, and the generations yet to come. “The Other Makes Me Responsible” shall be the new axiom of ethics. In short, Bionomics is an organic economic ecosystem and a sustainable economic solution revisiting ecology and economy contextually for the survival of the planet and mankind. Bionomics challenges contemporary economics which could not effectively reduce global inequality and equity issues. Bionomics advocates universal basic income and universal health coverage as fundamental rights and asks for new ethics of freedom and responsibility for the Other.

The book neither promotes atheism nor opposes the truth claims of religions. It never endorses the presence and appearance of God according to their story. The book tries to say that it is not the question of whether God exists or not, but it says that “God should exist lest let us create it” in “the likeness and image” of the ingenuity of human consciousness that is always in the process of becoming. The human will and conscious decisions matter in the making and sustainability of the world. Humans are the only species that are found existing in the known universe and planet earth is the only place to have a conscious life in the universe existing so far. The book proposes the ‘super-natural’ god (or goddess), the nature which is intrinsic to the creatures and forces of nature, not an appearance that transcends the laws of nature. Finally, the book meaningfully and modestly describes the fundamentality of human consciousness that is ubiquitous in nature, with or without gods. Human consciousness with its ingenious responsibility to create any entity, which is necessary for humans, nature, and the universe to organize, co-operate and manage meaningfully with stewardship. Human consciousness tries to find its source of energy through meditation, a fountain of spirituality.