From Personal Development to Human Development

Leonardo da Vinci’s extensive studies of human anatomy were hundreds of years ahead of their time. (Image by Wikimedia Commons, Leonardo da Vinci.)

At the third assembly of the World Humanist Forum on July 19, Antonio Carvallo proposed the creation of a new working table on the theme of Personal Development. During his presentation, a spark caught my attention. He remarked that, for over 5,000 years, humanity has devoted nearly all its energy to understanding and developing the external world, while neglecting its own internal development as human beings.

Here we are today, with astonishing technological, scientific, intellectual, and social capacities. We can split atoms, map genomes, and communicate instantly across the planet. Yet, in comparison, our understanding of how we function internally as human beings remains painfully limited. Human beings are still too often treated as tools, valued mainly for their capacity to produce and consume.

Ask a teenager what they plan to do with their life, and the question is typically understood to mean: What job will you have? Life becomes synonymous with work. You study in order to work, you work most of your life, and eventually retire—often exhausted and disillusioned. Fulfillment is closely tied to career success, even in a dysfunctional society or a toxic workplace.
Meanwhile, mental health statistics in Western society point to a deep and growing crisis:

• • In 2022, around 59.3 million U.S. adults (≈23.1%) experienced some form of mental illness.
  • In 2022, 15.4 million adults (6%) experienced serious mental illness.
  • In 2022, the CDC reported 49,449 suicide deaths in the United States—about a 3% increase from 48,183 in 2021, marking a record high.

Is this not a dramatic expression of unresolved internal conflict?

Why has internal development been so undervalued? It almost seems like there’s a global conspiracy against it. Most religions begin with an internal experience, but over time, they become increasingly outward-facing — placing God in the sky, focusing on external rituals, and obsessing over food or rules. Political ideologies like Marxism often fail to explore the role of violence, fear, and meaning in how we organize ourselves. Even in the modern “self-help” industry, personal growth is often framed as a way to “optimize performance” within the same dehumanizing structures that cause suffering.

Ask someone, “How do you deal with fear?” Most will struggle to answer. People have no internal tools or language to face and transform their fear. Fear becomes a tool used by the system to control everyday life: we fear being fired, not having enough money, not being loved, being “too much” or “not enough.”

Why are so many people exhausted? What do we actually know about our internal energy — how to cultivate it, renew it, and direct it? These are fundamental questions central to our survival and evolution, and yet society rarely addresses them.

Let’s be clear: we are not proposing personal development so that people can function better in this dehumanized system. True personal development is about changing the focus of our lives entirely. Nothing meaningful can be transformed in the world until we internalize our knowledge of what it means to be human, recognize that life has meaning beyond labor and consumption, and free ourselves from the illusion of fear.

Peace is not the absence of war. It is an internal state of being.

Imagine what it would mean for 8 billion people to embark on a path of self-understanding, learning to overcome pain and suffering, seeing money not as an end in itself but as a tool to humanize the Earth. Imagine if self-knowledge were approached with the same discipline, care, and passion as a musician practices an instrument.

Education must evolve. It must be rooted in the development of the whole human being. Reconciling with oneself should be the first step. The world we long for must first take root within ourselves—only then can we co-create it with others.