I just ran across a nice talk by Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity Without Growth, on BigIdeas. It’s hard to summarize such a wide-ranging talk, but I’d call it a synthesis of the physical (planetary boundaries and exponential growth) and the behavioral (what is the economy for, how does it influence our choices, and how can we change it?). The horns of the dilemma are that growth can’t go on forever, yet we don’t know how to run an economy that doesn’t grow. (This of course begs the question, “growth of what?” – where the what is a mix of material and non-material things – a distinction that lies at the heart of many communication failures around the Limits to Growth debate.)
There’s an article covering the talk at ABC.au, but it’s really worth a listen at http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2010/07/bia_20100704_1705.mp3
Probably it is growth of rationality (critical thinking) and growth of spiritual (meaning of life, self-actualization). So far only minority people had been reached that level, as most still struggle to meet their basic material needs.
Sorry, the “growth” words in the previous comment are better replaced with “development”, as it is (human) quality development, not quantity growth (and let the evolution to improve the quality in a hard way).