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Unitarian Universalists for a Just Economic Community
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By David Korten. Published May 2006 SOME GENERAL INFORMATION Dr. David C. Korten has authored numerous books, including When Corporations Rule the World, and The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism. He is a co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! A Journal of Positive Futures; founder and president of The People-Centered development Forum; an associate of the International Forum on Globalization; and a member of the Club of Rome. A former Harvard Business School professor, Air Force captain, and USAID advisor, he has more than thirty years experience living and working in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. He also serves on the boards of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies and the Bainbridge Graduate Institute. WHERE DOES THE TITLE COME FROM? We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future... To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth Community with a common destiny. The Earth Charter (2000) Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society. And they may well call this the time of the Great Turning. Joanna Macy (Ph.D., Buddhist teacher, deep ecologist, writer) By David Korten. Published May 2006 WHAT IS THE STORY LINE? Korten's Thesis: We face a defining choice between two contrasting models for organizing human affairs-- Empire and Earth Community. Absent an understanding of the history and implications of this choice, we may squander valuable time and resources on efforts to preserve or mend cultures and institutions that cannot be fixed and must be replaced. - Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human societies to maintain the institutions of domination. - Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative co-operation, and shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire. - The choice is ours to make. Why Has The Empire Model Held Sway For 5000 Years? The power of story!! - The Imperial Prosperity Story: An eternally growing economy benefits everyone. To grow the economy, we need wealthy people who can invest in enterprises that create jobs. Thus, we must support the wealthy by cutting their taxes and eliminating regulations that create barriers to accumulating wealth. We must also eliminate welfare programs in order to teach the poor the value of working hard at whatever wages the market offers. - The Imperial Security Story: There is a dangerous world, filled with criminals, terrorists, and enemies. The only way to insure our safety is through major expenditures on the military and the police to maintain order by physical force. - The Imperial Meaning Story: Reinforces the other two, featuring a God who rewards righteousness with wealth and power and mandates that they rule over the poor who justly suffer divine punishment for their sins. Why Would Things Change Now? The Perfect Economic Storm!! - Climate Change: Hurricane Katrina was just a preview! A DoD study of climate change predicts 10-25% lower crop yields, water shortages, forest fires, famine, disease, and uncontrolled migration. - Peak Oil: Global oil production cannot keep pace with growing demand. Rising oil prices spell the end of economies built on cheap oil, industrial agriculture, car-dependent sprawl, and the global projection of mechanized military force. - U.S. Financial Meltdown: Growing trade deficits generate foreign debt at a rate of $2 Billion a day. When the rest of the world tires of feeding our profligacy, financial meltdown will ensue. These are no longer future issues. These events are unfolding now. The status quo is no longer sustainable and is not an option. What Are The Options? - The Great Unraveling: A time when profligate consumption exceeds Earth's capacity to sustain and leads to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remains of the planet's resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population. A possible outcome for our future (or lack thereof). OR - The Great Turning To Earth Community: A time when people embrace the higher-order potential of our human nature, turn crisis into opportunity, and learn to live in creative partnership with one another and the Earth. A possible outcome for our future, but by no means assured. Who Will Lead "The Great Turning"? "In nature, change doesn't happen from a top-down, strategic approach. There is never a boss in a living system. Change happens from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously." Meg Wheatley, "Restoring Hope to the Future through Critical Education of Leaders" March 2001 The Great Turning requires more than adjustments at the margin of Empire. It requires turning from dominator to partnership relations in each of three major spheres of human activity: - Cultural Turning: The Great Turning begins with a cultural and spiritual awakeninga turning in cultural values from money and material excess to life and spiritual fulfillment, from a belief in our limitations to a belief in our possibilities, and from fearing our differences to rejoicing in our diversity. It requires reframing the cultural stories by which we define our human nature, purpose, and possibilities. - Economic Turning: The values shift of the cultural turning leads us to redefine wealthto measure it by the health of our families, communities, and natural environment. It leads us from policies that raise those at the top to policies that raise those at the bottom, from hoarding to sharing, from concentrated to distributed ownership, and from the rights of ownership to the responsibilities of stewardship. - Political Turning : The economic turning creates the necessary conditions for a turn from a one-dollar, one-vote democracy to a one-person, one-vote democracy, from passive to active citizenship, from competition for individual advantage to cooperation for mutual advantage, from retributive justice to restorative justice, and from social order by coercion to social order by mutual responsibility and accountability. What Would The New Earth Community Stories Sound Like? - The Earth Community Prosperity Story: Prosperity is measured by the quality of our lives and the realization by each person of the creative potential of their humanity. A high-performing economic system supports the development of this potential, provides every person with an adequate and dignified means of livelihood, maintains the healthy vitality of the planetary ecosystem that is the source of all real wealth, and contributes to building community through strengthening the bonds of affection, trust, and mutual accountability. - The Earth Community Security Story: Strong families and communities that build relationships of mutual trust and caring and that support all people in realizing the potentials of their humanity are the best guarantee of human security. They also serve as deterrents to criminal activity and as an important resource for apprehending those who engage in criminal acts. - The Earth Community Meaning Story: The cosmos and all within it is an integral interconnected whole that flows forth from a universal spiritual intelligence, the ground of all being. We humans know this intelligence by many names. This spiritual intelligence is engaged in an epic journey of self-discovery, a quest to know itself by actualizing its possibilities through the eternal process of learning and becoming. Everything that exists is both a product of this sacred quest and an instrument of its continued unfolding. we are the ones we have been waiting for!!! Break The Silence! End The Isolation! Change The Story! SOME DEFINITIONS (a la Korten) Empire: the organization of society by hierarchies of domination grounded in violent chauvinisms of race, gender, religion, nationality, language, and class. The result has been the same for 5,000 years... fortune for the few and misery for the many. Increasingly destructive of children, family, community, and nature, the way of Empire is leading to environmental and social collapse. Earth Community: a society grounded in the life-affirming cultural values shared by most all the world's people and eloquently articulated in the Earth Charter. Comes from the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development. An Earth Charter Commission was formed in 1997 to oversee the project and an Earth Charter Secretariat was established at the Earth Council in Costa Rica. The Great Unraveling: A time when profligate consumption exceeds Earth's capacity to sustain and leads to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remains of the planet's resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population. A possible outcome for our future (or lack thereof). The Great Turning: A time when people embrace the higher-order potential of our human nature, turn crisis into opportunity, and learn to live in creative partnership with one another and the Earth. A possible outcome for our future, but by no means assured. |