At the Green Festival with another one of my heroes - visionary, author, activist David Korten. Sharing, learning, and participating in the work such as that done by David Korten changes us and changes our world. The below is a glimpse into his website and work. I am profoundly grateful to those like David who can imagine and bring alive a whole different world, one which truly cares about and works for all. Peace & blessings....
We humans are Creation's most daring experiment with reflective consciousness, the source of our distinctive capacity to choose our future as an intentional collective act. For some 5,000 years, we have used this capacity foolishly at an enormous cost to ourselves and to other living beings. We must now take the step to a new level of species maturity and demonstrate our ability to act with collective wisdom and foresight. This weblog is my place to share my ongoing reflections on the nature of this challenge and report on my own attempts to contribute to its realization in my role as an active citizen.
The Path to a New Economy
For much of my adult life I have been embarked on a quest to understand the institutional sources of human dysfunction and map a pathway to positive change. Beginning with the launch of When Corporations Rule the World in 1995, my most widely read books have addressed the dysfunctions of a global economic system that values money more than life. For all the tragic pain created by the recent financial collapse, it is in the larger view a blessing as it demonstrates so conclusively that the economy we came to collectively worship as an engine of perpetual wealth creation was nothing more than an illusion based on massive fraud and self-deception.
My most recent book, Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth exposes the truth and maps a path to a new real wealth economy. You can follow my New Economy blog on the YES! Magazine site. See also the ongoing YES! web feature "Path to a New Economy."
Much of my attention is currently focused on the New Economy Working Group, a partnership of the Institute for Policy Studies in DC (IPS), YES! magazine, the Business Alliance for Local Livinng Economies (BALLE), and the PCDForum. I am co-chair with John Cavanagh of IPS. We are developing a New Economy website intended to take the discussion of a transformative economic agenda to a new level. We hope to do an initial launch before the end of 2009.
The Great Turning
The framework I find most useful in understanding the nature of the challenge before us is summarized in my article "The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community" in the Summer 2006 issue of YES! and in my book of the same name. See also my web essay "The Great Turning: Epic Passage."
We can change the human course by changing the framing stories of our dominant culture. The prevailing Empire stories celebrate the individualism, violence and greed that express the pathologies of our collective human immaturity, while denying the potentials for community, love, and nurturing service that define our more mature human nature. The turning from Empire to Earth Community depends on changing these stories through conversations that make public the transformative inner wisdom we posses as individuals. Institutional change will follow naturally.
The companion website, Navigating the Great Turning, offers a rich source of ideas and resources for Great Turning Navigators who are working to turn the culture by changing its framing stories.
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We seek: Within a generation, a global system of human-scale, interconnected Local Living Economies that function in harmony with local ecosystems, meet the basic needs of all people, support just and democratic societies, and foster joyful community life.
You may notice that this is a bit different from the greed-driven, money-centered, unjust, unsustainable, undemocratic, and predatory Wall Street ruled economic system we now have, which is why I’m so proud of being part of this organization.
Economic transformation depends in part on changing the prevailing stories about the nature of wealth, the purpose of the economy, and the possibilities of our human nature.
BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) is lighting the way to a New Economy, a global system of human-scale interconnected Local Living Economies that function in harmony with local ecosystems, meet the basic needs of all people, support just and democratic societies, and foster joyful community life. It is an epic, even audacious undertaking, but the future of humanity lies in the balance and we stand beside millions of people the world over who are rising to this great challenge. Now is the hour. We have the power. We are the one's we’ve been waiting for.
~David Korten
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