Monday, March 14, 2011

What is needed to make things better?

What is needed to make things better?

We need new stories to help shift our worldview and culture to Earth Community.

It is impossible to resolve issues of racism, sexism, employment, poverty within the current cultural context of Empire.

We need to develop cooperative relationships.

Earth Community needs changes in two areas
1. Values - from money to life
2. Relationships – from domination to partnership based on organizing principles of healthy living systems

The organizing principles for an earth society are:

1. Cooperative self-organization – species “meet their own need in ways that simultaneously serve others” 
2. Place – adapt to physical locale. We need to live adapted to microenvironments of our particular place on Earth. Devastation sometimes results from the introduction of an alien species, a consequence much like introducing a cancer tumor into a healthy living body, or a Wal-Mart into a previously thriving local economy. P. 292
3. Permeable Boundaries – to maintain a balanced relationship to maintain internal integrity and coherence and assume that exchanges with neighbours are balanced and mutually beneficial
4. Abundance – frugality, mutuality and sharing where the wastes of one are resources of another
5. Diversity – the greater the diversity the greater the resilience in times of crisis and also potential for creative innovative. p. 294 Summarized and quoted from David Korten, The Great Turning, from empire to earth community


There are 4 processes to help move toward Earth Community. They are both sequential and simultaneous.
1. Accelerate the awakening of cultural and spiritual consciousness – by individual engagement and dialogue with others, cross-cultural experiences, reflecting on meaning and values, exposing contradiction of Empire system, spreading awareness of unrealized human possibilities by changing prevailing stories.

2. Resist assault on children, families, community and nature by Empire’s systems – by resisting the institutions and agendas of Empire, demanding the repeal of unjust and undemocratic rules, and abolishing programs that serve Empire’s interests at the expense of community. Any civil disobedience must be non-violent, even in the fact of violent police and military repression. – to break the cycle of violence.

3. Form and Connect Communities of Congruence – by developing relationships , institutions, and authentic cultures of living societies – a local study group, farmers’ market, a school to develop inquiring minds, a course on voluntary simplicity, a socially responsible local business, a church congregation devoted to spiritual inquiry and community service, a holistic health clinic.  – to weaken Empire and strengthen Earth Community in an emergent process of displacement and eventual succession.

4. Build a Majoritarin Political Base – by taking the culture of Earth Community mainstream through the many formal and informal communications channels beyond corporate control. This will tip the balance in favour of Earth Community and the radical democratization of the formal institutions of economy, politics, and culture will follow.

p. 316-7 Summarized and quoted from David Korten, The Great Turning, from empire to earth community
To realize an earth community we need to convert 4 institutions – family, education, media and religion from imperial culture to earth community. The goal is to build mutual trust and facilitate cooperative sharing and caring through a process that is participatory and intentional.

Life is a never ending process of self-renewal in pursuit of unrealized potential, vibrating creation into existence in a manner suggestive of the ways in which quantum physics describes material reality.

 Life must be our defining value and partnership as the model for our relations with one another and the planet.

Humans are participating in an epic creative journey. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Summarized and quoted from David Korten, The Great Turning, from empire to earth community.

These processes involve withdrawing the legitimacy and life energy away from the systems of Empire, in economic, political and cultural spheres of life.

Economic transition includes “corporate free” economies that mimic healthy ecosystems – “buy local” to rebuild local food systems, elimination of corporate subsidies, stop intrusion of big box stores, hold corporations accountable for harms committed, reform corporate chartering. Example of initiatives are to encourage humane animal husbandry and sustainable agriculture, seek to abolish factory farms and ban genetically modified seeds, promote green business, introduce sustainable community –based forestry-management practices, and work to roll back the use of toxic chemicals, strengthen the protection of worker rights, raise the minimum wage, advance worker ownership, increase socially responsible investing, and promote other fiscal and regulatory measures that improve economic justice and encourage environmental responsibility.
  p. 319

The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) works toward planetary system of local living economies free from the pathologies of absentee ownership. It support local businesses in growing webs of economic relationships among themselves, raising consumer awareness of the implication of their shopping choices and working with local government to write rules that favour locally owned business essential to prosperous and vibrant community life. There are many other activities that support an earth community including Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Washington State, Co-op America, the American Independent Busyness Alliance and the New Rules Project of the Institute for Local Self Reliance. Other structures are emerging that are “rooted in and controlled by communities of place”

Political initiatives aim to “democratize the structures of government, promote active citizen participation in political life with a diversity of voices to shift public priorities to favour people, families, communities and the planet. These usually start from the bottom up, working with local government.

Cultural – Indications include
  • indigenous people reclaiming their traditions and identities and reaching out to share their understanding of human connections to the sacred Earth
  • large number of elders with potential to make “their experience and wisdom available as teachers and mentors
  • immigrants shifting the racial mix in “white power” centres
  • women’s role as fuller participants in society. Women tend to lead by networking rather than as an authority in a hierarchical system.

p. 322 Summarized and quoted from David Korten, The Great Turning, from empire to earth community


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