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A Story for Our Time |
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The Seeking a just, inclusive, and sustainable world that works for all
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A STORY FOR OUR TIME David C. Korten In Dream of the Earth, the eminent theologian Thomas Berry makes the case that humanity is falling into a deepening social and environmental crisis because we continue to live an old story at odds with contemporary need and reality. Berry and others, including Brian Swimme, Joanna Macy, Mae-Wan Ho, Elisabet Sahtouris, Lynn Margulies, Matthew Fox, and Duane Elgin, have since drawn from many sources, including astrophysics, quantum physics, the new biology, and the wisdom of the world’s many religious traditions, to craft the outlines of a more contemporary story. This is my version of the story. The story began some 15 billion years ago when a new universe flared into being with a great flash--dispersing tiny energy particles, the stuff of creation, across the vastness of space. With the passing of time these particles self-organized into atoms, which swirled into great clouds that coalesced into galaxies of countless stars that grew, died, and were reborn as new stars, star systems, and planets. The cataclysmic energies unleashed by the births and deaths of billions of suns converted simple atoms into more complex atoms and melded atoms into even more complex molecules--each step opening new possibilities for the growth and evolution of the whole. Each stage transcended the stage before in order, definition, and capacity--as the drama of creation unfolded. It was as if a great intelligence had embarked on a grand quest to know itself through the discovery and realization of the possibilities of its being. Life's Journey of Discovery More than eleven billion years after the quest began there was an extraordinary breakthrough on a planet orbiting one of the countless stars in an outer galaxy. Here the cosmos gave birth to living beings--microscopic in size, they were the simplest of single-celled bacteria. Inconsequential though they seemed, they embodied an enormous creative potential and with time created the building blocks of living knowledge that made possible the incredible accomplishments that followed. They discovered in turn the arts of fermentation, photosynthesis, and respiration fundamental to all life. They learned to exchange genetic material through their cell walls to share their discoveries with one another in a grand cooperative enterprise that created the planet's first global communication system. And they transformed and stabilized the chemical composition of the entire planet's atmosphere. As the fruits of life's learning multiplied, individual cells evolved to become more complex and diverse. In due course individual cells discovered the advantages of joining with one another in clusters to create complex multi-celled organisms--converting the matter of the planet into a splendid web of plant and animal life with capacities far beyond those of any individual cell. Those among the new creatures that found a niche in which they could at once sustain themselves and contribute to the life of the whole survived. Those that proved unable to find or create their niche of service expired. Continuously experimenting, interrelating, creating, building, the evolving web of life unfolded into a living tapestry of astonishing variety, beauty, awareness, and capacity for intelligent choice. A Stunning Potential Then, a mere 2.6 million years ago, quite near the end of our 15 billion year story, there came the most extraordinary achievement of all, the creation of a being with capacities far beyond those of any creature that had come before it to reflect on its own consciousness, to experience with awe the beauty and mystery of creation, to articulate, communicate and share learning, to reshape the material world to its own ends, and to anticipate and intentionally chose its own future. It was the living spirit's most daring experiment--and a stunning cooperative achievement. Each of these creatures, humans they were called, was comprised of from 30 to 70 trillion individual living, self-regulating, self-reproducing cells. More than half the dry weight of each human consisted of the individual micro-organisms required to metabolize its food and create the vitamins essential to its survival. All together it took more than a 100 trillion individual living entities joined in an exquisitely balanced cooperative union to create each of these extraordinary creatures. These new beings--these humans--had such potential to contribute to the journey of the whole. Yet their freedom to chose their own destiny carried a risk. As it gave them extraordinary creative potentials--it also gave them a great destructive potential. Human's were remarkably fast learners in the cosmic scheme of things. During their first two and a half million years they developed the capacity for speech, mastered the use of fire, produced and used sophisticated tools, engaged in artistic expression, learned the arts of cultivation, created systems of written expression, established highly organized civilizations, and created organized systems of knowledge in botany, zoology, astronomy, and cosmology. As their scientific and organizational capabilities expanded, ever more impressive technical advances came at a rapidly accelerating rate--at each step increasing their ability to manipulate and control aspects of their material world. Cultural Crisis Yet somewhere along the way something went terribly wrong, for they came to use their powerful technologies and institutions in ways that were increasingly destructive of life. Indeed, in a mere 100 years--between their years 1900 and 2000-- they destroyed much of the living natural capital it had taken billions of years of evolution to create. Some attribute this tragedy to a genetic flaw that doomed humans to the blind pursuit of greed and violence. Yet the earliest human civilizations were peaceful and cooperative and even during their most destructive periods the vast majority of humans were generous and caring. More compelling is the argument that the roots of the crisis were cultural, not genetic--the consequence of a materialistic ideology, born of what humans called their Scientific Revolution, that stripped humans of their sense of meaning, called forth their greed and violence, and made generosity and caring seem somehow naive. The Scientific Revolution and the industrial/technological era that followed it were in many respects the proudest period of human accomplishment. They freed a substantial portion of humanity from the deprivation, superstition, fear, and early death of medieval peasant life and from often oppressive religious dogma. They produced humanity's most impressive technological accomplishments--including the means to eliminate physical toil, deprivation, and geographical barriers between people, to feed a rapidly growing population, and to greatly improve health and extend mortality. They created institutions of global governance and cooperation. And they established democracy and human rights as universal ideals. Yet they also established a belief system that held matter to be the only reality and taught that the universe is best viewed as a giant clockwork set in motion at the beginning of creation and left to run down as the tension in its spring expires. They further taught that life is only an accidental outcome of material complexity, consciousness an illusion. Thomas Hobbes, a noted philosopher of the Scientific Revolution, took these ideas a step further to argue that since life is only an accident, it has no inherent meaning, human behavior is determined solely by appetites and aversions, and good is merely that which gives oneself pleasure; evil that which brings pain. The rational person thus seeks a life of material indulgence unburdened by concern for others. These beliefs became the foundation of a cultural system known as modernism and an economic system known as capitalism. Both nurtured the pursuit of a narrow self interest and absolved the individual of responsibility for the lot of society and nature. A Once and Distant God Though there was much ado at the time about a conflict between scientists and theologians, they eventually arrived at a mutual accommodation in many of their core beliefs. Western theologians, mostly elder males, had long before created their God in their own image--an elder male with a white beard who ruled a kingdom called Heaven. This God was so powerful that by the estimate of the Western religions, he created the cosmos, the earth and all its living beings in a mere six days. On the seventh day, his work thus done, he rested. The world views of the scientific and religious cultures subsequently differed primarily on the question of whether or not God returned after his rest. Scientists maintained that he departed forever. Theologians generally believed he returned. Some among those of Christianity's influential Protestant sect believed as well that he occupied his time after his return by rewarding the worthy with material abundance, and punishing the unworthy with sickness and poverty. As God personally determined the fate of each person, those with wealth and power were by definition worthy in his eyes, while the poor and powerless deserved their fate. Thus it was that Western theological culture inadvertently affirmed the righteousness of material inequality and political oppression and absolved humans of responsibility for one another and for the care the earth. Furthermore, for those whose religion taught that humans are the end product of creation, not an instrument of its continued unfolding it followed that whatever the deficiencies of the world as any individual might find it, it was to be accepted as God's will. Some believed that God would eventually return to establish peace and justice for all. Others looked to the afterlife for perfection and awaited their time to join God in paradise. Either way they believed the fate of humanity was in the hands of a God who resided apart in a far place. Misplaced Search for Meaning Capitalists had their own god called the market. They believed this god had a wondrous invisible hand that magically turned their every act -- no matter how avaricious and ruthless-- to the benefit of society. One of capitalism's defining features was a consumer culture its institutions cultivated by saturating the media with an endlessly repeated message that the consumption of advertised products would bring meaning and love to the empty and lonely lives of the otherwise unworthy. When consumption inevitably failed to substitute for meaning, more consumption was prescribed as the solution. Increasingly the creative energies of the species turned to building institutions dedicated to endlessly increasing consumption through a process called economic growth. Growth became such an obsession that no one seemed to care what was consumed. Nor did they seem to notice that the basic livelihood needs of the many went unmet while a fortunate few engaged in an orgy of consumption. Indeed, a privileged minority became so obsessed with the futile attempt to fill their empty lives with stuff they failed to notice that the growth they so prized was destroying the life support system of the planet, the social fabric of the society, and the lives of billions of people. The Money Game One of the human's more creative inventions was called money--a mysterious kind of sacred number that banks loaned into existence. By social convention humans accepted in exchange for things of real value like their labor, food, land, and shelter. It facilitated exchange and was a key to the substantial economic prosperity enjoyed by more than a billion humans. Eventually, however, since money was the ticket that allowed people to accumulate stuff, those who already had so much stuff they didn't know what to do with it, turned their attention to accumulating these sacred numbers for their own sake. As this accumulation served no evident purpose, its practitioners turned it into a competitive game in which the winner was the one with the biggest number. Many made their fortunes gambling on the prices of currencies, bonds, and corporate shares in a great electronic casino in cyberspace called a global financial market. The top players were called billionaires. A well known magazine called Forbes regularly published their current scores and rankings. For those who had the means to play, this game became life's purpose. Those less affluent, but with a bit of extra cash to spare, were encouraged to place their bets in the great casino through professional gamblers--called money managers. In the course of their play, the money managers moved trillions of dollars around the world at the speed of light, trashing the currencies and economies of hapless countries whose policies displeased them and the share prices of corporations that produced less than the profits they expected. In the wake of their moves whole governments fell and hundreds of thousands lost their jobs--while pundits of the corporate controlled media cheered the results as demonstrating capitalism's powers of "creative destruction." Life Into Money The corporations whose shares were traded in the great casino were a favored institution of capitalists. From a social perspective the corporation was a frightfully perverse sort of legal entity designed to allow the accumulation of massive financial power with little or no accountability for the consequences of its use. Some corporations were served by the labor of hundreds of thousands of people and received millions of dollars in subsidies from government. Yet the law and much of public opinion stipulated that only shareholders were entitled to a voice in management and a share in the profits. Employees were expected to leave their personal values at the door when they reported for work. On the job there was only one value--shareholder return. Treated as expendable commodities, workers could be fired without notice or recourse. Whole communities were simply abandoned when a corporation found it more profitable to move its operations elsewhere. In response to the insatiable demands of money managers for ever greater profits, corporations rewarded politicians with large financial gifts in return for public subsidies and laws granting them special privileges. Tiring of the inconvenience of bribing politicians one country at a time the major players created a new institution called the World Trade Organization--or WTO. Here unelected trade representatives loyal to corporate interests established international rules that obliged all countries to extend special rights and privileges to any global corporation. Incredible as it may seem, if the WTO decided that a law conflicted with WTO rules, the offending country was obliged to change it--even when the change was contrary to the interests and preferences of its own citizens. Invariably the rules of the WTO gave corporations ever greater freedom to roam the world converting the living wealth of society and planet into money. They turned the natural living capital of the earth into money by strip-mining forests, fisheries and mineral deposits, producing toxic chemicals and dumping hazardous wastes. They turned human capital into money by employing workers under substandard working conditions that left them physically handicapped. They turned the social capital of society into money when they paid substandard wages that destroyed workers emotionally and led to family and community breakdown and violence. They turned the living trust of public institutions into money by bribing politicians with campaign contributions to convert the taxes of working people into inflated corporate profits through public subsidies, bailouts and tax exemptions. Awakening As the year 2000 approached there was evidence of an emerging culture shift. Millions of people around the world were awakening, as if from a deep trance, to the beauty, joy, and meaning of life. Many among them began to question consumerism. Others took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands demanding a restoration of democracy, an end to corporate rule, and respect for the needs of all people and other living things. Yet others pondered the implications of a growing body of scientific evidence that matter, not consciousness, is the illusion--suggesting that conscious intelligence is the ground from which all else is manifest. They began to rethink human possibilities in light of new evidence of life's creative capacity for cooperation and radical self-organization. Some who reflected on questions of human purpose came to see humans not as the end of creation's journey, but rather as instruments of it's continued unfolding. Those at the cutting edge of the culture shift--some called them the Cultural Creatives--suffered a deep sense of isolation from the mainstream of society and their effort to correct serious institutional pathologies were sometimes violently resisted by those who believed them to be misguided opponents of progress and prosperity. Thus an epic cultural struggle was engaged with profound implications for the future of humanity and for life's evolutionary course. _____________________ David C. Korten is the author of The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism and the international best-seller, When Corporations Rule the World, now out in an updated and expanded second edition released in April 2001. He is board chair of the Positive Futures Network, publisher of YES! A Journal of Positive Futures which is dedicated to the process of cultural consolidation. YES! regularly reports evidence of the deep culture change at work, tells the stories of the movement's countless leaders, and facilitates individual engagement and alliance building among the movement's many elements. Find it on the web at www.yesmagazine.org or call (1-206) 842-0126 to subscribe. Korten is also president of the People-Centered Development Forum, which supports civil society alliance building at the global level. Find it on the web at www.pcdf.org. |