A Perspective from Outside the Corporation
The IBTE Conversation with David
Korten
Ethix Magazine Issue 25
(Sept-Oct 02): 6-9, 16
©Institute for Business,
Technology, and Ethics
P.O. Box 50474, Bellevue WA 98015
www.ethix.org
(Al
Erisman & David Gill are Co-Directors of the IBTE)
David C. Korten earned his M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Stanford University’s
Graduate School of Business, focusing on economics, organization theory, and
business strategy, and then served on the Harvard Business School faculty for
five years. Believing that a new generation of professional business
entrepreneurs was the key to overcoming world poverty, Korten worked on business
education and development projects in Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and, for fifteen
years, Southeast Asia.
Based on these experiences, Korten came to believe that the typical
corporate development model was more of a problem than a solution, that it
contributed to environmental and social breakdowns and intensified the gap
between rich and poor. Back in the United States since 1992, Korten has become
a major thinker and speaker in the anti-globalization movement. He is the
author of When
Corporations Rule the World (Kumarian Press & Berrett-Koehler Publishers, by
1995, 2nd ed., 2001) and The Post-Corporate World
(Berrett-Koehler Publishers,& Kumarian Press 1999).
David Korten is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures
Network (www.futurenet.org), publisher of
YES! A Journal of Positive
Futures, founder and president of The People-Centered Development Forum (www.pcdf.org),
and an associate of the International Forum on Globalization (www.ifg.org).
* *
* * *
David W. Gill:
How did you---a Stanford “Young Republican” earning an MBA and Ph.D. in
business, an Air Force Captain during Vietnam, and a Harvard business school
professor---end up as an anti-corporate, anti-globalization prophet out here in
“ecotopia” on Bainbridge Island, so far from the center and the mindset of the
business world?
David C. Korten:
Thirty years of working in Third World countries convinced me that the
development models we were spreading throughout the world were actually
deepening human poverty and inequality, and producing environmental destruction
and social breakdown.
My focus at Stanford was on
business organization. We were trained to trace problems back to the way
decision-making processes are organized. My analysis led me to conclude that we
have created a global system of economic institutions programmed to behave in a
sociopathic way. We had a very serious problem but very little discussion of
how the system might lead to such negative outcomes.
A lot of my analysis was
developed in conjunction with Asian colleagues from nongovernmental
organizations working with rural poor. At one point they told me that if I
really want to be helpful I should go home and try to educate the American
people to understand what America policies and American corporations are doing
to the rest of the world. It came to a point where I decided that was exactly
what I needed to do.
Gill:
So you are not blaming these problems on individual evil capitalists but on an
organizational structure and a system of relationships?
Korten:
My focus is on the economy as an organizational system that is structured to
reward the worst in us. There are certainly some extraordinarily dishonest and
greedy people who use this system. But most in the corporate system are
ordinary decent people, many of them with deep spiritual and ethical values.
They are caught in a system that gives them very little scope to behave in any
way other than what the system demands.
Worse Off Today Than
Before?
Gill:
How do you measure whether people are worse off or not? A friend of mine who
dropped out of the corporate fast track and moved to China a decade ago to teach
and to live a simple life among the people, insists that corporate development
has brought real improvement to the lives of ordinary Chinese people.
Korten:
My views are based on my own direct experience, on the reports of individuals,
popular movements, and groups working on poverty around the world, and on global
statistics. By World Bank and UN statistics more than two billion people live
in abject poverty on less than two dollars per day and another two billion live
under very marginal poverty conditions.
It is easy to go through
life without ever seeing the poor. I lived for 15 years in Southeast Asia,
including five years in Indonesia, one of the much-hyped Tiger economies. Over
time we got modern airports and highways, streets crowded with late model cars,
shopping malls, housing colonies, and so forth. It looked like incredible
progress, but conditions for most people became increasingly harsh. It’s so easy
not to see such divisions.
Albert M. Erisman:
Certainly poor people in these environments are worse off than the wealthy but
is the average person actually better off in this environment than without it?
Korten:
That part is very elusive in terms of hard data. But part of the dynamic that
we miss is also that the development process pushes more and more people off the
land and breaks down their community structures. Incomes may be rising, at
least marginally, in situations where people are in fact getting worse off
because they are being disconnected from their main subsistence production and
from the social security systems of the village and extended family as they are
forced into the money economy.
Indonesia was one of the
first countries I visited as a student resident in business school back in
1961. The changes in Jakarta since then are just incredible. And yet, out
beyond the fringes of modern development and you will find incredibly degrading,
putrid, fetid conditions that people are forced to live in. There was a lot of
poverty in Indonesia when I first visited there but not the same levels of
degradation as today.
Gill:
Despite today’s huge problems aren’t we in some respects better off than in
past? Was Russia better off under the Communists than in today’s globalized
corporate economy? And before 1917 for peasants under the czars? Did Western
Europeans have it better in the Middle Ages? or when the plague wiped out
one-third of the population?
Korten:
Following World War II, we
moved into the development era and a lot of the statistics were improving until
some time in the 1980s. Then the numbers started turning around in many
countries in terms of education and life expectancy. Even in Africa economic
growth turned negative in many countries. The trends vary from place to place,
of course, so generalizations are tricky.
When I first started getting
a sense that we were not only failing to make the progress that we claimed but
were actually making things worse for many people, I assumed that it must be
just a local phenomenon. But it was not just local. Obviously the situation
is extraordinarily complex and there are competing forces and trends. Japan,
South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, or Chile were at one
point identified as emerging economies. Massive amounts of money flowed in and
supercharged the economy as growth indicators headed for the sky. Then something
happened, the economy lost favor, the bubble burst, and the house of cards
collapsed. Peoples’ lives go up and down as economies rise and fall.
I believe that overall we
are in a pattern of decline and that the path we are on cannot work in terms of
bringing everybody into prosperity. A few critics of corporate globalization
could reasonably be interpreted as suggesting that there hasn't been any real
human progress since we left the caves and that the ideal for the future is to
return to the past. For myself, I have no desire to return to any sort of
idealized past. The challenge we face is to create a very different future that
makes the best possible use of our technology, of our capacity for global
communication and exchange, and for cooperative activity.
Gill:
So you see those as positive
things about technology.
Korten:
Technology is a very mixed
bag.
Erisman:
But you wouldn't want to
give up these two seventeen-inch flat screens on your desk.
Korten:
: Twenty inches! I would
be delighted if I did not have to spend my life sitting behind a computer
writing about why the world is falling apart.
Is the Corporation the
Villain?
Erisman:
World population growth is one of several big issues we must face. And yet the
thrust of your argument seems to be that the corporation is the villain. Are
corporations the cause of population growth? Why is this the focus?
Korten: My
analysis makes a direct link between the publicly traded, limited liability
corporation, which is the institutional centerpiece of the global economy, and
the accelerating destruction of the life support system of the planet, the
social fabric of society, and the legitimacy of our institutions.
Irrespective of where to lay
blame for how we got here, we face the question of how are we going to get out
of this. This brings me back then to how we are organized to make decisions.
The publicly traded, limited liability corporation is an organizational
technology that creates concentrations of economic and political power greater
than that of most states for the exclusive financial benefit of shareholders who
have no idea what the corporation is doing in their name and bear no liability
for the consequences. That power is organized to an extraordinary degree under
one individual, the corporate CEO, who has, particularly under the US system,
the power to virtually hire and fire at will, to open and close plants, to move
them around the world, to add and drop product lines, etc. There is virtually
no recourse from any of the individuals or communities that are affected.
We say the CEO is
accountable to shareholders, but it's really to the global “share markets,”
which have evolved into a system of financial speculation that ruthlessly strips
away human sensibility from investment decision making. Most shares are held not
by individuals, but by mutual, insurance, retirement, or trust funds managed by
professional money managers who are evaluated solely on returns to the
portfolios they manage. This financial system is now running out of control
beyond any kind of human regulation, with one exclusive purpose: to achieve the
maximum instant speculative financial gain. So we organize our power this way
and then we say, “Gee, why do we have all these social and environmental
problems and why isn’t someone fixing them?”
CEO
Power
Erisman:
A former CEO at The Boeing Company said to me, “Al, in some ways you have more
power in this organization than I do because you can actually impact the way
people work. My decisions get filtered through all sorts of people and
communities to the point where it's very difficult to actually produce change.”
It’s very difficult to create change. Someone said that every person in the
organization from CEO to the worker on the floor actually controls only about
15% of his or her world. This seems like a very small number but a great deal
can be done with that 15%.
Korten:
I’m talking about formal,
legal authority. In a sense none of us feel that we are ever in charge
and it is very difficult to bring about positive change but the CEO can decide
that the Boeing headquarters is going to abandon Seattle and move to Chicago.
At least some would interpret that as helping break the human bonds of
obligation so it becomes easier to fire people and to move production to China
and elsewhere in the world.
Erisman:
In fact, though, the CEO
moved to Chicago so that the person who remains in Seattle and has
responsibility for those decisions has the flexibility and room to make his own
decisions.
Korten:
But doesn't the CEO
ultimately decide how much of Boeing’s production moves off shore?
Erisman:
No. The person responsible for that production makes that decision. That
person is responsible to the CEO to deliver against his objectives but how he
does it is decided by him and his team. It is a much more complex system than
you are imagining.
Korten:
It is much the same thing
when the CEO delegates authority and responsibility for financial results that
leave the production manager with little choice other than to move production
off shore. Indeed, it is similar to the process by which financial markets
delegate their ownership authority to the CEO and hold him accountable for
financial results. One
thing over which the CEO has little or no power is the question of whether the
corporation will give priority to financial return over ethical concerns for
people and the environment. Obviously, the largest corporations couldn't
function without the CEO delegating a great deal of responsibility for working
out the details.
Erisman:
Incredible amounts. At General Electric, the biggest corporation in the world,
CEO Jack Welch said that his job was to develop people. He didn't know anything
about refrigerators or aircraft engines and let the people running those
businesses make the decisions how to build them and where to put the plants.
Korten:
That's his choice but he can
withdraw that authority at any time and he can at any time fire any one of those
individuals if he thinks that they are not focused adequately on the corporate
financial objective.
Erisman:
But if he operated in the way you describe, GE would be very unsuccessful and he
would be gone.
Korten:
As I recall, “Neutron” Jack
Welch was revered in part for his willingness to fire tens of thousands of
people to get a boost in share price. That aside, there is a distinction between
the distribution of formal power and the way it plays out. Many people working
in the corporate environment have a hard time understanding the issues I'm
calling attention to because things look so different from inside the
corporation. I'm not sitting within the firm so I look at problems from the
standpoint of society and how society is organized. Things look very different
out here. Within the corporation decisions are shaped by the legal fiduciary
responsibility to maximize shareholder return. But if you step back, the
statistics on increasing inequality are very clear. We've got a world of six
billion people roughly eighty percent of whom are living in conditions that are
not only substandard but often subhuman. Stepping back, you see a society
pushing the limits of the ecosystem and systematically destroying the life
support system which is ultimately the foundation of all real wealth. Without
it we can't live.
Erisman:
It is true that Jack Welch eliminated a lot of jobs when he started in the
position, and it is not my place to defend or criticize that. What he has said,
however, is that had he not taken a large, sluggish company and streamlined it,
it would not be a vibrant company today, with a positive presence in its
communities. But I'm not disputing your broad concerns. I'm trying to
understand where you're going with the argument. Opportunity may be more
important than income, for example.
Korten:
It may be. Ultimately the
distribution of ownership is more important than the distribution of income
because it is the foundation of income distribution and plays a major role in
determining who has opportunity and who does not. In very simple terms, we have
a growing population, increasingly unequal in its purchasing power and its
decision power, competing for what is a shrinking base of the real foundation
wealth of the land and resources on which we depend to sustain our living. The
greater the inequality in purchasing power and ownership control, the more the
folks at the top are in a position to rewrite the rules, acquire more and more
control of the real wealth and property in society, and exclude those who are
not part of the elite structure.
Erisman:
Business consultant Don Tapscott has suggested that the Internet creates a more
transparent world in which unethical practices will inevitably come to light
and force CEOs to eliminate these problems. This says that corporate interests
must include more than just profits and power.
Korten:
It is true that customers
and shareholders sometimes successfully take corporations to task for bad
behavior, but as we’ve seen in the recent accounting fraud scandals, a great
deal of damage can be done before customers --- or even shareholders --- realize
what is happening.
Erisman:
No doubt. But my
point is that the system is more complex than you're suggesting. The CEO is not
just making decisions narrowly-based on money but must include the values of
people. He cannot just do whatever he wants in a vacuum. Transparency creates
some correction in the system.
Korten:
Enron, Worldcom, AOL Time
Warner, Qwest Communications, Global Crossing, Waste Management, Sunbeam,
Halliburton, Xerox, Harkin Energy — the list of major companies so focused on
profits — and stock options — that they have been cooking the books with the
help of their auditors has become so long that even many business leaders and
analysts are saying the problem is systemic. Our forebears asked whether we
wanted to continue having kings and organizing our politics around a monarchy.
Now some kings were pretty good. Kings don't really control everything. Things
are not entirely their fault. But ultimately people decided it is really not a
very good way to organize because it concentrates too much unaccountable power,
with an enormous potential for abuse.
I would argue that we have
created something that is relatively akin to a monarchy in our economic
system. The powers of CEOs in our largest corporations probably exceed the
powers of most kings in the past, even if our CEOs don't quite have the liberty
to literally behead people at will.
Overstatements?
Erisman:
I'm sympathetic to a lot of
the concerns that you raise, such as the growing inequality and the
environmental challenge. But I was very frustrated with your book
When Corporations Rule the
World because many people who need to hear your concerns won't be able to
because of extreme or unsubstantiated statements you make. For example, about
the WTO protests in Seattle, you wrote: “Thousands of protesters committed to
nonviolent resistance courageously stood their ground against the violent police
battalions.” But while some of the protesters idealistic, courageous people.,
some of them were troublemakers. And while some of the police were repressive
and violent, some were not. And you made the statement "tens of thousands of
people are living well, hundreds of thousands enjoying higher levels, but
billions are in an evermore desperate struggle for survival." This
quantification of the problem appears to me to be an exaggeration.
Korten:
If you've got time, I can show you the videotapes of the Seattle WTO protests.
And if you read beyond the introduction of When Corporations Rule the World
you will find the generalizations you mention are well documented.
Erisman:
You do provide data, but not to support the implication of your statement that
the vast majority of people live in poverty. That a substantial number do (as
supported by your data and the data of others) is of concern enough. The
exaggeration may cause people who need to hear you to dismiss your whole
argument. That is my frustration.
Korten:
I appreciate your
frustration. To be perfectly frank, the parts you were reading were added in
the second edition. When I wrote the first edition I was already pretty
skeptical of the corporate system and the possibility of change coming from
within. But by the time I did the second edition I had no remaining illusions
about the possibility for the system changing itself. The system itself, by my
assessment, virtually precludes the depth of the change that is necessary, given
the constraints under which corporate management works.
I recognize that my words
are not likely to resonate with people within the system; they're not directed
to those people. My message to people within the corporate system who are
really concerned is don't waste your considerable talent and resources trying to
make incremental changes inside but bring your talents outside and help us
create an alternative system.
What is the Alternative?
Gill:
If corporations as we know them are essentially beyond reform, what would you
replace them with?
Korten:
We must begin to make choices not in terms of what will maximize shareholder
value but what will maximize the living conditions and well being of all the
world's people. And we must not only protect what we have but restore a lot of
what we've destroyed.
If we step back and ask how
we might actually design a deeply democratic system, grounded in equity, and
geared to providing people with the means of livelihood to live good lives, my
basic thesis is that it would look very much like a market economy. What I call
a real market economy. In my other book The Post Corporate World
I draw a very clear distinction between a capitalist global economy and a real
market economy. One is structured to concentrate wealth and power and the
other, in the genre going back to Adam Smith, is about a system of smaller
enterprises that are rooted in community and engaged in responding to people’s
needs.
It would be a system of
predominantly small and medium enterprises. You might have some very
complicated networks and we may need some larger companies. But in terms of
meeting most of our needs, I think we could all agree that we don't need a
transnational corporation to run hamburger stands or even to grow our food,
particularly if we're growing it in environmentally healthy and sustainable
ways. Think about an economic system in which enterprises are accountable to
the people who work in them or to the communities in which they do business and
are actually owned by their workers, managers, the community, or consumer
co-ops. The financial side is of course there and it is reasonable to make a
fair profit. But the firms would exist not solely for making profits but to
provide livelihoods.
Erisman:
Would this alternative
system produce the 747 that took you to Indonesia and the 20 inch flat panel
displays that allow you to write?
Korten:
I don't know whether it
would or not. I would not be too disturbed if we created a world in which
everybody had a secure diet, a decent place to live, good education, and
adequate healthcare, and didn’t have twenty-inch LCD computer screens and Boeing
747s — if that trade off turned out to be necessary.
Erisman:
I don't believe that small
and medium sized enterprises can produce large complex products like airplanes
and flat panel screens.
Good and
Bad Corporations
Gill:
What do you do with examples of corporations
that seem to operate in a humane, positive, value-driven way while achieving
long-term financial success? Aren’t companies like AES, Southwest Airlines,
Lincoln Electric Motors, the old Hewlett-Packard, the Body Shop, and Ben and
Jerry’s examples of another way in the corporate world?
Korten:
It probably is possible for
an individual company for a period of time to be more responsible than the norm
within the existing system. But I don't think that should deflect us from the
larger set of issues of whether this is a suitable way to organize a society. I
would argue that a corporation like Enron defines the system more than, say,
Southwest Airlines.
Gill:
But isn’t Enron evidence
that a serious corporate cancer will eventually be rejected?
Korten:
Yes, but remember that Enron was one of the darlings of the system until it
crashed. One of the interesting characteristics of Enron, which I believe
reflects the deep values of the corporate system, is that the company did not
produce any actual goods or services. It was engaged in profit-taking based
only on trading and market control — and it turns out “aggressive” accounting.
Enron was making money off of money without dirtying their hands in the
production of any goods and services. Enron epitomizes the dishonesty, the
lying, and the buying of politicians, the manipulation of markets, the ripping
off of shareholders and customers, and the corruption of the auditing system.
Gill:
But doesn't everybody agree
with that? Nobody is saying we must rip off our shareholders better next time.
They're saying we must be sure we're not doing any of this Enron stuff because
we would surely be exposed and undone.
Korten:
Enron is not representative of all corporations, but is the driving edge of the
system, of key features that are deeply structural, that encourage and reward
the absolute worst of corporate behavior. Your arguments all assume the
corporate framework and look for a way to fix this or that. But this will not
change anything in terms of how power is distributed. The real crux of it comes
back to this equity issue that we agree on. I would argue that the corporate
system as it is now structured is the absolute antithesis of any effort toward
more equity because it is all geared toward the systematic concentration of
wealth in the hands of those who already have wealth.
(Note:
the remainder of this text was published only in the uncut web version)
What
Really Motivates Executives
Erisman:
You describe the evil of the
system and yet, as a corporate executive for the last ten years, working within
that system, I never said, or felt like saying, “this is for me.” My colleagues
and I had a bigger mission than that.
Korten:
How would you characterize the mission?
Erisman:
The mission was to do something great. Boeing had a slogan "bringing people
together." For us it would be great to enable people across the globe to come
together or to communicate with each other in a better way. On a more local
level, our mission was to create an environment where people with incredible
talent could express it in their work, to give them the freedom and resources
necessary for a really good work experience. I have encountered individuals in
the corporate world who had the wrong motives but I often saw the system spit
them out in the same way that the system is spitting out Enron. I have a lot
more confidence in the system than you do.
Korten:
What you are saying is very important. Human beings have an enormous need to
feel that they are contributing in a positive way to a community. In fact, if
there is any hope for humanity, it must be grounded in that inner instinct.
Classic economic theory rules out possibilities for altruism based on any ground
other than personal profit but I think we're all saying that's just not true.
There is a very deep human drive. If we find ourselves in the context of a
situation like a corporation, we'll struggle mightily to find a moral rationale.
The question is, if we want
to really use that motivation, if we want to give it rein so that we can create
a world that works, is that best done within the existing corporate framework,
or are there other institutional frameworks where it becomes a more natural
process. The Boeing slogan, "bringing people together,” is wonderful. But if
we look at the ecosystem, it would seem that we're going to have to find ways to
bring people together that involve a whole lot less air travel than what we do
now. Air travel itself is an unsustainable burden on the planet.
There's also a quality of
life issue. I would like to spend a whole lot less of my life on Boeing 747s
than I do now, though it is my favorite airplane to fly. Yes we must bring
people together but could Boeing employees got together and look for a way to do
it other than with airplanes?
Fatalism
and Reform
Gill:
In your review of Thomas
Friedman’s Lexus and the Olive Tree, you say that what ticks you off most about
this book is Friedman's assumption that corporate globalization is inevitable.
Korten:
It's the most disempowering myth that's out there.
Gill:
So you urge radical reform of the global economic system. But how is that a
less daunting task than the reform of a corporation? Your book is saying
corporate misbehavior is inevitable, and resistance is futile. But just as you
reject Friedman’s fatalism about globalization, shouldn’t we reject your
fatalism about the corporation?
Korten:
The publicly-traded, limited-liability corporation is a particular institutional
form that happens to be pathological in its design and consequences. There are
three crucial dimensions: size, absentee ownership, and the special exemption
from liability for the people to whom management is supposed to be accountable.
One aspect of a reform agenda might involve breaking up global corporations into
independent businesses owned by their local stakeholders — which I think would
be a highly positive step. But then you would be dealing with a very different
sort of institution. It would be far smaller and it would be owned by people who
are real investor-stakeholders who are involved in the firm, live in the
community, and are in it for the long-term, not just to turn a profit on a stock
trade. You could call this reforming the publicly traded global corporation. But
then it would no longer be either global or publicly traded. I don’t think the
initiative for such reforms is likely to come from within the system any more
than I expect that Boeing is going to make a decision to work itself out of the
airplane business, that General Motors is going to lobby to end urban sprawl and
replace autos with mass transit, or that Coca Cola is going to decide to stop
urging children to consume expensive sugar water. My argument is not that the
system — even the individual enterprises now organized as publicly-traded
corporations — cannot be reformed. If I didn’t believe in the possibility of
reform, I would not be doing the work I do. The question is, whether it is
realistic to expect the impetus for the essential system change to come from
within the corporate system or whether the impetus must come from outside from
citizen groups. Again, I will reiterate that I would love to have somebody prove
me wrong by demonstrating that real transformational change can come from
within.
Erisman:
What do you put in the
place of the corporate structure?
Korten:
I would describe it as
human scale enterprises. What is the ideal? Is the ideal the very biggest
corporation making a 50 percent return? Or is it human scale enterprises in
which people know each other and they function within a community framework? I
would characterize a large corporation not as a community of people but as a
pool of money because in the end the only rights that are protected are the
rights of money; the individuals are expendable.
Erisman:
I certainly don't look at it
that way. I see it as a collection of individuals in a community actually.
Korten:
Yes. But they're all expendable. You can all be fired, including the CEO.
Erisman:
In most communities people can be fired or expelled.
Korten:
A very extreme measure. It's very very rare.
The
Blessings of WalMart
Erisman:
Your model is obviously better for some people. They have more of a sense of
ownership of what they're doing, they're part of a community and so on. But
economically you might say, if I live in this small community in Arkansas would
I be able to buy clothes at the same price and quality that I can buy them at
the local WalMart which has transformed some of these communities in terms of
creating opportunities for people to get their basic necessities at lower
prices.
Korten:
The system pushes people's wages down to where they can only afford the WalMart
products. It is a statistical fact that real wages have been coming back up
recently but I think they're basically still somewhere around where they were in
1970.
Erisman:
WalMart offers people the
opportunity to purchase things because of the way they've done things. Sam
Walton himself, even as the CEO and a very wealthy person, sat at a metal desk
in a little corner office.
Korten:
They're destroying downtowns all over the country.
Erisman:
Does it destroy downtowns or
does it give people a choice? At the mom and pop store quality may be terrible
and prices high, whereas at WalMart the quality is excellent and the prices are
low.
Korten:
It comes back to our
perception of the current situation. Whether WalMart is an advantage or is
destroying valuable community structures and values, pushing down wages, and
destroying valuable businesses that have functioned for generations in service
to their communities.
Erisman:
You envision a future that's very different. Can you actually move the system
we have from where it is today to the system you envision in a stable way? Is
there a constructive path to get there in your view?
Korten:
We need a discussion about
the possibilities of living economies. We're caught in the grip of a suicide
economy that's destroying the foundations of its own existence. What we need to
do is grow into being living economies based on something more — based on real
market principles that root ownership in real people and real communities. The
change process is grounded in the idea that there are an enormous number of
elements of what we call living economies already in place. In terms of
enterprises that are built around values ,that are owned by real people and so
forth. But they exist at the fringes of the suicide economy and are very
dependent upon the institutions of the suicide economy.
The strategy is to encourage
these enterprises to pull away from dependence on the suicide economy and begin
to develop relationships among themselves to create new economies which then
create an increasing range of new opportunities for people in terms of shopping,
employment and investment.
Finding
Alternatives
Gill:
So, how do you go about
the renewal? Do you just wait until things get so bad that people will say,
there must be a better way? How do you persuade people to begin looking
negatively at a suicide economy and look for an alternative?
Korten:
Well, it is happening. The
excesses of the corporate system are now being exposed big time and many people
are saying there must be a better way. There are centers of awakening in many
different settings, and in nations all around the world. People have a more or
less explicit feeling that things are not working right and that we need to look
for alternatives. Some are trying to organize politically. Some are engaged in
resistance. Others are engaged in trying to rebuild their communities and
neighborhoods. These things are coming up all over the world. It's partly
communicated through the different vehicles at our command
Paul Ray
estimates there are 50 million “Cultural Creatives” with deep commitments to
social and environmental values and to a future that's better than the past. If
you combine this with spiritual grounding, then you're among the 20 million or
so “Core Cultural Creatives.” It is hard to believe that this is 25 percent of
the adult population. Where are all these people? Ray says that is part of the
issue. Cultural Creatives don't see themselves reflected in the political
system or the media and so they feel very alone, isolated, and disempowered.
Part of the key to change is to help Cultural Creatives identify themselves and
reach out and connect.
The key to
change comes around a kind of an awakening. It's partly a cultural awakening
and partly a spiritual awakening. We each grow up within our own culture and
just simply accept that our particular world view is reality and there is no
basis for testing it. Out of the civil rights movement many of us came to
recognize that relationships among the races were defined by cultural codes that
do not necessarily have anything to do with reality. Then the women's movement
produced a similar realization around gender. Gender is defined by cultural
codes that don't necessarily have anything to do with reality. Then the
environmental movement -- same thing in our relationship to the environment.
Now we're in
a phase where we're questioning some of the culturally based assumptions about
the economy and our relationship to the economy. I would argue that in fact
part of what holds the existing corporate system is held in place by a
fabricated culture, i.e. a culture artificially created by the educational
system and by advertising — in contrast to a culture is what has become an
increasingly fabricated culture, not one that emerges as an expression of human
values and experience. grows out of peoples experience and sense of grounding
and community, human consciousness or values, but rather which has become
increasingly manipulated by the educational system Contemporary education too
often answers our questions about who we are and the nature of our
responsibility to society in terms of the theory of economic man, i.e., we are
creatures of greed and we best serve society by pursuing our individual
financial self-interest. Advertising constantly tells us that material
consumption will satisfy our thirst for meaning. -- the whole view of economic
man which has become so pervasive: that we're products of our greed. And of
course all the advertising messages have become increasingly pervasive and push
us toward a dissatisfaction with ourselves around materialistic kinds of things
that create a sense of emptiness that can be filled only by consuming whatever
product they're promoting. These beliefs are basic foundations of This is a
fabricated culture that serves the corporate system at the expense of life.
Throughout human history
people have tended to simply accept the teachings of their culture as a given.
Now, in part because of the great social movements of our time and because of
our expanded opportunities for cross cultural experience, But, again, because of
our cultural mechanisms we sort of fall into this without really stepping back
and questioning it. Now, what I think is happening is that more and more of us
are becoming aware of the existence and nature of culture, not in an abstract
sense, but in the a sense of really beginning to struggle with the many possible
ways of viewing and interpreting the same reality. realities. We come to
realize, “Oh, I grew up in a culture that taught me to see the world in this
particular way, but there's other ways of looking at it.” And then you begin to
realize, yeah, okay, my cultural world view is a construct that may or may not
correspond to objective reality. Indeed, there are many different cultural
constructs. A cultural construct is a human creation — a choice. not a given
inherent in the fabric of some objective reality. We have arrived at a point in
the human experience when we must make those choices consciously and
intentionally.
Posted January 7, 2003
