Author, Lecturer, Engaged Citizen
The Great Turning: Epic Passage
.jpg)
Our time is a defining moment for the human species. We have a brief window of opportunity to navigate the passage from a 5,000 year Era of Empire characterized by violent domination to an Era of Earth Community characterized peaceful partnership. This passage to a new level of species maturity promises a more secure and fulfilling life for everyone. Its successful navigation requires that we free ourselves from the illusions of a cultural trance that blinds us to the higher order potentials of our human nature.
We now have an unprecedented opportunity to turn the human course. This opportunity is born of a convergence of the imperative created by a potentially terminal global crisis and the possibility created by a global communications revolution.
A Three-Fold Crisis
The cause of the crisis is three-fold.
- Over consumption: Growth in human consumption resulting from a combination of population growth and growth in consumption per capita is depleting the natural life support system of the planet, disrupting natural water cycles and climate systems, and threatening human survival.
- Inequality: Unconscionable and growing concentration of financial power in a world of ever more intense competition for a declining base of material wealth is eroding the social fabric to the point of widespread social breakdown.
- Pathological Governing Institutions: The most powerful institutions on the planet, global financial markets and the transnational corporations that serve them, are institutions of Empire dedicated to growing consumption and inequality. They convert real capital into financial capital to increase the relative economic power of those who live by money, while depressing the wages of those who produce real value through their labor. These institutions respond to environmental and social crises with palliatives that side step the need to reduce overall consumption and reallocate resources from rich to poor. To do otherwise would be contrary to their legal and financial imperatives. We cannot expect the institutions that got us into the crisis to get us out of it.
- Reduce aggregate consumption, which means renouncing economic growth and obsessive over consumption as our defining economic priority in favor of meeting real human needs, including needs for dignity, community and meaningful work.
- Eliminate extremes of inequality, which means renouncing domination as our defining mode of organization in favor of equity and deep democracy.
- Transform our institutions and cultures to support reduction of consumption, conversion of financial capital into natural, social, and human capital, and expansion of the middle class through redistribution of wealth from rich to poor.
Imperative as Opportunity
There is significant evidence that for all our apparent differences, most all the world's people want the same thing: happy healthy children, families, communities, and natural sytems. Properly understood, the imperative creates an unprecedented opportunity to unleash long suppressed potentials of the human consciousness to bring forth the world for which we humans have long shared a deep yearning. See "What will Earth Community look like?"
The sacrifices are marginal relative to the potential gain. Mostly we must give up wasteful or actively destructive forms of consumption to free up resources for uses that actually increase our happiness and well-being. It involves, for example, reallocation from:
- Instruments of war to health care and environmental rejuvenation.
- Automobiles to public transportation.
- Suburban sprawl to compact communities and the reclamation of forest and agricultural land.
- Advertising to education.
- Financial speculation to local entrepreneurship.
Such a radical reallocation far beyond the realm of current political feasibility. The work of making it feasible begins with a conversation. Fortunately, that conversation is already underway in localities all over the world, spreading the good news that the world we must now create to secure the human future is the same as the world most all the world's people want.
We face a race against time between the awakening of an Earth Community consciousness and the spread of social and environmental collapse. Our window of opportunity could slam shut at any time with chilling finality.
An Irrevocable Choice
Success depends on facing up to the extent to which the crisis is a consequence of deep social and institutional pathology. Although green technologies will have an essential role, there is no technological fix. The fate of our children turns on our current irrevocable choice between two contrasting ways of relating to one another and Earth.
.jpg)
The Way of Empire features a pyramid of coercive power based on principles of domination and exclusionary private accumulation. It is the way of domination, greed, violence, wasted lives and environmental devastation. Left in place, it is destined to play out as a last man standing imperial competition for what remains of Earth’s natural bounty.
The Way of Earth Community features self-organizing networks based on principles of parthership and a cooperative sharing of Earth's resources to create a world that works for all. It is the way of partnership, sharing, reconciliation, mutual responsibility, and respect for all life.
How we choose will determine whether those who follow us will refer to our time as the Great Turning or the Great Unraveling.
Competing Stories
To change the future, change the story |
Empire’s power depends on its ability to control the cultural stories and the language that shape our collective understanding of our world and of the choices available to as a species. Empire stories induce a kind of cultural trance that conditions us to accept the dominator relations of Empire as just and righteous and to dismiss talk of alternatives as naïve, dangerous, or even sinful. Once we recognize the truth that Empire stories deny, the trance is broken. To change the future, change the story.
Global Awakening
The institutions of Empire will not act from within to voluntarily relinquish their power. Leadership for theturning must come from popular civic initiatives centered outside the institutions of Empire.
Empire has always met resistance from those with a larger vision of human possibility. Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. were among the more visible examples. Mostly, this resistance was geographically isolated and the institutions of Empire contained or co-opted it. No longer. Modern communications technology has obliterated the barriers of geography and is linking ordinary people into a seamless global web of learning and sharing unfiltered by imperial agents and institutions. Millions of people of every race, religion, and nationality are are now using this technology to create a species capacity to choose and act as a whole in the service of life, as documented by Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest..
Earth Community Agenda
| Native Hawaiian and cultural translator Puanani Burgess shares an indigenous perspective on the underlying values of an Earth Community vision and agenda. |
Our collective future turns on the success of the efforts of ordinary people with an awakened consciousness to advance the three primary elements of a bold Earth Community agenda.
- Earth Balance: Bring human consumption into balance with Earth’s natural systems by eliminating unproductive consumption and by restoring and even enhancing Earth’s natural regenerative processes.
- Fair Share/Equity: Bring our human relationships into balance with one another by sharing of resources and knowledge equitably and turning from a culture of competition and private accumulation to a culture of cooperation and sharing.
- Living Democracy: Create a system of radically democratic life-serving governing institutions that support Earth Balance and Fair Share, give voice to every person, and nurture the higher order potentials of the human consciousness.
.We are engaged in the greatest and most creative adventure in all of the human experience. It is a race against time. The window of opportunity is closing fast. Accelerating social and environmental collapse creates the imperative to act with deliberate speed to accelerate the awakening and focus the positive life energy it is unleashing.
****
In these dangerous and often frightening times it is important to regularly remind ourselves that we are privileged to live at the most exciting moment of creative opportunity in the whole of the human experience. The time is now. We have the power. We are the ones we have been waiting for.
We must end the wage to eliminate Money:
http://www.666ismoney.com/MoneyQuotes.html
Fidel Castro says: We’ve done away with a lot of privileges & inequalities & we want all of them to disappear, but the real problem isn’t to redistribute incomes or equalize wares. We must break from the mastery of money, get rid of money altogether.
(Jerry Rubin, DO IT!, 1970 visited Cuba & spoke with Castro
Bertrand Russell, 1919
There is a very great deal to be said for the Anarchist plan of allowing necessaries, and all commodities that can easily be produced in quantities adequate to any possible demand, to be given away freely to all who ask for them, in any amounts they may require. The question whether this plan should be adopted, to my mind, should be a purely technical one,: would it be, in fact, possible to adopt it without much waste & consequent diversion of labor to the production of necessaries when it might be more usefully employed otherwise? I have not the means of answering this question, but I think it exceedingly probable that, sooner or later, with continued improvement in the methods of production, this Anarchist plan will become feasible, and when it does, it certainly ought to be adopted.
Nikoli Tolstoy 1886
Money is a new & terrible form of slavery, and like the old form of personal slavery it demoralizes both slave & slave owner, only much more, for it frees the slave & the slave owner from personal human relations with one another.
Bible, Isaiah 55:1
Ho every one who thirsts, come to the waters, & he who has no money, come buy & eat; come, buy wine & milk without money & without price.
Ezekiel 7
They shall cast their silver in the streets, & their gold shall be as an unclean thing; their silver & their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels, because it hath been a stumblingblock of their iniquity.
Jesus, Luke 16
So I say to you, use your worldly wealth to win friends to yourselves, so that when money is a thing of the past you may be received into an eternal home….. No one can be the slave of two masters; for either he will hate the first & love the second, or he will be devoted to the first & think nothing of the second. You cannot serve God & money.” “the Pharisees, who loved money, who heard all this & scoffed at him.
Buddhist Scriptures, E Conze
It is an offence of this kind for a monk: to accept gold or silver with his own hand, or to get someone else to accept it for him, to buy various articles with gold or silver; to engage in any kind of buying or selling.
Money is the sinews of wars.
Tacitus, Cicero, Plato, Massinger, James Payne, Libanius, James IV of Scotland, Arthur Murphy, Plutarch, John Lyly, George Peele, George Farqubar, Carlyle, Thomas Fuller, John Fletcher, Arthur Hull. O. Henry, Michael Scott, & others.
Plato, Republic, 400 BC
Gold & solver, we will tell them, they will not need, having the divine counterparts of those metals always in their souls, as a god-given possession, whose purity it is not lawful to sullyby the acquisition of that mortal dross, current among mankind, which has been the occasion of so many unholy deeds.
Robert Owen, The Book of the New Moral Worlds, 1842-4
Money, which has hitherto been the root, if not of all evil, of great injustice, oppression, & misery of the human race, making some slavish producers of wealth, & others its wasteful consumers of destroyers, will be no longer required to carry on the business of life: so as wealth shall be so delightfully created in greater abundance than will ever be required, no money price will be known, for happiness will not be purchasable, except by a reciprocity of good actions & kind feelings.
Josephus, The Jewish War, c. 75 AD
Contemptuous of wealth, [the Essenes] are communists to perfection … as with brothers their entire property belongs to them all … They possess no one city but everywhere have large colonies. When adherents arrive from elsewhere, all local resources are put at their disposal as if they were their own, & men they have never seen before entertain them like old friends … Among themselves nothing is bought or sold.
(Compare to Essenes to New Testament Christians who “held all things common (Acts 2:4)
8th Party Program of the USSR 1919
In the opening stage of the transition from capitalism to communism, & prior to the organization of a fully developed system for the communal production & distribution of goods, the abolition of money is possible … The Russian Communist Party endeavors to provide a sense of measures favoring a moneyless system of account keeping & paving the way for the abolition of money.
H.D. Thoreau, Waldon, 1836-46
Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it. If he had known so much as this, he would never have earned it.
Saint Thomas More, Utopia, 1516
In Utopia all greed for money was entirely removed with the use of money. What a mass of troubles was then cut away! What a crop of crimes was then pulled up by the roots! Who does not know that fraud, theft, repine, quarrels, disorders, brawls, seditions, murders, treasons, poisonings, which are avenged rather than restrained by daily executions, die out with the destruction of money? Who does not know that fear, anxiety, worries, toils, and sleepless nights will also perish at the same time as money? What’s more, poverty, which alone money seemed to make poor, forthwith would itself dwindle & disappear if money were entirely done away with everywhere.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) L’Envoi
And only the master shall praise us and only the master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one will work for fame;
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees it, for the God of things as They Are!
QUESTION: If you had the power to create or erase any one law, what would it be?
ANSWER: I would create a law that says everything in the world would cost 10 cents. I would want this law because a lot of poor or homeless people could afford a house and food.
Courtni Birks, age 11, Naylor Middle School,
Tucson, Arizona
Daily Star, Oct. 19, 2007
He who earns wages earns wages to put it into a bag with holes. (not good)
Hagai 1:6
David Korten said in “When Corporations Rule the World” we were all forced to need money. So no one is free until we eliminate money, so that food, medicine, education, & everything is free worldwide. When all people on earth OWN all things on earth that will eliminate money, & end world poverty,, & then we’ll be more free. But we still won’t be free until every person on Earth is living in a Tower city. No one is free until we end world poverty by ending the wage.
See Carl Schurz (here)who says masters are also slaves: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASownership.htm
Renting is slavery & should not be legal (renters kill landlords & landlords kill renters)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rent_War
See slavery by Firestone in Liberia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Tire_and_Rubber_Company
The word capital-ism says “money, money money above life”.
Socialism & Communism say People helpong people, communities help each other & no one starves or is homeless or forced into prostitution or dealing drugs, & LOVE your neighbor.
See child slavery in USA in the 20th century & they’re all still slaves because work is slavery: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAchild.htm
See child sex tourism (caused by capitalism): http://needykids.com/mainslavery.htm
Child slaves in USA today:
http://www.ericdigests.org/1997-4/labor.htm
Slavery in Florida today: (but we’re all slaves):
http://www.spectrezine.org/resist/FloridaLeft.htm
http://www.iabolish.org/slavery_today/usa/states.html
Bill Blum is an excellent Socialist & proves in “Rogue State” that USA forced all attempts at social justice to fail:
http://www.killinghope.org/
Infanticide
http://www.infanticide.org/history.htm
GM forced us all to need cars:
http://www.lovearth.net/gmdeliberatelydestroyed.htm
It’s time to eliminate all the work:
http://mindprod.com/money/work.html
I'm sure that the reason "law enforcement" worldwide won't do more to stop kidnappings of men, women & children who are sold into slavery (100,000 a year in USA alone but probably more) is literally because they're in on the business, & they too (not all but most) are buying & selling those kidnapped people because they don't earn enough WAGE to survive! So doing something illegal is the only way they keep from being homeless too! The media people do it too to have more money to buy food & health care for their kids! We have to end Capitalism (the wage) immediately! It is slavery! Get all Socialists & communists & anarchists together to make an announcement on New Years Day! Capitalism is the Beast that is destroying all life on Earth.
David Korten, Thank you for all the great books & work you have done to bring about a better world for every human. But I don't think small businesses along with corporations are the answer. We'll only be free by saying that all people on earth must own all things on earth, & work part-time building beautiful Towers & Trains.
In 1992 when someone first spoke the words "guaranteed residual income" to me, I had a vision that if we gave every person on earth a guaranteed income, it would quickly end world poverty. I also saw that it would help to stop people from doing harmful things, or "work", which they had to do to get something to sell (fish, lumber etc) so they could then buy food, etc to survive. It would literally save the Earth from destruction, & the guaranteed Income would also eliminate money. Then at some point soon after, I realized that all nations had to start building massive 100-story Tower cities (each tower having all things: micro-factories, indoor parks & playgrounds, etc) connected to maglev Trains to also stop people from destroying the Earth. All the Towers would be identical to stop people from fighting over things. In USA there might have to be 50 cities(?) where one Tower would have the train station, & people in all the other towers would have to get the train station by other means of transportation. The tower cities would be planned in a wheel-&-spoke fashion, with beautiful parks/landscaping in the middle. People are so destructive that they would not be allowed outside of the cities. They would also be taught they'll be much safer in the Towers because in the wilderness the wild animals will again be able to multiply, like bears, mountain lions, etc, & they will attack & kill people, So the tower cities are the only safe place to be.
Now we know that it was wrong to build any automobiles (major cause of pollution & cancers), roads, houses, small buildings, factories that pollute, etc, which is why America bought into all capitalist lies, because we had lots of empty free land, but it was all wrong. Forcing people to each need a car & commute to work has killed millions in crashes, crimes & wars. Cars & the wage made capitalism look "good" but now we can see how wrong it was.
Eliminating all small buildings are the ONLY way to save the earth because it's the only way we can eliminate destructive automobiles, factories, lumber, weapons, etc, & only T&T will eventually eliminate the work which is slavery. Capitalists say "we must create jobs" (even if harmful) but we must build T&T to eliminate all jobs & work, eventually, to save the earth.
Each tower must be massive & beautiful: 12-sided roundish (is there a name for 12-sided?). Each tower might have a foundation of 50 acres or so; maybe more, maybe less, but very BIG. Each tower will have hospitals (which won't be needed much, over time, with no crimes or wars or automobiles). Every child will learn music & dancing from a young age (the best fun way for exercise).
Every person will be educated on computers, every child under the supervision of his/her own parents, & all people will learn about science, medicine & 5-10 languages, in 3 hrs a day 7 days a week, or similar; every person on earth will be a doctor & scientist. That will give all people something in common to talk about, & music & dancing will too. That's a good start. T&T are needed urgently to save the earth, which means humans & animals, trees & plants, rivers & oceans, & everything. Only a GI will destroy capitalist wage-slavery which is slavery, like Karl Marx said, but most people didn't think the wage is slavery, even for children (it's still called "child labor")! We need to say that corporations are slave plantations, & they enslave every person even if they don't work for a corporation.
David, Thank you for your excellent work.
Over the past six years, hundreds of us around the world have together designed a new kind of bank, to institutionalize Earth Balance, Fair Sharing and Living Democracy. Once the first Common Good Bank exists, any community ANYWHERE can create its own virtual common good bank in a matter of days, with as few as 50 depositors. In each community, depositors set sustainable lending priorities and decide how to use the bank's profits to serve the common good of the community and the world. The community can even create money, through an integrated local currency credit system. These banks provide a clear FAST economic transition path from Empire to Earth Community. Thank you for showing us the way.
William Spademan, Administrator, common good bank™ project, democratic economics for a sustainable world, Society to Benefit Everyone, Inc. www.commongoodbank.com
Comments