“We are at a point in time in the human experience where we will soon be facing very deep and very rapid changes,” Korten intones. “It is time to begin making some very deep choices both individually and collectively.” Out of this pivotal moment will emerge one of two eventualities: The Great Turning or the Great Unraveling.
In the Great Turning, Korten explains, humanity recognizes its overshoot and begins to turn back from the 5,000-year-old values of “Empire”—exploitation, subjugation and deprivation, to those of “Earth Community”—a life-centered, egalitarian, sustainable way of ordering society based on democratic principles of partnership. In the Great Unraveling, society rapidly disintegrates into a fight to the death for rapidly dwindling resources.
And I think that we should hear this too:
“Empire is not inevitable, not the natural order of things. But in our time, Empire has reached the limits of exploitation that the people and the planet will tolerate. And all the evidence of [our current] environmental and social breakdown all trace back to this unifying reality,” says Korten.
But, he maintains, we can turn away from it. “On a finite planet, sustainability and equity are inseparably linked.”
Korten divides humanity into five essential states of consciousness: magical, imperial, social, cultural and spiritual. The culture of Empire is driven by the first two, the culture of Earth Community is driven by the last two, and those of the Socialized Consciousness—good people who, although taking their cues and values from the dominant culture, play by the rules, expect a fair reward and don’t intend any harm—occupy a vast middle and comprise the literal and metaphysical swing voters with the power to shift us towards the Great Turning
Healthy Living With a Twist - LIME
2 comments:
I have some slight reservations about this, despite being broadly in sympathy with what he's saying. I think a lot of it comes down to what seems (ironically) to be an underlying naivety and idealism. The values of what he labels as Empire and Earth Community are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It is possible to have societies and states of consciousness that mix aspects of the two. Thus you can have people and cultures who proclaim spiritual values and outlooks but seek to impose them imperialistically on others or conversely hold to a basically magical outlook on life yet operate in an egalitarian 'cultural' way. Not only are these theoretical possibilities, we've all met people like this.
Now what this means is that under the pressure of the environmental crisis there is no inevitability that humanity will respond by choosing one of two options. In fact, I would argue, it is most likely that as a species we will not. Hegel noted that history proceeds along the dialectic. The natural tendency will be that we will not maintain the thesis of Empire nor embrace the antithesis of Earth Consciousness, but rather find some synthesis of the two that enables us to live with our circumstances without enduring the wrench of completely upending our collective state of conciousness.
The thing that makes me most uneasy about the scenario outlined is the confidence with which it is asserted that limited resources inevitably mean embracing equality as the only means of ensuring sustainability. Human history teaches us there is no inevitability about this. Our awareness of living on a finite planet may be relatively new, but the experience of limited resources has been the norm for most people throughout most of history. And generally it has not led to equality. As another article you referenced a while back points out, warfare over resources has tended to not occur when resources are plentiful - between nomadic groups who can always up sticks and move somewhere else. To expect a sharp awareness of limited resources to push us towards equality and cooperation flies in the face of the evidence.
And there's worse for the idealists to consider. Unless everyone (that's Everyone) embraces the Earth Community consciousness, you get Empire. Those who cling to the values of Empire walk over those who do not, creating a new group of Imperialists, or the 'Earth Community' take up the methods of Empire to defend their new higher ideals. For what it's worth, I suspect this last is close to what we currently have in the West. By and large, most people in the West hold to the ideals being extolled here. But they also hold to the right and necessity of fighting to maintain their way of life and reject the wholesale dismantling of the inequalities of the world economic system necessary to bring sweeping change.
Thinkers, politicians, and activists like to speak of necessary choice between good and bad, black and white. There are good and important reasons why they do so. But it leads to analysis that is flawed. We live in a world that is a terrible mixture of the two. And change, when it comes, is likely to be incremental, not radical.
Hmmm. Some good reflections there Mark. One thing I was not sure about though: "The thing that makes me most uneasy about the scenario outlined is the confidence with which it is asserted that limited resources inevitably mean embracing equality as the only means of ensuring sustainability."
I think I'd read what was being proposed more along the lines of the only way to synthesise sustainability AND equity is to work towards an order where Empire is undermined. A tall order admittedly. And I would agree that change is going have to be non-catastrophic. So this points to working to push along reforms and changes that will embed just solutions. The problem is that if we are too cynical about things then it will undermine the likelihood of change ...
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