The Great Turning

by David C Korten

  Competing for the Swing Vote

  Socialized Consciousness, which is the consciousness of most American adults, adapts to the values and social roles of the prevailing culture. It represents the swing voters, and it is pivotal to the cultural politics of the Great Turning because it can adapt to either the dominator culture of Empire or the partnership culture of Earth Community. (See figure 2.1.)

  To the extent that the culture of Empire prevails, the Socialized Consciousness will lean politically in favor of the agenda of Empire. To the extent that the culture of Earth Community prevails, it will lean politically in favor of the agenda of Earth Community. In the contest for the loyalty of the swing voters, each side has its natural advantage.

  Empire’s Advantage

  Empire’s well-established cultural and institutional hegemony gives it a decided advantage. Empire also enjoys another important advantage: anyone who has reached the level of the Socialized Consciousness has experienced the world through the lens of the Imperial Consciousness and thus is familiar with its organizing principles. By contrast, only those who have moved beyond the Socialized Consciousness to a Cultural or Spiritual Consciousness can understand fully the deeply democratic possibilities of Earth Community. Empire also enjoys an advantage in the inclination of adults of an Imperial Consciousness to be attracted to the competitive struggle for positions of institutional power from which they can dominate others—thus reproducing the dynamics of Empire.54

  Figure 2.1: Culture and consciousness.

  Finally, the uncertainties of our time, including job insecurity, severe weather events, and terrorist threats, favor Empire. Fear causes a regression to a more primitive consciousness and increases susceptibility to manipulation by advertisers and demagogues who seem instinctively to speak to our fears and insecurities. “Buy my product and it will bring you beauty and love.”“Elect me and I will make you prosperous and protect you from evil enemies.” “Believe in my God and he will grant you salvation for your sins and eternal bliss in the afterlife.”“Trust in the magic of the unregulated market to convert your unrestrained greed and self-indulgence into a better life for all.” Each of these refrains plays to the fears and fantasies familiar to the frightened child that resides in each of us.

  The culture and institutions of Empire feed on, and reward, psychological immaturity and dysfunction and reproduce it from generation 55to generation. In so doing they stifle healthy human development and the creative capacity required to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. This has been a chronic condition of the dominant human societies for five thousand years and now threatens the very survival of the species. Taking the step to maturity requires that we accept individual and collective responsibility for the shadow side of our human nature and set about to create a mutual support system, rather like a global Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that provides the emotional support required to move beyond our psychological dependence on domination and violence.

  Earth Community’s Advantage

  Although Empire would seem to have an insurmountable advantage, four circumstances give the ultimate advantage to the possibilities of Earth Community. First, the drive to realize the fullness of our humanity is inherent in our nature. Second, a substantial majority of people have achieved a Socialized Consciousness or beyond and are therefore capable of understanding the concept of a public good that transcends narrowly defined individual interests and requires cooperation to achieve. Third, as elaborated in chapter 3, we face ecological and social imperatives distinctive to this moment in the human experience to embrace the higher potentials of our nature. Fourth, as elaborated in chapter 4, breakthroughs in global communication and in our understanding of the interdependent nature of our relationship to one another and the planet are supporting the awakening of the higher orders of consciousness at an unprecedented rate. Although persons of a mature consciousness are generally averse to the competitive struggle for dominator power, they are strongly attracted to leadership roles in social movements engaged in challenging Empire’s dominion.

  Perhaps the best indicator that the values of Earth Community ultimately hold the edge is the behavior of contemporary demagogues. Those who seek to align the electorate behind imperial agendas favoring elite power and privilege find they must resort to stealth tactics that hide their true aims and values. To gain political support they must profess a commitment to advancing the Earth Community values of care for children, family, community, justice, democracy, and environmental stewardship. Like the young man who observed that it is easiest to steal from people who trust you, they prey on the trust that people are 56naturally inclined to place in their leaders. Such deceptions may work for a time, but eventually trust persistently betrayed becomes trust denied.

  Contrary to those who maintain that we humans are destined to lives of violence and greed, our nature embodies a wide range of potential. The possible levels of achievement range from the criminal sociopath who is unable to consider any need or interest other than his own to the profound social and spiritual sensibility and vision of a Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, or Martin Luther King Jr.

  At birth, we humans do not have the physical capabilities normal for an adult. Nor do we have the consciousness of an adult. The journey by which the human individual acquires the higher-order moral and emotional maturity required for responsible adult function is one of life’s most extraordinary adventures. As we saw in the case of the Hacienda Santa Teresa, success depends in substantial measure on a supportive setting and the guidance of mentors who themselves possess a mature consciousness.

  Five orders of human consciousness define the path to emotional and moral maturity. The lower orders of Magical and Imperial Consciousness produce a culture of Empire. The higher orders of Cultural and Spiritual Consciousness produce a culture of Earth Community. The Socialized Consciousness, from which the majority of people operate, is capable of adapting to the values and expectations of either Empire or Earth Community, depending on which culture prevails. Dramatic changes in the human context since the mid-twentieth century have created the imperative and the possibility for the human species to make a conscious collective choice for a culture of Earth Community.

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  CHAPTER 3

  The Imperative

  Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.1

  Viktor E. Frankl

  This troubled planet is a place of the most violent contrasts. Those that receive the rewards are totally separated from those who shoulder the burdens. It is not a wise leadership.2

  Spock, “The Cloud Minders,” Star Trek

  The “Cloud Minders” episode of the original science fiction television series Star Trek takes place on the planet Ardana. The planet’s rulers live in peaceful splendor in the beautiful city of Stratos suspended on a platform high in space. Far removed from the planet’s desolate surface, they are also far removed from the misery and violence endured by the Troglytes, who toil under slavelike conditions in the planet’s mines below to earn the interplanetary exchange credits used to import the luxuries that the Stratos rulers enjoy. The rulers consider their privilege to be wholly fitting given their perception that it is their superior intelligence, cultural refinement, and moral sensibility that set them apart from the Troglytes below.

  This transparent political allegory speaks to the stark division between the elite rulers of planet Earth who live in gated mansions, work in tall office towers, and fly by private jet to meetings and luxury vacation homes and those whose toil makes their luxuries possible. To legitimate the injustice of the imperial system, the Stratos dwellers of our planet Earth construct stories that praise their personal virtues and glorify the greatness of their rule and of the institutions that place them beyond accountability to ordinary mortals. It is virtually impossible for rulers to rule wisely when they are so far removed from the reality of the lives of those who shoulder the burdens of their decisions.

  The
consequences can be deadly, especially when the isolation of the rulers prevents them from recognizing and responding to rapid and dramatic changes that create an imperative for adaptation to new 58human realities. That is our present human circumstance. Our profligate consumption is destroying the living systems of the planet on which our lives depend. Modern weaponry has turned war into an instrument of self-destruction.

  Far removed from the realities of the rapidly changing human context, conditioned by the beliefs of imperial culture, and constrained by the imperatives of imperial institutions, those who rule from the clouds attribute the growing threat to life, civilization, and the existing institutions of social order to external enemies and to those who question established authority. In deep denial of the truth that the root source of the problem traces to the institutions of Empire that secure their privilege, they respond as imperial rulers have for five thousand years: by seeking to secure and expand their own power they thereby hasten the impending collapse.

  The imperatives of this distinctive moment in the human experience have been long in coming. The earliest humans, Homo habilis, appeared on the planet some 2.6 million years ago. Living as one with the animals of plain and forest, this physically unimpressive species exhibited little of the capacity for choice and self-reflection that would manifest in future generations. Our early ancestors learned to cultivate and use their capacities in a slow but steadily accelerating progression that set us ever further apart from the other species with which we share the planet.

  During the twentieth century, the speed at which we humans acquired new technological powers to reshape our relationship to one another and the planet accelerated to a blur, arguably exceeding the sum of the technological advances of the previous twenty-six thousand centuries. Within the space of the last hundred years alone, we have reached out to the planets, looked back through time to the origins of the universe, and delved into the deepest mysteries of subatomic particles and genetic codes to acquire seemingly godlike powers of destruction and creation. We have not, however, used these powers wisely—in large measure because those to whom we yield the power to lead continue to live and rule from the clouds.

  This chapter deals with the imperative born of massive institutional failure. The following chapter will address the opportunity.

  A PLANET UNDER CRIPPLING STRESS

  Somewhere around 1980, we humans crossed an evolutionary threshold: the burden we place on the life support systems of the planet 59passed beyond the sustainable limit. The figures are sobering. Just since 1950, in barely more than fifty years, the global human population more than doubled from 2.6 billion persons in 1950 to 6.4 billion in 2005. The value of the global economic output increased from $6.7 trillion in 1950 to $48 trillion in 2002, as measured in constant U.S. dollars.3 The number of motor vehicles is ten times what it was in 1950.4 Fossil fuel use is five times what it was, and global use of freshwater has tripled.5 Spending on advertising aimed primarily at getting the 1.7 billion people—27 percent of humanity—who currently enjoy material affluence to consume even more goods and services was nearly ten times greater in 2002 than in 1950.6

  By 2002, humans were consuming food, materials, and energy at a rate of about 1.2 Earth-equivalent planets.7 The difference between human consumption and the regenerative capacity of Earth is made up by depleting the natural capital of the planet—both nonrenewable capital, like minerals and fossil fuels, and renewable capital like forests, fisheries, soil, water, and climatic systems. The consequence is to extract a temporary and unsustainable subsidy from Earth to support current consumption at the expense of our children and their children for generations to come.

  The World Wildlife Fund regularly publishes a Living Planet Index that tracks the health of the world’s forest, freshwater, ocean, and coastal ecosystems over time. This index declined by 37 percent over the thirty-year period from 1970 to 2000. The index is unlikely to reach zero—a dead planet—because the planet will surely rid itself of the offending species long before this occurs.8

  About 420 million people now live in countries that depend on imported food because they lack sufficient farmland per capita to feed their people. By 2025, this number could exceed 1 billion as population grows and the amount and quality of cropland decline. More than a half billion people now live in regions prone to chronic drought. This number is expected to grow to as high as 3.4 billion by 2025.9

  A combination of ecosystem disruption, malnutrition, a lack of access to clean water, and the rapid movement of people and goods across ecological boundaries has spread devastating new diseases such as HIV/ AIDS with unprecedented speed. Diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, once thought to be all but eradicated, are reasserting themselves in more virulent forms. Climatic disruptions and the imminent end to the ready availability of cheaply extracted oil that has made many of our 60contemporary human excesses possible will accelerate the crisis and constrain our human capacity to address it.

  Climate Disruption

  The scientific consensus that climate change is real and is in substantial measure caused by human activity grows each year as the evidence becomes ever more compelling. The average global surface temperature increased by 0.6 degrees centigrade over the twentieth century, with accelerating increases projected for the twenty-first century.10 The warming is greatest in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in the Arctic region, where the polar ice cap has thinned by 46 percent over twenty years and may begin melting entirely in the summer months as early as 2020. The ocean thermals in the Atlantic that drive the Gulf Stream that warms Europe have substantially weakened, creating concern that it may slow or stop entirely —with devastating consequences for European nations and particularly European agriculture.11

  Even small increases in temperature can have major climatic effects, as demonstrated by a steady increase over the past five decades in severe weather events such as major hurricanes, floods, and droughts. Globally there were only thirteen severe events in the 1950s. By comparison, seventy-two such events occurred during the first nine years of the 1990s. The cost of the damage caused has risen from roughly US$3 billion annually in the 1950s to $40 billion annually in the 1990s.12 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which ravaged the Gulf Coast of the United States and Mexico in 2005, are only a foretaste of what is to come.

  Agricultural disruption and major population displacements are now imminent because of climatic change and a resulting rise in the sea level. A study commissioned by the U.S. Pentagon warns that global warming during the twenty-first century could “result in a significant drop in the human carrying capacity of Earth’s environment… [and] potentially de-stabilize the geo-political environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to resource constraints.… Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.”13

  The End of Oil

  A sharp rise in oil prices in 2004 and 2005, coupled with revelations that Shell and other oil companies were systematically overestimating their proven petroleum reserves, spurred a lively discussion of when global 61oil production will peak and begin an inexorable decline in the face of growing demand and rising extraction costs. Referred to as “peak oil,” this event is predicted to send energy prices skyrocketing and result in massive economic dislocation as the cheap oil subsidy that fueled much of the economic expansion of the past hundred years is withdrawn.

  According to Fortune, the most optimistic estimates from credible sources place peak oil as much as thirty-five years in the future. Other credible experts suggest that 2005 may have been the fateful year. Meanwhile China has gone from having virtually no private automobiles in 1980 to having a projected 24 million in 2005, with anticipated exponential growth for the foreseeable future.14 In 2004, China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest consumer of oil.15 The United States, of course, is the number one oil consumer. As Fortune correctly notes, it really does not matter whether peak oil has already occurred or will not be encountered for another thirty-five year
s.16 Reconfiguring the world’s economy to move beyond dependence on petroleum and reverse the buildup of greenhouse gases must be an essential and immediate priority.

  If we humans do not choose to act on our own, Earth is poised to make the choice for us by forcing the mother of all market corrections. It will be a traumatic lesson in the market principle that subsidies cause markets to misallocate resources, the systems principle that infinite growth cannot be sustained in a finite system, and the cybernetic principle that failure to take timely action to restore system equilibrium results in overshoot and collapse.17 In everyday language, we humans have used cheap oil subsidies to create economies and lifestyles that depend on the unsustainable consumption of Earth’s resources, our consumption already exceeds sustainable limits by a substantial margin, and if we do not take immediate corrective action, economic collapse is imminent.

  By the calculations of the Living Planet Index, we humans have been in ecological overshoot since roughly 1970. In fact, the process began nearly a hundred years earlier, when the modern transformation of human economies to petroleum dependence began in earnest. The intervening years have been devoted to building an infrastructure dependent on cheap oil while at the same time accelerating the depletion of Earth’s accessible petroleum reserves and the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

  The twentieth century has been Empire’s most profligate period of excess. We are poised to pay a terrible price. Slowly awakening from the stupor of petroleum intoxication, the raging headache of humanity’s 62hangover is starting to set in. We humans must now deal not only with the five-thousand-year legacy of Empire but also with the consequences of imperial excess that cheap oil made possible. The longer we delay abandoning the way of Empire for the way of Earth Community, the more devastating the collapse will be and the greater the price we all will pay.