The Great Turning

by David C Korten

  When I turned sixty-five, Timothy Iistowanohpataakiiwa, a Native American friend and elder, gave me one of the most important gifts of my life. In a simple Native ceremony attended by a number of friends and colleagues, he initiated me as an elder into the human community and commemorated my graduation with the gift of an eagle feather he had worn during his participation in the sacred Sun Dance ceremony. It totally changed my outlook on aging. Rather than passing into irrelevance on the path to death, I was initiated into elderhood as mentor, teacher, and wisdom keeper.

  Although a complete return to traditional ways is neither possible nor appropriate, we have much to learn from those traditional societies, because they embody an innate understanding of the developmental needs of children and of the art of living in relationship to the larger web of life. Contemporary imperial societies organize for money making. Traditional societies organize for living.

  More than two thousand years ago, the great Greek philosophers reasoned that the good society is one that supports every person in their journey to the full realization of the highest potentials of their humanity and, in so doing, reproduces the conditions of its own healthful function. Many traditional societies came far closer to actualizing this ideal than do most modern societies, despite the latter’s considerable advantages in technology, scientific knowledge, and material resources.

  Actualizing the ideal, however, does not require going back to lives of subsistence and isolation. It is entirely possible to create societies that are at once human, rooted in their place, and modern in their global connections, understanding, and use of technology. It begins with applying the organizing principles of partnership to the restructuring of our human institutions. Here we may look to nature as a knowledgeable and inspiring teacher.

  NATURE AS TEACHER

  Life on Earth has been learning the secrets of organizing by partnership for four billion years. The defining patterns found in virtually every living system on the planet reveal the lessons of that learning. From the descriptions of the workings of these systems authored by biologists Janine Benyus, Mae-Wan Ho, Lynn Margulis, Elisabet Sahtouris, and others we can discern a number of organizing principles for the partnership societies we must now create.17 292

  Principle of Cooperative Self-Organization

  Life has learned to establish and maintain coherence through an energetic dance of mutual influence, self-regulation, and adaptation that maintains a balance of individual and collective needs at each of life’s many levels of organization, from cell to global biosphere. Each level of organization appears to be a choice-making entity in its own right, with its own capacity to choose in the interests of both self and whole.

  Conditioned by our imperial cultures, we humans have been so focused on the patterns of competition that contribute to life’s dynamism that we have failed to see the deeper narrative of life as a profoundly cooperative enterprise. Life has learned what many of us humans have not — living beings exist only in relationship with other living beings.

  According to Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, one of life’s most important lessons is that the species that survive and prosper are ultimately those that find a niche in which they meet their own needs in ways that simultaneously serve others.18 Furthermore, as Sahtouris observes, life has characteristically learned to cooperate through experiencing the negative consequences of unbridled competition. In her words, “One can discern in evolution a repeating pattern in which aggressive competition leads to the threat of extinction, which is then avoided by the formation of cooperative alliances.”19 These observations speak directly to our human time as we learn the extent of the threat that ruthless competition now poses not only to our own species but as well to countless others.

  Principle of Place

  Life has learned to organize into complex multiorganism ecosystems that adapt to the most intricate details of the microenvironments of their particular physical locale. Each species evolves and learns within the context of the location-specific ecosystem in which it establishes itself, making its individual contributions to a cooperative community effort to capture, share, use, and store the available physical resources to optimize the potentials of the whole. The mutuality of learning and alliance building within any given ecosystem community is underscored by the devastation that sometimes results from the introduction of an alien species, a consequence much like introducing a cancer tumor into a healthy living body, or a Wal-Mart into a previously thriving local economy. 293

  We humans have been relating to the ecosystem of planet Earth as if we were an alien species—the cancer tumor in the body of life—seeking our own unlimited expansion without regard to the consequences for the larger community of life on which our own existence ultimately depends. We must now learn what every successful species has learned before us: to live as members of cooperative living communities exquisitely adapted to the microenvironments of our particular place on Earth.

  Principle of Permeable Boundaries

  Life has learned that to maintain the coherence of its internal energy flows, it must bound itself at each level of organization with a permeable membrane by which it can manage the intake and dissipation of energy and matter from and into its environment, and exclude predators. For example, if the wall of the cell is breached, the cell’s matter and energy instantly mix with the matter and energy of the environment, and it dies. To maintain the coherence of their internal energy and information exchange, multicelled organisms require a skin or other permeable protective covering. Similarly, biological communities or ecosystems need the boundaries provided by oceans, mountains, and climatic zones to exclude invasive species not acculturated to the established community. The planetary biosphere depends on the atmosphere and ozone layer held in place by Earth’s gravitational field to control the exchange of radiation with the universe beyond.

  Even as it needs boundaries to maintain its integrity, however, life’s processes of self-renewal depend on a managed exchange with its environment. Therefore, each organism’s boundary membrane must be permeable, and what flows through that membrane in both directions must be subject to management by the organism so that it can maintain itself in a balanced relationship with all around it. Successful living entities protect their borders not out of selfishness but out of a need to maintain their internal integrity and coherence and to assure that exchanges with their neighbors are balanced and mutually beneficial.

  The trade agreements that have aroused a powerful global resistance movement seek rules that guarantee the right of corporations to place clear protective boundaries around their interests and to manage these boundaries for their exclusive benefit. These same agreements prohibit individuals, families, communities, and nations from establishing any form of protective boundaries that allow them to maintain the coherence 294of their internal life-energy flows from assault by predatory corporations intent on extracting the life energy of people and nature to advance the growth of their financial assets. They are akin to a medical practice devoted to protecting the cancer from the body’s immune system.

  As for any living organism, the healthful function of human communities depends on permeable, managed boundaries. The family, locality, or nation that either leaves itself open to the unregulated intrusion of predatory alien corporations and financial speculators or conversely closes its borders to balanced and beneficial exchange will be quickly drained of its vitality.

  Principle of Abundance

  Life has learned that frugality and sharing are the keys to abundance for all. Biological communities exquisitely fine-tune the efficient capture and recycling of energy and useful matter. They are living exemplars of the motto “Waste not, want not.” The wastes of one become the resources of another through the continuous reuse and recycling of energy and materials within and between cells, organisms, and species cooperating to minimize the dissipation of energy and useful matter beyond their respective individual and collective boundaries.

  The abundan
ce of life depends on its ability to both share and conserve energy and matter, and to freely share information in order to grow the potential of the whole. Unrestrained growth based on competitive expropriation is the ideology of cancer cells and alien species. True abundance depends on frugality, mutuality, and sharing.

  Principle of Diversity

  Life has learned that diversity is an essential foundation of creative potential. Just as life never exists in isolation from other life, neither does it exist in monocultures. Life has learned that the greater the diversity of the bio-community, the greater its resilience in times of crisis and the greater its potential for creative innovation in the pursuit of new possibilities.

  Likewise, a diversity of age, gender, culture, religion, and race provides an invaluable contribution to the resilience and creative potential of human communities. We humans have yet to learn to celebrate, cultivate, and harvest the benefits of diversity long denied by our many chauvinisms. 295

  EARTH COMMUNITY

  The turning from Empire to Earth Community has two primary elements. First is a turning from money to life as our defining value. Second is a turning from relations of domination to relations of partnership based on organizing principles discerned from the study of healthy living systems.

  Partnership in a Contemporary Context

  If we were to apply living-system principles to organizing the relations of daily life within our modern context, we would create locally rooted, self-organizing, compact communities that bring work, shopping, and recreation nearer to our residences—thus saving energy and commuting time, reducing CO2 emissions and dependence on oil, and freeing time for family and community activities. Life would become less dependent on cars, and the needs of automobiles would no longer dominate the landscape. We would convert land now devoted to roads and parking to bike lanes, trails, and parks. Our governance processes would be radically democratic.

  We would grow more of our food on local family farms without toxic chemicals, process it nearby, compost organic wastes, and recycle them back into the soil, thus better securing our food supply and improving human and environmental health. We would design environmentally efficient buildings for their specific microenvironments and construct them of local materials to reduce the energy costs of transport. We would produce much of our energy locally from wind and solar sources. Locally generated wastes would be recycled locally to provide materials and energy inputs for local use.

  With family life, work life, and community life more geographically proximate and people in more regular and natural contact, our lives would be less fragmented and more coherent, the bonds of community denser, stronger, and more trusting. Children and youth would be naturally engaged in community life, thus acquiring the experience, mentors, and role models they need to prepare for the responsibilities of adulthood. We can provide our youth with courses in developmental psychology, responsible citizenship, and the skills of parenting as part of the school curriculum and encourage them to practice the application of these skills through community service and the care and mentoring of younger children. 296

  With the restoration of community life, elders would become a resource as caretakers, educators, mentors, and wise advisers to those still negotiating the pathway to a mature consciousness, thus restoring respect and meaning to the elder years. The elder who remains engaged in the responsibilities of community life is unlikely to suffer from either a longing for or a fear of death. By their very presence in the fullness of their maturity, they keep alive the flame of the spirit of what can be and serve thereby, often in unassuming ways, as individual and collective guides to the future.

  Psychologist Robert Kegan observes that “who comes into a person’s life may be the single greatest factor of influence to what that life becomes.”20 It is particularly important that each child experience a deep and enduring relationship with at least one elder of a mature consciousness. I recall the significance of my relationship to my paternal grandmother, in whom the flame of the spirit of life burned bright and who communicated to me in so many ways her sense of life’s wondrous possibilities and the virtue of standing on examined moral principles. It took me many years to fully understand and appreciate the lessons she taught me, but her influence lives on in all that I do.

  Empire is expensive. Eliminating wasteful uses of energy and other resources would mean less need to expropriate the resources of other countries through economic and military domination, thus greatly reducing the need to divert resources to maintaining a large military force. If foreign interests no longer control the labor and natural resources of the world’s poorest nations, those resources would be available to the people of those nations for use in improving their own lives. This would reduce the motivation for terrorism and further reduce the need to expend scarce resources on domestic security. Breaking up global corporations into human-scale, locally owned enterprises would free still more resources by eliminating the massive burden of inflated executive compensation packages and by removing bureaucratic barriers to innovation.

  An economy that responds to the self-defined needs of adults of a mature consciousness would no longer allocate a major portion of its creative talent and communications resources to advertising to make people feel insecure and incomplete in order to create artificial demand. Less advertising would mean less visual pollution, a stronger sense of self-worth for individuals, and a reduction of wasteful consumerism 297that could be translated into a shorter workweek and more time for family and community.

  The savings could finance first-rate education, health care, and community services for all and provide workers with a living family wage. The benefits would ripple out across the social landscape. With ample living wages, educational opportunities, and essential services, crime rates would drop, and prison and other criminal justice costs would fall.

  We would be working less and living more. Our lives would be freer and richer. Our environment would be cleaner and healthier. A world no longer divided between the obscenely rich and the desperately poor would know more peace and less violence, more love and less hate, more hope and less fear. There would little need for dominator structures to impose order. Earth could heal itself and provide a home for our children for generations to come. These are all among the abundant joys of Earth Community and all are within our collective means.

  Indicators of Success

  We might ask by what indicators we will know the Earth Community we seek to create. We will know a society has succeeded when it matches the following description:

  Virtually every adult has achieved at least a Socialized Consciousness and most adults have achieved a Cultural Consciousness by early middle age and a Spiritual Consciousness by late middle age.

  There is a vibrant community life grounded in mutual trust, shared values, and a sense of connection. Risks of physical harm perpetrated by humans against humans through war, terrorism, crime, sexual abuse, and random violence are minimal. Civil liberties are secure even for the most vulnerable.

  All people have a meaningful and dignified vocation that contributes to the well-being of the larger community and fulfills their own basic needs for healthful food, clean water, clothing, shelter, transport, education, entertainment, and health care. Paid employment allows ample time for family, friends, participation in community and political life, healthful physical activity, learning, and spiritual growth.

  Intellectual life and scientific inquiry are vibrant, open, and 298 dedicated to the development and sharing of knowledge and life-serving technologies that address society’s priority needs.

  Families are strong and stable. Children are well nourished, receive a quality education, and live in secure and loving homes. Rates of suicide, divorce, abortion, and teenage pregnancy are low.

  Political participation and civic engagement are high, and people feel their political and civic participation makes a positive difference. Persons in formal leadership positions are respected for their wisdom, in
tegrity, and commitment to the public good.

  Forests, fisheries, waterways, the land, and the air are clean, healthy, and vibrant with the diversity of life. Mother’s milk is wholesome and toxin free, and endangered species populations are in recovery.

  Physical infrastructure—including public transit, road, bridge, rail, water and sewerage systems, and electric power generation and transmission facilities —is well maintained, accessible to all, and adequate to demand.

  The first time through, this list may read like a radical utopian fantasy, but only because it contrasts so starkly with our present experience. In fact, each of these conditions is achievable by all but a very few of the most physically and socially ravaged nations, and each condition aligns with core values shared by both conservatives and liberals. If any of them seem alien, it is only because they all depend absolutely on cooperation and sharing. They are forever beyond the reach of the lone individual and of societies that choose to live by the values and relationships of Empire. They are achievable only by societies that choose to live by the values and relationships of Earth Community.

  HAPPINESS IS A CARING COMMUNITY

  Becoming more frugal in our use of resources has become a condition of human survival. To the alienated Imperial Consciousness that finds meaning primarily in the addictions of Empire, this seems an almost unthinkable sacrifice. The more mature consciousness recognizes, however, that a turn to Earth Community is neither about self-sacrifice nor about renouncing technology or progress. It is about getting clear on our values, setting new priorities, redefining progress, and consuming 299less so that we may become more human and in the process experience the abundance of authentic relationships.