During the last half of the twentieth century, most nations came to embrace economic growth as a proxy measure for human progress and happiness. Comparative international studies, however, report that once a nation has achieved a moderate level of per capita income, further increases in wealth bring only slight increases in perceived well-being.21 This growing body of research on the “economics of happiness” affirms one of the oldest and most universal of spiritual insights. Beyond the minimum level of income essential to meeting basic needs, the authentic relationships of strong communities are a far better predictor of happiness and emotional health than the size of one’s paycheck or bank account.
The United States has been the world’s most aggressive national proponent of economic growth and consumerism as the tickets to happiness. Over the last half of the twentieth century, inflation-adjusted U.S. gross domestic product per capita tripled, yet surveys indicate that self-reports of satisfaction with life have remained virtually flat.22 What did clearly increase in the United States over this period were measures of depression, anxiety, distrust, and psychological dysfunction. The incidence of depression increased tenfold.23
One of the more startling affirmations of the wisdom that relationships are more important to happiness than money and material possessions comes from a study that compared the life-satisfaction scores of groups of people of radically different financial means and physical circumstances. The results showed four groups clustered at the top of the life-satisfaction scale, with almost identical scores.
One group (with a score of 5.8 out of 7) comprised persons on the list of Forbes magazine’s “richest Americans,” the richest of whom own tens of billions of dollars in assets, and the “poorest” hundreds of millions. The other three groups were the Pennsylvania Amish (5.8), the Inuit people in northern Greenland (5.9), and the Maasai (5.7), a traditional herding people in East Africa who have no electricity or running water and who live in huts made of dung.24 This suggests that in complex modern cultures, it takes a great deal of money, indeed, to equal the happiness that comes in simple societies from a sense of belonging to a place and a strong, caring community.
Perhaps the most revealing comparison was between Calcutta slum dwellers (4.6), whose life-satisfaction score was slightly above a neutral 300rating (4.0), and Calcutta pavement dwellers (2.9), who were the lowest-scoring of all the groups surveyed. Both the slum dwellers and the pavement dwellers live under appalling conditions of physical deprivation. The pavement dwellers, however, have no place or community, while the slum dwellers live in a place they identify as their own located within a bounded, if rudimentary and unstable, community.25 Relationships of mutual caring and commitment are the variable that most consistently explains these results.
The greater the extent to which our relationships are reduced to impersonal financial exchanges, the greater the sacrifice in happiness, well-being, and emotional health. Money can help to compensate for the loss, but it takes a great deal of money to buy the happiness that companionship and community bring for free.26 Relationships, not money, are the true measure of well-being. What matters most is our connection to and participation in the life of community. If we were to define human progress by the measure of human happiness, we would devote far less of our resources to making money and far more to building community.
My life journey has taken me to the lands of the Maasai in Kenya, and I have walked among the slum dwellers of Calcutta. While I cannot speak with confidence for those Maasai who have retained their traditional ways, I have no doubt that any Calcutta slum dweller would instantly choose to trade his life for mine. I am equally clear I would have no interest in such a trade and believe that no one in our modern time should be confined to lives so harsh and limiting. My contact with both groups gives me all the more reason, however, to be respectful of the profound implication of the finding that human happiness depends far more on the relationships of community than on money and material possessions.
Newtonian physics embodied the premise that only matter is real. The more contemporary science of quantum physics teaches the very different lesson that “solid” matter is mainly empty space given form and substance by a relational fabric of energy particles in constant motion. Relationships are real; matter is an illusion.
The old biology taught that each living being is engaged in an individualistic competition for survival against every other living being. 301The new biology teaches that life exists only in cooperative relation to other life and the species that survive are those that find their place of service. Life is community.
Psychologists are affirming the ancient wisdom that happiness depends not on the quantity of our possessions, but the quality of our relationships. As Empire is the path to sorrow, so Earth Community is the path to joy. Relationships are the foundation of everything.
We humans have a powerful drive to connect with one another and with nature. Perhaps more than any other species we are aware of the vulnerability inherent in the reality that we exist physically and psychologically only in relationship. The pain of separation is so great that we will do most anything to connect, even to the extent of destroying the objects of our love.
Earth Community offers an alternative to the alienation and the sorrows of Empire, a way of living that places life values ahead of financial values and organizes by the principles of partnership rather than the principles of domination. The deeper and more mutually affirming our relationships, the richer and more distinctively human we become. The yawning gap between the integral relationships for which we yearn and the fragmentation and alienation of modern life suggests the epic proportions of the challenge before us.
Yet the key to redirecting our human course is elegant in its simplicity. To change the human course, replace the stories of Empire that presently guide our collective path with stories of Earth Community grounded in the wisdom of the highest orders of human consciousness and informed by the whole of human knowledge and experience.
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CHAPTER 18
Stories for a New Era
The great spiritual-religious wisdom traditions of the world have all taught some variant of this message: The deepest human pleasures come from living in a world based on justice, peace, love, generosity, kindness, and celebration of the universe and service to the ultimate moral law of the universe.1
Rabbi Michael Lerner
Gandhi… entered public life as the defender of a small, immigrant minority in a dusty corner of a global empire, but before he was done he had led a movement that, more than any other force, dissolved that empire, and in the process had proposed a way of life in which the constituent activities of existence—the personal, the economic, the social, the political, the spiritual—were brought into a new relationship.2
Jonathan Schell
It is not enough, as many progressives in the United States are doing, to debate the details of tax and education policies, budgets, war, and trade agreements in search of a positive political agenda. Nor is it enough to craft slogans with broad mass appeal aimed at winning the next elections or policy debate.
Virtually every progressive issue, from peace to environmental protection and the elimination of racism and sexism, traces its roots to the cultures and institutions of Empire. Seeking to resolve them in piecemeal fashion is an exercise in futility. Either we resolve them all by putting Empire behind us, or we accept Empire and resolve none of them. Putting Empire behind us requires putting aside its imperial prosperity, security, and meaning stories and crafting a framing vision communicated through life-affirming stories of the possibilities of Earth Community. Such stories are implicit in the work of millions of people—the organizer cells of the new culture—who are bringing the perspective of the higher orders of human consciousness to bear as they create new cultural spaces 303that give people the freedom to experiment with cooperative relationships. We must learn to express these stories in clear and coherent narrative.
As the stories
of Empire nurture a culture of domination and deny the possibility of partnership, so the stories of Earth Community nurture a culture of partnership, redefine prosperity and security, affirm the possibilities of the higher orders of human consciousness, and call us to find our place of service in Creation’s epic quest. As I have attempted to document in previous chapters, caring communities grounded in a love of life are by the very nature of life an essential precondition for achieving human prosperity, security, and meaning. This simple but profound truth is a unifying message of the narrative versions of the Earth Community stories that follow.
Let me say here that I share below versions of the Earth Community stories that work for me at this particular time. They are works in progress that draw on the shared experience and wisdom of many colleagues, but they are only a first cut. The New Right has been honing for many years the imperial stories I related in chapter 14. It will take at least a few years and the contributions of many thousands of people to arrive at comparably honed stories of Earth Community.
EARTH COMMUNITY PROSPERITY STORY
True prosperity depends on life-serving economies that satisfy our basic material needs, maintain a sustainable balance with Earth’s natural systems, strengthen the bonds of caring communities, and support all persons in the full realization of their humanity. This requires the localization and distribution of power within a framework of responsible citizenship and international cooperation. It is wholly within our means —and consistent with our human nature—to create such economies. The prosperity story of Earth Community speaks to the possibility.3
Prosperity is measured by the quality of our lives and the realization by each person of the creative potential of their humanity. A high-performing economic system supports the development of this potential, provides every person with an adequate and dignified means of livelihood, maintains the healthy vitality of the planetary ecosystem that is the source of all real wealth, and contributes to building community through strengthening the bonds of affection, trust, and mutual accountability. 304
Poverty, unemployment, high crime rates, and broken families are all indicators of an economic system that gives higher priority to maintaining and enhancing the power and privilege of a small elite class than to providing the essentials of life to all. Prosperity is best served by the just and equitable distribution of income and ownership among all members of society. As five thousand years of history clearly demonstrate, policies that favor the rich as a privileged class marginalize those who have less and facilitate the expropriation of their labor and resources, thus limiting their creative productive contribution and the prosperity of the whole. Poverty is an inevitable product of an unjust system designed to exploit those who work hard and play by the rules.
Those who make the greatest contributions to the community properly receive a greater material reward, but only within limits consistent with economic justice. Generally, the more equitable a society is, the greater its access to the creative potential of every individual and the greater its potential prosperity. The social costs of inequality increase to the extent that the wealthy use their power advantage to take more rather than to give more. Inequality and sustainability are incompatible as inequality encourages wasteful extravagance among the rich and desperation among the poor.
It is proper that those who have received the most from society pay proportionately higher taxes and contribute a greater portion of their time to community service. Similarly, it is appropriate to continuously restore balance and forestall the creation of family dynasties by a redistribution of assets to the society at the end of each life through an inheritance tax to maintain a balance between individual incentive, equity, and public benefit.
Markets are an essential and beneficial human institution, and as with any other human endeavor their efficient function depends on the participants’ exercise of a mature sense of responsibility for the whole. Markets also require impartially enforced rules that assure fair dealing, balance public and private interests, provide public services and infrastructure, maintain the conditions of fair competition, and assure an equitable distribution of ownership and income. There is no beneficial place in a healthy economy for predatory individuals or for enterprises organized for the sole purpose of making money for wealthy absentee owners. 305
Every person is at risk of becoming unemployed through no fault of their own, or of incurring a serious illness or injury requiring care beyond their means. None of us know how long we will live or what disabilities we may suffer in our elder years. Some will live well beyond the normal life expectancy, and a few among these will need years of expensive care. The quality of life and prosperity of all are enhanced by the sharing of these risks through unemployment benefits, retirement plans, and health insurance programs that guarantee coverage for all, irrespective of means.
In a resource-scarce world, the greater the capacity of the economic system to adapt to specific local conditions, the more efficient the use of resources will be, and thereby the greater the prosperity of the whole. This capacity for adaptation is greatest when each community is living within its own means, decision making is local, and exchanges among communities are fair and balanced. These conditions increase democratic control and accountability; limit the ability of economic predators to bid down labor, health, safety, and environmental standards; and preclude the accumulation of destabilizing external debts.4
The Earth Community prosperity story pretty much turns the imperial prosperity story on its head. This is wholly appropriate and scarcely surprising, because the priority of the imperial economy is to maintain the established relations of domination. The priority of the Earth Community economy is to build mutual prosperity through relations of partnership.
EARTH COMMUNITY SECURITY STORY
The primary role of political institutions is to maintain order and set priorities for collective action to advance the common good. Just as their contrasting prosperity stories do, the security stories of Empire and Earth Community reflect their differing priorities. For Empire, security means securing the established hierarchy of privilege, whatever the cost. For Earth Community, it means securing the well-being of present and future generations against avoidable risks and sharing the costs of the risks that are unavoidable. Here is a suggested security story for Earth Community:
Strong families and communities that build relationships of mutual trust and caring and that support all people in realizing the potentials of their 306humanity are the best guarantee of human security. They also serve as deterrents to criminal activity and as an important resource for apprehending those who engage in criminal acts.
Responsible citizenship, cooperation, and nonviolent conflict resolution come naturally to emotionally and morally mature adults. Long term, our best guarantee of physical security will come from public policies that support a healthy family and community life that strengthens mutual trust and caring and nurtures the growth of every individual to full moral and emotional maturity. The desire to harm, dominate, or demean others is an indicator of the failure of family and community to fulfill their essential roles, which is in turn an indicator of a failure of public policy to provide the necessary support.
The greatest threats to physical security now facing the world, short of nuclear Armageddon, are climate change, toxic contamination, water shortages, rising energy prices, and economic instability created by financial speculation and skyrocketing trade imbalances. These and other consequential security threats — including crime, terrorism, and war — are a direct consequence of the cultures and institutions of Empire that weaken family and community, mismanage natural resources, undermine the legitimacy of official institutions, create extremes of injustice, and suppress development of the higher orders of moral consciousness.
One of the most important indicators of a healthy society is a low crime rate combined with a low rate of incarceration. Imprisonment is a last resort, and for all but the most extreme cases its proper pur
pose is rehabilitation and eventual reintegration into the community. The goal is to achieve restorative justice that promotes healing and respect for all persons. That said, persons who repeatedly engage in criminal acts must, as a last resort, be subject to imprisonment through due process to prevent them from doing further harm to themselves and others.
Just as strong families and communities are the best guarantee of security against domestic crime, so too a strong community of nations is the best guarantee of security against the threats of international crime, terrorism, and rogue regimes. Militarization begets militarization, which in turn invites the preemptive use of military force to resolve real and imagined threats and grievances.
Military security is best assured through negotiating mutually agreed-upon 307and verified programs of disarmament, retooling from war economies to peace economies, and working through institutions of international cooperation to eliminate war as an instrument of national policy.
Similarly, violence begets violence, including acts of terrorism. Invading other nations to capture or punish terrorists legitimates violence as the means of settling disputes and fuels terrorist recruitment. Apprehending terrorists and holding them accountable requires the cooperation of national and international law enforcement agencies. The terrorist activities of nonstate political groups are generally acts of desperation by groups that find no other outlet for the expression of their grievances. Democracy to assure every individual a meaningful political voice is the best preventive measure. The United States and other nations can best support democracy by ending their support for dictatorial regimes and their dependence on the foreign resources to which these regimes provide access.
The Great Turning Page 37