World We Want Commentary

On May 25, 2008 Common Dreams posted the text of my April 13 presentation to the Seattle Green Festival, which elicited a flurry of commentary from Common Dreams visitors. See http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/25/9185/#comment-285829.

The following is a response I posted on May 27, 2008.

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I want to jump in to respond to some of the comments on my article and to extend an invitation to visit my website http://davidkorten.org.

I’m puzzled by claims made by some commentators that I miss the nature or urgency of the crisis facing our species. Much of the article to which these comments refer is devoted to making the argument that we are on the brink of environmental and social collapse as a consequence of terminally destructive institutions and cultural stories. I elsewhere note that corporations are legally designed to fit the behavioral profile of psychopaths and that our governing institutions are prone to elevate psychopaths, who lack a capacity for consciousness, to the highest positions of power because they reflect the values of the system.

With reference to the now much earlier mention of genocide against native peoples in North America, I provide a brief, but pointed historical summary of that experience in my book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community in the section titled “Genocide” beginning on page 165.  It comes just before the section on “Slavery.”

With reference to American Indian culture, I consider one of the signs of hope for the human future to be the fact that many indigenous peoples, including Native Americans, are coming forward to offer those of us raised in Western culture a gift of their values and wisdom. It fulfills an ancient prophecy and is an essential contribution to the work of creating a world that works for the whole of life. I am grateful for that gift.

My main point in this particular article is that if we look beneath our differences we can find a foundation of common ground, our Common Dreams if you will, on which to build a needed political consensus to move beyond pointless debates about American flag lapel pins and whose minister said what in a sermon years ago.

I can understand that some people may find my call for conversation to be a bit mild given the depth and urgency of the crisis, but it is an essential starting point. Serious conversation, such as the one occurring here that challenges defining cultural stories is a revolutionary act that undermines the status quo by helping people see otherwise denied possibilities. Growing public awareness of the seriousness of our current human crisis creates an essential opening for the rapid spread of the conversation this article advocates.

One of the advantages of reaching one’s elder years is having lived through enough history to experience how rapidly deep change can happen — and how committed groups can shape and accelerate it. I experienced the changes in race relations brought by the civil rights movement, the changes in gender relations brought about by the women’s movement, and the rise of environmental consciousness brought by the environmental movement. Each began with a conversation among a small group of people that led to an expanding challenge to a false story.

I was an active participant in the movement that raised public consciousness of the use by global corporations of trade agreements to attack democracy, equity, and the environment. It began as a conversation among a few international activists the beginning of 1994 when there was virtually zero public awareness that multilateral trade agreements had far more to do with power than with trade. Our conversations focused on a search for common ground rather than attacking one another for our differences. Having found our common ground, we could each speak to our larger constituencies with one voice, but in our separate dialects. Five years later the epic 1999 protest action in Seattle shut down a World Trade Organization meeting and inspired the subsequent protests that brought the corporate multilateral trade agreement juggernaut to an abrupt halt.

It began with a conversation and it grew through the viral spread of that conversation to a point where literally millions of people were mobilizing around the world. It may have been a conversation mainly among members of the choir, but it became a very large and powerful choir with a powerful voice that reached far beyond its members and gave birth to the even larger and more powerful social organism we now call global civil society. You can find more thoughts on the power of stories and conversation as a revolutionary force at http://davidkorten.org/content/story-power

Identifying the values and dreams we share in common, rather than focusing only on what divides us, opens the possibility of creating the broad alliances essential to navigating the transformation our current human circumstance demands. It may sound like a New Age idea to some, but my experience tells me is it very practical politics that creates the foundation for essential changes in our institutions and public policies. You can find more of my thoughts on how to use this power at http://davidkorten.org/content/great-turning-0.

Those concerned about avoiding accommodation to the institutions of Empire may be interested in my recommendations to dismantle the military establishment (http://davidkorten.org/SmartSecurity) and eliminate the institution of the private benefit corporation (http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=2171). Both are practical actions essential to our physical security and prosperity.

I have also come to realize over the years that responding to violence with violence only perpetuates the culture and institutions of violence that we must now retire. Self-defense and acting to restrain those who are incapable of functioning as responsible members of society is one thing. When we act from hatred to destroy them through physical violence, we become the very thing we deplore.

The distinctive power competence of civil society is our ability to challenge the cultural stories that lead us to yield our life energy to the institutions of imperial rule. Once we liberate ourselves from the cultural trance, we can choose as a people to withdraw our loyal submission and render these institutions powerless. Thom Hartmann calls it “walking away from the king.” A prime example was the virtually bloodless coup when the Filipino people walked away from Marcos in 1986 and he fled the country in shame.

With regard to cynicism, no matter how much it may be justified by the circumstances, it only creates a self-defeating, self-fulfilling prophecy. We must keep hope alive and act with confidence that creating a better world is possible.

David Korten