glossary
- Multinational Corporation-
The term multinational corporation technically is properly used to refer to a corporation with independent operations in multiple countries, acting in each as if it were a national corporation loyal to the interests of the host country and its people. It is the artful term of choice of corporate PR because it implies a commitment to good citizenship everywhere.
- Era of Empire-
Era of Empire refers to a 5,000 year span of history that began when our early ancestors in the Tigris-Euphratis and Nile river valleys first turned away from Earth Community and embraced the organizational forms and relationships of Empire, Creating societies in which a few at the top enjoy extreme power and privilege and those at the bottom are forced into lives of submission and desperation created a win-lose competition for resources between individuals and nations with devastating social and environmental conse
- Empire-
Empire with a capital E is a generic term for the coercive hierarchical ordering of human relationships at all levels of society from those among nations to those among family members. It lavishes extreme power and privilege on the few at the top and consigns the many to a continuing struggle for survival at the bottom. This results in a rule or be ruled dynamic of violent and ultimately self-destructive competition for power between nations, religions, classes, races, genders and individuals.
- The Great Turning-
The term The Great Turning has come into widespread use to describe the awakening of a higher level of human consciousness and a human turn from an era of violence against people and nature to a new era of peace, justice and environmental restoration. Most people are not aware that this awakening is underway, because positive change rarely reaches the level of front page - or even back-page - news! YES! magazine is one of the few publications that is in the business of bringing these stories to public attention.
- Living Democracy Movement-
Living Democracy Movement is a term used by Frances Moore Lappe and Vandana Shiva to refer to the emerging global movement for social transformation. This movement goes by many names. It was originally known by many as the Anti-globalization Movement, a highly misleading term for what is arguably the most global and inclusive movement ever. Early in the new millennium it was commonly referred to as the global Peace and Justice Movement.
- Economic Growth-
Economic Growth is a process by which the wealthy exppropriate the resources of the poor and turn them into garbage at an accelerating rate to make money for people who already have more than they need. Strip away the carefully crafted illusions that growth creates prosperity and the truth is exposed that the larger consequence of economic growth is an acceleration of the consumption of real wealth (living wealth) to increase the finacial power of the rich and thereby increase inequality.
- Earth Community-
The term Earth Community comes from the Earth Charter, a declaration of university responsibility to and for one another and the living Earth created through a process that began with the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and carried forward through a multiyear collaborative process involving hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals of diverse religious faiths, cultures, races, languages, and nationalities.
- Culture-
Culture: According to Wester's New Collegiate Dictionary, culture is "a: the integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, action, and artifacts and depends upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations b: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group." Culture is the lens through which we view and interpret the world in which we live.
- Cultural Trance-
The New Oxford Dictionary defines a trance as "a half-conscious state characterized by an absence of response to external stimuli." Such a state may be induced by hypnosis. It may also be induced by a cultural story field.
Every human community has a cultural story field comprised of the shared stories that define the community's shared values, understanding, and expectations. A cultural story field is essential to the coherent function of any community. Without it there is no community in any meaningful sense.
- Cultural Consciousness-
Cultural Consciousness is the condition of being conscious of culture, the lens through which we view and interpret our world, as a human construct subject to human choice. The cultures of healthy societies adapt over time to changing circumstances. The circumstances of humanity are now changing far too rapidly for the conventional, largely unconscious processes of cultural regeneration and adaptation to suffice.
- Earth Community Navigators-
Earth Community Navigators: Engaged citizens who are actively contributing to turning the human course from the dominator model of Empire to the partnership model of Earth Community. - Plutonomy-
Plutonomy, a term that combines, "plutocracy" and "economy," refers to an economy in which growth is confined to people at the very top of the wealth pyramid. The term was coined by hip investment and marketing advisers to characterize the U.S. economy. That they use it not out of alarm or moral outrage over extreme injustice, but rather as a guide to framing profitable investment and marketing strategies, is one of the many indicators of the moral corruption of the system.
- Earth Community Dialogue-
An Earth Community Dialogue is a conversation focused on identifying, understanding, and articulating the differences between Empire stories and Earth Community stories, testing the underlying premises of both sets of stories against personal experience, and planning activities to expand the conversation. (See The Great Turning: Epic Passage.) It may involve as few as two people. There is no upper limit.