Report from the Charter Business Call: April 28, 2015
“Change the Story, Change the Future”
We humans live by shared cultural stories. They are the lens through which we view reality. They shape what we most value as a society and how we structure power. Hope lies in reawakening to our true nature as living beings born of a living Earth born of a living universe. An authentic sacred life and living Earth story is emerging. This is a moment of unprecedented opportunity to create a future consistent with our true nature and possibility. Change the story; change the future. ~David Korten
David Korten Portrait by Robert Shetterly from his series Americans Who Speak the Truth
Speaker David Korten
David Korten is the co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, President of the Living Economies Forum, a member of the Club of Rome, and a former Harvard Business School Professor. But whatever you do, don’t call him an economist! As David writes in the prologue of “Change the Story, Change the Future”, that’s because the very title “economist” implies a world-view – really a cosmology – that leads us to act as a species as if destroying life to make money is a path to prosperity for all. David calls that world-view the “Sacred Money and Markets story.” It has been a license for individual excess (even more dramatically non-human corporate excess) that has become an existentially deadly threat. David says “the cause of this misdirection is not an inherent flaw in our nature; it is a flaw in our story.”
David’s presentation is about how our shared stories shape our future as a species and the power this gives us to choose our common future with conscious collective intent. He notes the essential elements of an emerging “Sacred Life and Earth Community story” grounded in a reawakening to the truth that we are living beings born of and nurtured by a living Earth, itself born of a living universe. This story changes everything and holds the key to our self-liberation from the existential threat we currently pose to ourselves.
Agenda
Welcome/Introductions (MarilynTurkovich and Reed Price)
Presentation (David Korten)
Breakout Groups (All)
Observations and Q&A (All)
Closing (Reed Price and Marilyn Turkovich)
Welcome/Introductions
Marilyn Turkovich: Welcome everyone. If we have a possibility of a new future, David can help us see the potential and reality of such a future. [She provided some introductory statements about David Korten’s background (see above)].
Ben Roberts: [Provided the call logistics]. Press 5 for technical difficulties. Press 1 to raise your hand. We did not activate the social webinar feature for this call. If you would like to access it, you can go to maestroconference.com and put in your email and PIN#.
Reed Price: We welcome David Korten. He will be discussing his book, “Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth” (http://www.yesmagazine.org/products/change-the-story/change-the-story). This 100-page book is packed with wonderful information. I highly recommend it to you. [Reed provided additional introductory details about David Korten’s background (see above)].
Presentation
David Korten: I am delighted to be with you and share in this conversation on these crucial and deep issues. As Reed noted, I am not an economist. My academic background is in business. I have studied how organizational culture shapes human behavior and how the efforts to make profits influence our world. I worked in international development and saw the contrast between the systemic celebration of progress and development to end poverty and suffering in the 3rd world and the reality in which we were creating a few very rich people, some middle class, and many who were experiencing greater poverty and exclusion while we simultaneously damaged the Earth. The patterns I saw overseas are also playing out in more advanced countries.
We need to address compassion at the individual level and at the systemic level. Compassion for the oppressed means confronting the oppressor. How do we express compassion for the oppressor? Our current economy is a suicide economy- driving to destroy economic existence and our existence as a species. Now in the US we have the greatest financial inequality since the time of the Great Depression. We are seeing environmental collapse and poisoning ourselves. We have systems blocking government to address these situations. We will continue repeating cycles of economic downfall. My book covers it all. We need to revitalize a key principle- life is more important than money. We need systems that root power in communities and compassionate people and not in global financial markets and institutions concerned only with maximizing profits.
We have story-power. Our shared stories- the deepest stories by which we understand what is valuable to us- allow us to organize as tribes, communities and now as a global society. If the system is not working, we need to look at the story. We currently live by the “Sacred Money, Sacred Market story”. I had an experience in 2012 before the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. I was meeting with an international group planning their contribution to the conference. They were noting that the establishment from Wall Street was going to the conference with the message that we need to put a price on nature to value her. Indigenous people say that if we put a price tag on nature, then nature is up for the highest bidder. We need to start with a different premise. Earth is our birth mother, our soul.
At the Rio+20 conference, Karma Tshiteem spoke about the Happiness Initiative in Bhutan which seeks our deepest level of wellbeing. At the end of his talk, he ended with 3 key words: “Time is life” (http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/a-plea-for-rio-20-dont-commodify-nature). This made an impact on me because I grew up with another story: Time is money. Money is wealth. Making money creates wealth and is the defining purpose of our economy. The rich are our society’s wealth creators. They create jobs. Material consumption is natural. The Earth belongs to us. Corporations are groups of people working in a common cause and entitled to same rights as the individual. This is the story we are constantly exposed to. This story supports grossly unjust systems. This story orients every decision to maximize financial return. There is growing inequality to enrich the rich at the expense of the poor. This story guarantees inequality and eliminates efforts to create jobs with living wages. It is our nature as a species to be competitive and inquisitive. This can be good but can also drive us to eliminate our connection with nature. Where is the source of agency and decision-making power in our society? If you go to my book, you can see how this story ties into our various cosmologies.
We need the emergence of a new, deeper story that brings together truths from all our human knowings- the indigenous peoples’ wisdom, our spiritual traditions, and our science. It is a story of an evolving universe. Earth is a living being- not a dead rock in space. To understanding this story we must understand the evolution of life. From the outset, the simplest of cells organized as a community, cooperating with the Earth to create conditions of climate, atmosphere, oceans, etc.- conditions essential for life and unique to this planet. This evolution required extracting excess carbons (toxins) from the environment and sequestering them deep underground. Now we organize our economy to extract these toxic carbons from the Earth and release them into the environment. We exploit the very conditions essential for our life. Our current pervasive story legitimates rule for financial organizations. The living, unfolding universe leads us to a different story- the “Sacred Life and Living Earth story”. Here are the elements. Start with the fundamental truth that time is life. Real wealth is living wealth. Money is just a number. It is not itself wealth.
We humans are living beings nurtured by a living Earth. Life exists only in community. Only by organizing a community does life create conditions essential to its existence. We belong to the Earth. Our health and prosperity depend on Earth’s health and prosperity. This takes us to compassion for all beings. Our human nature calls us to care and share for the benefit of all. That is the way our brains are wired to operate. Serving the living community is the source of our greatest happiness. The current greed and violence that are celebrated lead to serious psychological dysfunction. Poverty is the result of a system that destroys jobs. The purpose of any institution is to support people as members of a vibrant community. Corporations that seek to gain power by financial ends have no place in a healthy society.
Life organizes through decision-making is at the local level- using local nutrients, water, energy, and sharing information in a balanced relationship with nature. Systems become self-reliant on local level and interconnected on a global scale. If we are in balance locally, we are in balance globally. This becomes the frame for the living economy. We meet our needs while maintaining our balance with the living Earth. The sharing of our portion of our resources requires democracy at the deepest level. Each individual must be a participant.
Transition to the new economy begins with a life-affirming story- the story of a living Earth which is the frame of the living economy. This new story is emerging through practice- people moving their money into local institutions, buying small homes, “buying local” campaigns, recycling, shifting choices of where we work and shop, engaging in the living building movement (to facilitate our working together with nature), fighting fracking, fighting for social justice, etc. As we engage, we must also articulate the story that underlies it so we become very explicit about how we gain a future that works for all human beings and the Earth. We need to be the most self-aware species- able to choose our future through reflective contemplation.
Reed: Thank you David. Our challenge is: How can we as individuals and communities break the “Sacred Money, Sacred Market story” and open the door to the new story? This is the question for our Breakout Groups today.
Breakout Groups
Observations and Q&A
Jackie: We need to translate what we are trying to do in compassion into an economic language. If would be helpful if we could change the “money” currency to energy. Where we focus our energy, hold our energy, or share it- would be a portal for change.
David: I totally agree with what you are saying. I am struck that many of the voices on the call are women’s voices. The women’s movement is foundational to this change of the story. Language is important. The issue of the relationship between money and energy is fascinating. As money plays out in the world it appears to have volition and agency. This is ridiculous because it is just a number. Our economy monetizes relationships. In traditional society- relationships are built on mutual caring and sharing. In the course of development, we have monetized relationships which gives control to those who have money. Women’s relationships over time have been monetized also as more women have entered the workforce. Who controls the money is the ultimate power holder in our current situation.
Jim: An important area is the political change that will be needed to move in the direction of the new story. Where are the key points of political intervention? How can we be involved effectively?
David: This is a good question. Both of our major political parties are controlled by money. We must drive for a constitutional amendment to eliminate Citizens United. We need to eliminate the TransPacific Partnership- corporate rights legislation. Anything we can do to get money out of politics will help.
Randy: I struggle with the idea of story and how people hold story. Many people are surface knowers instead of deep knowers. Are we even conscious of the stories that we hold? How do we get to the deeper ownership of the story?
David: I love listening in on these conversations- the depth and sophistication of the questions are breathtaking. You are right Randy. If you look at our educational system, we organize knowledge to dampen our creativity and deeper understanding. A key point of the new story is that we actually are creatures of many, many possibilities. We have demonstrated our capacity for violence and greed but most people are caring. We have to organize a community around a story. We have grown up in our own culture. Often we are like fish that do not notice the water in which we swim. We are often not conscious of the story or the confines of a narrow culture. Part of our education is coming to recognize the importance of stories and that stories have consequences. Different stories can shape whole societies in different ways. The breaking down of geographical barriers has given us opportunities to immerse in other cultures. We learn that our stories have deep and powerful implications. We must ask: how are they shaping us? Which stories have the greatest credibility? I believe that the “sacred life” story lives in the human heart. It comes from the indigenous peoples.
Ben: How do you see yourself in the larger field of others who are working on this, e.g. Charles Eisenstein and others?
David: There are a lot of people interested in the new economy. That is our source of hope. Many are asking these questions and helping to develop this framework. I have the ability to see connections and I resist the enculturation of any story. I take things people know and point out the connections with other stories. Regarding Charles Eisenstein- I was enthralled with his first book. I see huge parallels between his work and mine. However, I declined to make an endorsement of Charles’s “Sacred Economics” book due to his statement that we have to make money “sacred”. We absolutely need a new economics- grounded in the frame of ecological economics- starting with ecology and the eco-system. Society and the economy are embedded in the eco-system. The only business of the economy is to serve life. We should not put a price on ecological economics. Developing a true economics of living systems is a very challenging task. Our constructs need to change. We are influenced in what we do by what we measure. We need to do like the Bhutanese do- measure the health of children, the health of the salmon runs, how well we are ridding ourselves of toxic contaminants, the degree to which every individual has a chance to contribute to our community. Shifting the frame from money to life truly changes everything.
Kirk: My observation is that we don’t notice our story until we are able to step beyond our story. Many people are finally seeing that the current story does not work. It is an individual journey that ultimately leads to a collective journey.
David: If we delve into the story that is integral to our nature, we find that the true story is contrary to everything we hear via school, the media, our conversations, etc. Most of our conversations are framed around the “Sacred Market, Sacred Money story”. We often feel different and it takes a lot of courage to speak out about that. Only when we speak that truth can we mobilize into alliance.
Barbara: Thank you David for your work. How do you address the situation when someone is so indoctrinated by the current system?
David: My view is that I don’t have enough time and energy to convince people who are dead-set against the new story. My experience is that they are a distinct minority of humanity. My view of the strategy for social change is that the majority of people are healthy and thoughtful despite the distortions of our culture. We need to start with a few creative people and expand out through creative circles. I speak to the choir- helping them see the framework and the language and get them talking together. Ultimately, we speak diverse stories but in harmony. In the future there will be those still stuck in the non-compassionate story. We need to keep them out of positions of leadership.
Lesa: I feel strongly about the importance of messaging and articulating the story. Often this is bypassed and yet it is critical. We can do good things and yet miss the overall, guiding purpose of why we do what we do. It is important to practice and message the story.
David: As we live the new story, we must articulate and make people aware of the new story. I make a point of laying out the old story and make a clear contrast with the new story. Setting forth the old story and the fabrications helps create the foundation for articulating the new story in a clear way. The concept of the power of the story is new to a lot of people. Acquiring the ability to step back and see our story as an outside observer can be challenging. Each of us has the ability to choose our story. As an adult it is our responsibility to be accountable to this.
Closing
Reed: We will be sharing the notes for the call with everyone. These calls are free; however, we appreciate donations to sustain the work of the Charter for Compassion International.
Marilyn: I encourage everyone to join us for next week’s call entitled, “Death Makes Life Possible”. Check out the next Charter newsletter for the schedule of the future calls.
Additional Information
The Spring, 2015 issue of Yes! Magazine is about being “Together, With Earth”: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/together-with-earth. The key message is that the Earth is a living organism, organizing to maintain the elements essential for our existence. So-called modern progress has depended on exploiting the Earth’s resources as if they had no end. We’ve lost touch with the ancient wisdom that we are partners with Earth and all life on it. Now is the time to reclaim our sacred connection with Earth, and to think deeply, radically, and personally about the best ways to keep this planet—and its millions of species—alive.
YES! Magazine a Strategic Partner of the Charter for Compassion. Yes! reframes the biggest problems of our time in terms of their solutions. Online and in print, Yes! outline a path forward with in-depth analysis, tools for citizen engagement, and stories about real people working for a better world.
Today’s world is not the one we want—climate change, financial collapse, poverty, and war leave many feeling overwhelmed and hopeless.
YES! Magazine empowers people with the vision and tools to create a healthy planet and vibrant communities. They do this by:
- Reframing issues and outlining a path forward;
- Giving a voice to the people who are making change;
- Offering resources to use and pass along
