Friends,
Here's the full text of David's talk, which was discussed in
cj# 1100-1102.
Hope you find it as inspiring as I did.
rkm
The talk, with illustrations:
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/korten/korten_feasta.shtml
Discussion:
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/message_browser/message_dir/1968.shtml
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/message_browser/message_dir/1969.shtml
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/message_browser/message_dir/1970.shtml
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Civilizing Society
by David C. Korten
The FEASTA annual lecture.
Dublin, Ireland - July 4, 2000
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It is a substantial privilege to present the annual FEASTA
lecture and to be part of your effort here in Ireland to
challenge the destructive forces of corporate globalization
and global capitalism. And I want to thank my good friend and
colleague Richard Douthwaite from whose work I have learned
so much for his role in arranging this presentation. Since
you have already had lectures from Herman Daly, Richard
Douthwaite, and Vandana Shiva, you are already fully familiar
with the limits of corporate globalization and the ideology
of economic growth. So I'm going to concentrate on sharing
some of my most current thinking on understanding the deeper
roots of our crisis and the nature of the global citizen
movement that is emerging to counter the destructive forces
of global capitalism.
The citizen protests in Seattle the end of last year brought
the World Trade Organization meeting to a stand still and
focused world attention on an increasingly visible tension
between two extraordinarily powerful social forces.
One is the force of corporate globalization driven by a once
seemingly invincible alliance between the world's largest
mega-corporations and most powerful governments. In the eyes
of its proponents the integration of national economies into
a seamless global economy is spurring economic growth through
the expansion of trade to bring material prosperity to all
the world, spread democracy, and create the financial
resources and new technologies needed to protect the global
environment. But most of all it is making many of these
proponents very rich and powerful, which may have something
to do with their enthusiasm.
The second force is the global democracy movement being
advanced by a planetary citizen alliance known as global
civil society. Before Seattle '99 this force found expression
in the national democracy movements that played a critical
role in the breakup of the Soviet empire and the fall of
apartheid in South Africa -- and in other great progressive
social movements of our time, such as the civil rights,
environmental, peace, and women's movements.
The corporate force is centrally planned by a well-organized
and well-funded corporate elite and PR rhetoric not
withstanding, the driving motive is a competitive drive for
profits. The citizen force depends largely on voluntary
energy, is self-organizing, and is grounded in a deep value
commitment to democracy, community, equity, and the web of
planetary life. Although it has no identifiable
organizational or institutional form, it is taking on a
striking sense of coherence and acquiring the power to at
least make the corporate elites very nervous. Its impetus
comes from the awakening of millions of people of every
nationality, race, and religious affiliation to the
contradictions of corporate globalization, which contrary to
its claims is enriching the few at the expense of the many,
replacing democracy with an elitist and authoritarian
corporate rule, destroying the environment, and eroding the
relationships of trust and caring that are the essential
foundation of a civilized society -- all in the mindless
pursuit of money to further enrich those who already have
more money than they could possibly use.
Let's look more closely at the story of the Seattle WTO
protests that the corporate media pretty much missed. My home
is on Bainbridge Island, a 35 minute ferry ride from Seattle,
so Seattle is rather like my home town. The media portrayed
the demonstrators as anti-trade. In fact the issue that
brought 70,000 people from all around the world to Seattle's
streets was democracy. They were protesting corporate rule --
of which the WTO is a powerful symbol. The violent response
of the police with plastic bullets, tear gas, and pepper
spray dramatically confirmed the demonstrator's worst fears
about the state of democracy in America and the openness of
the WTO process to citizen input.
The Seattle protests also signaled a historic shift in
progressive politics in America from the politics of identity
and special interests to a politics of the whole. It gave
expression to a grand convergence of social movements that is
giving birth to the global democracy movement. Union workers,
environmentalists, members of the faith community, feminists,
gays, human rights and peace activists and many others
acknowledged the reality that either we work together to
build true democracy and create a world that works for every
person, for every living being, or we will have a world that
works for no one.
The churches mobilized around the call of Jubilee 2000 --
debt forgiveness for low income countries -- giving
expression to a growing awareness among people of faith that
the call for economic and social justice is a foundation of
Christian teaching. Labor unions reached out in solidarity
with all the world's workers in a call to guarantee basic
rights and living wages for all working people everywhere in
a realization that in a global economy unless all workers
have rights and living wages, none will have them.
Environmentalists and union leaders joined in common alliance
out of a realization that there will be no jobs without a
healthy environment. And that without secure jobs and labor
rights the environment will be destroyed in the struggle for
survival.
Then there were the real heroes of Seattle, the youth who put
their bodies on the line in the face of brutal police
violence to bring the WTO meeting to a stand still. Tired of
being manipulated and lied to by a system that is stealing
their future, they spent months training one another in the
principles and methods of nonviolent direct action, preparing
themselves for a highly decentralized consensus based mode of
organizing that modeled the radically democratic societies
they intend to build. They proved that radical democracy can
be highly effective, even under violent assault by the brutal
forces of a police state.
Similar demonstrations against corporate globalization of
comparable or even larger scale have become common place
around the world, with notable examples in Geneva, the U.K.
France, Brazil, India, Thailand, and many others. We are
witness to the emergence of an epic struggle between
corporate globalization and popular democracy. Though it most
certainly involves issues of class, it is more than a class
struggle. It is a struggle between humanity and its
institutions -- between life and money -- between two
cultural belief systems that stand in stark and
irreconcilable conflict.
Catholic theologian Thomas Berry traces the underlying
problem to the false premises of an obsolete scientific story
that has diminished our image of ourselves and deprived our
lives of meaning. He makes the case that our survival as a
species may depend as much as anything on discovering a new
story that gives us a reason to live -- a story that helps us
ask one of the most basic of questions: why? It is the story
of a living cosmos and the human search for our place of
service to life's epic journey. The easiest way to
demonstrate the significance of Berry's insight is to recite
to you a version of the new story grounded in discoveries
from the cutting edge of contemporary science that places our
current dilemma in its larger context.
This story begins a very, very long time ago -- perhaps as
much as 15 billion years ago -- when a new universe flared
into being with a great flash -- dispersing tiny energy
particles, the stuff of creation, across the vastness of
space. With the passing of time these particles
self-organized into atoms, which swirled into great clouds
that coalesced into galaxies of countless stars that grew,
died, and were reborn as new stars, star systems, and
planets. The cataclysmic energies unleashed by the births and
deaths of billions of suns converted simple atoms into more
complex atoms and melded atoms into even more complex
molecules -- each step opening new possibilities for the
growth and evolution of the whole.
Each stage transcended the stage before in order, definition,
and capacity as the drama of creation unfolded. It seemed
that a great intelligence had embarked on a grand quest to
know itself through the discovery and realization of the
possibilities of its being.
More than eleven billion years after the quest began there
was an extraordinary breakthrough on a planet latter to be
known as Earth. Here the cosmos gave birth to the first
living beings -- microscopic in size, they were the simplest
of single-celled bacteria. Inconsequential though they
seemed, they embodied an enormous creative potential and with
time created the building blocks of living knowledge that
made possible the incredible accomplishments to follow. They
discovered in turn the arts of fermentation, photosynthesis,
and respiration fundamental to all life. They learned to
exchange genetic material through their cell walls to share
their discoveries with one another in a grand cooperative
enterprise that created the planet's first global
communication system -- billions of years before the
Internet. And they transformed and stabilized the chemical
composition of the entire planet's atmosphere. As the fruits
of life's learning multiplied, individual cells evolved to
become more complex and diverse.
In due course individual cells discovered the advantages of
joining with one another in clusters to create complex
multi-celled organisms -- converting the matter of the planet
into the splendid web of living plants and animal with
capacities far beyond those of any individual cell. Those
among the new creatures that found a niche in which they
could at once sustain themselves and contribute to the life
of the whole survived. Those that proved unable to find or
create their niche of service expired. Continuously
experimenting, interrelating, creating, building, the
evolving web of life unfolded into a living tapestry of
astonishing variety, beauty, awareness, and capacity for
intelligent choice.
Then, a mere 2.6 million years ago, quite near the end of our
15 billion year story, there came the most extraordinary
achievement of all, the creation of a being with a capacity
far beyond that of any creature that had come before to
reflect on its own consciousness, to experience with awe the
beauty and mystery of creation, to articulate, communicate
and share learning, to reshape the material world to its own
ends, and to anticipate and intentionally chose its own
future. It was the living spirit's most daring experiment and
a stunning cooperative achievement.
Each of these creatures, humans they were called, was
comprised of from 30 to 70 trillion individual living,
self-regulating, self-reproducing cells. More than half the
dry weight of each human consisted of the individual
micro-organisms required to metabolize its food and create
the vitamins essential to its survival. All together it took
more than a 100 trillion individual living entities joined in
an exquisitely balanced cooperative union to create each of
these extraordinary creatures. These new beings -- these
humans -- had such potential to contribute to the journey of
the whole. Yet their freedom to chose their own destiny
carried a risk. Failing to recognize and embrace their
responsibility to the whole they turned their extraordinary
abilities to ends ultimately destructive of the whole of
life, destroying in a mere 100 years much of the living
natural capital it had taken billions of years of evolution
to create.
Some attribute this tragedy to a genetic flaw that doomed
humans to the blind pursuit of greed and violence. Yet the
vast majority of humans were generous and caring. More
compelling is the argument that the ideology of what humans
called their Scientific Revolution stripped humans of their
sense of meaning, called forth their greed and violence, and
made generosity and caring seem somehow naive. This ideology
taught that matter is the only reality and that the universe
is best thought of as a giant clockwork set in motion at the
beginning of creation and left to run down as the tension in
its spring expires. It further taught that life is only an
accidental outcome of material complexity, consciousness an
illusion. Though such beliefs defied logic, denied the human
experience, stripped life of meaning, and were contrary to
reality they became a foundation of the dominant Western
culture.
Thomas Hobbes, a noted philosopher of the Scientific
Revolution, elaborated on these flawed beliefs to articulate
a theory of human behavior and a moral philosophy that
ultimately became the theoretical and philosophical
foundation of humanity's dominant economic system. He argued
that since life has no meaning and human behavior is
determined solely by appetites and aversions, good is merely
that which gives oneself pleasure; evil that which brings
pain. The rational person seeks a life of material indulgence
unburdened by concern for others. These beliefs became the
foundation of a cultural system known as modernism and an
economic system known as capitalism.
Though there was much ado about a conflict between scientists
and theologians, they actually arrived at a mutual
accommodation in many of their core views. In an act
revealing of human hubris, Western theologians had long
before created their God in their own image, an elder male
with a white beard who ruled a kingdom called heaven. This
God was so powerful that by the estimate of the Western
religions, he created the cosmos, the earth and all its
living beings in a mere six days -- presumably for the sole
benefit of the humans he created on the sixth day. On the
seventh day, his work thus done, he took a rest.
The main issue on which scientists and theologians were
inclined to consequential differences centered on whether or
not God returned after his vacation to tend to the needs of
those humans he chose to favor. The theologians generally
believed that he returned to keep a book on who by his rules
was naughty or nice, reward the worthy with material
abundance, and punish the unworthy with sickness and poverty.
Some noted that by this characterization God bore a striking
resemblance to a mythical figure human's called Santa Claus.
Those with wealth and power were by definition worthy in
God's eyes and the poor and powerless were unworthy. Thus it
was that Western theology affirmed the righteousness of both
materialism and political oppression and absolved humans of
responsibility either for one another or for the earth.
Furthermore, since humans were the end product of creation,
not an instrument of its continued unfolding it followed that
what ever the deficiencies of the world as any individual
might find it, it was to be accepted as God's will.
Some believed that God would return, in his own good time, to
establish peace and justice for all. Others looked to the
afterlife for perfection and considered their time on Earth
as something akin to a short layover in a cheap hotel on
their way to paradise. Either way it was in the hands of a
God who resided apart in a far place.
No where was the rejection of human responsibility for the
lot of society greater than in the economic system human's
called capitalism. One of capitalism's defining features was
a consumer culture cultivated by saturating the media with an
endlessly repeated message that consumption of whatever
product was advertised would bring meaning and love to the
empty and lonely lives of the otherwise unworthy. When
consumption inevitably failed to substitute for meaning, more
consumption was prescribed as the solution.
Increasingly the creative energies of the species turned to
building institutions dedicated to endlessly increasing
consumption through a process called economic growth. Growth
became such an obsession that no one seemed to care what was
consumed. Nor did they seem to notice that the basic
livelihood needs of the many went unmet while a fortunate few
gorged themselves on luxuries. Indeed, a privileged minority
became so obsessed with the futile attempt to fill their
empty lives with stuff they failed to notice that the growth
they so prized was destroying the life support system of the
planet and the social fabric of the society, and the lives of
billions of people.
Even more perverse was the role of what humans called money
-- a mysterious kind of sacred number that was created out of
nothing by banks by loaning it into existence. Though most
humans had little idea were money came from, they were
socially conditioned to accept it in exchange for things of
real value like their labor, food, land, and shelter. Since
money was the ticket that allowed people to accumulate stuff,
those who already had so much stuff they didn't know what to
do with it, turned their attention to accumulating sacred
numbers called money that banks happily stored for them in
computers. As this accumulation served no evident purpose,
its practitioners turned it into a competitive game in which
the winner was the one with the most financial assets. The
top players were called billionaires. A well-known magazine
called Forbes regularly published their current scores and
rankings.
This game became life's purpose for those few who had the
means to play. The most dedicated redesigned human
institutions to allow them to achieve ever more inflated
scores. Any human with extra cash was encouraged to join in
by placing it in the hands of professional gamblers called
money managers who traded currencies, bonds, and corporate
shares in a great cyberspace casino called a financial
market. In the course of their play, the money managers moved
trillions of dollars around the world at the speed of light,
trashing the currencies and economies of hapless countries
whose policies displeased them and the share prices of
corporations that produced less than the profits they
expected. In the wake of their moves whole governments fell
and hundreds of thousands lost their jobs.
These corporations were a frightfully perverse sort of legal
entity designed to allow the accumulation of massive
financial power with little or no accountability for the
consequences of its use. Some corporations were served by the
labor of hundreds of thousands of people and received
millions of dollars in subsidies from government. Yet the law
stipulated that only shareholders were entitled to share in
its profits. Employees were expected to leave their personal
values at the door when they reported for work. Workers could
be fired without notice or recourse. Whole communities were
abandoned when a corporation found it more profitable to move
its factories elsewhere.
To satisfy the money managers, corporations gave politicians
huge sums of money in return for which the politicians voted
corporations subsidies and special privileges. Tiring of the
inconvenience involved in doing deals with politicians one
country at a time the major players created something called
the World Trade Organization -- or WTO. Here unelected trade
representatives loyal to the corporate interest established
international rules that obliged all countries to extend
special rights and privileges to global corporations.
Incredibly, the WTO could require any country to change its
laws to conform to WTO rules, even though such action might
be contrary to the interests and preferences of its own
citizens. Invariably the rules of the WTO gave corporations
ever-greater freedom to roam the world converting the living
wealth of society and planet into money. They turned the
natural living capital of the earth into money by
strip-mining forests, fisheries and mineral deposits,
producing toxic chemicals and dumping hazardous wastes. But
it isn't just natural capital they placed at risk. They also
turned human capital into money by employing workers under
substandard working conditions that left them physically
handicapped. They turned the social capital of society into
money when they paid substandard wages that destroyed workers
emotionally, leading to family and community breakdown and
violence. They turned the living trust of public institutions
into money by bribing politicians with campaign contributions
to convert the taxes of working people into inflated
corporate profits through public subsidies, bailouts and tax
exemptions.
Then, as the year 2000 dawned, a remarkable thing happened.
Millions of humans started waking up, as if from a deep
trance, to the beauty, joy, and meaning of life. They began
to reject consumerism and took to the streets by the hundreds
of thousands demanding a restoration of democracy, an end to
corporate rule, and respect for the needs of all people and
other living things. The process of building a new politics
and a new consciousness was set in motion. It was, however,
yet a tiny spark of hope in comparison to the forces of
corporate capitalism that were consuming the Earth.
There are indications that humans may be on the threshold of
a new intellectual and social maturity as new scientific
findings continue to demonstrate the fallacies of the old
story and its underlying belief systems. Yet so far they
still resist coming to terms with the social implications of
their scientific understanding that matter exists only as a
continuing dance of flowing energies, that creation is an
ongoing self-organizing process, that life is fundamentally a
cooperative process, and that earth's successful species are
those that learn to meet their own needs in ways that serve
the larger web of life.
Perhaps with time they will come to grasp the deeper
philosophical implications of these findings. For example
that the material world is largely illusion, conscious
intelligence is the ground from which all else is manifest,
and humans are an instrument of creation's continued
unfolding -- not its end accomplishment. Though embodied in
ancient human wisdom, human's largely dismiss these and other
truths as superstition. Perhaps their rediscovery will bring
them a renewed sense of life's profound meaning, inspire a
search for their own place in service to life's incredible
journey, and lead them to transform their values and
institutions in ways that unleash potentials within their
being beyond their current imagining.
This story, of course, is our story, the choices are our
choices. The challenge before us is to transform a global
society dedicated to the love of money into a global society
dedicated to the love of life and the continuing exploration
of its possibilities.
To help us better understand the nature of this challenge, I
want to establish a framework that may help us understand the
ideal of a civil society and the larger possibilities of the
global democracy movement. This framework divides society
into three primary spheres of collective life: polity,
economy, and culture.
[ Image - "Three Spheres of Collective Life" (on website) ]
* Polity is the sphere in which rules are
formalized and enforced regarding the rights and
obligations that govern relationships among members
of the society. It holds the threat power inherent
in its monopoly over police and military power.
* Economy is the sphere that organizes the
production and exchange of valued goods and
services. It holds the exclusionary power inherent
in the ability to control access to the means of
living, as well as to material luxuries.
* Culture is the sphere in which the society
defines the values, symbols, and beliefs that are
its sources of meaning and identity. It holds the
normative power to determine what is valued and to
legitimate institutions and the uses of the power
resources of polity and economy. Though cultural
power may seem weak compared to the powers of
coercion and exclusion, it is ultimately the
decisive power in any society, as it is the
foundation on which all else rests, including the
powers vested in the formal institutions of the
polity and the economy.
To complete our framework setting, let's turn to the
question: What is the meaning of the term Òcivil societyÓ? Is
it simply another term for the institutions of the
nongovernmental, nonprofit sector as implied by its customary
use? Or is it something more? Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, in
their classic study of Civil Society and Political Theory
trace the idea of a civil society back to ancient Greece and
Aristotle's concept of a politike koinonia or political
community, later translated into Latin as Societas civilis,
or a civil society. For Aristotle the civil society is an
ethical-political community of free and equal citizens who by
mutual consent agree to live under a system of law that
expresses the norms and values they share. The law thus
becomes a codification of the values and practices of the
shared culture and is largely self-enforcing. The requirement
for coercive intervention by the state to maintain order is
minimized because the necessary coherence of society is
achieved primarily through self-organizing processes that
maximize the freedom of the individual in return for
voluntary self-restraint that flows from a sense of shared
values and civic responsibility.
The common contemporary practice of treating civil society as
synonymous with all the varied organizations that are both
nongovernmental and nonprofit -- essentially the residual
institutional space not occupied by the institutions of
government and business -- captures nothing of the more
profound idealism embodied in the classical Aristotelian
concept of a civil society. I think it also significant that
our use of the term civil society is most often evoked by
groups and individuals engaged in a struggle to reclaim
social spaces for democratic engagement by free and equal
citizens. This suggests we might properly use the term civil
society in two ways. The first is to refer to a society that
has achieved the ideal of democratic civility. The second, is
to refer to those elements of a society that are actively
engaged in expanding the social spaces in which the practice
of democratic civility is both practiced and valued as a step
toward the creation of a civil society in the larger sense.
Now let's put the pieces of this puzzle together to see more
clearly how the ideal of a civil society contrasts with the
existing global capitalist economy. This schematic
representation of a civil society, which is adapted from a
book on Shaping Globalization by my Philippine colleague
Nicanor Perlas, incorporates the underlying premise of the
cosmic story I shared with you earlier that all being is a
manifestation of a spiritual energy or intelligence. I
realize that there will surely be some among you who find
this premise in conflict with your own belief system. I honor
that and ask only that you consider with me the ways in which
our views of society and human possibilities may ultimately
depend on our spiritual beliefs. One of the tragedies of our
time is that we rarely discuss such issues with one another,
even in private, and thus rarely subject our deepest beliefs
to critical examination.
[ Image - "Civil or Capitalist?" (on website) ]
As a Hobbesian denial of the existence of spirit leads
logically to a rejection of individual responsibility for
anything other than one's personal material gratification, a
recognition of the spiritual foundation of all existence
leads naturally to a profound and freely embraced sense of
responsibility for the whole and the mindful personal
engagement individual in community, political, and economic
life that is the necessary foundation of a truly civil
society.
An authentic culture is the product of the active community
life of individuals who are in contact with the spiritual
energy that expresses itself through them. The shared values,
symbols, and beliefs of an authentic culture are in turn the
foundation on which the civil society's more formalized
institutions of polity and economy are built. The life
affirming values of an authentic culture lead naturally to
the creation of an authentically democratic polity based on a
deep commitment to openness, active participation in
political discourse, and to one person, one voice, one vote
equality and the kind of consensus based decision making that
our youth were practicing in the streets of Seattle and in
other equally sophisticated protest actions around the world.
They also lead naturally to the creation of an authentic
market economy comprised of local enterprises that provide
productive and satisfying livelihoods for all, and vest in
each individual a share in the ownership of the productive
assets on which their livelihood depends. Such a society
would be radically self-organizing and predominantly
cooperative in the manner of all healthy living systems, and
would maximize the opportunity for each individual to develop
and express their full creative potential in service to the
life of the whole.
The contrast between a civil society so defined and our
contemporary capitalist society is stark indeed. In the
capitalist society denial of the spirit results in a
self-aggrandizing materialism that looks to money as the
defining value. Global financial markets that value life only
for its liquidation price become the ruling institution. The
control of productive resources becomes consolidated in
global mega-corporations answerable only to the managers of
huge investment funds who in turn are answerable only for the
financial returns produced on their portfolios. The wages of
working people are suppressed to increase the returns to
those who already command vast financial holdings. Economic
affairs are centrally planned by the heads of corporations
that command internal economies larger than those of most
states. Through ownership of mass media, influence over
school curricula, commercialization of the arts, and mass
advertising corporations dominate the processes of cultural
regeneration -- reinforcing the values of materialism and
consumerism that strengthen corporate legitimacy, lead us to
accept corporate logos as the sources of our identity and
meaning, and alienate us all from our sense of connection to
both our inner spirit and to the web of planetary and
community life.
Similarly, the concentration of financial power in the
corporate ruled economy, combine with media control to allow
corporate dominate of the institutions of polity. The result
is a one dollar one vote democracy that concentrates control
over the rule making system in the hands of a wealthy elite
and a persistent bias toward the passage of laws that favor
yet further concentration of financial wealth at the expense
of life. The excluded majority become increasingly alienated
from political participation -- lose interest even in voting,
and by default yield even more power to big money.
As dependence on money for access to the necessities of life
and the sources of identity increases, individual attention
comes to center on making money at the expense of spiritual
and community life. Spiritually impoverished and dependent on
corporations for money and what it will buy, individuals face
enormous pressure to embrace the values of the corporate
culture. Ideals of equity are out the window and individual
freedom becomes largely illusory as the majority of people
find themselves deeper in debt and giving ever more of their
life energies over to the imperatives of the money machine.
Those for whom the corporate system finds no use are simply
discarded like so much trash.
Because it is destructive of life and spirit, the capitalist
economy must be considered a social pathology. Even its
apparent capacity to create vast wealth is largely illusory,
because though it is producing ever more sophisticated
gadgets and diversions, it is destroying the life support
systems of the planet and the social fabric of society. It is
therefore destroying our most important wealth. Its
institutions function as cancers that forget they are part of
a larger whole and seek their own unlimited growth without
regard to the consequences.
It is a powerful testimony to the reality and power of
humanity's spiritual nature that millions of people all
around the world are waking up from the cultural trance into
which they have been lulled by capitalism's relentless siren
song of material indulgence. Their resistence is not confined
to street protests. They are also engaged proactively in
creating civil alternatives, protecting nature, democratizing
the polity, rebuilding local market economies, and applying
the values of civility in their own organizations. The
resulting enclaves of civility are both expanding and
melding. We call it globalizing civil society, but we could
as well call it the civilizing of global society. Either way
it is an extraordinary and increasingly powerful
self-organizing, bottom-up process of cultural and
institutional transformation only partially understood even
by its leaders.
One key to understanding the nature and significance of what
is happening is to realize that though it has its political
dimension, what is becoming manifest is predominantly a
cultural movement that draws its increasingly powerful energy
from a deep, yet still largely unrecognized global-scale
culture shift toward the values of an authentic or integral
culture. This values shift is creating the cultural
foundations of a truly civil society. Paul Ray, a values
researcher tracing cultural change in the United States
provides a compelling framework for documenting and
understanding this shift, which of course is happening not
only in the United States, but as well all around the world.
Ray identifies three major cultural groupings.
[ Image - "Culture Shift in America" (on website) ]
* The Modernists -- who are still the largest
cultural group in America -- actively prize
materialism and the drive to acquire money and
property. They tend to spend beyond their means,
take a cynical view of idealism and caring
relations, and value winners. Their numbers are
relatively stable.
* The Traditionals want to return to traditional
ways of life and traditional gender roles. They
tend toward religious conservatism and
fundamentalism. They also believe in helping
others, volunteering, creating and maintaining
caring relationships, and working to create a
better society. Their numbers are in rapid decline.
* The third group -- Ray calls them the Cultural
Creatives -- is a product of the reaction against
modernism's lack of authenticity. Its members are
distinguished by the embrace of the values of an
integral culture that honors life in all its
dimensions, both in their inner spiritual
experience and in their outward commitment to
family, community, the environment,
internationalism and feminism. They have a
well-developed social consciousness and are
generally optimistic about the possibilities of
humankind. They are interested in alternative
health-care practices, personal growth and
spiritual development, and they are careful,
thoughtful consumers. Most significant in terms of
our present discussion, as Ray documents in his
forthcoming book, The Cultural Creatives, most
Cultural Creatives are activists. The typical
Cultural Creative is likely to be involved in
several groups working for social change.
Furthermore, most social change initiatives in the
United States, including those involved in the
Seattle protests, are headed by Cultural Creatives.
Cultural Creatives are the vanguard of the global
democracy movement -- and their numbers are growing
fast. Now 50 million in number in America alone,
they are 26% of the adult American population. As
recently as the early 60s they were less than 5%.
Politically and socially active, the Cultural Creatives are
crafting a new ecological and spiritual world view, a new
literature of social concerns and a new problem agenda for
humanity. At the same time they are pioneering psychological
development techniques, restoring the centrality of spiritual
practice to daily living, and elevating the importance of the
feminine -- all building blocks of a civil society.
Yet Cultural Creatives remain invisible to the corporate
media, which is dominated by modernist values. And their
values are unrepresented by a political system that is still
defined by the struggles between moderns and traditionals.
Unaware of their own numbers and potential power, most
Cultural Creatives feel culturally isolated, out of step with
the mainstream, and politically disempowered. To actualize
their true potential as a force for change, they must first
become visible to one another and to the larger society. For
this reason, perhaps the most important consequence of the
Seattle WTO protests was the message it sent to Cultural
Creatives everywhere in the world that they are not alone in
their discomfort with the cultural, economic and political
forces of modernism and corporate globalization and their
belief in the possibility of creating a better world for all
-- even in America, the world center of materialism and
corporate arrogance. Most cultural creatives I know found it
to be a powerfully energizing moment. A variety of
international surveys reveal that the patterns identified in
America by Ray are part of a generalized global trend toward
an embrace of the values of an authentic or integral culture.
The pattern includes a loss of confidence in hierarchical
institutions -- including those of government, business, and
religion -- and a growing trust in their inner sense of the
appropriate. Interest in economic gain is decreasing, while
desire for meaningful work and interest in discovering
personal meaning and purpose in life is increasing.
Beyond the struggle to resist the destruction being wrought
by the global corporate juggernaut, the civilizing citizen
movements are awakening to two critical priorities. One is to
articulate and demonstrate alternatives to corporate
globalization in order to counter the fatalistic modernist
mantra that ÒThere is no alternative.Ó The second is to
recognize that the movement's greatest strength is cultural
power and to devote serious attention to helping Cultural
Creatives recognize that they are part of a large and
increasingly powerful cultural group, find one another, and
strengthen the alliances that are linking them into a global
mega-movement. The greater the visibility of this new
cultural formation the greater its power and the more rapidly
disaffected moderns and traditionals will be drawn to its
ranks.
A great deal of my own energy is going into an organization
called The Positive Futures Network, publisher of YES! A
Journal of Positive Futures, which is working on both of
these agendas by telling the stories of those who are working
for the deep changes required to create a world that works
for all and by providing people with the information
resources they need to connect with one another and to link
the movement's many elements. It just happens that I've
brought some sample copies of YES!, along with subscription
forms for those who are interested. Or check it out on the
web .
Overall, the goal of claiming the cultural mainstream may be
more nearly within the reach of the civil society movements
than even the most optimistic of us may imagine. Once this
happens, transformation of the institutions of polity and
economy to complete the civilizing of society will follow.
I believe we live at one of the most critical and exciting
moments in all of human history. The ability to chose is one
of the defining characteristics of life. As a species we find
ourselves confronted with a profound choice -- to take the
step to a new level of understanding and function in service
to the whole of life or to risk our own extinction. We face
both the necessity and the opportunity to reinvent human
society. I find the creative possibilities incredibly
exciting. Though the optimistic thrust of my comments may
suggest I consider the outcome to be foreordained, that is
far from the actual case. I am in fact only presenting what I
consider to be possibilities to sharpen our understanding of
the options. The great struggle between humanity and its
institutions -- between a culture of life and a culture of
money -- is far from resolved. But let us hope that
Aristotle's dream of a truly civil society -- a dream shared
by countless millions throughout human history -- is an idea
whose time has finally come. It's in our hands.
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Richard K Moore
Wexford, Ireland
Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance
email: •••@••.•••
CDR website: http://cyberjournal.org
cyberjournal archive: http://members.xoom.com/centrexnews/
book in progress: http://cyberjournal.org/cdr/gri.html
A community will evolve only when
the people control their means of communication.
-- Frantz Fanon
Permission for non-commercial republishing hereby granted - BUT
include and observe all restrictions, copyrights, credits,
and notices - including this one.
============================================================================
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