The Great Turning
- Details
- Created on Sunday, 13 November 2011 14:23
- Written by Elaine Beth Peresluha
The Great Turning based on The Great Turning: From Empire To Earth Community by David C. Korten
Please note that this is the written text from which Elaine speaks extemporaneously. The words will not match what you hear on Sunday mornings. To hear exactly what is said please go to our podcasts of Sunday's sermons.
In 1995, David Korten wrote When Corporations Rule the World exposing the relationship between global corporate structures and rising poverty and unemployment, inequality, violent crimes, broken families and environmental deterioration. In the prologue of his more recent book, The Great Turning: From Empire To Earth Community, he muses, “Now it turns out, those were the good days”.
In this 2006 book he refines those notions introduced in 1995. To two contrasting models for organizing human affairs, Empire and Earth Community.
“Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. For five thousand years, Empire has brought fortune to the few, condemned the majority of humanity to misery and servitude, suppressed the creative potential of the species, and appropriated much of the productive surplus of human societies to maintain institutions of domination.
Earth Community, by contrast, features organization by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative cooperation, and gives priority in allocating the productive surplus of society to growing the generative potential of the whole”.
Five years later, we have passed an unimaginable milestone - 7 billion people on the planet. We have achieved the widest divide between rich in poor in our nation since the great depression, continuing unemployment and shocking economic crisis in what many consider the originating point of empire, Europe. It feels beyond the capacity of words to adequately name the challenge that faces humanity. In the introduction to The Great Turning, Joanna Macy comes close:
“By what name will our children and our children’s children call our time? Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption let to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planets resources, a dramatic dieback of the human populations and a fragmentation of those who remained into warring, fiefdoms ruled by ruthless local lords?
Or, will they look back in joyful celebration on the noble times of the great turning, when their forbearers turned crisis into opportunity, embraced the higher order potential of their human nature. Learned to live in creative partnership with one another and the living earth bringing forth a new era of human possibility…”
On the wall in my bathroom I have one of Brian Andreas’s Story People prints hanging—it has this whimsical angelic figure leaning over these words:
In my dream the angel shrugged and said if we fail this time it will be a failure of imagination. Then she leaned over and placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.
(Walk down from pulpit and place the globe in someone’s hand. Return to pulpit)
We are capable of adapting or intentionally modifying our behaviors and beliefs to the values and expectations of either Empire or Earth Community. Ultimately, we humans are the architects of our own nature, and thereby of our future.
In The Tipping Point Malcom Gladwell likens social change to the spread of a viral infection to epidemic proportions. He identifies three requirements for infection to actually turn into an epidemic:
- The tipping point - requires the unique and extraordinary efforts of a few carriers. Somebody has to step way past the norms of the average to push a mere outbreak into an epidemic - remember his hush puppies story? Just a few pairs of shoes on a few eccentric artist types in The East village and an almost bust company resurged – from 30 thousand shoes to 430 thousand, to four times that. Isolated urban chic grew right into Main St USA.
-
Epidemics require stickiness. When a virus mutates in a way that a human body can no longer rally to defend against the invasion of the virus, the infection becomes epidemic; the disease has stuck. If the message for social change become so loud that humans can no longer ignore it, it sticks.
-
There is power in context When people are in a group. The power for decision making is diffused. We actually act more swiftly and intentionally when we think we are the only ones to respond than if we think someone else will take care of it. It is our human nature to assume someone else will take care of it, unless we look around and no else is there.
I loved the story of the nurse who was committed to increasing awareness of diabetes and breast cancer in the black community. She was discouraged because whenever she offered her seminars on prevention at the church, only 20 people out of 200 who would show up, and these were usually the converted. She decided to use Gladwell’s advice. First, she was the extraordinary innovative agent that went beyond the sphere of normal. She changed the context of her initiative. She moved out of the church and into the beauty salon. Stickiness? She structured the delivery of her message to a captive audience. Women were in the salon for 2-4 hours. Using the stylist as her source, a uniquely trusted relationship. Women know that once you find someone to do your hair the way you are happy with, you will drive 100 miles to keep that relationship.
Gladwell’s Law of A Few reminds us that what epidemics and successes of social change have in common is modesty. Concentrated efforts and small budgets used intelligently change the context of a message and inspire the messenger. Whether it is fashion change or revolution, word of mouth works. Engage the right people within the right circles and you can change the world, one conversation at a time.
Where else but in First Parish, in Concord Massachusetts, do we know this–historically in our bones. We just celebrated the extraordinary context of change that is at the core of the identity of this congregation. Telling William Dawes that the British were coming did nothing for the colonists of New England. Telling Paul Revere made all the difference in the world
We are religious society. And Unitarian Universalism is a religion. Historically framed amongst the world’s religions. Look around this world right now. Women in Saudi Arabia are confronting the sexism of their religious traditions that shape their political and social environment. Jews and Muslims are locked in holy conflict. Extremism in almost all faith traditions intensifies the polarization of empire consciousness. We cannot change the world by eradicating faith–we can reshape the context of the conflict. Truth and meaning are of equal import to the development of an Earth community. We need the best of religion, its value and meaning without its distortions by human imperfection–more today than yesterday in light of our technological advances that race us into unknown territories of destructive potential. Our human stories, for better or worse, have included religion. If we are asking all people to speak their truth and be brave with their stories, we must be prepared to hear the stories of faith. We require relevancy from those religions, not historic rhetoric and dogma–and the continued freedom to discover and choose. Using reason to question and spirit to inspire, lest exclusive thinking on either pole shackle us, which can diminish our human experience or can exclude or bring harm to others.
We know how to cross the traditional lines of division and diversity. We have been dong that for thousands of years heretic rebel a thing to flout hate drew the circles to keep us out but love and I had the wit to win–we drew a circle to keep them in–we have been the marginalized, the heretics, early adopters, those thinkers and seekers moving on the edges of religious and social/political thought for too long. We need to move from the margins to the center–taking our values and our skills for finding relevancy in rational as well as spiritual thought to engage people in the work of our generations. We are the revolutionaries. Social Action is not a facet of out faith, it is our faith. Not in the strident, brow beating, Empire strategy but in the Earth community context–of engagement, relationship, respect, and collaboration.
This week, Mississippi voters delivered a big victory for women and families. 476,178 people in Mississippi stood up to the extreme right wing zealots and the likes of Mitt Romney, who has said he absolutely supports “personhood” amendments. The people of Mississippi took a stand and protected a woman's right to make her own health care decisions.
The Occupiers of Boston, Wall St., Oakland, and Madison are the beginnings–the first adopters. They need you, people with resources, people with business project and management savvy to be like the person who took the nouveau kitsch of hush puppies into the main street. You are the talented, the gifted and the people with values that can sense the import of this moment. The virus has been planted–we need to be the spreaders, the voices that bring this sense of new values, earth community that can fall the empire. It only takes 20 percent of a population to inspire social change. When 20% of the population adopts, the 80% will tip.
We are poised in an exceptionally fertile time. We have the power right here to initiate dramatic, exponential change. You are connectors, mavens, and salespeople. You have the resources, the spheres of influence, and the skills to change the world. Consider the world in your hands, no one else’s and be inspired.
What The Great Turning defines as Earth Community defines 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.
The Great Turning begins with relearning how to live, which depends in turn on new life-affirming stories that celebrate the possibilities of community. Life-affirming stories of Earth Community, give voice to the deep human yearning for healthy children, families, communities, and natural environments, religious, rational, humanist, theist all, appreciating the best that each has to offer.
The work of The Great Turning is not to fix Empire. It is to take the seeds of change dotting the surface of our globe and strengthen, focus and spread them into the epidemic proportions needed to tip humanity to the point of transformation. To birth a new era that makes the choice for life, gives expression to the higher potential of our nature, and restores to people, families, and communities the power that Empire has usurped. Leadership for birthing this new era will not come from those who feel comfortable with the status quo or who are intent on preserving their special privilege. It will come from the people who are feeling out of step with the beliefs and values of the imperial cultures and the institutions of contemporary life. They will live the new into being by giving practical expression to the change they seek.
Humans are an intelligent, self-aware, choice-making species participating in an epic creative journey. Many of us have serious doubts about the validity and values of the prevailing imperial stories. Yet because we rarely hear them challenged by credible voices, we fear ridicule if we give voice to our doubts. The process of change begins as those who experience an awakening of human consciousness find the courage to break the silence by speaking openly of the truth in their hearts. The more openly we each speak our truth, the more readily others find the courage to speak theirs. We can then more easily find one another and end our isolation as we form communities of congruence in which we share our insights, bolster our courage, and give expression to stories that demonstrate and celebrate the possibilities of Earth Community.
Read Isaiah 6:8
The Great Turning has begun. Those of us who experience the call must act with courage and commitment to inspire the tipping point. We must break the silence, articulating the truth in our hearts. The more clearly we speak our truth the more we inspire others to speak, and transformation is achieved. Silence and the isolation sustain empire consciousness. Assuming someone else will do it sustains empire consciousness. Break the silence, end the isolation, change the context, and change the story.
From Robert Fulghum’s It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It
For….
Imagination is stronger than knowledge-
And myth is more potent than history
Dreams are more powerful than facts-
And hope always triumphs over experience-
…Love is stronger than death.