Photo: Ritzy Ryciak
November 2006
The End of “Business As Usual”
David Korten is looking both ways
at the crossroads of history
By Charles Shaw
David Korten doesn’t give speeches. He calls the presentations he’s been conducting across the country “Earth Community dialogues.” And although he’s ostensibly giving them to publicize his seminal new work, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (Berrett-Koehler Publishing), Korten views these gatherings as community collaborations. It’s genuine modesty from the man whose book has been called both “the exact right book for the political moment” and “a blueprint for a spiritual and social revolution.”
On a sunny azure Sunday morning, 25 or so members of Local First Chicago, a network of independent, locally-owned businesses and community organizations, have gathered at Chicago’s storied No Exit Café to talk with “David,” as everyone calls him. Though Korten possesses an awe-inspiring CV, and tongue-in-cheekily describes himself as an “elder,” after spending five minutes with him it’s eminently clear that “Dr. Korten” is too formal a mantle for this gentle sage from Bainbridge Island, Puget Sound.
His countenance beams calm as he begins. It’s going to be OK, his eyes speak softly, we’ll get through this… all of it. He opens his talk as he opens his book, portending a fast-approaching grave moment in our collective history, the apex of modern industrial civilization.
“We are at a point in time in the human experience where we will soon be facing very deep and very rapid changes,” Korten intones. “It is time to begin making some very deep choices both individually and collectively.” Out of this pivotal moment will emerge one of two eventualities: The Great Turning, or the Great Unraveling.
In The Great Turning, Korten explains, humanity recognizes its overshoot and begins to turn back from the 5,000-year-old values of “Empire”—exploitation, subjugation and deprivation, to those of “Earth Community”—a life-centered, egalitarian, sustainable way of ordering society based on democratic principles of partnership. In the Great Unraveling, society rapidly disintegrates into a fight to the death for rapidly dwindling resources.
Will we interpret this crossroads as the terminal crisis of the species or an epic opportunity to create the world we want? Korten believes our decision will depend on the stories by which we make sense of what is happening, and begin to recognize the choices that are ours to make. But the central message is that “business as usual” is over.
A “perfect economic storm” is looming, he warns, a consequence of the convergence of Peak Oil, climate change and a collapsing U.S. dollar. Korten’s vast experience as an economist for Third World development has allowed him a powerfully prescient vision. Growing awareness of the instability of the American (and thus the world) economy has caused no small measure of discomfort to activists and analysts alike. But what differentiates Korten from a run-of-the-mill apocalyptico is that he’s a true believer in “the potential of human-creativity and community” to reshape the world along just and sustainable lines.
Real change will consist of removing power from a central authority and returning decision-making to the local community level, Korten continues. These communities will then come together in larger collective networks to collaboratively administer society. It’s not utopian thinking; it’s simply a return to the way things were, before the era of Empire.
Korten surveys the daunted group, empathically connecting to their anxiety. He reassures, “I find hope in the fact that all across the country and all across the world people are gathering in conversations like this, and are beginning to challenge the old stories.”
Looking back at Korten’s life’s achievement makes his balance and optimism all the more worthy of a measure of reverence. Born and raised in a politically conservative home, educated at Stanford and employed for some 25 years as an economist with a mission to end global poverty, Korten was, in his own words, a “true believer” in the American way of life.
“I thought I could bring the secrets of US business success to the rest of the world so that they would be rich and happy like us.” Beginning in Ethiopia, he devoted his early career to setting up business schools in low-income countries.
He worked all over the world as an advisor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID)—Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines—but by the late ’80s he began to recognize the toll establishment institutions like the World Bank/IMF and Free Trade agreements were taking on those poor nations, and on his core values of family, community, peace, justice and nature.
“I found that our definitions of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ were all within the context of economic growth, and much of what we call ‘development’ is really a process of the most powerful and affluent 20 percent of humanity appropriating the land and water resources the remaining 80 percent rely upon for their livelihood,” he says.
His understanding of psychology allowed him to become one of the visionary few to see that the corporation, particularly the global corporation, was inherently sociopathic, and that all the institutions of the Establishment—church, state and business—functioned to serve the will of this, the latest version of Empire.
“I realized that the leadership needed to redirect the human course would depend on citizen groups… on communities.” This awakening was the triumphal flourish that turned him off Establishment for good.
After participating in the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, from which emerged the Earth Charter, Korten wrote the 1995 international best-seller When Corporations Rule the World. In 1996 he co-founded the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! magazine. His follow-up book, The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, was launched at the United Nations headquarters in 1999. In 2002 he participated in the launch of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), of which Local First Chicago is a member.
It took him four years to write The Great Turning, a masterpiece of history, evolutionary theory, developmental psychology and religious and spiritual teachings to make the case that we can save humanity.
“Empire is not inevitable, not the natural order of things. But in our time, Empire has reached the limits of exploitation that the people and the planet will tolerate. And all the evidence of [our current] environmental and social breakdown all trace back to this unifying reality,” says Korten.
But, he maintains, we can turn away from it. “On a finite planet, sustainability and equity are inseparably linked.”
Korten divides humanity into five essential states of consciousness: magical, imperial, social, cultural and spiritual. The culture of Empire is driven by the first two, the culture of Earth Community is driven by the last two, and those of the Socialized Consciousness—good people who, although taking their cues and values from the dominant culture, play by the rules, expect a fair reward, and don’t intend any harm—occupy a vast middle and comprise the literal and metaphysical swing voters with the power to shift us towards the Great Turning.
Korten believes it is the responsibility of each of us who lays claim to “consciousness” to help bring along the others. Don’t look to him or to charismatic “leaders” for salvation, he cautions. The Great Turning can only be navigated if everyone has hands on the rudder, helping each other turn, turn, turn….
Charles Shaw is Editor of Chicago’s Conscious Choice.
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