Category Archives: The Great Turning

The Great Turning

The World We Want: The Power of Authentic Stories

By David Korten | Great Turning website

Read more posts in The World We Want series.

Profound social change takes place when an important cultural story changes—and the impetus to challenge imperial rule rarely comes from within the institutions of Empire. Democracy took hold when we replaced the story of the divine right of kings with the story that the powers of government derive from the will of the people. People of color and women won recognition of their full human rights only as the civil

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The Great Turning

The World We Want: Why Now?

By David Korten | Great Turning website

Read more posts in The World We Want series.

Change begins with a new story that celebrates the best, rather than the worst, of what we are and can be. It’s pretty straightforward. If we convince ourselves that we are innately brutal, greedy beings and that this is all for the good, then we set ourselves a goal of perfecting our capacity for greed and violence, thus perpetuating the world of our nightmares.

It is time to start filling our heads instead with

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The Great Turning

The World We Want: The Bad Story in Our Heads

By David Korten | Great Turning website

Read more posts in The World We Want series.

So what’s our problem? Why are we in such a mess? Why didn’t we long ago just get together to create the world we really want? What are the real barriers to creating the world in which we measure our progress against a national happiness index rather than by an index of how fast we are turning stuff into garbage?

Corrupt politicians and greedy corporate executives come to mind. These folks certainly demonstrate

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The Great Turning

Growth Too (Continued)

Here is what I call the ‘Eldering Consumer Checklist’ in this new marketplace. Actually it is a checklist for all consumers—it just comes more naturally as we get older and start living on a fixed (finite) income. We can take it with us and ask these questions before we spend a nickel on anything.

  1. Is this something I need? (As in, will I suffer without this?)
  2. Will I need this in the future? (Does this have continuing value?)
  3. Does the production of this item (or service) harm or potentially harm others?
  4. Does my consuming this contribute to our collective quality of life?
  5. In consuming this, who should I thank? Is there anyone I should apologize to?

“But wait a minute!” you say. “What about all the things I don’t really need but really do want”? My answer is that you still have a choice. But as long as our

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The Great Turning

Growth Too (Two)

I wrote a post on growth a while ago about how insane I think it is to believe we can grow forever—at least in terms of economic growth. I was also reading The World We Want posts by David Korten that echoed the same sentiments but that go further to point out that all the breakdowns that are appearing are perhaps the greatest creative opportunity in history. That got me thinking that while I

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The Great Turning

The World We Want: What If We All Wanted the Same Thing?

By David Korten | Great Turning website

Read more posts in The World We Want series.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it turned out the choices we must make together to survive together are the same choices we must make to create the very world most of all the world’s people want? If that were case, then we should be able to just get together and make it happen. Wouldn’t that be cool? Maybe we should start a conversation to find out what people truly want…

Actually, that conversation started quite

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The Great Turning

The World We Want: The Big Picture III

By David Korten | Great Turning website

Read more posts in The World We Want series.

This brings us to the third element of the big picture of the human confrontation with the limits of our Mother Earth: the governing institutions to which we give the power to set our priorities and our collective course. We might wonder how such injustice could happen in a world governed by democratically elected governments. The answer is simple and alarming.

Our world is not governed by democratically elected

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The Great Turning

Youth / Adult Partnerships and Growing Communities

By Zakia Carpenter | Unending Conversations of Hope blog

This article appeared in the April 20-26, 2008 issue of the Michigan Citizen and is reproduced here with the author’s permission. Please post your comments here.

I have noticed a breakdown in youth-adult functionality that I’m just beginning to articulate. From what I have read about the Millennial Generation (youth, like me, born between 1977 and 1998), experts predict it will be more separate from previous generations due to

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The Great Turning

The World We Want: The Big Picture II

By David Korten | Great Turning website

Read more posts in The World We Want series.

The second piece of the big picture of the human confrontation with the limits of our Mother Earth is an unraveling of the social fabric of civilization that is a consequence of extreme and growing inequality. A world divided between the profligate and the desperate cannot long endure. It intensifies competition for Earth’s resources, undermines the legitimacy of our institutions, and drives an unraveling

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The Great Turning

Growth

I remember having conversations about real estate prices 7 or 8 years ago, particularly on the West Coast. “How can prices keep rising and where does all the money come from to buy these properties?” A house I sold in 1997 resold in 2005 for four times what I sold it for! I am not an economist, but something didn’t seem right to me about this kind of never-ending upward spiral. My ex-wife sells homes and told me people were getting into million dollar properties with little or no down payment.

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