By David Korten | Great Turning website
Many
of us have been anticipating the day of reckoning for our reckless
human ways for decades. That day has arrived. Peak oil, climate chaos,
financial collapse, and spreading social disintegration are all
consequences of deep cultural and institutional dysfunction. The
imperative to address them presents us with an epic test of our human
intelligence and creativity.
When I was a student in business
school my professors always told us "Go for the
In the late 80s, Anne Wilson Schaef and Diane Fassel wrote a book called The Addictive Organization. While I have a very different experience and theory than what they were proposing, I think their metaphor was perfect. For me, the idea that an organization or society can become ‘addicted’ is not a metaphor. I believe, like Charles Horton Cooley, that “Individuals and organizations
One of the nice things about traveling about as I have been for the past couple of years is that you get an opportunity to listen to people in other countries speak about the state of the world. As a fair generalization, I would suggest that we in the USA and Canada are among the most vocal ‘worriers’ I encounter. I would say that a high percentage of North American conversations—at least among those I converse with and based on my take on ‘the news’ on TV—are worried about something.
I have been having a lot of ‘state of the economy’ conversations lately. The consensus is that we are going in the wrong direction and the only question is how long, how deep and how prepared we are for the long haul. I made the observation that the economic consequences of a recession are only part of the problem. A recession is a trust issue. When credit dries up, it means that lenders don’t trust the borrowers to keep their commitments. It creates a kind of double-bind. Here is how it
I was playing a trivia game and had to answer what the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are. I got three out of four, but had to go to go to Wikipedia to get them all — War, Famine, Conquest and Death. These traditional Biblical symbols mark the ‘end of time’, when all things are put right and presumably all karma is erased and this journey will be complete. In researching each of them, I learned that ‘conquest’ is best translated in today’s language as ‘corruption’. The ancient
Thomas Friedman’s great op-ed piece about global warming definitively declares that, when faced with making decisions that have life or death consequences, there is, at some point, no more time for procrastinating, debating and analyzing. At some moment, to continue to procrastinate or put off until tomorrow becomes a fatal decision.
I love this idea that ‘later’ ceases to be an option when the stakes are high enough. When this is the case, we are committed—no matter what we choose. It
I have been thinking a bit about ‘returns’ lately. I read a blog about ‘return on energy’ that pointed to the growing awareness of our choices and what is at stake when we make them as we age. Are we getting more out of life than we’re putting in? This kind of ‘capitalist’ metaphor got me thinking. Is life a transaction in which we need to measure the return as a basis for assessing our ‘life worth’?
I am a capitalist insofar as I believe in free enterprise. I don’t know
Nope, the name of this post is not a misspelling. I mean warning! I wonder…when does a ignoring a dire warning become denial? When does someone hearing, “You are drinking too much” become an alcoholic? As someone who has had my fair share of after work drinking and after dinner toasts, I can tell you that you never know you are in denial when you are in denial. If enough people suggest there may be a problem, then the only way to know if there is a problem is to assume they are right. If
I came across a 10-minute YouTube video about global warming and climate change. Logical Choices is worth watching if you still think we can afford to sit back and let the next generation take care of the world.
By Shae Hadden
Bio
I was somewhat surprised to see
that most conference participants appeared to be in their late 40s and
up. The few younger people who were present stood out from the crowd.
Korten noted in his closing remarks how most audiences he speaks to are
comprised of older people in their 50s and 60s, and that there is a
need to attract younger people. Perhaps their absence is indicative of
the fact that North American society does not, for the most part,