By David Korten | Website
The Power of Conversation
Getting out of our current mess begins with a conversation to change
the shared cultural story about our essential nature. The women’s
movement offers an instructive lesson. In little more than a decade, a few courageous women changed the
cultural story that the key to a woman’s happiness is to find the right
man, marry him, and devote her life to his service. As Cecile Andrews,
author of Circles of Simplicity, relates, the transition to a
new gender story began with discussion circles in which women came
together in their living rooms to share their stories. Until then, a
woman whose experience failed to conform to the prevailing story
assumed that the problem was a deficiency in herself. As women shared
their own stories each realized that the flaw was in the story.
Millions of women were soon spreading a new gender story that has
unleashed the feminine as a powerful force for global transformation.[ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
conversation
story
transformation
voluntary_simplicity
By David Korten | Website
Learning to be Human
If
the properly functioning human brain is wired for caring, cooperation,
and service, how do we account for the outrageous greed and violence
that threaten our collective survival? Here we encounter our
distinctive human capacity to suppress or facilitate the development of
the higher order function of the human brain essential to responsible
adult citizenship. [ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
caring
cooperation
holistic_thinking
learning
service
By David Korten | Website Read the first part of this article here.
Wired to Connect Scientists
who use advanced imaging technology to study brain function report that
the human brain is wired to reward caring, cooperation, and service.
According to this research, merely thinking about another person
experiencing harm triggers the same reaction in our brain as when a
mother sees distress in her baby’s face. Conversely, the act of helping
another triggers the brain’s pleasure center and benefits our health by
boosting our immune system, reducing our heart rate, and preparing us
to approach and soothe. Positive emotions like compassion produce
similar benefits. By contrast, negative emotions suppress our immune
system, increase heart rate, and prepare us to fight or flee.[ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
community
empire_story
happiness
health
service
By Irene Noble
My mother, my friend,
died when she was 91. I miss her still, yet it was eighteen years ago.
She was a beautiful, elegant, stylish lady. More than that, she was
forgiving, uncomplicated by her total honesty, always willing to learn
new ways, new directions even though it might require a reversal of old
assumptions.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
acceptance
friends
learning
mother
possibilities
relationship
strength
By David Korten | Website
The
story of purple America is part of a yet larger human story. For all
the cultural differences reflected in our richly varied customs,
languages, religions, and political ideologies, psychologically healthy
humans share a number of core values and aspirations. Although we may
differ in our idea of the “how,” we want healthy, happy children,
loving families, and a caring community with a beautiful, healthy
natural environment. We want a world of cooperation, justice, and
peace, and a say in the decisions that affect our lives. The shared
values of purple America manifest this shared human dream. It is the
true American dream undistorted by corporate media, advertisers, and
political demagogues—the dream we must now actualize if there is to be
a human future.[ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
community
cooperation
empire_myth
justice
peace
purple_america
By Irene Noble
Admittedly my vision of my granddaughter
is somewhat impaired by my love for her, but for the life of me I fail
to understand how she became so wise so soon. We are
both an only child, both raised by a single parent (a father for her,
and a mother for me). We share a “jack of all trades” DNA. I watch her
now as she, like my younger self, slightly out of focus, tries her
wings. Like a hummingbird sampling nectars looking for the blossom with
the most satisfying sugar, she fearlessly plunges into an array of
interests that defy the time needed to perfect any one of them. I tell
you this by way of introduction hoping to lead you into a greater
subject. There she is at 23 with time to spare and here I am at 85
almost out of time.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
dream
failure
potential
rejection
serenity
soul
wisdom
By Eliezer Sobel | Website
There is much talk on Serene Ambition and
elsewhere about altering one’s perspective and internal conversation
about aging so as to “create a future to live into” that infuses the
present with passion and energy, as distinct from the dreary
resignation of merely playing out the repetitive and predictable habits
and tendencies generated by the past. And yet, while this sounds
good in theory, what of the physical limitations imposed by age? [ Read More]
Written by admin at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
aging
conversation
possibility
suffering
time
By David Korten | Great Turning website
Read more posts in The World We Want series.
How does it happen? It starts with a conversation. A while back, Cecile Andrews, our local Seattle author of The Circle of Simplicity,
explained to me how the women’s movement changed the story on gender
and unleashed the long suppressed power of the feminine. It started
with discussion circles in which women came together to share personal
stories. As each woman spoke her truth, a larger truth was revealed for
all to see. The prevailing story that the key to a woman’s happiness is
to find the right man, marry him, and devote her life to his service
was not true.[ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
choice
conversation
responsibility
voluntary_simplicity
womens_movement
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
rights and women’s movements successfully exposed the fallacy of the
story that people of color and women are less than fully human.
Recognizing the full humanity of all peoples opens us to a deeper
understanding of what it truly does mean to be human in all the rich
potentials that our human nature embodies.[ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
authentic
democracy
earth_community
great_turning
social_change
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
the story that it is our nature to be caring and giving and that this
is all for the good, and therefore we properly set our sights on
perfecting our capacity for love and caring and create the world of our
dreams.[ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
earth_community
empire_story
great_turning
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?[ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
empire_story
leaders
power
wealth
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…[ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
choice
compassion
conversation
cooperation
earth_charter
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.[ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
community
democracy
environment
government
justice
sustainability
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 the
technological divide. However, this is just one factor
dividing us. Every generation has ideas and values differentiating it
from prior generations. Our histories shape us differently.
Essentially we are our own entity, separate from those who gave birth
to us. [ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
dialogue
differences
generation
intergenerational_relationships
leadership
support
transformation
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 of the
social fabric of mutual trust and caring essential to healthy social
function.[ Read More]
Written by admin at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
equity
ethanol
inequality
natural_wealth
poverty
resources
|
RSS Feeds
