By David Korten | Website Read the previous post in this series. This brings us to the most important reform of all:
changing the way we create money. One key to Wall Street’s power and to
the inherent instability of the financial system is the current
practice of private banks creating money with a simple bookkeeping
entry each time they make a loan. Because the bookkeeping entry creates
only the principal, but not the interest, unless the economy grows fast
enough to generate sufficient demand for loans to create the new money
required to make the interest payments on the previous loans, debts go
into default and the financial system and the economy collapse. The
demand for repayment [ Read More]
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By David Korten | Website
Read the previous post in this series. The only legitimate function of an economic system
is to serve life. At present, however, we assess economic performance
solely against financial indicators—gross domestic product (GDP) and
stock prices—while disregarding social and environmental consequences.
We are now paying the price for years of managing the economy for
financial performance, which translates into making money for people
who have money—that is, making rich people richer.
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
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By David Korten | Website
Read the previous post in this series. Far from serving the financial needs of Main Street, Wall Street treats
Main Street like a colony to be managed for the benefit of its colonial
master. In alliance with the Federal Reserve, Wall Street players have
used a combination of control over the money supply, predatory lending
practices, and lobbying and campaign contributions to suppress wages,
dismantle social safety nets, and capture the value of productivity
gains for themselves. The top 1 percent of U.S. income earners
increased their share of national cash income from 9 percent to [ Read More]
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By David Korten | Website
Read the previous post in this series. Once we extinguish the immediate fire, we can turn
our attention to redesigning the potentially beneficial institutions of
finance to align with the imperatives of sustainability and equity.
Ironically, given the excesses committed by Wall Street in the name of
market freedom, the economy we need to create looks remarkably like the
market economy vision of Adam Smith, revered by many as the father of
capitalism.
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
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By David Korten | Website
Read the previous post in this series. The first item of business is to get the immediate
crisis under control. Wall Street institutions have long claimed their
trading activities create wealth, provide the funds that keep business
moving, increase economic efficiency, and stabilize markets. The
financial meltdown pulled away the curtain to reveal a corrupt system
that runs on speculation, the stripping of corporate assets, predatory
lending, and asset bubbles like the real estate and dot-com “booms.” [ Read More]
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By David Korten | Website The financial crisis has put to rest the myths
that our economic institutions are sound and markets work best when
deregulated. Our economic institutions have failed, not only
financially, but also socially and environmentally. This, combined with
the election of a new president with a mandate for change, creates an
opportune moment to rethink and redesign. President-elect
Obama has promised to grow the economy from the bottom up. That would
be a substantial improvement over growing the top at the expense of the
bottom. [ Read More]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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 eldering at The Great Turning
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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 eldering at The Great Turning
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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]
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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 eldering at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
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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 eldering at The Great Turning
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