from "The Post-Corporate World" by David C. Korten (remember him?)
[Note: Again, I do not claim to agree necessarily with all of what is written here -- JH]
9 - For nearly three hundred years Western societies, and increasingly societies the world over, have been living out a deadly tale inspired by the basic precepts of Newtonian physics. According to this tale,
The universe resembles a giant clockwork set in motion by a master clock maker at the beginning of creation and left to run down with time as its spring unwinds. In short, we live in a dead and wasting universe. Matter is the only reality, and the whole is no more nor less than the aggregation of its parts. By advancing our understanding of the parts through the reductionist processes of science, we gain dominion over the whole and the power to bend nature to our ends.
10 - Consciousness is an illusion; life is only an accidental outcome of material complexity. We evolved through a combination of chance genetic mutations and a competitive struggle in which those more fit survived and flourished as the weaker and less worthy perished. Neither consciousness nor life have meaning or purpose. People are just extremely complicated machines, whose behavior is dictated by knowable natural laws.
Competition for territory and survival is the basic law of nature. We cannot expect humans to be or become more than brutish beasts driven by basic instincts to survive, reproduce, and seek distraction from existential loneliness through the pursuit of material gratification. A primary function of the institutions of civilized societies is to use the institutional control structures of hierarchy and markets to channel our dark human instincts toward economically productive ends.
This story has had numerous positive effects. It liberated Western societies from the stultifying intellectual tyranny of the church and gave legitimacy to learning through empirical observation. It brilliantly focused attention on mastering the material world and gave rise to extraordinary advances in scientific knowledge and technology that brought previously unimaginable affluence to some 20 percent of the world's population and propelled our species into new levels of planetary awareness and communication.
The story's negative effects, however, are now putting us on a path of self-destruction. It has led to the embrace of money as the defining value of contemporary societies and given birth to a hedonistic ethic of material self-gratification; the hierarchical, control-oriented megainstitutions of the state and the corporation; and an economic system that rewards greed and destroys life.
11- Our embrace of the old story's prophecy of death is leading our species inexorably toward self-destruction. The time has come for a story that acknowledges life's creative power and inspires us to strive for new levels of consciousness and function.
This is the powerful message of theologian Thomas Berry, who argues eloquently in Dream of the Earth that our future depends on a new
12 - cosmic story that restores meaning to life and draws us to explore life's still-unrealized potentials. Such a story is taking shape and drawing inspiration from many sources, including findings from the modern physical and life sciences and the world's richly varied spiritual traditions. Though it remains both partial and speculative, the new story goes something like this:
The universe is a self-organizing system engaged in the discovery and realization of its possibilities through a continuing process of transcendence toward ever higher levels of order and self-definition. Modern science has confirmed the ancient Hindu belief that all matter exists as a continuing dance of flowing energies. Yet matter is somehow able to maintain the integrity of its boundaries and internal structures in the midst of apparent disorder.
Similarly, the cells of a living organism, which are in a constant state of energy flux, maintain their individual integrity while functioning coherently as parts of larger wholes. This ability implies some form of self-knowledge in both "inert" matter and living organisms at each level of organization. Intelligence and consciousness may take many forms and are in some way even present in matter. What we know as life may not be an accident of creation but rather integral to it, an attractor that shapes the creative unfolding of the cosmos.
To the extent that these premises are true, they suggest we have scarcely begun to imagine, much less experience, the possibilities of our own capacity for intelligent, self-aware living. Nor have we tested our potentials for self-directed cooperation as a foundation of modern social organization. Evolution, although it involves competitive struggles,violence, and death, also involves love, nurturance, rebirth, and regeneration--and is a fundamentally cooperative and intelligent enterprise.
There is substantial evidence that it is entirely natural for healthy humans to live fully and mindfully in service to the unfolding capacities of self, community, and the planet. Yet in our forgetfulness we have come to doubt this aspect of our being. Nurturing the creative development of our capacities for mindful living should be a primary function of the institutions of civilized societies. It is time that we awaken from our forgetfulness and assume conscious responsibility for reshaping our institutions to this end.
13 - Unlike the dead-universe story, this sotry beckons us to deepens our understanding of the potentials of life and consciousness and the master the art of living at both individual and societal levels. It calls us to embrace life as the defining value of society and recongize that we have the freedom and the capacity to make this choice.
Some may argue that the new story is hardly new at all. Rather, it is one of the most ancient of stories, a rediscovery of the wisdom of traditional cultures that see evidence of the hand of conscious intelligence at work in all of creation and stress the integral relationship of the individual to the community. This is partially true. What is new is the way in which this story integrates the ancient wisdom with modern scientific findings, insights, and methods of observation to achieve new understanding and potentials for growth to higher levels of individual and community function.
14 - In the past, it has been mainly biological determinists, such as sociobiologists and social Darwinists, who have turned to biology for political and economic insights, usually used to justify existing structures of racism, gender discrimination, inequality, and capitalism's ruthless competition. Those efforts have ben characterized by a limited and fatalistic view of the human condition consistent with the dead-universe story. It is radically different to look to the fuction and evolution of living systems for insights into our as yet unrealized potentials.
34 - False promises are the money world's stock in trade. Most often its Sirens sing not of greed but of a universal material paradise--a world in which modern technology will banish poverty, war, and violence by providing everyone with a life of material comfort and luxury. Yer behind the promise lies a disturbing paradox. Although money-world institutions profit from the mass production and distribution of goods and services and are leading proponents of growth in production and consumption, scarcity plays a central role in their global quest for profit.
Any economist will happily tell us that scarcity creates values. Intelligent people pay money only for goods that are scarce. which has the greater real value: air or diamonds? Air is free, diamonds are pricey. Life says air, because we must have it to live, and provides it in abundance. Money says diamonds, because they are scarce, and its institutions limit supply to inflate the price.
That's the money world's little secret. Though it promises abundance, its preference is for scarcity--the source of its profits. If wastes contaminate our municipal water supplies and create a scarcity of potable water, the money world profits from the sale of bottled drinks. Where there is a scarcity of good public transit, it profits from cars, gasoline, and road building. when soil fertility declines, it sells us more fertilizer. Where jobs are scarce, it finds labor cheap. The money world thrives on scarcity, not abundance, and its greatest prize is a monopoly that allows it to restrict supply.
38 - Market theory, as articulated by Smith and those who subsequently elaborated on his ideas, developed into an elegant and coherent intellectual construction grounded in carefully articulated assumptions regarding the conditions under which such self-organizing processes would indeed lead to socially optimal outcomes. For example,
* Buyers and sellers must be too small to influence the market price
*Complete information must be available to all participants and there can be no trade secrets
39 - *Sellers must bear the full cost of the products they sell and pass them on at the sale price.
*Investment capital must remain within national borders and trade between countries must be balanced
*Savings must be invested in the creation of productive capital.
There is, however, a critical problem [. . .] Herein lies the catch: the conditions of what we currently call a capitalist economy directly contradict the assumptions of market theory in every instance.
Bear in mind that the optimally efficient market exists only as a theoretical construction. No economy has ever fully satisfied its assumptions and probably non ever will. The challenge facing those of us who would create an economy that approximates the market's promised outcomes of fair but modest returns to capital, full employment at a living wage, and socially optimal allocation of society's productive resources is to establish a framework of rules that create as closely as possible the conditions that market theory assumes.
9 - For nearly three hundred years Western societies, and increasingly societies the world over, have been living out a deadly tale inspired by the basic precepts of Newtonian physics. According to this tale,
The universe resembles a giant clockwork set in motion by a master clock maker at the beginning of creation and left to run down with time as its spring unwinds. In short, we live in a dead and wasting universe. Matter is the only reality, and the whole is no more nor less than the aggregation of its parts. By advancing our understanding of the parts through the reductionist processes of science, we gain dominion over the whole and the power to bend nature to our ends.
10 - Consciousness is an illusion; life is only an accidental outcome of material complexity. We evolved through a combination of chance genetic mutations and a competitive struggle in which those more fit survived and flourished as the weaker and less worthy perished. Neither consciousness nor life have meaning or purpose. People are just extremely complicated machines, whose behavior is dictated by knowable natural laws.
Competition for territory and survival is the basic law of nature. We cannot expect humans to be or become more than brutish beasts driven by basic instincts to survive, reproduce, and seek distraction from existential loneliness through the pursuit of material gratification. A primary function of the institutions of civilized societies is to use the institutional control structures of hierarchy and markets to channel our dark human instincts toward economically productive ends.
This story has had numerous positive effects. It liberated Western societies from the stultifying intellectual tyranny of the church and gave legitimacy to learning through empirical observation. It brilliantly focused attention on mastering the material world and gave rise to extraordinary advances in scientific knowledge and technology that brought previously unimaginable affluence to some 20 percent of the world's population and propelled our species into new levels of planetary awareness and communication.
The story's negative effects, however, are now putting us on a path of self-destruction. It has led to the embrace of money as the defining value of contemporary societies and given birth to a hedonistic ethic of material self-gratification; the hierarchical, control-oriented megainstitutions of the state and the corporation; and an economic system that rewards greed and destroys life.
11- Our embrace of the old story's prophecy of death is leading our species inexorably toward self-destruction. The time has come for a story that acknowledges life's creative power and inspires us to strive for new levels of consciousness and function.
This is the powerful message of theologian Thomas Berry, who argues eloquently in Dream of the Earth that our future depends on a new
12 - cosmic story that restores meaning to life and draws us to explore life's still-unrealized potentials. Such a story is taking shape and drawing inspiration from many sources, including findings from the modern physical and life sciences and the world's richly varied spiritual traditions. Though it remains both partial and speculative, the new story goes something like this:
The universe is a self-organizing system engaged in the discovery and realization of its possibilities through a continuing process of transcendence toward ever higher levels of order and self-definition. Modern science has confirmed the ancient Hindu belief that all matter exists as a continuing dance of flowing energies. Yet matter is somehow able to maintain the integrity of its boundaries and internal structures in the midst of apparent disorder.
Similarly, the cells of a living organism, which are in a constant state of energy flux, maintain their individual integrity while functioning coherently as parts of larger wholes. This ability implies some form of self-knowledge in both "inert" matter and living organisms at each level of organization. Intelligence and consciousness may take many forms and are in some way even present in matter. What we know as life may not be an accident of creation but rather integral to it, an attractor that shapes the creative unfolding of the cosmos.
To the extent that these premises are true, they suggest we have scarcely begun to imagine, much less experience, the possibilities of our own capacity for intelligent, self-aware living. Nor have we tested our potentials for self-directed cooperation as a foundation of modern social organization. Evolution, although it involves competitive struggles,violence, and death, also involves love, nurturance, rebirth, and regeneration--and is a fundamentally cooperative and intelligent enterprise.
There is substantial evidence that it is entirely natural for healthy humans to live fully and mindfully in service to the unfolding capacities of self, community, and the planet. Yet in our forgetfulness we have come to doubt this aspect of our being. Nurturing the creative development of our capacities for mindful living should be a primary function of the institutions of civilized societies. It is time that we awaken from our forgetfulness and assume conscious responsibility for reshaping our institutions to this end.
13 - Unlike the dead-universe story, this sotry beckons us to deepens our understanding of the potentials of life and consciousness and the master the art of living at both individual and societal levels. It calls us to embrace life as the defining value of society and recongize that we have the freedom and the capacity to make this choice.
Some may argue that the new story is hardly new at all. Rather, it is one of the most ancient of stories, a rediscovery of the wisdom of traditional cultures that see evidence of the hand of conscious intelligence at work in all of creation and stress the integral relationship of the individual to the community. This is partially true. What is new is the way in which this story integrates the ancient wisdom with modern scientific findings, insights, and methods of observation to achieve new understanding and potentials for growth to higher levels of individual and community function.
14 - In the past, it has been mainly biological determinists, such as sociobiologists and social Darwinists, who have turned to biology for political and economic insights, usually used to justify existing structures of racism, gender discrimination, inequality, and capitalism's ruthless competition. Those efforts have ben characterized by a limited and fatalistic view of the human condition consistent with the dead-universe story. It is radically different to look to the fuction and evolution of living systems for insights into our as yet unrealized potentials.
34 - False promises are the money world's stock in trade. Most often its Sirens sing not of greed but of a universal material paradise--a world in which modern technology will banish poverty, war, and violence by providing everyone with a life of material comfort and luxury. Yer behind the promise lies a disturbing paradox. Although money-world institutions profit from the mass production and distribution of goods and services and are leading proponents of growth in production and consumption, scarcity plays a central role in their global quest for profit.
Any economist will happily tell us that scarcity creates values. Intelligent people pay money only for goods that are scarce. which has the greater real value: air or diamonds? Air is free, diamonds are pricey. Life says air, because we must have it to live, and provides it in abundance. Money says diamonds, because they are scarce, and its institutions limit supply to inflate the price.
That's the money world's little secret. Though it promises abundance, its preference is for scarcity--the source of its profits. If wastes contaminate our municipal water supplies and create a scarcity of potable water, the money world profits from the sale of bottled drinks. Where there is a scarcity of good public transit, it profits from cars, gasoline, and road building. when soil fertility declines, it sells us more fertilizer. Where jobs are scarce, it finds labor cheap. The money world thrives on scarcity, not abundance, and its greatest prize is a monopoly that allows it to restrict supply.
38 - Market theory, as articulated by Smith and those who subsequently elaborated on his ideas, developed into an elegant and coherent intellectual construction grounded in carefully articulated assumptions regarding the conditions under which such self-organizing processes would indeed lead to socially optimal outcomes. For example,
* Buyers and sellers must be too small to influence the market price
*Complete information must be available to all participants and there can be no trade secrets
39 - *Sellers must bear the full cost of the products they sell and pass them on at the sale price.
*Investment capital must remain within national borders and trade between countries must be balanced
*Savings must be invested in the creation of productive capital.
There is, however, a critical problem [. . .] Herein lies the catch: the conditions of what we currently call a capitalist economy directly contradict the assumptions of market theory in every instance.
Bear in mind that the optimally efficient market exists only as a theoretical construction. No economy has ever fully satisfied its assumptions and probably non ever will. The challenge facing those of us who would create an economy that approximates the market's promised outcomes of fair but modest returns to capital, full employment at a living wage, and socially optimal allocation of society's productive resources is to establish a framework of rules that create as closely as possible the conditions that market theory assumes.
posted by jlhart7 at 7:05 PM
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