From What Is to What If
From What Is to What If
Cover image: Original drawings by Rob Hopkins
Given the state of the world, the message of despair is pretty convincing. Things look grim. But something about that doesn’t sit quite right with me. In fact, there’s evidence that things can change, and that cultures can change, rapidly and unexpectedly. And that’s not just naïve, pie-in-the-sky thinking.
In How Did We Do That? The Possibility of Rapid Transition, Andrew Simms and Peter Newell tell the story of Iceland’s 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption, which sent fine dust into the sky that spread for thousands of miles and grounded most of the world’s planes. Then what happened? People adapted. Quickly. Supermarkets replaced air-freighted goods with local alternatives. People discovered other, slower ways to get around, or decided they didn’t really need to travel at all. People held business meetings online. The Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, ran the Norwegian government from New York . . . with his iPad. This isn’t the only example. We might be focused these days on how we are only nine meals from anarchy, but there are stories from throughout history about how rapid transitions lead to ingenuity, flourishing, imagination and togetherness.1
I’ve seen this with my own eyes, thanks to an experiment a few friends and I initiated more than a decade ago in our hometown of Totnes in Devon, England (population 8,500). Our idea was a simple one: What if, we wondered, the change we need to see in response to the biggest challenges of our time came not from government and business, but from you and me, from communities working together? What if the answers were to be found not in the bleak solitude of survivalism and isolation, in the tweaking of ruthless commercialism, or in the dream that some electable saviour will come riding to our rescue, but rather in reconnection to community? As we put it: ‘If we wait for governments, it will be too late. If we act as individuals, it will be too little. But if we act as communities, it might just be enough, and it might just be in time.’
As we began floating this idea with our friends and the wider community, the term ‘Transition’ arose to describe the intentional act of shifting from high resource use, high carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, extractive business practice and fragmented communities to communities with a healthier culture, more resilient and diverse local economies, more connection and less loneliness, more biodiversity and more time, democracy and beauty.2
As ‘Transition Town Totnes’, we began asking these ‘what-if ’ questions, and things started unfolding apace in our town. People planted fruit and nut trees in public spaces, grew food at the train station, and connected neighbours who wanted to grow food with neighbours who had unused garden space. We crowdfunded to buy a mill – the first new mill in Totnes in more than a hundred years – to grind local grains and pulses for a range of flours, and we hosted an annual local food festival celebrating food grown in and very near to Totnes. As I write this, Transition Homes is building twenty-seven houses using local materials for people in need, and Caring Town Totnes has developed a network of caregiving organisations so they can work together more effectively. Through it all, we’ve held community conversations so people could come together to imagine and discuss the kind of future they’d like to create.
In 2013, we mapped the local economy with our Local Economic Blueprint and argued the financial case for a more localised approach to economic development.3 Our annual Local Entrepreneur Forum invites the community to support new businesses and has now helped launch more than thirty enterprises.4 Recently, some friends and I started a community-owned craft brewery, New Lion Brewery, which brews delicious beers using many local ingredients, often in collaboration with other emerging social enterprises.5 And early on, Transition Town Totnes created the Totnes Pound, a local currency that has inspired many other local currencies around the world. When people asked us, ‘Why do you have a £21 note?’ we asked, ‘Why not?’
Around the same time that we were mapping the local economy, Transition Streets brought together approximately 550 households in groups of six to ten neighbouring households. Each group met up seven times to look at issues such as water, food or energy consumption and to agree on actions they could take before the next meeting to reduce waste, cut costs, and develop community resilience. By the end, each household cut their carbon emissions by an average of 1.3 tonnes, saving around £600 a year.6
What was fascinating about Transition Streets was that when organisers asked participants what was most impactful about taking part, nobody mentioned carbon. Or money. They reported that they felt like part of the community, they felt as though they belonged, they knew more people, they felt connected. This has been true across the board. More important than any of the actual projects was the sense of connection, of feeling part of something, of the underlying story starting to shift. A collective reimagining of what the future could be. I began to see that our efforts were starting to become, at least in part, a different story our town told about itself. And in the process, our collective sense of what was possible began to shift. We discovered that if enough people came together, we could create an entirely new kind of story from the collective experiences of so many people trying to make good, and better, things happen in our community.
Part of the beauty of Transition is that it’s all an experiment. I don’t know how to do it. Neither do you. In Totnes, we were just trying to spark something that might unlock a creative spirit, a renewed sense of possibility, a fresh and hopeful way to think about the future, without any thought that it could spread to other places. But spread it did. As early as 2007, Transition groups started popping up in communities in the United States, Italy, France, Japan, Holland and Brazil. The Transition movement now exists in fifty countries and in thousands of communities. Every group is different, and emerges from the spirit and culture of the place. It’s a process that, from the outset, has invited and supported people’s creativity and imagination. It has also profoundly affected how I think about our world’s biggest problems.
What I saw ignite with the Transition movement taught me that we’re often looking in the wrong places for the solutions to our biggest threats. Yes, political action is a vital part of democracy, and can lead to very real change, but in addition to thinking we always need to campaign and lobby harder, design bigger and more disruptive demonstrations and rally more people through more online petitions, perhaps we need sometimes to stop, stare out of the window and imagine a world in which things are better. Maybe it’s time to recognise that at the heart of our work is the need for those around us to be able to imagine a better world, to tell stories about it, to long for its realisation. If we can imagine it, desire it, dream about it, it is so much more likely that we will put our energy and determination into making it reality. As my friend and mentor the late David Fleming wrote, ‘If the mature market economy is to have a sequel . . . it will be the work, substantially, of imagination.’7
To experience the Transition movement in Totnes and see it take off around the world made clear to me how prescient Fleming’s remarks were. Bringing about the world we want to live in, the world we want to leave to our children is, substantially, the work of the imagination, or what educational reformer John Dewey describes as ‘the ability to look at things as if they could be otherwise’.8 It seems a lot of people are reaching a similar conclusion.
Excerpt from From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want by Rob Hopkins / Chelsea Green Publishing / October 2019. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.
References:
- Andrew Simms, Nine Meals from Anarchy: Oil Dependence, Climate Change and the Transition to Resilience (London: New Economics Foundation, 2008).
- This story is told in ‘The Lessons from Kinsale – Part One’, Transition Culture (blog), 12 December 2005, https://www.transitionculture.org/2005/12/12/the -lessons-from-kinsale-part-one/.
- Transition Town Totnes, Totnes & District Local Economic Blueprint, 2015, http:// www.reconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/TD-Local-Economic-Blueprint -final_low_res.pdf.
- Find out more about the Totnes Local Entrepreneur Forum and its history at https://reconomycentre.org/home/lef/local-entrepreneur-forum-2015-wrap-up/.
- Check us out: http://www.newlionbrewery.co.uk. Better still, pop in and say hi. Say I sent you. . . .
- There are three key pieces of research on Transition Streets and its impacts: GfK NOP Social Research, LCCC Baseline Research Mini Report – Totnes, 2012, https:// www.transitionstreets.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/LCCCBaselineResearch MiniReport%E2%80%93Totnes.pdf; Fiona Ward, Adrian Porter and Mary Popham, Transition Streets: Final Project Report, September 2011, https://www .transitionstreets.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/TransitionStreets-finalreport -27Sep2011.pdf; Helen Beetham, Social Impacts of Transition Together (SITT): Investigating the Social Impacts, Benefits and Sustainability of the Transition Together/ Transition Streets Initiative in Totnes, 2011, https://www.transitionstreets.org.uk /wp-content/uploads/2012/07/SocialimpactsofTransitionStreets-finalreport.pdf.
- David Fleming, Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2016), 209.
- Maxine Greene, ‘Imagination and Becoming (Bronx Charter School of the Arts)’, 2007, https://maxinegreene.org/uploads/library/imagination_bbcs.pdf.
Two Poems
Two Poems
Wire Farming
We all take a turn in the fields. They’re too
precious to leave lonesome,
a surplus crop is too rare to go unnoticed.
Even the security barriers can’t be trusted
not to uproot and flee with cuttings.
We have always been wire farmers
here. My father was, as were his parents
and theirs. We don’t go to the city.
My mother lost an eye there to an organ
harvester. My brothers and I have never
been to the city. We all have eyes.
The neighbors grow tomatoes with little pockets
for dressing. Some lettuces have natural perforation
for pulling each leaf into identically straight shreds.
Most apples have snaps to keep the slices in place.
We mostly eat broths of simmered metals.
Harvesting the field makes a winter’s worth of scraps.
The wires grow thick and high, spirals of red,
blue, daffodil chase across and under the ground,
mesh the sky three stories tall. Each bundle
weighed by hand, depending on where the roots
will grow into this or that device, a hand or back.
When my brother tried to leave
he tore at the green-gray wires sprouting
from his ankles for days
but couldn’t cut or shake them away.
Ours are strong, they do not tear or fray.
Warning
There is hazard in being nameless and this warning is for you. There is a time not yet here, but almost here, that will consume you who have no strength or acidity, only entanglement and contrived repetition. You do not know what it means to make a sound in the night and I cannot return what you lost in deep water. You have been clearly marked, your departure is eventual. Still there is a chance, an opportunity, for you to thrive and evolve, if not into someone useful, then into a person who can live the loss of a face. If you are interested, there is a boat.
Holding a Seed for the Future
Holding a Seed for the Future
Just to the north of us, the fire rages inland. It has already destroyed almost 100 homes. Here, we wait, just out of the mandatory evacuation zone, with our go-bags packed, already the fourth day without electricity. Even the dawn air seems strangely quiet, with the sun unnaturally red from the smoke-filled air. Fires, storms, floods have arrived, like the outriders of climate collapse, while in cities around the world—from Santiago, Chile, to Beirut, Lebanon—there are sudden riots, sparks of unrest, and social collapse. The cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor are raising their voices, rushing toward us, even as the voices of politicians argue and the corporations continue their ravages of the land, caring only for profit and greed.
When I first saw images of the future, of a new era, it was not like this. It carried visions of a civilization based upon oneness, awareness of a unified living Earth and Her inhabitants, of the song of creation reawakening within the heart of humanity. And in these visions there were new technologies promised to us—nonpolluting sources of energy, the wisdom of the scientist and the shaman coming together to bring new ways of healing and a deeper understanding of the ways of the Earth, the forces within nature and our own bodies. I had those visions 20 years ago, and they still hold their promise in my heart—a new story waiting to be lived, a seed of something true that belongs to our real nature and the sacred purpose of creation.
But now, around us is a different story. We can hear the voices of young people calling out for their future, for climate justice and the living Earth. And there is also climate catastrophe and social collapse—no longer just a warning, but a reality that makes the dawn sun frighteningly red. The future we are facing has already begun to arrive—a time of darkening and danger, of increasing insecurity, instability, even chaos. Yes, hopefully within a week our power will be restored, the shops will again be open, our way of life will appear to return to what we call normal. Those whose houses were not burned will call themselves lucky and continue with their lives, just as the politicians will continue to argue, the corporations continue to pollute and make profit. We are the lucky ones. We are not facing climate starvation in Africa. We are not refugees with our few possessions in a bag, fleeing poverty and violence, facing human traffickers and hostility at the border, walls, barbed wire, or a leaking boat. And yet, we are all of these people, just as we are the Earth suffering, crying out. We are all the story of humanity and the land.
How can we hold together our dream for the future and this reality of a dying Earth? How can we support the truth of social and environmental unity in diversity—recognizing how all of our racial and cultural differences belong together as part of humanity’s living tapestry, just as nature’s biodiversity coexists and supports each other as an interdependent whole—even as we become surrounded by more voices of tribalism, isolationism, divisiveness, and increasingly authoritarian regimes? How? We can envision a future based upon these primal principles, the “Original Instructions” given to the first peoples and their wisdom keepers: that we have to get along together with all of creation. We are the lucky ones because we can keep in our consciousness an awareness of the sacred that runs through all of life—the rivers and the trees and the stones and the stars. And as social and environmental collapse come closer, we know the work that needs to be done: the simple work of cooperation rather than competition, loving kindness and generosity, and supporting communities held together by these values. We carry the seeds of a future that we know is waiting, a dawn no longer red from burning fires.
This is the work of resilience that will support us through the breakdown of the coming decades. We can no longer naïvely hope that through greening the economy or spiritual awakening we will all suddenly emerge into a different world. Real social and environmental work, like real spiritual work, involves facing the darkness with our feet on the ground, accepting the truth that the journey will be hard and long, as well as full of unexpected miracles and unexplained magic. We look seven generations into the future even as we live in this present moment, mindful to what is happening around us.
There are three simple aspects to this work. There is the immediate need to help humanity wake up to this accelerating crisis and reduce carbon emissions, to stop clear-cutting the ancient forests, polluting the oceans with plastic, and begin the work of rewilding and restoring wetlands. Can we limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, or are we facing 2 or even 4 more degrees? And what would this mean? Here, science and technology can help us, even if it is not the answer. As I have often said, “The Earth is not a problem to be solved, but a living being in distress.”
The second aspect is to learn how to live in a time of transition, of social unrest, even collapse. What are the tools of resilience to support us as the sea levels rise and the fires burn? Yes, we need to learn to live more simply, no longer caught in consumerism and its environmental and soul-destroying values. We have to accept the basic premise that our way of life, founded on the false promises of material prosperity, is over. Our civilization is past its sell-by date and is becoming pathologically self-destructive. As we live in a time of radical uncertainty as nature becomes more and more out of balance, we need to understand what this means to us individually and as a community, to face our fears, our grief, and take necessary steps of how to transition. But we also can look deeper at the spiritual and moral values that sustain us and our communities, like love and care for each other and for the Earth. As the crisis deepens, these values may be more important than any new technology.
And finally, those of us who hold a vision for a future that is truly sustainable for the Earth and all of Her inhabitants need to hold this seed close to our hearts. The future will not be as we have planned—our world is already too far out of balance. But this may be our most important gift to future generations—a belief in the living oneness, the unity of being that belongs to the essence of life and to the patterns of nature. Then we will not be caught in the fragmentation of the coming decades, whose signs we can already see in present social and economic divisiveness. But we will carry the light of a new consciousness, a new civilization that is humanity and the Earth’s deepest promise. And we can plant this seed in our daily life, in simple acts of generosity and loving kindness, in recognizing that we are not separate from each other or from the Earth. In small communities, we can tend the land waiting for springtime, even as we are more and more surrounded by the storms of winter.
Kito Mbiango | The Power of Art to Drive Action
Kito Mbiango | The Power of Art to Drive Action
Kito Mbiango’s work speaks nostalgically to our primal intelligence, engaging us in a conscious reflection about our collective evolution. His Climate Change Collection is a response to the accelerating environmental degradation we are facing and have imposed upon nature and all wildlife. The artist’s goal with this collection is to shift the traditional climate change narrative of impending doom to a more positive one of reverence and deeper reflection through ‘embodied cognition.’ In this series, he invites viewers to experience these awe-inspiring feelings of interconnectedness with nature through his vivid, interposed imagery. In doing so, he seeks to spark conversations across generations and geographies to spur collective action and draw attention to the dire need for restoring balance with nature.
It is said that we are experiencing ‘climate grief’ or ‘ecological grief’ which captures the feelings of loss, anger, hopelessness, despair, and distress caused by climate change and ecological decline. This feeling of loss is impacting our psyches and mental health, but also making many realize that this means we will all need to make changes in our lifestyles and eating habits, which can lead to further denial and paralysis.
In turbulent times, we often turn to the artists and creatives to nurture our inner selves and help us construct and imagine new realities. As Leonardo DaVinci said, “Art is the queen of all sciences, communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.” Art and culture thus have an immense role to play in educating and mobilising civil society towards climate action. “When we look around our cities,” observes Mbiango, “we are bombarded with ads for consumer and luxury products. This push to consume is what has created this climate disaster to begin with.” In his view, we need to use similar tools and thinking to reverse this trend, impelling people to collective action.
“We are missing the visual and cultural language needed to communicate about the climate, which can empower families, communities and influencers to demand change and resources from their policymakers and governments,” says Mbiango. “At its core, it is about reminding us of our organic unity–and about respect, reverence and love.”
Kito Mbiango finds inspiration in esoteric concepts, vintage photographs, and scientific illustrations. He transforms this material into a new language in which colors, textures, and geometry are used to reflect the eternal dance between man, woman, and nature. He implicitly understands the importance of finding a visual voice or resonance. He does so by a focused meditation on a particular theme. He then transfers and blends symbols and images onto fabric, canvas, wood, and recycled materials. Each medium he uses involves meticulous studies of layering and light, evoking ancestral spirits and voyages through time.
Rooted in Social Justice
The sensitivity of his work stems from Mbiango’s African roots—his father was President of the Supreme Court of Congo and his mother was a nurse. His grandmother, a master in ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging was a major influence. They shared a passion for geology and collecting minerals together when he was young. This rich cultural exposure led to a deep veneration for the land, indigenous wisdom, and how it should inform our collective future. He pays tribute to timelessness—where imagination and reality intersect.
Mbiango divides his time among Brussels, New York, and Miami. He has mastered his own technique utilizing multiple production methods, including image transfer and mixed media assemblage, applied meticulously by hand. His body of work explores themes encompassing memory, history, and socio-political realities. Ultimately, they reflect a collective yearning for transcendence.
The Artist as Futurist – Towards a Collective Consciousness
Mbiango’s work is informed by a deep passion for innovative thinking and the work of futurists like Elon Musk, Buckminster Fuller, and theologist Teilhard de Chardin who set down the philosophical framework for planetary, net-based consciousness over 50 years ago. Chardin foresaw the development of the internet, but described it as a noosphere—literally, “mind-sphere,” or a thinking layer containing the collective consciousness of humanity which will envelop the earth. He realized that everything around him was beautifully connected in one vast, pulsating web of divine life. He likened this global infrastructure to “a generalized nervous system” that was giving the human species an “organic unity.” Mbiango’s artistic practice reflects these rich notions of human connection emerging. He intuitively incorporates elements of ancient knowledge, through imagery and symbols, which form part of his vast archives. This organic weaving of ideas, materials, and processes creates indefinable works that are emotive and thought-provoking because they deliberately transcend recognized classifications.
Mbiango has been recognized for his pioneering work by The Institute for the Future, Palo Alto and his work has served to support global advocacy across the private and public sectors including with BNP Parisbas, Women Deliver, The World Bank’s Climate Investment Fund (CIF), UNICEF, UN Women, Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation the David Lynch Foundation and the World Economic Forum.
He recently took his activism to the streets on digital screens across New York City and in the iconic Oculus in the World Trade Centre. He hopes to incite waves of change by getting others of all ages and backgrounds to bring their creativity and passion in support of the climate movement.
Artist's Statement
Active Hope | Time with Joanna Macy
Active Hope | Time with Joanna Macy
Last year, I did something I’d been putting off for a long time. I joined Joanna Macy and 28 other people for a weekend of the Work that Reconnects—workshops she has been developing and offering since the 1970s. I knew of Joanna as a philosopher of both ecology and Buddhism, full of wisdom and deep practice on both fronts. Over the years, I would see opportunities to join her. I’d carefully read the description, which always included confronting our deep pain about what is happening with the earth. It sounded profound; it sounded like something I should do; it sounded very painful. I would decide to do it another time.
Then I moved to Marin, just across the San Francisco Bay from her home in Berkeley. She is close to ninety, and I wanted to be able to work with her before she completely passes the baton to others. I listened to an interview with her which made me realize how delightful she is. And I was in such pain at the drastic backward lurch we took with the 2016 election, that I figured I couldn’t feel any worse. I might even see my way to some clarity and faith. The weekend was called, after her book of the same title, “Active Hope: how to face the mess we’re in without going crazy.”
As with many things we dread, it wasn’t what I feared. I found it uplifting, joyous, complicated, loving, inspiring, painful—life distilled into a weekend. The work was even familiar, similar to practices I’d done in other contexts. We sat in circles large and small, paired up, went off alone. All to explore not only what we felt, but where such feelings could lead us. Once again, I learned how much I share with others, and how much comfort their presence on the journey gives me.
There is, sadly, an unending amount of pain and anger to be felt when we are alive to what’s happening on our planet: the loss of habitat, the pollution of oceans and rivers, the increasingly rapid unraveling of climate integrity, the struggles of species, including our own. The list is endless. I spend a lot of my time in continual concern about, and celebration of, plants. But when I answered prompts that asked for my worst fears or deepest hopes, my first response was about the suffering of people: hungry children, trapped women, exploited workers, refugees with nowhere to go, indigenous people losing their homes and sacred places. The thinking behind the devastation of the natural world is the same thinking that exploits and degrades humans.
This heightened awareness led to one of the most memorable moments of the weekend. I’ve always assumed that the earth could survive us better than we can survive each other. That, if necessary, she would shrug us off her beautiful shoulders and get on with her very long life. Cities would eventually crumble, plants would take root in the rubble, creatures would spread out into their ancient habitats. Other life forms would eventually evolve. There was a certain grief-filled comfort in this.
Then Joanna led an exercise called milling. We walked around our space aimlessly until she had us stop. We took the hands of the person nearest us and looked into his or her eyes. Joanna spoke of the profound beauty of seeing this unique and precious being, the only one that will ever be. Then we moved on. After about five encounters, we stopped.
Later that day, a young and radiant rabbi, pregnant with her first child, said that she, too, had always thought the earth would be fine without us. “But,” she said, “when we were milling, I realized that the earth loves us.”
I was very moved by her, and by everyone there, especially the young people. There were heart-rending moments.
A man in his mid-twenties wept at the speed of the earth’s losses. A young woman whose baby had just turned one talked about how much mothers are shamed in our society. Our rabbi spoke of having to be strong for her congregation, who were terrified of the anti-Semitism unleashed since the election. One woman was afraid the ocean would be dead by the time her 12 year old daughter, who wants to be a marine biologist, is ready. Another young man talked about trying to resist the lure of violent protest.
We are often afraid to give anguish and rage space because we have don’t know what to do with their force. By closing difficult emotions off, we risk numbing our ability to respond to the urgencies of this time. Or we can be all too willing to feel them, but not to release them, and then be immobilized by a tangle of despair and fury. The constant barrage of things to feel bad about is overwhelming and deeply dispiriting. No matter how much we want to help, we feel like hummingbirds taking a drop of water to a wildfire.
Joanna has practiced Buddhism since the 1960s. So, it would be natural that her solution to the problem of pain is simple, ancient, and very challenging: be present. Breathe it into our hearts and give it room, give it time. Let ourselves mourn and rage. No matter how large or overwhelming, grant whatever comes the space it asks for. Breathing out, let it go. Then carry on with our thread in the fabric. In all, a process that might require a lot of steady breathing.
Our struggle with these difficult emotions arises from our greatest gift as humans: compassion. Damage to the world and its people, which comes from greed and obliviousness, will be slowed and salvaged by love: for the earth itself and for the wondrously intricate web of all beings that we are a part of.
This is no simple ‘love, sweet love’ invocation. The kind of love we need is challenging in itself: complex, knowledgeable, dedicated to human and more-than-human community. A willingness to change for the sake of the global good. A profound understanding of our inherence in the natural world. These are the most nourishing gifts we can give both the earth and ourselves. These are the energies that allow the earth herself to rise in us. Imagine the inspiration and courage that would arise when we no longer think we’re on the planet and instead know that we are the planet.
Re-Imagining America
Re-Imagining America
America is the fact, the symbol and the promise of a new beginning. – Jacob Needleman
As I ponder our future as a society and a people, I have a heavy heart because of the recent tragic murders, (as I write), of Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the mailings of pipe bombs to prominent Democrats by Cesar Sayoc, and the senseless slaying of two elderly African Americans in Virginia. Historically, xenophobia, racism and anti-semitism have been the poisons which have most effectively undermined democracies and prepared the way for authoritarian regimes. We are a divided nation, with a president who endlessly stokes such divisions, while attacking the press and the idea of public truth.
America was founded on three central political ideas, ‘these truths’, as Thomas Jefferson called them: the idea of political and legal equality for human beings; of natural rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and of the popular sovereignty of the people, the consent of the governed. These ideals were a mighty call not only to the citizens of the United States but to people from around the world seeking a better life. Yet from the very beginning and throughout our history we have lived with profound contradictions. As Lepore notes in her recent history of the USA:
A nation born in revolution will forever struggle against chaos. A nation founded on universal rights will wrestle against the forces of particularism. A nation that toppled a hierarchy of birth only to erect a hierarchy of wealth will never know tranquility. A nation of immigrants cannot close its borders. And a nation born in contradiction, liberty in a land of slavery, sovereignty in a land of conquest, will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history.1
The question we face, then, is whether we can accept that our history is one of both high aspirations and noble truths, and of crimes against both the human and natural world. A nation dedicated to freedom while pursuing world empire and domination, a country promoting equality while initially condoning slavery and the destruction of native peoples, a land of opportunity which marginalizes ever-greater numbers of people – such a nation is, indeed, caught in a struggle with itself. But is this not the human condition: are we not each living between the promptings of our higher self, our spirit, and our shadow, revealing that which needs to be understood, integrated and transformed?
I think that each of us is asked to find a new relationship to nature, to the earth and to our environment, to reconnect to the other and the human community and to find a more conscious relationship to the divine world and to our individual spirit. This work is never done, and requires facing, acknowledging and seeking to transform our shadow by listening to the voice of conscience. Why should it be any different for American society, with the shining light of its spirit, its goodness, generosity of heart and practical wisdom and skill, and its arrogance and naked pursuit of wealth and power.
We are individually and collectively in the same boat; how do we become more caring, loving human beings while creating a society which fosters equality, relationship, opportunity, freedom and love? In his marvelous work on the American Soul, Needleman notes this deep connection between the forms of society and our inner soul states:
The hope of America lies and has consisted in the fact that its political ideals and forms of government, its iconic actions and archetypal heroes, reflect in two directions at once – towards the external good of a life of liberty and equality and the reasonable search for a life of community and creative aspiration, and at the same time inwardly toward the search for inner development, the life of conscience and reason that defines the true nature of humanity and gives life its ultimate meaning.2
As there are moments of crisis in our life history – our evolving biography, which call us to reassessment, to ponder the meaning and purpose of our life, to face ourselves with clarity and conscience – so, too, are there crises in the evolving American story which challenge us to re-imagine what America is and can become. I believe we are again at such a point, in which the ideology of oppression and the forces of fear, hatred, egotism and division threaten to overwhelm us, and to neglect those founding principles and high ideals which marked the origin and development of this once-great nation.
Alexander Hamilton asked a profound question during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, regarding ‘whether societies of men [and women] are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force’.3 He and many of the founding fathers saw the creation of the new nation as an experiment, as an effort to move history in the direction of reason, enlightenment and divine grace. The answer to Hamilton’s question is still open. We are again at a time of great testing, as we were during the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the Great Depression leading to the Second World War. It seems that about every 80 years, roughly four generations, we face a profound and existential crisis to American democracy, as Howe and Strauss have pointed out in their generational study of US history, The Fourth Turning.4
It is of course possible to find many turning points in American history, but I believe there are four periods during which the survival and further development of American society was, or is again, threatened. The first of these was during the Revolutionary War period and the founding of the new republic, from approximately 1770 to 1787, from the time when tensions over taxation and representation between the 13 colonies and Great Britain began to grow, through the Revolutionary War, to the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
The second major threat to the country’s future was from the 1850s to the formal end of the Civil War in 1866. The challenge to national sovereignty which the secession of the eleven slave-holding states of the Confederacy posed to federal authority was extreme, as was the division over the question of slavery. Between 600,000 and 750,000 soldiers died during the Civil War, more than in all other US wars combined.5 The rancor of the conflict between the North and the South continues to this day, and is reflected in attitudes, speech and politics.
A third point of crisis and transformation occurred from 1928 to 1945, starting with the onset of the Great Depression and ending with the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945.
In each of the three previous periods there were multiple challenges to the nation’s future: first, the quite likely defeat of the new continental army by the British under General Howe and the possible failure of the 13 colonies to form an effective national government after the Revolutionary war. Then, during the Civil War, the threat of the long-term division of the country into two over the question of slavery and its extension into newly acquired territories. And in the early twentieth century, the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism, Nazism and authoritarianism, which threatened the future of both Western economic life and the viability of democratic governments.
And, in each of these major crises in American history, it took political and moral imagination to found and then to extend democracy, to deepen the rule of law, and to expand the realm of economic opportunity. It took leaders deeply committed to the founding ideals of freedom, democracy, equality and economic justice; to galvanize the nation into positively responding to the outer and inner challenges of these turning points in our history.
I would say that the fourth period of crisis started in 2001 with ‘9/11’.
Today, it is the combination of US imperial ambitions, the profound levels of income inequality, the oligarchy of corporate wealth and power and the distinct authoritarian tendencies of the Trump administration, which pose a significant threat to our future as a democratic society. I believe we face a crisis of identity; what kind of a country will we be, a political crisis about the nature of democracy and the rule of law, and an economic crisis about the sustainability and equity of our economic system. The Trump administration is the symbol and reality of societal trends which go back decades, and both Democrats and Republicans – indeed, all of us – carry some responsibility for a slide into authoritarianism, for the politics of global domination, for the corruption of our institutions, and for the oligopoly of wealth and privilege which we now have.
Can we again find leaders with the moral imagination, the conscience and the vision to guide the American republic to a new and more noble chapter in its history? Can we overcome the pattern and ideology of oppression, of global domination and of economic exploitation which has characterized so much of our actions and policies in recent decades, and regain the respect of the global community? Can we again become ‘the fact, the symbol and the promise of a new beginning’?9
Toward a Strategy of Hope
The gap between who we say we are as a society and a nation, and how we have actually behaved, has increased dramatically since at least the beginning of the twenty-first century, a soul space of disappointment and disillusionment was created in the national psyche which Trump and the forces of our collective American shadow have exploited to lead us astray.
A strategy of hope begins by seeing ourselves clearly, by self-knowledge, by being awake, and by recognizing the ways in which we as a nation have served the gods of power, prejudice, aggression, pride and material wealth, while proclaiming the values of human freedom, decency, peace, equality and economic opportunity. It means recognizing that we all live within what Parker Palmer calls the ‘tragic gap’ as individuals and a nation:
On the one side of the gap, we see the hard realities of the world, realities which can crush our spirits and defeat our hopes. On the other side of that gap, we see real-world possibilities, life as we know it could be because we have seen it that way. 10
When the experience of this gap is sufficiently painful, we create communities of conscience, groups of the heart, which have always moved our society in a positive direction in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. The young people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who recently founded the #NeverAgain Movement, did just that in fighting for gun control. As David Hogg noted,
When it happened to us, we woke up. We knew we couldn’t wait until we got out of college and settled into jobs. We had to make the world a better place now. It was literally a matter of life and death. 11
So let us honor, join and support the many groups promoting environmental sustainability, freedom of speech and worship, educational choice, racial justice, labor rights, women’s equality, democratic reform, peace and economic justice – groups which make up the vast network of civil society nationally and globally. While we can only see the future in our imagination, out of our experience of life we do know our own yearning for greater inner and outer freedom, our desire for greater equality in rights and political life, and our wish for right livelihood and economic justice.
We can seek help from the good spirit of America, say yes to a new future and follow Rebecca Solnit’s advice:
“Dream big. Occupy your hopes. Don’t stop now”12
This brief essay is an excerpt from the recently published book, Re-Imagining America: Finding Hope in Difficult Times, by Christopher Schaefer, available from Amazon and fine bookstores everywhere.
Notes
1 Jill Lapore, These Truths: A History of the United States, W.W. Norton, New York, 2018, p. 786.
2 Jacob Needleman, The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders, Tarcher/Putnam, New York, 2002, p. 19.
3 Lepore, These Truths, p. xvii.
4 See the fascinating study by William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, Bantam/Doubleday, New York, 1997. Strauss and Howe call the period in which we now find ourselves the Millennial Crisis, lasting from 2005–2026, having also identified the Revolutionary Period, the Civil War and the New Deal Era as periods of crisis and transition in our history. See pp. 123–138.
5 Avery Craven, Walter Johnson and Roger Dunn, A Documentary History of the American People, Ginn and Company, New York, 1951. See the commentaries on the US Constitution from the Federalist papers, pp. 186–194, and the Constitution with the articles of amendment, pp.194–205.
6 Craven, Johnson, Dunn, A Documentary History, p. 409.
7 Ibid., p. 718.
8 Lepore, These Truths, pp. 433–471.
9 Needleman, The American Soul, p. 5.
The Alchemy of Power
The Alchemy of Power
An Emergent Paradigm
There is a growing backlash to yang-dominant norms that have resulted in imbalances of power and inequities in the distribution of resources. It appears that a yin-ward worldwide wave is emerging as more and more groups are cohering around values like happiness and well-being, and as more and more businesses adopt a quintuple bottom line that includes people, prosperity, planet, partnership, and peace. Many people believe that the emergent wave is nothing less than an international ontological leap toward a new paradigm, meaning a new basic model, a new set of fundamental assumptions about the way the world is. Our paradigm is our shared reality. A paradigmatic change is a fundamental ground shift, an ontological transfiguration, of our basic assumptions about personal, financial and social power. A paradigm shift means that the basic meaning of leadership power is morphing dramatically.
The demographic of new paradigm early-adapters comprises a mix that crosses almost all sectors, including race, gender, age, occupation, ethnicity, education, geography, and class. Its constituents are at every level of rank in organizations and they represent a critical mass of all organizational stakeholders. They share a resonance with what their hearts and souls are telling them about their work and about the world. Hate mongering and reactions to it are dominating the airwaves while there is a distinct lack of representation of the ever-widening circles of people who are establishing new levels of accountability for the value of values. Although they are still a somewhat incoherent demographic, which is partly why they are under-represented by media, new paradigm early adapters are a force to contend with. Whether you identify with that demographic, find yourself deeply suspicious of it, or choose to ignore it completely, as a leader you are necessarily contending with the reality of its depth and breadth, consciously or not.
Small and large businesses, schools, governmental, nongovernmental, and civic organizations are demonstrating what decades of studies bear out: operationalizing values is the best insurance for living and working with robust people, within robust economies, on a robust planet. We know that there is enough for everyone on the planet to be well and happy, but the problem is that our systems are geared toward other priorities. In other words, we have enough to cover everyone’s needs but not to cover everyone’s greed. The term “new paradigm’ designates an emergent global ethic for creating workplace and civic cultures that are organized around personal, organizational, and social greatest good. You could argue that exactly the opposite is happening and site the news as evidence. Big front, big back….
Changing Times
Not one of today’s pressing work and/or world problems is a result of too much kindness and caring, nor of too much accommodation of differences. Yet, despite a plethora of evidence to the contrary, the leadership genre has been saturated with yang messages that people, especially women, value those kinds of yin things too much and that there is no place for such fluff at work.
But an undeniable international call is arising for re-valuating what we value and how we value it. It is coming from a highly diverse and growing demographic that is increasingly adamant about creating cultural norms for better work in a better world. That emergent demographic, first identified in a longitudinal study on Cultural Creatives (see Anderson and Ray), is a cross-sector of men and women who recognize that there are pervasive problems in the systems of business-as-usual.
As the world comes to terms with the problem that current ontological assumptions about economics are not a plan for human survival, pioneers like Oprah Winfrey, Tony Hsieh, and thousands of civic leaders, executives, business owners, managers, farmers, artists, spiritual leaders, and concerned citizens are forging more life-affirming ways of defining success while they soar through financial ceilings. There is a global trend toward values-centered economics, policies, and practices that is reflected in part by the increasing market share for personal well-being products and services, for all things ecofriendly, for fair and transparent systems, and for ecologically and socially responsible companies.
Across the planet, there is growing alignment around the call for systemic, values-driven transformation and that collective urge is already big enough to impact everyone’s work everywhere. It is a worldwide wave that is gathering momentum as it heads toward a new shore, a new normal, a new paradigm, where our common aspirations for dignity and vitality take their rightful places in our economic and social systems.
There is growing recognition that conventional metrics, like gross national product (GNP), stock prices, and standard spreadsheets, only measure an extremely narrow spectrum of what people value. Despite that limitation, economic indicators are often assumed to be social indicators and that leads us to conflate indicators like a high GNP with the notion that all things are good. Increasing numbers of people are concluding that common economic standards are unacceptable because they lack valuation for the things people value most….
…
Dawn of a New Fire
Mystics and philosophers have forever grappled with the spark of life that generates intentions and makes them real. The only thing we know for sure about the spark that animates us is that words can never describe it. The most cross-culturally consistent word seems to be “love.” A Course in Miracles says there are only two emotions: love and fear. That pretty much captures the metaphysical difference between old and new paradigms. You could say that the old one is fear-based and the new one is love-based. Not romantic love. Not on-again, off-again gushy stuff—but the most powerful driving force in the universe because it has the capacity to transform what it touches. When people love their work, they deliver!
Metaphysical influences have always been, and will always be, pervasive and operative in the human experience. New paradigm thinking is both a renewal of our availability to metaphysical realities, as well as higher prioritization of our facility with them. With so many leaders already making the transition to values-driven leadership, we are seeing the dawn of the new fire that de Chardin wrote about—a common-good-centered fire, one that cannot be fueled by fear or through the pain of others, but rather by humanity’s greatest force: love. Old paradigm leaders have spent billions of dollars, and far too many lives, to intervene between populations and their direct connection to that inner fire because it can be so threatening to the status quo. But alchemical leaders catalyze those sparks of causality and then fan the flames.
As “softer,” more yin indicators and practices are becoming more and more operative in our workplaces and our world, we’re seeing higher prioritization of, and greater valuation for, well-being, dignity, compassion, harmony, and justice for all global citizens. A new fire is dawning with an emerging clarity that we are the hearts, we are the hands, we are the feet, we are the voices, we are the minds, and we are the souls who can and must co-create our peaceful co-arising with one another and with the planet.
…
Universal Transformation
Alchemical leaders realize that people at the top of the responsibility chain play especially critical roles in creating the work we want to do and the world we all want to live in. The vast concept of a global paradigm shift is a way of:
- conceptualizing the larger context in which your organization is situated
- contextualizing your leadership role in transformational times
- revealing the roles of those with strong propensity for ushering it in
Thanks to the great minds and hearts that contributed to the amazing world we’ve got, there are solid historical yin and yang pillars to build on as we formulate new paradigmatic understanding of what power is and what we want to do with it. After living in a yang-dominant ontology for millennia, we are witnessing the dawning of a new ontology that holds universal well-being as an anchoring principle. The conscientization process is a way to think about how to utilize the momentum of this evolutionary moment to catapult your organization to new heights.
Whatever it ends up being named by history, leaders and business schools risk irrelevance if they choose to ignore the leap of economic and social consciousness that is represented by the concept of a new paradigm. There are many choices yet to be made between where we are and where a new paradigmatic reality might take us. But wherever we end up, it is clear that it no longer works to equate power with control or success with just financial growth. Workplace parameters are evolving, and leaders must evolve themselves and their cultures to keep up.
A paradigmatic resetting of cultural coordinates demands a resetting of every leader’s personal, professional, internal, and external compass points such that the role of mojo is no longer considered extraneous but is squarely located at the center of decision-making. However, alchemical leaders go beyond developing personal and collective mojo alignment. They take a global citizen approach by aligning their organizations with universal ethics and values, which, in turn, sends signals to workers that automatically raise individual and collective mojo because that’s what happens when people feel part of something that is bigger than themselves.
Reinventing Success
We are living through a reestablishment of just what the equanimity needs to be between yin factors like intentionality, civility, relationship, inner strength, and wisdom; and yang factors like financial data, methodology, physical strength, and rationalism. Paradigmatic shifting is not about valuing the yin more than the yang, it is about creating a dialectic ontology based on both/and, rather than either/or, consciousness. A dialectic ontology frames power as yang best practices, expertise, and competence being in dynamic equanimity with yin morals, shared vision, and aligned consciousness.
Since we have had yang-dominant norms for so long, the emergent paradigmatic correction needs to be yin-ward leaning. The world is demanding that the yin voice be brought into full-fledged harmony—not muted, not retuned, and no longer kept at a hum. As the paradigmatic pendulum swings away from the yang-ward spiral we have been in, the emerging yin-ward cultural swing is toward the whispers of wisdom’s voice. The acknowledgment of metaphysical influences along with heightened consciousness of our interdependence with one another constitute a cultural epiphany. And now that a critical mass of people is experiencing that epiphany, there is no going back. Leaders must abide or step aside.
In such a rapidly changing world, it is becoming clearer than ever that the dynamics of success are far more fluid and far less tangible than we have been believing. Metaphysics, which is the study of the fundamental nature of things, is the domain for addressing the dire need to reinvent success in accordance with our universally desired common ground of interconnectivity, happiness, and well-being. We are each a factor in the evolution of billions of factors that make up life on Planet . Earth. Our consciousness is a mega-factor, all the more so when it is aligned with others. The shift away from values-suppressive norms and toward a world that works for everybody reflects, above all else, a global shift in consciousness.
Going Forward toward the World We Want
As we enjoy unprecedented communications connectivity, we are waking up to newfound capacity for evolutionary leaping toward living out our highest ideals. The United Nations’ 2012 vote to start convening toward a new paradigm based on happiness and well-being, and the world’s agreement on the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, reflects a growing number of people whose consciousness is aligning toward new ways of operating.
Though the mystery of our cosmic unfolding can never fully be known, we do know that time is a continuum of changes. The capacity to demonstrate causality in the matter of change is alchemical power. Alchemical leaders are adept with causing what is happening under their watch by way of consciously working with the metaphysical forces that flow through and around each one of us. Alchemical leaders catalyze the sparks of new, bold, bodacious visions of a workplace and a world that works for all global citizens.
Our Scarlet Blue Wounds
Our Scarlet Blue Wounds
On the heels of something great, I’ll take you there.
Consider failure the cause celeb it is. Let’s build a new world.
Out of clay, let us hew a stone absent despair;
aaaaaaafrom 55-year-old timber, let us whittle a new age.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaLet Love love whomever it loves.
We will build new cities near rivers and deep within valleys.
And in the times of fire and flood, we will lift
like eagles to aeries. Let us bleed red blood everywhere
aaaaaaaand bear our scarlet blue wounds.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaLet Love love whomever it loves.
We will mark every soul with magic –yes! –
and return to the dust that’s prepared for us.
May we, the old, die young; and you, the young, live forever.
aaaaaaaMay we agree to return here again.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaLet Love love whomever it loves.
Previously published in a slightly different version in Emmett Wheatfall, Our Scarlet Blue Wounds (Newberg, Oregon: Fernwood Press, 2019).
Ten Economic Insights of Rudolf Steiner
Ten Economic Insights of Rudolf Steiner
“The whole Earth, considered as an economic organism, is the social organism. Yet this is not being taken into account anywhere. It is precisely because of this error that the whole science of political economy has grown so remote from reality. People want to establish principles that are meant to apply only to an individual cell. Hence, if you study the French theory of economy, you will find it is constituted different from English or German or other economic theories. But as economists, what we really need is an understanding of the social organism in its totality.”—Rudolf Steiner
Exactly ninety years ago Rudolf Steiner delivered his course on economics in Dornach, Switzerland. He gave fourteen lectures over a period of two weeks, and used the remaining time for seminar discussions in a question and answer format to deepen certain topics brought up by the participants. Reading Steiner’s largely ignored economic lectures today, one becomes aware that most of his concepts are still as fresh and counter to the mainstream as they were in 1922.
As we are entering an age of social, economic, and ecological disruption at this early stage of the twenty-first century, many people are beginning to realize that perhaps the most important root causes for this crisis originate in an economic thinking that is increasingly out of touch with the social, ecological, and spiritual realities of our time.
How, then, can we rethink and redefine the fundamental economic concepts that frame our discussions and shape our key institutions in society today?
This is the big question on the table today.
Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on economics may not seem like the most accessible reading. Yet, they offer a largely unused goldmine of fresh economic ideas that could not be more timely and relevant.
Here is a little ten-point guide that outlines some key ideas that he develops throughout these lectures. All ten ideas seem to me to be more pertinent and necessary today than they already were ninety years ago.
1. Economics today has to be based on a world economy, not a national economy. While many economists today would agree with this proposition, mainstream economic thought in our public conversation and in business schools is still organized around frameworks and mindsets that gravitate around the wealth of nations, rather than the well-being of all in our global economy today.
2. Economic realities today require us to shift our ego-centric frame of thought to an eco-centric mindset. Think about the current Euro crisis. Think about the Wall Street crisis in 2008. Think about the climate crisis ahead of us. What do they all boil down to? The same thing. That none of them can be solved within an economic framework that revolves around ego-system awareness. They all require an economic thought that revolves around eco-system awareness, or, in the words of Steiner, “altruism.” [1]
3. All economic value creation begins with nature and agriculture. Today many leading thinkers of the emerging new economy have started to make nature and agriculture a more central variable in economic thought. [2] Steiner’s economic thinking starts with nature, that is, work applied to nature, and continues with capital (organization and leadership) applied to work, that is, the division of labor. Organic agricultures—such as biodynamic agriculture, which happens to be one of the seedbeds of the emerging local living economy in the US today [3]—are, in Steiner’s view, microcosms of a closed loop economy.
4. Wages are not the price for labor, but the price for goods or services. Steiner proposes that work or labor is not a commodity. Hence it cannot have a price. What has a price are the fruits, the results of what we create. In a world in which we have 1.2 billion young people joining the job market during this decade and only 300 million jobs available for them, we face a shortage of about almost a billion jobs. Steiner’s framing of work as not a commodity, but more as a human right, points to a different way of searching for a solution that focuses on awakening and empowering the deeper entrepreneurial capacities of the human being.
5. Capital is not money but spirit-in-action. The essence of capital and money is that they are realized spirit—the realization of deep human creativity applied to economic value creation. This is certainly one of the most interesting propositions that stems from Steiner’s economic thinking, which leads to a number of interesting frameworks and suggestions.
6. The problem of our economy is a lack of balance between three types of money, resulting in capital congestion related speculative bubbles. Steiner suggests that there are three types of money, which differ in terms of their use: purchase money, lending money, and gift money. Purchase money is used for consumption expenses. Lending money is used for building up new enterprises and usually is more productive than money used just for consumption. The highest long-term productivity, however, comes with gift money, such as expenses for education, parenting, or cultivating the global environmental commons. While we have an oversupply of profit-seeking capital today (about 200 trillion dollars), we have a vast undersupply of gift money, which would be available for social entrepreneurs, schools, and other initiatives that try to cultivate our environmental, social, and cultural commons. Steiner’s framework here suggests that the financial meltdowns of our time are the result of not properly balancing the three main domains of money.
7. Aging of Money as a point of leverage? Today we know that the decoupling of the financial and the real economies is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Already, in 1922, Steiner suggested a possible structural solution for this: That money should, just like goods, “wear out” a little. Because, if it does not, it will create an unfair advantage for money relative to goods, which always tend to wear out. Thus, for the financial and the real economies to have an equal playing field, we need money that would “wear out”—that is, that incentivizes the user to use it as gift money before the end of its life cycle. Otherwise money and the real economy would be “unfair” competitors, which is kind of what we have today.
8. Awareness based self-regulation of the economic process. Steiner also proposes an evolution in our view of how markets work. He suggests a new way to think about coordination mechanisms by closing the feedback loop of economic actors, their collective action, and their awareness. The leverage point to improve the economic process is that the “process” is being observed at each stage and that the observers can instantly respond to what they see through their individual and collective actions and decision-making. Thus, Steiner’s view of evolving the market economy is to build in a higher level of whole systems awareness and self-regulation.
9. Imagine every human being would get an average amount of agricultural land. Another idea that sounded totally crazy in 1922 but has now already entered the discussion in 2012 is the concept that every human being would receive a certain amount of agricultural land in order to take care of it. All approaches to climate change and climate security based on human rights build on a very similar type of idea: that we all, all current (and future) human beings, share the same planet. Thus, we all should be given equal rights of use of global commons-based resources. But, as the Happy Planet Index (HPI) of the New Economics Foundation points out, the developed countries use way more of these resources than their fair share, while the opposite is true for the developing countries. [4] As this concept enters more and more into the global conversation, it will be used as a rationale for transferring capital and technology from places where there is too much (Global North) to places where there is too little (Global South and/or developing countries). Eventually, all economic thinking must be grounded in our one-planet reality.
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), founder of the biodynamic approach to agriculture, was a highly trained scientist and respected philosopher in his time, who later in his life came to prominence for his spiritual-scientific approach to knowledge called “anthroposophy.” Long before many of his contemporaries, Steiner came to the conclusion that western civilization would gradually bring destruction to itself and the earth if it did not begin to develop an objective understanding of the spiritual world and its interrelationship with the physical world. Steiner’s spiritual-scientific methods and insights have given birth to practical holistic innovations in many fields, including education, banking, medicine, psychology, the arts and, not least, agriculture. (Biodynamic Association)
Rudolf Steiner gave this complex sequence of dense, subtle, multileveled lectures and seminars to students of economics in Dornach, Switzerland, during the summer of 1922. The course reflects a lifetime of thinking on the subject and marks the conclusion of his intense five-year period of activism in the service of social, political, and economic issues.
During this time, which began as World War I was ending in 1917, he worked tirelessly to promote the cause of what he called “threefolding” (Dreigliederung), by which he meant rethinking the social order on the basis of clear separation and independence of the three fundamental spheres of activity that make up a society. He proposed three independent systems:
- an autonomous rights sphere (limited to judicial and political matters)
- an autonomous economic sphere (cooperative or associative by nature)
- and an autonomous spiritual-cultural sphere
Autonomy of these three spheres, Steiner believed, would allow a free, healthy, productive society and open the possibility of lasting peace.
Rethinking Economics is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the true nature of an economy and how it works. Steiner presents the basic elements of what it would take to create a just, socially responsible, and ecologically aware economy today. Visit | Steiner Books
This volume is a translation from German of Aufgaben einer neuen Wirtschaftswissenschaft, Bd.1, Nationalökonomischer Kurs (GA 340) and Aufgaben einer neuen Wirtschaftswissenschaft, Bd.2, Nationalökonomisches Seminar (GA 341), published by by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland.
10. We need concepts that are more flexible, fluid, and in synch. Steiner calls not only for a new economics, a new kind of economy, but for a new kind of economic thinking that coevolves with the changing reality in the field. Economic theory has to be different from the natural sciences that look at reality from outside. Research on the economy means being a participant in the reality that you are trying to describe. This type of participatory action research calls for different methods and concepts that are more flexible, fluid and dynamic, and that can coevolve with the reality that they mirror and are part of.
These are ten golden nuggets out of a much larger number of fresh and new ideas. I have just mentioned a few that stood out to me. Take your own journey through this wonderful material—let your own interest and questions be the guide.
The Ten Points above are meant only as a first spark to ignite that journey. Enjoy!
From Rethinking Economics: Lectures and Seminars on World Economics by Rudolf Steiner / SteinerBooks / December 2015. Forward by Otto Scharmer. Reprinted with permission of publisher.
Notes
- For more detail on ego-system vs. eco-system awareness, see my book, co-authored with Katrin Kaufer, Society 4.0: From Ego-system to Eco-system Economies, published by Berrett-Koehler.
- http://neweconomicsinstitute.org/
- http://www.livingeconomies.org/
- http://www.happyplanetindex.org/
Collective Trauma and Our Emerging Future
Collective Trauma and Our Emerging Future
Dr. Claus Otto Scharmer
MIT SENIOR LECTURER, FOUNDER OF THE PRESENCING INSTITUTE
Thomas Hübl
SPEAKER, AUTHOR, AND FOUNDER OF THE ACADEMY OF INNER SCIENCE
Thomas | I’m so happy that you are with us today, Otto. First of all, a very warm welcome and thank you for joining us so generously here at the Summit.
Otto | Thank you for having me. It’s a real joy and pleasure, Thomas, to reconnect with you personally after our first meeting here in Cambridge, and the virtual conversation we had a few months ago. I really look forward to continuing this conversation.
Thomas | I think that it’s perfect to have this conversation now, exploring a multidisciplinary approach to the phenomenon of collective trauma. How does it affect our social systems? How does it affect our political system? There are so many layers from personal health up to global questions.
Otto | The issue of trauma just in my own experience over the past decade or so, particularly over the past five or so years, seems to be increasingly coming up wherever I go. So, whenever you work with social systems, with deeper levels of systems change, you bump into that phenomenon. On an individual level, but very often on a collective level, we have to deal with the phenomenon of trauma. I’m not really any specialist on trauma, but from my professional expertise—which is awareness-based systems change, working with collective larger systems and deep change into learning processes—I’m bumping into it all the time.
Thomas | And something that you also told me in the pre-conversation that resonates a lot with my experience and working in this collective trauma process is, actually, that trauma and collective trauma creates absence. There is a part of me that is disembodied, there is a part of my emotional experience I cannot inhabit. There is maybe a part of my mental capacity that might shut down. There’s definitely a part of my relational capacity that is being hurt, and so on, into social systems. Because you worked a lot on the Theory U, which I think many people may have heard about, I would love to hear you speak a bit about the principle of absence or absencing that you developed.
Otto | Yes, I’m happy to do that. Some 28-plus years ago, I came here to MIT in Boston, because of the systems thinking framework, and really how to address the bigger issues of our time with that framework. It is basically the distinction between visible behavior—what appears more on the surface on the one hand—and that which doesn’t appear—the deeper structures, the paradigms of thought, and the deeper sources from which our thinking, from which awareness, consciousness and action, is arising from. So, it’s this distinction between symptoms and these deeper root issues. . . . And when you think about the symptoms today, in the Theory U context, I see three major divides happening in many countries and contexts and systems. The ecological divide, the social divide, and the spiritual divide, which arise from the disconnect from self to nature, self to other, and self to self. That’s just the background.
When we look at that, then the question of trauma really is, on the one hand, that history and many issues we have in our society are reenactments of trauma. Violence usually happens when you reactivate the trauma. We cannot understand the Middle East without the Crusades. We cannot understand it without the Holocaust. They are deeper trauma; they can be activated, and then they result in violence. From one point you can say, history is a repetition of a reenactment of trauma from the past. And there’s a lot of evidence for that. But on the other hand, I think that may also be blinding us when we are just limited to that perspective.
There’s also something new happening. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism with Hitler and Stalin and so on, that we hadn’t seen before. And in this century, something is happening that, again, cannot be understood with just a 20th century lens.
This image comes from my colleague in Cambridge, Kelvy Bird, who also is a cofounder of the Presencing Institute. And it depicts the current moment we are living in, which is a moment of disruption as seen on the left-hand side. And moment of disruption means we’re standing here, and the future is going to be different. We don’t know exactly how it will be different, we know less about that. But what we know the least about is actually how to move from here to there.
And the presencing perspective on this situation is a perspective that suggests that, in order to deal with disruption, in order to move from here to there, we have to go on a journey. In part, it is an outer journey, which means going to the edges of the system. And in part, it is an inner journey that connects to the deeper layers of our own experience. Because, if we connect to the true deep experience of the now, we realize that the future is already here. We realize that in our current experience, it’s not only based on the current reality or driven by the past, but that the future is already here in the deepest experience of the now. And the Theory U journey is basically a journey that brings together this outer and this inner journey.
When we talk about the current situation in the 21st century, one of the few things most people would agree on is that, yes, we do live in an age of disruption. That means the future is going to be different from the past. And we see, I believe, in all countries the same pattern, which is three types of responses. The first one is “same old, same old.” And that is something that, by the month, becomes less and less tenable. The two main responses that remain are: turning backward or leaning forward. Turning backward is basically grounded in, and operated by, a freeze reaction. Freezing the mind, the heart, and the will. Also known as ignorance, hate, and fear.
Leaning forward into something that we don’t know—leaning into the emerging future—requires us to open the mind, open the heart, and open the will, which now only works if we can access our capacity for curiosity, compassion, and courage. I call this the cycle of presencing. Becoming present and connecting with your highest future possibility. And the other one is absencing.
The journey of the ‘U’, or the journey of the presencing cycle, is basically a journey of seeing, sensing, and presencing. Presencing is really connecting to source. And the gateways, below, are the work of Francisco Varela, who is the founder of Mind & Life Institute and coauthor of On Becoming Aware. The essence of what he synthesized is the core process of becoming aware, where he synthesized meditation and phenomenology into three core capacities that he called suspending, redirecting, and letting go.
Those are the gateways into these capacities. Suspending old habits of thought leads to seeing with fresh eyes. That’s the open mind. Redirecting, now, in the social realm, I interpret as kind of looking at a situation not through my eyes, but the eyes of the other—empathic seeing and listening of the heart. And then the letting go, is letting go of the old and ‘letting come’ of what is wanting to emerge.
Now, the interesting thing about absencing is that it’s the exact mirror image. So, it’s not about seeing, but blinding. It’s not about sensing, but it’s de-sensing. Getting stuck inside your skin as an individual, but also in a collective skin. And it’s not about connecting to source and presencing, but disconnecting from your highest future possibility.
Absencing, and the gateways into that—denial, entrenching, and holding on—I probably don’t need to explain that we see a lot of this in our current society. For example, President Trump by now has told more than 12,000 lies and false or misleading statements since he has been in office. How did that impact his popularity? Not at all. Not in any significant way. And that’s kind of the post-truth politics that we live in. It’s a collective condition that we have in more and more countries.
We see societies falling apart. You can watch it here in the United States, but also in many other countries. It is a social phenomenon that we see in many different forms: we see it in politics, we also see it in the economy, and we see it in communication. Blinding and de-sensing means you are disconnecting horizontally. You’re disconnecting from what’s going on around you. And the absencing is the vertical disconnect. You disconnect from your higher self, from your highest future possibility.
One of the most significant developments over the past decades is that capitalism has shifted from a financial capitalism to a surveillance capitalism, which Shoshana Zuboff describes in her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. So, manipulation, blaming others, we see those phenomena. And the result is enacting violence. I think about violence in terms of three. There’s direct violence and there’s structural violence. Structural violence is all violence where you have victims, but not a person seen as a perpetrator. For example, hunger, underdevelopment—these are forms of violence that we see in many countries. That’s structural violence. It’s the economic structure that’s behind it. It’s not an individual; it’s our collective actions. And then I think that there is actually a third type of violence, which I call attentional violence. And with that I mean attentional violence is to not see another person, another human being, in terms of their highest future possibility.
When you are not seen in a society, that’s a form of violence that is inflicted upon you, resulting in destruction of nature, other, and self—the three divides I mentioned earlier. Presencing is basically ‘letting come’; crystallizing; and giving birth to, prototyping, and then embodying, the new. It’s really about bringing something into reality, a dormant deeper potential. Kind of allowing that, and birthing that into reality—allowing something to grow within and then move into reality. . . . I think this might be a helpful contribution. Because it is a framework and a language that allows us to not only look at the trauma that has been generated in the past, but also to look at the deeper making of trauma and direct structural and attentional violence that is happening now, unique to our century. And in that, each of us is participating on either side of the equation, one way or another.
Thomas | Yes; first of all, amazing. I like the word “absencing” because I think it describes the absent part, the unseen part, which is buried and we don’t really know that it’s buried. I think that’s a very powerful description of many symptoms that are actually the result of what I would call the collective trauma field.
I often describe the collective trauma field as: imagine you’re growing up in an apartment and, all your life, you never took a step outside. And one day somebody visits you and asks you, “How does the house look from outside?” And you can’t tell them because you never saw it. You just saw your apartment from the inside. What I’m saying is that I believe none of us has ever seen the world outside of the thousands of years of trauma. But the thing is, the absent part of us is usually absent and only visible through symptoms, but never is the thing itself.
Maybe you can expand a little more on the danger of our time, also given technology. You have talked about steering collective behavior, manipulating collective behavior, and many other symptoms or issues. So, what is the potential dark side or dangerous side in our time with the current tech development? And maybe, what is a human centric or humane way of developing technology so that it really serves us?
Otto | When you look at the absencing cycle, it is kind of supercharged by technology and by tech companies. And that’s basically why Shoshana Zuboff and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism analysis is so important. Because you could say today in the world, there are really two narratives going on. It’s the absencing story and all the problems around that. And then there is the deeper human awakening that’s happening across the planet.
That’s the other narrative. And that is the most important story not told. Why? Because the whole collective conversation is absorbed through the amplification of the absencing that happens through social media, that happens through all sorts of traditional media. For example, when you share fake news, your tweet is 40 percent more likely—according to a recent MIT study—to be reshared than accurate news. In other words, the reason why we see an amplification of absencing, is that for the big data companies like Facebook, it’s better business. That’s factor number one. It’s the business model, it’s the core of the business model.
And the second one has to do with dark money. So, dark money is very visible here in the United States. In the early 2000s, the majority of people wanted a carbon tax; they wanted to tax carbon in order to deal with climate change. And then the climate denial industry got created by an investment of $500 billion through the Koch brothers and all their networks. It’s well described in the book, Dark Money. And the result is that, basically, the political class, and the parliamentarian decision-makers, and the public media, but also what happens in universities, is a function of what serves that special interest group. So, number two is special interest groups. And the influence these small groups have is a disproportionate influence on the political process.
These two problems point at two deeper evolutionary issues in our current moment: the evolution of our economy toward wellbeing for all, and the evolution of our democracy toward governance systems that are more direct, more dialogic, and also more distributive.
Technology is a function of the intention that we use when we design, distribute, and use technology. And the intention that Facebook is using, for example, is profit maximization, which means maximizing user engagement, which maximizes advertising revenue. And that’s why Facebook is one of the most valuable companies in the world. But the unintentional side effect is that it makes everyone’s life miserable. And it’s undermining democracy in many countries in the world. You could say that’s a lack of awareness we are amplifying.
Thomas | What I see in your Theory U model is, I see the presencing and the source space is the space where we can rewrite evolution or human history while we are living it. It’s kind of a rewriting process. It’s like you can change the letters in the presence.
And the presence is also like the timelessness you experience in deep contemplation or meditation; it is actually the only way to see the current structures or possibilities or tendencies. And through an awareness process, bring in a new possibility, a new imprint. And it’s also my experience in the facilitation of large group collective trauma processes, that actually, ‘staying with’ is such a refined process. Just sometimes ‘staying with’ the transference patterns of people on to us, and what a person radiates in their inner architecture of the nervous system into the environment, and which tendencies a person radiates into his or her environment is affecting the environment. And I think that’s only possible in a state of presence.
But the past that we often talk about is the unintegrated history that becomes the ‘other.’ And in your words, with the absencing, it becomes the blaming—it becomes not being able to include, like othering. But also othering in space time, in the future, in the past. We fragment life. And the past is the unintegrated energy that affects me right now. Fears that affect me now. And that’s why the function that we talk about—‘staying with’—sounds, at the beginning, very simple. But in fact, is one of, I believe, the most complex functions that a facilitator basically needs to learn and express through experience.
‘Staying with’ is the capacity to witness creation. Because if you’re only in creation, you’re blind. You’re blinded by it, because you can’t see creation. So, you need contemplative practices in order to be able to witness and presence the process of creation.
Otto | That is so interesting, Thomas. So, what comes to my mind listening to you is, the ‘staying with.’ It may look a little bit as if absencing is the opposite of presencing, but that’s not true. In reality, the presencing is grounded in the ‘staying with,’ and in the deeper connection, and holding the space.
You could say fear is—you get too small—and then there’s really nothing. And the opposite of that is fanaticism. But courage is the holding of the space in between. Presencing is not the opposite of absencing. It’s kind of the middle way. There are always two different forms in which absencing can manifest. And that’s also true for our current age. I can move too much into ‘anti-this, anti-that.’ That’s one problem, and how absencing shows up and, basically, moves into direct violence one way or another. And we see the uptick in violence. But the other form of absencing shows up and is enabled through cynicism. Through disconnect, through not caring. That’s why this ‘staying with’ is a real key capacity that we need to build. Not only on the level of the individual, but also on the level of the collective.
Thomas | How can we support systems to go through such a process?
Otto | ‘Staying with’ is grounded in a number of deeper holding capacities that I will talk about in just a moment. And that are really, I believe, critical enabling conditions for this larger shift of consciousness that is beginning to happen in our society right now; to really bring that to the level of impact or the level of scale that’s necessary today. We have super-amplification in absencing through all kinds of social media and so forth. We do not have these amplification mechanisms on the presencing space. And what we need for that is awareness-based social technologies that make a system sense and see itself. . . . So, that’s kind of what we have been developing over the past 15 years, mostly through experimentation at the Presencing Institute.
And this is just one method that we have been coming up with under the leadership of my colleague and cofounder of the Presencing Institute, Arawana Hayashi. It’s something we call Social Presencing Theater.
And based on what I said earlier—I talked about the ecological divide, the social divide, the spiritual divide—we always include these three roles. Ecological divide, how? The voice of Mother Earth.
And the social divide. How do you bring that in? Well, bring in the voice of the most marginalized people. That is, something different, someone different in each system. And then the spiritual divide is often kind of the voice of the future. It’s kind of the voice of the children, born or not yet born. It’s bringing in that. You need to step into the feeling of that role, and then you embody that with your body, with your gesture. And with a sentence that is summarizing that. And all that is being recorded and reflected on later.
So, it’s less facilitator driven and more like a collective mapping exercise that takes a deep scan into the deeper layers of the social system or the social field.
We need awareness-based social technologies that will allow us to move from individual to collective seeing. And from collective seeing to the deeper levels of sensing and connecting to source. And that’s in these tools. That’s the question of social technology to some degree. That often either we don’t have, or we don’t know exactly how to use. And that’s, I think, where we have a huge leverage point, because if these capacities build more, I think we’ll see a kind of shift from ecosystem to ecosystem awareness a lot more going forward. What comes to your mind, Thomas?
Thomas | I loved the emphasis on embodiment. Because if you go out on the street you might think, “Okay, everybody is in a body.” But actually, the amount of body that we do not inhabit, and that maybe we are not even aware that we are not inhabiting is, I think, bigger than we might expect. And so I love your emphasis on what it means to come into alignment with the body.
I think it’s very powerful. And also that it has the capacity to bring the future closer, so it has both dimensions. It’s this Global Social Witnessing, which practices how to find out how the system is aware of itself or not—through contemplative practices and the monitoring of the physical, emotional, and mental self.
Otto | Absolutely. The real result of such a process is that you switch on a capacity on the level of the collective. And that it has a lot to do with witnessing, which is switching on a higher level of awareness. And coming back to this question: so how do we actually deal with trauma? Not only by understanding the mechanism, but by creating transformative healing spaces.
A lot has to do with creating these holding spaces at a level that can really hold the complexity of very difficult and traumatic experiences of the past. And that has to do with the deeper capacity of unconditional witnessing. And then, as we deepen this process toward the open heart, there is this holding of the other. It’s not only seeing but you’re also holding the current moment that wants to emerge. Unconditional love as a second quality is really critical for building up these deeper spaces. And the third quality that we found really critical has to do with the gesture of supporting—being 100 percent in the service of the evolution of the other. And that is grounded in unconditional confidence. Unconditional confidence in the capacity of the other to step into his or her own highest possibility. But it’s also a confidence in the capacity of the collective.
So, the seeing, holding, and supporting is a way of how I relate to the other, that is based on collapsing the boundary between me and the other more and more. And really putting myself into the service and support of the evolution of another and the evolution of the collective.
Thomas | And also the unconditional confidence; that I really have the confidence in you doing your part of the orchestra and you playing your instrument well. And you’re trusting that, or you’re confident that, I am playing mine. That’s an amazing relief when nowadays, many people are paralyzed in the enormity of the global challenges and what they can do in such a situation. It seems meaningless. No, it’s not meaningless. Like when I’m one musician in the big philharmonic orchestra, my part is important. But I’m not playing all the parts. I would be totally overwhelmed if I had to play 30 instruments. But if I just have to play mine, but I am really passionate about playing mine, and you are passionate about playing yours, and then we are playing together and we’re listening to the conductor maybe, to the organizing principle of the system.
I’m very much looking forward to continuing this. There are so many more things I could now continue with. So, thank you so much, Otto. I don’t know if there’s anything you want to end this with?
Otto | I feel the same, Thomas. We’ll find ways to continue this conversation one way or another. Looking forward to that. Thank you so much.
This is an edited version of a conversation between Otto Scharmer and Thomas Hübl during the “Collective Trauma Online Summit” in October 2019.
Both Otto and Thomas will be part of the Global Social Witnessing Conference.Lab, March 30th to April 2nd 2020, in Witten/Herdecke, Germany. There, they will continue their inspiring dialogue!
More information: http://www.globalsocialwitnessing.org
Collective Trauma Online Summit: https://collectivetraumasummit.com
