David Korten’s new essay expands the human story
David Korten has recently published A New Story for a New Economy: To Find Our Human Place in a Living Universe, an essay that continues his exploration of redefining human relationships with ourselves, the planet, and the universe. In this excerpt from his introductory article for Yes! magazine, he describes three core themes which will later be expanded into a book.
“We humans are living beings birthed and nurtured by a living Earth in a living universe. To survive and thrive, we must learn to live as responsible contributing members of the whole of Earth’s community of life.
Obvious as this truth might be, we currently organize ourselves as if we are money-seeking robots inhabiting a dead Earth in a dead universe. This potentially fatal error explains why we are in deep trouble.
The wisdom of traditional peoples, the lessons of religious prophets, and current findings of science together confirm the true story that lives in each human heart and defines our authentic nature. To find our way to a vibrant future, we must acknowledge and share with one another that which we already know.
I elaborate the conclusions of my quest in “A New Story for a New Economy: To Find Our Human Place in a Living Universe.” This web essay connects three themes:
1. The theme of a Living Universe Cosmology that recognizes and celebrates all being as the manifestation of the spiritual ground of creation seeking to know itself through a creative, self-organizing unfolding toward ever-greater complexity, beauty, awareness, and possibility.
2. The theme of a Living Earth Community comprised of countless trillions of individual intelligent, choice making organisms that function as an adaptive, resilient, evolving community to maintain the conditions essential to the existence, health, and vitality of organic life.
3. The theme of a Living Earth Community Economy by which we humans organize to meet our own needs as responsible contributing members of the Living Earth Community that birthed and nurtures us.
I urge you to read the essay and reflect on the questions in the discussion guide on page 24. Then, extend an invitation to selected friends to read the essay and join you in your home or community gathering place to share reflections in search of a deeper understanding of your respective beliefs, stories, and possibilities.
Beginning on page 25, I share the personal story behind the essay. Some readers suggest that reading the personal story first provides a context that helps to bring the essay more fully alive.
You can download the complete essay as a pdf here.”
I think it’s integrally important to recover stories validated by science and by a direct contact experience with LIFE in the subtle non physical world; a mixture of the demands of modernity and the first person experiential basis that many premodern peoples had as a living relationship with nature. It is not enough to recover ancient stories and to choose one from among them. The “re-enchantment” requires a throrough validation for reason and for experience. In this, we also need to explore the psychic, intuitive and “paranormal” with the naturalness of pre modern peoples and to verify its reality experiential and experimentally in a personal and collective fashion.
as a Peruvian with some inkling remaining about the non-physical (even if modern Peru is fast losing that sensitivity) I’d say that it’s not enough to create a new story however, vast and inspiring and with a more “integral” (post postmodern?) awareness to be more sensitive and inspired. It is also necessary to really experience the living meaningful conscious life within nature in its subtle aspects (the realm of non physical minds and ‘spirits’ – not just “Spirit” with a capital “S”). If we are personally unable to perceive that much, we can accept that others following the same experientuial method are doing it and verifyong that aspect of reality. culturally acknowledged, worldviews and explanatory systems should accompany that re-dicovery of a multiplicity of worlds that affect and interact with our physical world.
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