The Great Turning: Into the Future

"Managers and executives in large corporations, from GE to Wal-Mart, understand issues concerning the environment in a way that would have been radical in the nonprofit world not even ten years ago. Essentially, the nonprofit and social entrepreneurship sector is a source of memes that are moving into the governmental and for-profit world." - Paul Hawken ["Blessed Unrest" p. 152]

"There are two worldviews that represent opposing forces in the world. One is the worldview of interconnectedness, of understanding that all life is sacred, that all people and nature are interconnected; wealth is shared, actions are love-based and creative, nonviolence is the path towards peace, and survival depends on partnership with others and with nature. The other worldview is one of separation: life is separated into them and us, good and evil, with survival depending on competition and domination over other people and over nature. Capitalism has perpetuated the worldview of separation. Capitalism teaches individualism and competition, leads us to think our self-worth is based on material wealth, and gives us the false feeling that only money, rather than community, brings security; thus, we live in fear that we don't have enough for ourselves or that what we have is going to be taken away." - Judy Wicks ["The Local Living Economy", Resurgence, March 2006, p. 35]

Joanna Macy apparently coined the term "The Great Turning" in the 1990s. She describes it as three layered: holding actions in defense of Earth, creation of sustainability, and a paradigm shift of values toward deep ecology and ecocentrism. David Korten used her term as the title for his recent book "The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community", though it says little about many facets of Ecocentrism described in ECOSHIFT.

President Jimmy Carter once said (presumably when he was President), "In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose." Statements like this perhaps initiated the Great Turning away from consumption and materialism and toward community and respect.

David Korten and Paul Hawken have been very influential voices about the economics involved in creating the need for and resulting from The Great Turning. Korten's 2000 lecture to the Schumacher Society, "Creating a Post-Corporate World", is a fine overview of the subjects of ECOSHIFT. In his various writings he has a lot to say about what a fair market economy and Earth community would look like. In "Blessed Unrest", Paul Hawken describes a huge range of culture-changing organizations in terms of types of groups: Keepers, Watchers, Friends, Defenders, Coalitions, Alliances, Networks, Street Performers, Culture Jammers, and Real Billionaires. His million groups are illustrated in Hays' "Wars in the Woods" with regard to forest practices, in Mitchell's "Big Box Swindle" for opposition to chain stores and support for local businesses, and in Schwab's "Deeper Shades of Green" for local anti-pollution groups. Magazines that cover the Great Turning and the many groups involved in it include Resurgence, The Utne Reader, E: the Environmental Magazine, YES! A Journal of Positive Futures, and Orion Magazine. Resurgence provides fine, in depth articles by many of the movement's well-known names. It is my favorite though it is published in Great Britain and thus has a British rather than an American slant. (I would also like to recognize here a number of fine Ecoshift magazines that have ceased publication: Timeline, Earth Light, Earth Ethics, Wild Earth, Whole Earth, and Natural New England.)

Other writings about The Great Turning include "Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth" by Lester Brown, who says: "An eco-economy will affect every facet of our lives. It will alter how we light our homes, what we eat, where we live, how we use our leisure time, and how many children we have. It will give us a world where we are part of nature, instead of estranged from it". The booklet "Global Consciousness Change: Indicators of an Emerging Paradigm", by Duane Elgin and Coleen LeDrew, includes suggestions for starting a study circle.

I'm not sure why so much more of The Great Turning seems to happen on the West Coast than on the East Coast, but the BIG annual event is the Bioneers Conference in California. Finally in October 2008, the first Northern New England Bioneers Conference was held near me in Portland Maine. (Too bad I only heard about it when it was already happening.)

Certain companies in the corporate world have led the way into the future. One of them is Tom's of Maine, makers of toothpaste and similar items. For a time, every package of toothpaste produced by Tom's included Jane Goodall's "Four Rays of Hope". Goodall said "As we move toward the millennium it is easy to be overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness.... Yet I do have hope." and she gives four reasons:

1. "We have at last begun to admit to the problems that threaten the survival of life on earth. And we are problem-solving creatures."
2. "[N]ature is amazingly resilient."
3. "[Y]oung people around the world" have "tremendous energy, enthusiasm, and commitment".
4. The "human spirit" is "indomitable".

"So let us move into the next millennium with hope…. Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace violence and intolerance with understanding and compassion. And love."

Extremes of Worldview

Although stated as dichotomies, these pairs of terms should really be seen as a continua; most of these continua are discussed elsewhere in ECOSHIFT.

These continua may be double-peaked, with most individuals positioning themselves closer to one end or to the other. I believe this extremist tendency arises from a true dichotomy between fundamental beliefs:

1. Humanity, the highest life form on Earth and in the Universe, is the culmination of Creation. Earth and the Universe are uniquely designed to support humanity.
2. There are many and ever-changing life forms on Earth and in the Universe. All species, including humans, are evolving into something else.

Daniel Quinn, or the gorilla "Ishmael" who speaks for him, shows how these opposing beliefs differentiate between Takers and Leavers. Takers attempt to obtain everything that they want and take it now; Leavers satisfy themselves with what they really need and leave the rest for future generations.

Competition or Cooperation

There is little disagreement among proponents of The Great Turning that these stories need to be replaced, but there is disagreement about how to do it and what to replace them with. At times this has led to competition and rancor, such as the conflict between deep ecologists and ecofeminists in the 1990s (see the Ecofeminism chapter). Other areas of controversy include the relationship between competition and cooperation, and the question of which countries need to reduce consumption first and by how much. I use these here as examples, but it is fair to say that almost everything in this book is controversial in one way or another.

Proponents of The Great Turning frequently emphasize that we must turn away from the intense competition inherent in social Darwinism and replace it with a spirit of cooperation. Because ecoshifters respect the natural world, we like to use it as an example of how humans could do things better. In "The Great Turning" [p. 275], David Korten says "How long would the forest ecosystem survive and prosper if the individual organisms lived by the neoliberal economic principle of unfettered competition for short-term individual advantage?", and elsewhere, "The organizing principle of life is partnership, not domination." He is far from alone in over-romanticizing the cooperative aspects of natural communities in an effort to downplay the competitive aspects. Ecologists, however, know that while organisms always exist within a community of life, they must struggle to do so in the face of competition. If nature were such a friendly place, organisms would not have to produce thousands to millions of offspring in order to pass on their genes; for most species, most offspring are killed before maturity by members of their own species, by predation from other species, and by competition for food and energy. Cooperation, whether in parenting by eider ducks, or in symbiosis between alga and fungus in lichens, develops when it helps a species to grow and reproduce itself. Elisabet Sahtouris says "One can discern in evolution a repeating pattern in which aggressive competition leads to the threat of extinction, which is then avoided by the formation of cooperative alliances." Nature is not a community of cooperation, but it is a community of interdependence. Both cooperation and competition are inherent components of Creation. We need not apply human ethics to judge either as good or bad. The difficulty is not with competition, per se, for instance in sports, but with its tendency in humans to lead to disrespect. Competition has been fundamental to continuing creation on Earth; but only humans have turned it into arrogance.

Competitive arrogance leads nations into opposing efforts to change. The Kyoto protocol failed to substantially reduce carbon emissions because the United States and several other large countries were unwilling to reduce their energy consumption. The argument continues over who should "go first", and how much. Should all nations reduce at the same rate, say 3% per year? Or should large nations reduce at a faster rate than small nations? Or should developing nations stop making things worse by trying to reach American levels? Or should the most affluent nations make large reductions while the least affluent increase in order to reach global per capita equity. No scenario has been proposed on which all nations can agree. Consequently there is not much progress. I say it's time for the United States to show some leadership qualities instead of its usual chauvinism about maintaining our way of life.

The Happy Planet Index

Conceptually, the HPI is straight forward and intuitive:
     HPI = (Life Satisfaction x Life Expectancy x beta) / (Ecological Footprint + alpha)
Life expectancy at birth and the per capita ecological footprint (see the Sustainability chapter) can be calculated with reasonable accuracy. Life satisfaction is evaluated by polling questionnaires such as the one for individuals on the HPI web site. Life Satisfaction is multiplied by Life Expectancy to give a higher value for the same satisfaction over a longer life span. Dividing by the Ecological Footprint makes the HPI go down as the footprint goes up. The constants alpha and beta are described in the initial HPI global report (available as a PDF download). The beta multiplier simply sets the optimum value at roughly 100. The alpha constant ensures that an approach to zero footprint does not lead to an infinite HPI. My personal HPI from the on-line questionnaire came out as 63, a fair bit lower than the 84 optimum but way above the average American value of 29.

The Wikipedia entry "Happy Planet Index" shows a world map and an ordered list of HPI by countries. Central American and Caribbean countries dominate the top ten. European countries are led by Austria at 61st. Columbia, Cuba, and Viet Nam are near the top of list, but the United States is 150 out of 178, which is not something to be proud of. Clearly a nation does not have to have a high footprint to be happy. Although the HPI is controversial with respect to data inputs and calculations, it has rapidly become widely discussed. Google returns over 50,000 entries for a concept less than two years old.

In spite of conflict and debate, the pace of The Great Turning toward sustainability within Earth's support systems increases rapidly. The remainder of ECOSHIFT describes the various spiritual beliefs that underlie turning to an ecocentric worldview.