大象传媒

Those who follow my work are aware that I believe a viable human future depends on navigating a deep cultural and institutional transformation grounded in a story of unrealized human possibility. For the past two years, I’ve been on a quest to frame a story that reflects the depth and breadth of human knowledge and points the way to an essential cultural and institutional transformation of our human relationships with one another and Earth.

The quest has led to a simple self-evident truth with deep roots in traditional wisdom cultures:

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.

My next project is a short book that further develops the framework of the Living Earth Economy; will be released in February 2015 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

In June 2015, the 20th anniversary edition of When Corporations Rule the World will be released. The original 1st edition text will be updated with new chapters, laying out how the consolidation of corporate power has progressed since the original publication in 1995, with the continued deepening of the resulting social and environmental system failure, and the subsequent development and trajectory of the citizen resistance and shift to a Living Earth frame presented in Change the Story, Change the Future.