Ted, Thanks for this. rkm http://cyberjournal.org ============================================================================ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 15:56:13 -0500 To: •••@••.••• (Richard Moore) [and others] From: ted lumley Subject: Signs of the coming revolution. dear all, an excerpt from an interesting article in the Utne Reader, along with some appended thoughts; #5 Signs of the Coming Revolution Beyond the empty campaign rhetoric that passes for public debate today lie the seeds of a dramatic cultural and political transformation. In 50 years, America will be a very different place. And surprise! It might be better than you dare imagine. Here's why. The 'five reasons why' in this article in the Nov Dec 2000 issue of the UTNE reader give a coherent ring (which deserves our nurturing!); 1. The Resurgence of Citizen's Movements, Paul Hawken 2. The Graying of America (of the developed world societies), Gay Gaer Luce 3. The Rising Challenge to Corporate Control of Our Lives, David C. Korten 4. Our Rediscovery of the World's Mysteries, James Redfield 5. A New Connected Generation, Margaret Wheatley Here's an excerpt from the `citizen's movements' portion; In the United States, more than 30,000 citizens' groups, non-governmental organizations, and foundations are addressing the issue of social and ecological sustainability in the most complete sense of the word. Worldwide, their number exceeds 100,000. Together, they address a broad array of issues, including environmental justice, ecological literacy, public policy, conservation, women's rights and health, population growth, renewable energy, corporate reform, labor rights, climate change, trade rules, ethical investing, ecological tax reform, water conservation, and much more. These groups follow Ghandi's imperatives. Some resist, others create new structures, patterns and means. The groups tend to be local, marginal, poorly funded and overworked. It is hard for most groups not to feel justified anxiety that they could perish in a twinkling. At the same time, a deeper, extraordinary pattern is emerging. If you ask these groups for their principles, frameworks, conventions, models, or declarations, you will find that they do not conflict. Never before in history has this happened. In the past, movements that became powerful started with a unified or centralized set of ideas (Marxism, Christianity, Freudianism) and disseminated them, creating power struggles over time as the core mental model or dogma was changed, diluted, or revised. This new sustainability movement did not start this way. Its supporters do not agree on everything --- nor should they --- but remarkably, they share a basic set of fundamental understandings about the earth, how it functions, and the necessity of fairness and equity for all people in partaking of its life-giving systems. This shared understanding is arising spontaneously from different economic sectors, cultures, regions, and cohorts. And it is spreading throughout this country and the world. No one started it this worldview, no one is in charge of it, no orthodoxy is restraining it. I believe it is the fastest-growing and most powerful movement in the world today, unrecognizeable to the American media because it is not centralized, based on power, or led by charismatic white males. As external conditions continue to worsen socially, environmentally, and politically, organizations working towards sustainability multiply and gain more supporters. ~^~ i would agree with this author and would suggest that this new form of movement is an `inductive movement' as per the appended model discussed in one of our 'sharing circle' dialogues, in contrast with the western tradition of `assertive movements' in my view, the challenge is for the participants to provide a mirrored view of themselves in the course of their individual conscious movements so as to nurture the growth of coherency, as in the container-constituent-codynamics of a hurricane. this article by paul hawken et al is a step in this direction. cheers, ted ============================================================================
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