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By David C. Korten

The human species is entering a period of dramatic and potentially devastating change as the result of forces of our own creation that are now largely beyond our control. It is within our means, however, to shape a positive outcome if we choose to embrace the resulting crisis as an opportunity to lift ourselves to a new level of species maturity and potential.

The outcome will depend in largemeasure on the prevailing stories that shape our understanding of the traumatic time at hand —its causes and its possibilities. Perhaps themost difficult and yet essential aspect of this work is to change our stories. If we succeed, future generationsmay look back on this as a time of profound transition and speak of it as the time of the Great Turning. If we fail, our timemay instead be known simply as the tragic time of the Great Unraveling.

Histories written by the victors of Empire's endless wars, intrigues and deceits have greatly exaggerated Empire's accomplishments while neglecting the costs and lost opportunities. Current attempts by the world's imperial elites to salvage the power and privilege of Empire are accelerating the collapse of critical social and environmental systems and threatening the survival of human civilization, if not the human species.

We now have the means to end the 5000-year era of Empire that has reproduced hierarchies of domination at all levels of human organization.A global cultural and spiritual awakening is building momentumtoward the birthing of a new era of Earth Community based on a radically democratic partnershipmodel of organizing human relationships. This awakening gives us cause for hope.

There are those who say that the violence and greed of Empire are defining characteristics of our human nature, that ruthless competition for power and material goods is inescapable. They say our impulses must be disciplined either by central authority or by market competition, both of which create hierarchies of power that consign the majority of humans to lives of desperation and suppress the creative potential of the species.

The truth is at once more complex and more hopeful. Our human nature actually embodies many possibilities, ranging from violence and greed to love and service. Contemporary human societies fail to manifest the higher-order potentials of love and service, not because of an inherent flaw in our human nature, but because the dominator relations of Empire actively suppress the development and expression of this potential. As a species, we now face both the imperative and the opportunity to say no to Empire, grow up, and accept the responsibilities of mature adulthood.

Our failing environmental and social systems create the imperative. The global revolution in transportation and communications is creating the opportunity. Leadership in actualizing the possibilities is coming from people everywhere who are making the choice to walk away from Empire's false choices and engage the work of turning our cultures, economies, and politics from dominator to partnership relations.

The Great Turning begins with a cultural and spiritual awakening. Economic and political turning can only follow a turning in cultural values frommoney andmaterial excess to life and spiritual fulfillment, fromrelationships of domination to relationships of partnership, froma belief in our limitations to a belief in our possibilities, and fromfearing our differences to rejoicing in our diversity.

The values shift of the cultural turning calls us to turn from measuring well-being by the size of our yachts and bank accounts to measuring well-being by the health of our families, communities, and natural environment. It leads us fromeconomic policies that raise those at the top to policies that raise those at the bottom, from economic plutocracy to economic democracy, fromhoarding to sharing, and fromthe rights of ownership to the responsibilities of stewardship.

The economic turning creates the necessary conditions for a turn from a democracy of money to a democracy of people, from passive to active citizenship, from competition for individual advantage to cooperation formutual advantage, fromretributive justice to restorative justice, and fromsocial order by coercion to social order bymutual responsibility and accountability.

Everything is going to change. The question is whether we let the changes play out in increasingly destructive ways or embrace the deepening crisis as our time of opportunity. Now as never before we must unleash the creative potential of the species and direct it to democratizing our cultures and institutions and bringing ourselves into balance with one another and Earth. It is the greatest creative challenge the species has ever faced. Success would seem a futile dream, except that all around the planet momentum is already building.

David C. Korten is a proponent of a planetary system of local living economies and the author of several books, including When Corporations Rule theWorld.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher. From The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community , copyright © 2006 by David C. Korten, Berrett- Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, CA. All rights reserved. www.bkconnection.com

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