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Saturday, July 20, 2013

Making Change Happen

             Making Change Happen: A Three-Fold Strategy

To turn the human course, change the framing story, create a new reality, and change the rules.
This is part thirty-one of a series of blogs based on excerpts adapted from the 2nd edition of Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. I wrote Agenda to spur a national conversation on economic policy issues and options that are otherwise largely ignored. This blog series is intended to contribute to that conversation. —DK

Chess, photo by William Hartz
Photo by William Hartz
As explained in my New Economy 2.0 blog on “The Story of a New Economy,” the power of authentic culture stories gives civil society the ultimate advantage in the contest for the human future. Stories alone will not, of course, bring down the institutions of Empire. Nor should we welcome the inevitable chaos that the collapse of Empire will bring if we have not first laid a foundation of the new rules, relationships, and institutions of a New Economy.
Social systems self-organize around ideas and relationships. They are living, complex, dynamic, and constantly evolving as they and their members learn from shared experience. The organism, not the machine, provides the appropriate metaphor. The relevant knowledge resides not with outside experts but with the people who populate the system. The challenge for those who strive to be agents of transformational change is to help members of their group, community, or society recognize, organize, and use that knowledge in ever more effective ways.
Through the dynamics of societal scale social learning processes, people innovate, create, and learn to relate in new ways that enhance their shared well-being. Individual learning translates into community learning that translates into species learning.
The overall process has three primary elements that frame a powerful societal-scale change strategy.
  1. Change the defining stories of the mainstream culture. My previous New Economy 2.0 blog made the case that “Every Great Social Movement” begins with an idea carried forward through conversations that challenge and ultimately displace a prevailing cultural story. The civil rights movement is changing the cultural story on race. The women’s movement is changing the story on gender. The environmental movement is changing the story on the human relationship to nature. Through public presentations, books, magazines, talk shows, and the Internet’s many communications tools, millions of people are now spreading stories of the possibilities of a New Economy.
  2. Create a new economic reality from the bottom up. Many of those who have been inspired by some aspect of the New Economy story are already engaged in initiatives that are building the foundation of strong local living economies. They are establishing and supporting locally owned human-scale businesses and family farms that create regional self-reliance in food, energy, and other basic essentials. They are moving their money to local banks and credit unions, retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency, and changing land-use policies to favor compact communities, reduce auto dependence, and reclaim agricultural and forest lands. By creating a new reality on the ground their actions open opportunities for new personal choices, demonstrate the possibilities of the new story, and build a base for effective political action.
  3. Change the rules to support the values and institutions of the emergent new reality. The rules put in place by Wall Street lobbyists put the economic rights of global financiers and corporations ahead of the economic rights of ordinary people, place-based communities, and even nations. As we change the story and build appropriate institutions from the bottom up, we gain the political traction needed to change the rules to support democratic self-determination at the lowest feasible level of systems organization.
Successful social movements are emergent, evolving, radically self-organizing, and involve the dedicated efforts of many people, each finding the role that best uses his or her gifts and passions.
My life path has led to a somewhat unusual interconnected engagement with all three strategic elements. I participated in founding YES! Magazine to communicate the stories of human the future it is ours to create and serve as its board chair. I am a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, which supports communities across the United States and Canada in growing the New Economy from the bottom up. And I co-chair the New Economy Working Group, which is framing and advancing a New Economy policy agenda.
Social systems self-organize around ideas and relationships. They are living, complex, dynamic, and constantly evolving as they and their members learn from shared experience.
Social movements grow and evolve, not through top-down direction, but around framing ideas and mutually supportive relationships. New ideas gain traction or not depending on their inherent appeal and utility. As individual groups find one another, new alliances may emerge or not, depending on what works for those involved in the moment. Some alliances are fleeting; others endure.
As social movements develop, multiple sources of leadership are essential. There are many individuals and organizations whose work incrementally influences the whole. Any individual or group, however that presumes to be the leader of the whole or aspires to organize a central coordinating body to impose order on the chaos does not understand the process. Self-organizing chaos is integral to the movement building process and essential to its success.
[Next: Are You a Culture Worker?]

David Korten author pic
David Korten (livingeconomiesforum.org) is the author of Agenda for a New Economy, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is board chair of YES! Magazine and co-chair of the New Economy Working Group. This Agenda for a New Economy blog series is co-sponsored by CSRwire.com and yesmagazine.org based on excerpts from Agenda for a New Economy, 2nd edition.
Interested?

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

70th Bday - Jonathan

7/15/2013 (Jonathan Bender)

There are mountains that have not been climbed
There are seas that have not been sailed
There are roads that have not been walked

Much beauty lies in the mystery of things

The goal at the beginning is the pursuit
The goal at the end is the mystery

I was once buried in the pursuit
By bearing witness to others’ journey 
I learn to witness my own

No journey has done more for me than yours
Through you I see the value of perseverance,
Of pragmatism,
Of community,
Of creativity,
Of adaptability,
Of devotion,
Of compromise,
Of refusal to compromise,
Of love,

Happy 70th

May you have many more.


-Your son

Monday, July 15, 2013

Happy 70th

Life on the Verge of 70

It is time to celebrate old age--
Well, middle old age, which begins with seventy years.
We ask where did the time go?
Our parents, children, friends, siblings, occupations, habits, and loves
Ate it up.
Memories fade and leave a space for inventing the past.
Endurance until you make it through gives way
To making a way around.
We ask where did our energy go?
Time for a nap.
Love was intense, passionate, and daring when we were young.
We are grateful for the love we have instead of love we want.
As we notice others have slipped on the banana peel
We pretend it cannot happen to us
And lose it all.
We set out to save the world from conquest of the greedy.
We were powerful, mostly in controlling ourselves.
We created a life to launch our children
Caves under blankets, sports, drama, music, and peers,
The DNA for grandchildren.
Our bodies were able to sustain the blows of all comers.
We recovered from accidents, fatal illness, and worn parts
Through grit, wisdom, and the mystical unifying force
That led us to healing people and health again.
How many chances?
What is left for two people who already have it all?
We have been to the mountain and the depths of the Grand Canyon.
Striving for ourselves is over, to give to the Creator in service
Of a world on the verge of life or death.
What’s next?

To Nate With Love and Honor
For his seventieth birthday

Sandra

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Brother Reuben

Brother Reuben (1942 - 2007)


Oldest of the ‘Bender Boys Three,’
Leader of the pack became his first calling.
He was ever in action, exploring all to which he had access,
Held captive by his proclivity for romping in the great out doors.
Sedentary, contemplative doings were not his forte,
Rather, the application of his restless spirit and precocious physicality.

Plagued by seasonal allergies,
Hay fever symptoms were found to disrupt his sleep and energy.
Grade school offered little to support his active nature,
Even escaping via an open window....prompting parental intervention.
An early exit from high school - three days were enough!
Created new freedoms and responsibilities

Mingling and working with and for local adults,
Led to a laudatory work reputation and a path to alcohol addiction.
Before he was eligible for a drivers license, 
Two arrests led to a long term friendship with a Highway Patrol Officer!
Purchase of a horse, motor scooter, car and motor cycle,
Expanded outlets for his spirit, with support from the town banker.

Purchase of a 1960 Chevy replaced an older 1951 model, 
Both used to retrieve his high school siblings from games and practices.
A foray into stock-car racing, via a reconfigured 56’ Chevy,
Led to multiple trophies and respect from his competitors.
All the while, defying his father’s disapproval,
He created a stamp of approval via surrogate figures.

His strong-willed manner often belied his social shyness, 
Yet never hid his generous heart and honest nature, most endearing. 
Unprepared and unskilled for marital life and step parent-hood though he was,
He met its challenges, albeit with varied results, loved by many, while hurting a few.
Though lacking common interests, we were able to bond through the years,
Making his early departure less of a grief-filled time, knowing he is in a better place.


Brother Nate - 7/15/2013

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Turning Seventy

Turning Seventy
    (7/15/2013)


Passing years have gone so fast,
And evolved into a present day septuagenarian stage.
Noting markers of the advancing years,
Signals a more urgent call for disciplined living,
With everything in moderation.....dietarily, physically.
Holding past memories ever closer and vivid,
I embrace the struggle to capture them for posterity sake.
I revel in the reality “it’s been a good life, all in all,”
And continue to drift to new discoveries and new directions.
People who have touched my life, friends and family circles alike,
Wide and diverse......I salute them all.
Acknowledging the many joys, the fewer sorrows,
All essential parts of learning and growth experiences.
Holding a dearest and deepest place.....my marital union,
Augments, in profound ways, the coalescence process,
And serves also, as catalytic fuel for future expansion possibilities.
Continuing the work till the end of life,
Self discovery and its accompanying phenomenology shall prevail,
Welcoming the future with anticipation and hope.
Bring on the rest, for it may just be the best yet!


Nate Bender