Change the Story/Change the Future
We are captive to Empire stories that legitimate imperial domination. Our future depends on embracing Earth Community stories that affirm our potential for creative partnership.
Empire Story
Earth Community Story
Obedience to God the father, creator, and ruler of all is the path to salvation and eternal bliss in the afterlife.
The image of God as human patriarch is an invention of Empire. All of Creation is the manifestation of an integral spiritual intelligence engaged in a grand quest to know itself through the discovery and actualization of its possibilities.
Only the material world is real and is best understood as a grand machine. Life is an accidental outcome of material complexity. Consciousness and free will are illusions.
The cosmos is best understood as a grand multi-celled living organism. Matter and our experience of separation from one another and the integral spirit are illusions. Only relationships are real.
It is our right and responsibility as humans to populate, subdue, and dominate the Earth.
It is our responsibility as humans to honor the living Earth as scared and to live in balanced, respectful, and creative partnership with all beings that comprise Earth’s web of life.
Women and people of color have no soul and are less than fully human.
The only people who are less than fully human are those whose souls have been so corrupted by the pursuit of money and power that they have lost their capacity for compassion, cooperation, and service.
It is our human nature to be individualistic, materialistic, greedy and violent.
The human brain is wired to reward caring, cooperation, and life in community. Extreme individualism, materialism, greed, and violence are signs of serious psychological disorder.
The rich demonstrate by their wealth that they are God’s favored.
People of wealth and power who believe their good fortune is a mark of special righteousness reveal their emotional, spiritual, and moral immaturity.
Money is the measure of wealth and those who make money are society’s wealth creators.
Most money exists only as numbers stored on computer hard drives. Wall Street’s ideal is to grow these numbers through financial games that produce nothing of real value, which is a form of theft.
Unregulated markets assure the optimal use of resources and maximize the well-being of all.
Markets without appropriate rules are an invitation to the unscrupulous to engage in unethical behavior that violates basic market principles.
We all do best when we each focus on maximizing our personal financial interests.
Humans survive and thrive only in community. We all do best when we each contribute to the well-being of the whole.
The sole purpose and responsibility of business is to maximize profit.
The proper purpose and responsibility of business is to serve the community. Profit is a means, not an end.
As the global defender of freedom and democracy, it is America’s responsibility to maintain the world’s most powerful military and impose order on the world through the projection of military force.
America is an imperial oligarchy that in the name of democracy and shared prosperity projects its military and financial power globally to control the markets, labor, and natural resources of other nations for the financial benefit of Wall Street financiers and corporations. We best serve humanity by learning to live within our own means.
Prepared for the Workshop: “To Change the Future, Change the Story”
Guiding Lights Conference, Seattle 2012Based on David Korten, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
May be freely shared with appropriate citation