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What is the Meta-story in people’s heads that blocks the Great Turning from Empire to Earth Community?
Because it is our nature to be fearful, violent, greedy, and individualistic our wellbeing depends on a system of hierarchy to impose order and channel our destructive impulses to constructive ends. There is no alternative. Indeed, although it may bring pain and hardship to the losers, it is in fact all for the good, because the brutal competition of war and the unrelenting pursuit of individual profit builds character, drives innovation, and leads to greatness. It has been the key to human success since the beginning of time and ultimately works to the benefit of everyone.
What is the contrasting meta-story that has the power to shift the culture and turn the human course?
We humans have a natural capacity and desire to be loving, peaceful, generous, and cooperative. Despite our wondrous cultural differences, at the core of our being we all want a world of healthy happy children, families, and communities living in peace and cooperation in a vibrant natural environment. For millennia, imperial culture and institutions have suppressed this capacity and held us back from realizing our dream—with devastating and now potentially terminal consequences. Culture and institutions are human creations. We created them through our individual and collective actions. We have the right to change them. Our new communications technologies give us the means. Our confrontation with social and environmental collapse creates the imperative.
What question best captures interest and engages participation in the global conversation we hope to facilitate?
“Why is there such an enormous gap between the world most people want and the world we have?”
What is the message that turns withdrawal and denial into hope and active engagement?
We live at a unique moment in the human experience that presents us with the opportunity and the imperative to create the world we want. Opportunity and imperative are both important parts of the message, but it is generally best to begin with opportunity.
Love (approach) and fear (avoidance) are our two primary human emotions. The forces of Empire play to the negative emotions of fear and hate, which appeals to our lower nature and stimulates our defense mechanisms of violence, denial, and withdrawal. The power of Earth Community flows from its message of hope and love, which appeals to our higher nature and stimulates our desire to share, learn, and engage.