THE CHINESE WORD "CRISIS" IS MADE
UP OF TWO CHARACTERS: ONE MEANS
"DANGER",THE OTHER,"OPPORTUNITY"
UP OF TWO CHARACTERS: ONE MEANS
"DANGER",THE OTHER,"OPPORTUNITY"
How Food Riots, Pricey Gas and Home Foreclosures
Point to a Better Future
By Marjorie Kelly and Paul Raskin, AlterNet. Posted
May 10, 2008.
We are beset today by a systemic global crisis that
could open the way to hopeful transformation. It is up
to us.
Can anybody make sense of what the heck is going
on today? A lead story in the news covers the rioting
in Haiti and a half-dozen other nations as food prices
soar. Another front-page column reports that the U.S.
subprime mortgage crisis is seizing up credit
markets worldwide and contributing to housing woes
-- possibly even economic destabilization -- in
Ireland, Spain, Britain and elsewhere. Other news
reports the discovery of a huge fracture in Antarctica’
s vast Wilkins ice shelf, drawing attention to the slow-
motion crisis of climate change. And there are
ongoing reports about water shortages in Africa and
Asia, droughts in Australia, sky-rocketing oil costs,
the razing of the Amazon and images of war and
terror.
Is the conjunction of these various crises simply a
coincidence? The answer is no. From a historical
perspective it is possible to see an overall pattern
that connects the dots. What is unfolding today is a
systemic crisis, heralding the beginning of a large-
scale shift at the deepest levels of cultural
organization. We are in transition -- for the first time
in history -- to a tightly interconnected global system.
We have entered the planetary phase of civilization,
in a passage that may prove as significant as the
advent of agriculture or the Industrial Revolution.
When keeping our thermostats high melts ice sheets
at the bottom of the world, when our housing crisis
erodes the world economy, when filling our cars with
biofuel from corn contributes to hunger a world
away, we’re not in Kansas anymore. We need a new
map of the world. The old one -- with its geopolitics
based on the competition of self-interested nation-
states and its economy growing exponentially atop a
natural world of unlimited resources -- is vanishing,
along with cheap gasoline.
The new map conceptualizes the world as a single
global system with interacting, nested subsystems. In
this view, lines of connection reach beyond national
borders to embrace all of humanity -- linking the poor
in Haiti to homeowners in Spain to investors in the
United States -- and reaching beyond society to the
larger earth community, encompassing even the very
air itself. All are entwined in a common fate. All
compose a single system and must find their place
on a new map, as we rechart the world for a new era.
Transitions announce themselves in the language of
crisis. We are in a time of turbulence as old patterns
give way and new ones form. The multiple crises
today signal a system transformation operating at the
scale of the planet. Transformation is distinct from
adaptation, which is the normal process of
incremental adjustment to new conditions.
Transformations are rare moments in history when
dominant societal structures cannot cope with
emerging developments and change in fundamental
ways. With the converging lines of crises we face
today, we may be entering a perfect storm of
destabilizing stress.
We cannot predict the future. It may be good, bad or
ugly, depending on how events unfold and how we
respond. But scenarios can help us envision
alternate futures, and our organization has -- with the
aid of an international group -- crafted four scenarios
of possible futures. In a "market forces" scenario,
the United States continues with business as usual,
other nations converge toward American lifestyles,
economic growth remains the sine qua non of
development, and environmental strain and cultural
polarization intensify. In "policy reform," government
seeks ambitious policies to protect the environment
and reduce inequity; but with the ethos of
consumerism unchecked, the reformist path could be
overwhelmed by unsustainable trends. In "fortress
world," reform fails and problems cascade into self-
amplifying crises as the affluent retreat into
protected enclaves amid oceans of misery.
In a "great transition" scenario, mounting crises lead
not to breakdown but to breakthrough into a
sustainable culture, where we shrink our
environmental footprint, not only because we must
live lightly and equitably on this small planet, but
because quality of life matters more than quantity of
stuff. It is a world where global interdependence -- as
both a fact of history and a moral imperative --
replaces the heedless pursuit of self-interest as a
guiding ethos. Such a resilient, just and livable world
order is possible, though not inevitable. We do not
offer facile hope. Large-scale social transformation
does not come from small-scale woes: A time of
troubles lies ahead.
Nevertheless, there is a case for hope. In the
turbulence of transition, small actions can have big
effects. We stand at a moment of unparalleled
creative opportunity that calls for bold leaders and
engaged citizens to articulate new visions of a 21st
century social order and to mobilize a global
movement to bring these visions to reality. Our world
today generates more despair and resignation than
vision and action. But it would not be the first time
that an effervescence of popular political energy
arrived unexpectedly to shift the direction of history.
We are beset today not by random bad luck, but by a
systemic crisis that could -- on the other side of
calamity -- open the way to hopeful transformation. It
is up to us.
Point to a Better Future
By Marjorie Kelly and Paul Raskin, AlterNet. Posted
May 10, 2008.
We are beset today by a systemic global crisis that
could open the way to hopeful transformation. It is up
to us.
Can anybody make sense of what the heck is going
on today? A lead story in the news covers the rioting
in Haiti and a half-dozen other nations as food prices
soar. Another front-page column reports that the U.S.
subprime mortgage crisis is seizing up credit
markets worldwide and contributing to housing woes
-- possibly even economic destabilization -- in
Ireland, Spain, Britain and elsewhere. Other news
reports the discovery of a huge fracture in Antarctica’
s vast Wilkins ice shelf, drawing attention to the slow-
motion crisis of climate change. And there are
ongoing reports about water shortages in Africa and
Asia, droughts in Australia, sky-rocketing oil costs,
the razing of the Amazon and images of war and
terror.
Is the conjunction of these various crises simply a
coincidence? The answer is no. From a historical
perspective it is possible to see an overall pattern
that connects the dots. What is unfolding today is a
systemic crisis, heralding the beginning of a large-
scale shift at the deepest levels of cultural
organization. We are in transition -- for the first time
in history -- to a tightly interconnected global system.
We have entered the planetary phase of civilization,
in a passage that may prove as significant as the
advent of agriculture or the Industrial Revolution.
When keeping our thermostats high melts ice sheets
at the bottom of the world, when our housing crisis
erodes the world economy, when filling our cars with
biofuel from corn contributes to hunger a world
away, we’re not in Kansas anymore. We need a new
map of the world. The old one -- with its geopolitics
based on the competition of self-interested nation-
states and its economy growing exponentially atop a
natural world of unlimited resources -- is vanishing,
along with cheap gasoline.
The new map conceptualizes the world as a single
global system with interacting, nested subsystems. In
this view, lines of connection reach beyond national
borders to embrace all of humanity -- linking the poor
in Haiti to homeowners in Spain to investors in the
United States -- and reaching beyond society to the
larger earth community, encompassing even the very
air itself. All are entwined in a common fate. All
compose a single system and must find their place
on a new map, as we rechart the world for a new era.
Transitions announce themselves in the language of
crisis. We are in a time of turbulence as old patterns
give way and new ones form. The multiple crises
today signal a system transformation operating at the
scale of the planet. Transformation is distinct from
adaptation, which is the normal process of
incremental adjustment to new conditions.
Transformations are rare moments in history when
dominant societal structures cannot cope with
emerging developments and change in fundamental
ways. With the converging lines of crises we face
today, we may be entering a perfect storm of
destabilizing stress.
We cannot predict the future. It may be good, bad or
ugly, depending on how events unfold and how we
respond. But scenarios can help us envision
alternate futures, and our organization has -- with the
aid of an international group -- crafted four scenarios
of possible futures. In a "market forces" scenario,
the United States continues with business as usual,
other nations converge toward American lifestyles,
economic growth remains the sine qua non of
development, and environmental strain and cultural
polarization intensify. In "policy reform," government
seeks ambitious policies to protect the environment
and reduce inequity; but with the ethos of
consumerism unchecked, the reformist path could be
overwhelmed by unsustainable trends. In "fortress
world," reform fails and problems cascade into self-
amplifying crises as the affluent retreat into
protected enclaves amid oceans of misery.
In a "great transition" scenario, mounting crises lead
not to breakdown but to breakthrough into a
sustainable culture, where we shrink our
environmental footprint, not only because we must
live lightly and equitably on this small planet, but
because quality of life matters more than quantity of
stuff. It is a world where global interdependence -- as
both a fact of history and a moral imperative --
replaces the heedless pursuit of self-interest as a
guiding ethos. Such a resilient, just and livable world
order is possible, though not inevitable. We do not
offer facile hope. Large-scale social transformation
does not come from small-scale woes: A time of
troubles lies ahead.
Nevertheless, there is a case for hope. In the
turbulence of transition, small actions can have big
effects. We stand at a moment of unparalleled
creative opportunity that calls for bold leaders and
engaged citizens to articulate new visions of a 21st
century social order and to mobilize a global
movement to bring these visions to reality. Our world
today generates more despair and resignation than
vision and action. But it would not be the first time
that an effervescence of popular political energy
arrived unexpectedly to shift the direction of history.
We are beset today not by random bad luck, but by a
systemic crisis that could -- on the other side of
calamity -- open the way to hopeful transformation. It
is up to us.
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