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and joy to live a flourishing life. The time has come for every one of us to awaken the
divine spark that resides in our heart.
What is the purpose of our existence?
We have been born at a critical juncture in history, in a world in transition, where it is
possible to guide the advancement of humankind toward peace on Earth. Living peace
and enabling peace to prevail on Earth is the ultimate purpose for all of us. We can and
must embrace it in every sphere of our existence.
By living consciously and responsibly, we can draw upon our inherent freedom and
power to shape our destiny and the destiny of humankind. Our task is to
collaboratively create a world of dignity and compassion that unfolds the full potential
of the human spirita world in which every individual gives expression to his or her
highest self, in service to the human family and the whole web of life on the planet.
Toward a new civilization
It is imperative to bring together individuals from diverse fieldsscientists, artists,
politicians, business leaders, and othersto create a solid multidimensional
foundation for catalyzing a timely shift in the course of history. The time has come for
all people to become courageous pioneersto venture beyond their personal, cultural,
and national interests and beyond the boundaries of their discipline, and to come
together in wisdom, spirit and intention for the benefit of all people in the human
family. By so doing, we can overcome the hold of obsolete ideas and outdated
behaviors in todays unsustainable world and design a more harmonious and
flourishing civilization for the coming generations.
The paradigm of the new civilization
The paradigm of the new civilization is a culture of oneness with respect for diversity.
Just as the myriad cells and diverse organs of our body are interconnected by their
oneness and work together in harmony for the purpose of sustaining our life, so each
and every living thing is an intrinsic part of the larger symphony of life on this planet.
With the conscious recognition that we are all a part of a living universe consisting of
great diversity yet embracing unity, we will co-evolve with one another and with
nature through a network of constructive and coherent relationships.
We, as individuals responsible for our and our childrens future, hereby declare that:
We affirm the divine spark in the heart and mind of every human being and intend to
live by its light in every sphere of our existence.
Sesto Castagnoli (Swiss) Evolutant and Entrepreneur, Founding President of WSF World Spirit Forum
Raffi Cavoukian (Canada) Musician, Founder of the Centre for Child Honouring
Matteo Ceccarini (Italy) Artist, Figurative Painter
James Channan (Pakistan) URI-Pakistan Regional Coordinator, Catholic Priest
Robert Chase (USA) Founding Director, Intersections International
Deepak Chopra (USA) Holistic Medicine, Goi Peace Award 2010 Recipient
Anwarul K. Chowdhury (Bangladesh) Former UN Under Secretary-General and High Representative
Tracy Cochran (USA) Editor, Parabola Magazine
Patricia Cota-Robles (USA) President, New Age Study of Humanitys Purpose
Jude Currivan (UK) Cosmologist, Author
Stephen Dinan (USA) CEO, The Shift Network
Larry Dossey (USA) Physician of Internal Medicine, Writer of "Healing Words"
Gordon Dveirin (USA) Organization and Human Development Consultant
Riane Eisler (Austria/USA) Author, President of the Center for Partnership Studies
Duane Elgin (USA) Author, Futurist, Goi Peace Award 2006 Recipient
Barbara Fields (USA) Executive Director, The Association for Global New Thought
Linda Francis (USA) Co-founder, Seat of Soul Institute
Hideaki Fujio (Japan) President, Chichi Publishing Company
Marc Gafni (USA) Founder, Center for Integral Wisdom
Jagdish Gandhi (India) Founder of City Montessori School, UNESCO Prize for Peace Education
Jim Garrison (USA) Author, Theologian, Founder and President of Ubiquity University
Charlie Stuart Gay (Mexico) Entrepreneur and Social Enterprise Humanitarian
Maximilian Gege (Germany) Co-founder and Chairman, The Board of the German Environmental
Management Association (B.A.U.M. e.V.)
Charles Gibbs (USA) URI's Founding Executive Director
Jane Goodall (UK) Primatologist, Former UN Messenger of Peace
Jonathan Granoff (USA) President, Global Security Institute
Nicole & Alexander Gratovsky (Russia) Founders, The Dolphin Embassy
Stanislav Grof (USA) Psychiatrist, Founding President of the International Transpersonal Association
Rod Hackney (UK) Former President, The Royal Institute of British Architects and International Union of
Architects
Mussie Hailu (Ethiopia) Regional Director of URI to Africa and Representative of URI to the United
Nations Economic Commission for Africa, African Union Commission, UNEP and UN-HABITAT
Hazel Henderson (USA) Economist, Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior 2010
Helena Norberg Hodge (Sweden) Pioneer of the Localization Movement, The Economics of Happiness,
Goi Peace Award 2012 Recipient
Jean Houston (USA) Author, Advisor to UNICEF in Human and Cultural Development
Barbara Marx Hubbard (USA) Futurist, President of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution
Takashi Imazato (Japan) Architect
H. H. Swami Isa (India) Founder of the Global Energy Parliament, the Charitable Isa Viswa Prajnana Trust,
the Isa Viswa Vidyalayam School, and the Isalayam Ashram
Masato Ishikawa (Japan) Shinto Chief Priest, Morooka Kumano Shrine
David T. Ives (USA) Executive Director, Albert Scheitzer Institute
Hildur Jackson (Denmark) Co-founder of Gaia Trust, Denmark; GEN - The Global Ecovillage Network
and Gaia Education.
Ross Jackson (Denmark) Founder and Chairman, Gaia Trust, Denmark, Author of Kali Yuga Odyssey
Bawa P. Jain (USA) Secretary General, World Council of Religious Leaders
Ernesto Kahan (Israel/Argentina) Physician & Writer, Academician of Honor-International Academy of
Sciences, Technology, Education and Humanities, Former Vice President of IPPNW (International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War - Association awarded the Nobel Peace Prize)
Mikinosuke Kakisaka (Japan) Shinto Chief Priest, Ohmine Hongu Tenkawa Daibenzaitensha Shrine
Noriyoshi Kashima (Japan) Shinto Chief Priest, Kashima Shrine
Fumihiko Katayama (Japan) Shinto Chief Priest, Hanazono Shrine
Bibi Guru Inder Kaur & Singh Sahib Bhai Sahib Hari Singh Khalsa (Italy) Co-founders and Directors,
Yoga Dharma Community, Rome, Italy
Tim Kelley (USA) Global Change Agent
Sada Anand Singh Khalsa (Japan) Master of Kundalini Yoga & Meditation, Leader of the Sikhs in the
West
Ashok Khosla (India) Chairman of Development Alternatives, Co-chair of International Resource Panel
WindEagle Kinney-Linton (USA) Co-founder and Director, Ehama Institute
Jayanti Kirpalani (UK) Director for Europe and Middle East of Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual
University and their NGO Representative to the United Nations, Geneva
Audrey Kitagawa (USA) Attorney, Head of Light of Awareness International Spiritual Family
Takashi "Tachi" Kiuchi (Japan) Chairman, E-Square and the Future 500, Former Chairman, Mitsubishi
Electric America
Eve Konstantine (USA) Leadership Coach and Trainer
Philip Kotler (USA) S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing Kellogg
School of Management, Northwestern University
David Krieger (USA) Founder, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Ietaka Kuki (Japan) Shinto Chief Priest, Kumano Hongu Taisha Shrine
Chung Ohun Lee (USA) Executive Director of UN Affairs and Interreligious Work at Won Buddhism
International
Joaquin F. Leguia (Peru) President and Founder, Association for Children and the Environment - ANIA
Princess Irene van Lippe-Biesterfeld (Netherlands) Princess of Netherlands, Social Reformer
Bruce Lipton (USA) Cell Biologist (Epigenetics), Goi Peace Award 2009 Recipient
David Lorimer (UK) Executive Vice-President of Wrekin Trust, Spiritual Educationalist
Lilou Mace (France) Journalist, Host of the Juicy Living Tour
Donald Mackenzie (USA) Former Minister, The United Church of Christ
Joanna Macy (USA) Environmental Activist, Author, Scholar of Buddhism, General Systems Theory, Ecophilosophy
Datin Paduka Mother A Mangalam (Malaysia) President, Pure Life Society
Chinta Mani Yogi (Nepal) Founding Principal - Hindu VidyaPeeth-Nepal (HVP), Founding Chairperson Shanti Sewa Ashram (SSA)
Marianne Marstrand (Denmark/USA) Executive Director, The Global Peace Initiative of Women
Howard Martin (USA) Co-author of "The HeartMath Solution"
Koichiro Matsuura (Japan) Former Director-General of UNESCO
Shunkai Matsuura (Japan) Chief Priest, Mibu Temple, The 85th Senior Priest of Toshodaiji Temple
Avon Mattison (USA) Peace Building, Peace Messenger of UN
Dorothy J. Maver (USA) Project Director, Kosmos Associates
Patrick McCollum (USA) Spiritual Leader, Founder of Patrick McCollum Foundation
Lynne McTaggart (USA / UK) Science-based Programs for Health and Growth, Media
Nipun Mehta (USA) Founder of Service Space, Jefferson Award for Public Service, the President's
Volunteer Service Award and Wavy Gravy's Humanitarian Award, Project Incubator
Dena Merriam (USA) Founder and Convener, The Global Peace Initiative of Women
Nina Meyerhof (USA) President and Founder of Children of the Earth, Evolutionary Leaders
Edgar Mitchell (USA) NASA Astronaut, Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14
Takahiro Miwa (Japan) Shinto Chief Priest, Hiyoshi Shrine
Kamran Mofid (UK) Founder, Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative (GCGI)
Lady Fiona Montagu (UK) Philanthropist, International Advisor to Nobel Peace Laureate Betty Williams's
World Centres of Compassion for Children
Humayun A. Mughal (Japan) Islamic Sufi Faith Leader
Tolegen Mukhamejanov (Kazakhstan) Co-chairman of the World Forum of Spiritual Culture Organizing
Committee, Senator of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Composer, Poet
Kazuo Murakami (Japan) Geneticist, Emeritus Professor of Tsukuba University
Hiroshi Nakahigashi (Japan) Shinto Chief Priest, Hiraoka Shrine
Honnen Nakamura (Japan) Professor, Koyasan University
Norihiko Nakamura (Japan) Shinto Chief Priest, Fujisan Hongu Sengentaisha Shrine
Wodzimierz Nast (Poland) Bishop, The Holy Trinity Evangelic Augsburg Protestant Church (Warsaw),
Protestant Priest
Roger Nelson (USA) Director of IONS, Coordinator of Research at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies
Research, Collective Consciousness
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Danish Radio Concert Hall in Copenhagen, one the greatest concert halls of the new
millennium designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel
The evening event in Copenhagen will overlap with the sunrise on May 17th at the Sanctuary
at the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan, where peace-loving people have been gathering for
decades to pray for world peace. Here, thousands of people will gather for the annual
Symphony of Peace Prayers event, to celebrate the launch of the Declaration with a day of
intense prayer and meditation led by representatives of various faith traditions. Transcending
all differences of religion and culture, we will pray with one voice for peace on earth, creating
a positive energy field filled with vibrations of love and healing. This high-dimensional
energy will be anchored in the Fuji Declaration to awaken the divine spark in all people
touched by its message.
Connecting the world in oneness with diversity, these events will be broadcast through the
Internet and other media. Similar events of varying scales will also be organized by volunteers
in many locations worldwide.
Our vision is to create a world that gives expression to the highest potential of the human
spirita world in which every individual manifests the very best in themselves in service of
the human family. The time has come for all of us to become courageous pioneersto
venture beyond our personal, cultural, and national interests and come together in wisdom,
spirit and intention for the benefit of all. We sincerely hope you will join us. (For more
information or to get involved, please visit fujideclaration.org beginning in January 2015.)
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The author of the Report takes full responsibility for the assessment and interpretation of the findings.
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2. Problems and opportunities connected with taking practical steps to achieve the
goal stated in the Fuji Declaration
in politics,
in the economy,
in business,
and in the media.
2.1 Problems and possibilities for taking practical steps in politics
2.1.1 Obstacles
We do not know what the new world political system and its structure will look like. But it is probable
that major impact will be exercised by individuals and collectives in civil society, since they are
interconnected not only through political systems but through flows of money, trade and goods, and are
not directly constrained by the present system. The outcome of a major shift cannot be predicted
because it will be shaped by the input of many diverse actors. The world political-economic system is
exposed to multiple forms of intervention and initiative.
The dominant players and stakeholdersnational and regional political leaders including prominent
social scientists acting through institutions of knowledge-creation and distributionexhibit a serious
lack of responsibility. This institutionalized irresponsibility and indifference, supported by a tacit
consensus about separations and divisions as unchangeable features of the contemporary world,
endanger the future of human life on the planet. The recent return of the nation-state and the
accompanying nationalistic slogans and prejudices within Europe and around its borders brought the
rise of rightwing and religious extremism and populism, and an increasing rejection of
multiculturalism. Xenophobia, racism and anti-semitism have been growing not only in the peripheries
but also in the core countries of industrialized societies. Common to these movements is insistence on
historic divisions and cultural differences, as well as a complete lack and rejection of a holistic
approach to current social, political, and ecological problems. Threatened in their existence and
legitimacy, obsolete institutions, interest groups and powerful global, regional and national
stakeholders entrench themselves and fight to secure their interests and their survival.
2.1.2 The challenge
There are as many as 114,000 international NGOs and roughly 65,000 international organizations
operating at the global level. In the private sector there are an estimated 43,000 globally operating
transnational corporations. These entities represent an enormous scope and potential for driving and
implementing change. A new stage in history, the transformational stage, is dawning. In this phase new
conflicts are arising, but also solidarity/cohesion/onenness is increasing on local as well as global
levels. Old ideologies, systems and structures are contested and partially replaced with a new
worldview. The process of replacement, however, could take decades to achieve. An awareness of
increasing interdependence in the various spheres of economic existence is a slow process; it has to be
speeded up. A revolution is needed to enable new economic, technological and social models to replace
the macro-economic machine model with a model of organic-regenerative-holistic development
based on the recognition of the interdependence of the major actors and processes.
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It will not be easy to bring down the mental, political, and physical walls of division and separation and
replace them with a holistic view and the corresponding behaviors. In our deeply divided world the
ideology and practice of absolute sovereignty and the security of states (not of societies) dominates
the realm of politics. Democracy is restricted to some spheres of existence and activity within the
geographical domain of nation-states. Democracy does not exist in institutionalized forms on global,
regional and transnational levels. In the world of politics, the idea of nation-states as actors possessing
equal rights is overwritten by a system created by the biggest and most powerful actors. The political
system is unbalanced and has reached the point of a bifurcation.
In order to unseat the existing power holders, marginalized groups and communities, womens
movements, racial-ethnic and religious minorities, gender and age-based groups and indigenous
populations need to be consolidated into alliances at the grass-roots level. A movement in this direction
has been under way for the past forty years, but it has not developed far enough. The current crisis
requires a fundamental paradigm shift to move the human community toward a new international
political system with a new mind-set.
2.1.3 Developments
There are significant signs of change in the functioning of the world system. From the late 1970s
onward, the world has witnessed the emergence of new social movements, civil society networks, and
protest and resistance movements against dictatorships and authoritarian systems. Since the outbreak of
the global crisis in 2007, there has been a new set of social and political movements, protests,
networks, and individual initiatives and these may form the core of a new, democratic global civil
society. The new way of thinking and strategy in civil society is based on nonviolence and open,
rational, and continuous dialogue with the representatives of the dominant powers. The emerging
family of anti-systemic players is not yet crystallized but is gaining a higher level of self-awareness and
self-confidence. The new paradigm of a more democratic and just world order can already be perceived
in the thinking, behavior, networking, and associations of the new actors.
Dissenting groups mobilize and form, submerge, and re-emerge in new, diverse and innovative
morphologies. The new social formations include environmental and social justice movements and
movements of indigenous peoples and cultures. Something profound and pervasive is happening in
regard to social organization at the local, national, regional and international levels. This is not a
movement in the traditional sense, because it does not coalesce around a particular ideology, or even
have a topical focus. The world has become too complex for these developments. But the breadth,
scope and scale of protest is unprecedented in history. Elements of this form of activism extend to all
parts of the globe. It cannot be divided because it is already diverse at the grass-roots level. Despite its
diversity, it shares basic values and ideas regarding how the world functions and what peoples role is
in it.
The values of organized structures are changing, especially in regard to a participatory form of
democracy. The assertion Nothing about us without us heralds the effective voice of previously
marginalized or excluded groups. On the basis of the new thinking, global strategies could be built for
creating a new social contract on local, regional and global levels. The spread of protest the world over
signals a new impetus for civil society, a new demand for a fair and functional social contract between
citizens and power holders. This could be the path toward achieving inclusion and mutual tolerance
based on respect for the diversity of individual cultures and the integrity of the natural environment.
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2.2 Problems and possibilities for taking practical steps in the economy
2.2.1 Obstacles
Between 2000 and 2030 the world population will grow by 2.5 billion; the demand for food will nearly
double, industrial production and energy consumption will triple, and demand in developing countries
will quintuple. The gaps will keep growing. There are countries with a GDP per capita over $100.000
(Qatar, Luxemburg), and there are very poor countries with a GDP around $1.000 (Bangladesh, SubSaharan Africa). In 1970, the income of the richest 20 percent of the worlds people was thirty times
more than that of the poorest 20 percent. By 2005 this gap had grown to seventy-five percent and it
keeps growing. At the same time the global population is increasing. Demographic growth is an
endemic characteristic of the poor regions.
The concept of sustainable development had an important impact in the economy, for example, by
spreading environmentally friendly consumption habits, clean technologies, the valuation of renewable
resources, and in defining development in qualitative rather than quantitative terms. But renewable and
non-finite resources, the natural capital of the economy, still keep decreasing because there are hardly
any efforts to replace what has been used up.
Sustainable development means ensuring the continuous existence of the necessary resources. This
calls for radically new thinking. Development does not necessarily bring about the growth of wealth,
and even less the increase of wellbeing. Wellbeing calls for the development of education, increases in
levels of health and in life expectancy, the improvement of social security and growth in the level of
personal freedom. Environment-conscious consumers are ready for some self-limitation (selective
waste collection, turning off the tap, disconnecting the telephone recharger, etc.) but these have only
marginal effects on their ecological footprint. While one would expect that the footprint of
environment-conscious people will be smaller than those of non-environment-conscious individuals,
empirical studies show that the ecological and carbon footprint of so-called brown (least environment4
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conscious) and green (most environment-conscious) consumers does not differ significantly. The
ecological footprint correlates with income, but its correlation with environmental awareness is not
demonstrated.
Taking feedback delays into consideration, without timely and radical change, the current economic
system faces global disaster.
2.2.2 Alternative conceptions
Optimism in the belief in the power of economic growth to overcome environmental problems has been
overshadowed by the fact that, even by 2030, most of the world will not reach the per capita GDP
where the quality of environment could be expected to start improving. It is clear that in the case of
easily externalizable pollution with little chances to establish the polluters liability (greenhouse gases,
waste), or contamination that produces irreversible degradation (e.g. the accumulation of heavy metals
and stable organic contaminants with their collateral effects), economic growth remains incapable of
overcoming environmental pollution. The data show that without a radical change in the conditions of
distribution, squalor will remain an obstacle to creating the necessary demographic and environmental
changes.
There are economic models where economic growth serves sustainable development: these are models
of structural economic growth. Eco-efficiency can be increased in ways that contribute to the increase
of employment in society. Supported by the increase in labor, the consumption of services in the
economy can develop while material consumption decreases. This would signify the gradual
replacement of a stock economy with a flow economy.
In order to foster and encourage the implementation of the alternative models, the concept of ecological
footprint may have to be replaced by the concept of celestial footprint. One of the great dangers of
using GDP is that, as it is now widely recognized, it is not connected to wellbeing, which is a different
and more complex concept. This can be avoided if we measure subjective wellbeing, which is a more
important indicator than GDP, given that humans need more than material resources to achieve a state
of wellbeing.
The resources that enter into the calculation of the size of the celestial footprint are not necessarily
purely spiritual, although spirituality could be an important element. The celestial footprint measures
the non-material content of wellbeing in a person or community. The higher the celestial footprint, the
smaller is material consumption at the given level of wellbeing. The challenge is to be happier with the
same ecological load; or decrease the ecological load without diminishing happiness. Of course, in
these equations the numerator and denominator may change singly or simultaneously.
The measure of the celestial footprint is important in a materially limited unsustainable world, for the
celestial resource pool is not limited. Using celestial resources does not depend on their availability,
only on the skills and creativity of the users as shaped and promoted by their culture and their values.
2.2.3 Conditions for taking practical steps
There are thousands of ways to increase or maintain happiness but they all have common elements: (1)
they use either earthly or celestial resources; and (2) these resources are used either via markets
(price tagged resources) or their use is outside the monetary system. There are three basic approaches
to creating a long-term sustainable economy.
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The first approach: using non-material (celestial) and non-price-tagged resources such as a warm
family atmosphere, a high level of social capital, the enjoyment of natural beauty, and conditions for
personal and community peace and empathy.
The second approach: using nonmaterial resources via the market mechanism. Eco-efficiency as a nonmaterial source of GDP is an example of this, and so is economic development without material growth
as well as livelihood gained through licenses, and legal or other cultural artifacts.
The third approach: using material resources not mediated by market mechanisms, that is, resources
that are free in monetary terms. Breathing fresh air and drinking free and clean water are examples of
such use.
(A fourth approach would correspond to the classical understanding of the economy. Material resources
are used via market mechanisms for acquiring foods, clothes, etc. The critics of economic growth
assume that (1) this way of pursuing happiness is the most typical and yet it is unsustainable in a
materially limited world, and that (2) dollars in GDP (or any other category of indicators of economic
performance) correlate with the ecological load of humanity. This approach is dominant, but it is not
sustainable.)
The above approaches can be combined in a large variety of ways, offering many alternative
development paths. There are, of ourse, both monetary and nonmonetary trade-offs in the various
approaches, but market- and GDP-friendly economic scenarios can be delineated. According to these
scenarios, the focus of the economy should be creating employment rather than profit, fulfilling needs
rather than owning things, and producing durable and safe products and services rather than products of
planned obsolescence. Implementing such scenarios can help to maintain and increase human
wellbeing and the quality of life, and at the same time preserve the integrity of the natural environment.
However, in the last count only a fundamental change in the values that govern economic behavior
could create an economy that is sustainable in the long term, and this is a new paradigm in the
economy. The ative advancement of this paradigm remains a precondition of the realism of practical
steps toward achieving the goal stated in the Fuji Declaration.
2.3 Problems and possibilities for taking practical steps in business
2.3.1 Obstacles
For most of the 20th century the role of business in society centered on (1) the individual as the unit of
analysis; (2) utility and rational choice theory; (3) transaction costs as an efficiency-driven set of
relationships between agents; and (4) the acceptance of hierarchy as a control mechanism to produce
output in the most efficient ways possible through centralized management and decision-taking. The
social responsibility of business was, as Milton Friedman wrote in his influential 1970 article in the
New York Times, to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profitsso long
as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without
deception or fraud. The assumption was that business is a utilitarian system in which individuals and
companies do the right thing because market forces create the necessary opportunities for doing so. As
Lord Keynes said, this presupposes an invisible hand that harmonizes the interests of the individual and
of society.
Operating on the above assumptions has resulted in an unrestrained drive by companies to increase
their profits and market share. The outcome has been a historically unparalleled concentration of
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wealth in the hands of a few entities owned and controlled by an elite group of managers and investors.
This has occurred at the expense of benefits to the great majority of actors in business and in society
and has permitted the use of technology without regard for its societal and ecological consequences.
Continuation by business in its classical role would create critical problems in the economy as well as
in society.
2.3.2 Supporting trends
There is a new trend in the world of business that can be described as the arc of interconnectedness.
The trend indicates evolution in the purpose and the organizing principles of business, shifting business
from a worldview of tribalism, scarcity and mindlessness to one of interconnectedness and respect for
all forms of life. This indicates a transformation in the underlying logic of business from a selfconcerned search for profit and growth toward concern with wider social and ecological benefit.
Leading companies are no longer primarily focused on maximizing shareholder returns and/or reducing
harm, but on creating prosperity and wellbeing in the system in which they operate. A key feature of
the trend is the commitment to reconcile the profit motive with creating positive impact in the world.
New organizational forms are emerging in business that compete not only in regard to the quality of
goods and services offered by the companies, but also in regard to their ability to induce positive social
and environmental change. The type of organizations known as hybrid organizations and benefit
corporations are examples of such sustainability-driven companies. They demonstrate the capacity
of for-profit organizations to develop mutually enriching connections between business, community,
and the environment. At the leading edge business leaders manifest concern even with the level of
consciousness round them, as they seek to enhance the sense of connectedness of people in their
organization with others and the world at large. They understand sustainability as not just the
safeguarding of resources for future generationsthe original meaning of the term proposed by the
Brundland Commission in its 1987 Reportbut as leading to the flourishing of business in a
flourishing business environment: the goal identified as sustainability as flourishing (SAF).
The logics underlying business strategies can be classified as instrumental (profit logic), normative
(social logic), and integrative (combination of social and profit logics). The instrumental or profit logic
assumes that companies are instruments for wealth creation and that this is their paramount
responsibility. In light of this logic, strategies aiming at sustainability-as-flourishing (SAF) are means
to the end of generating profitcompanies adopt SAF strategies because they believe it is good
business. On the other hand the normative or social logic assumes that the relationship between
business and society is embedded with ethical values. Under this logic companies put their ethical
obligation above any other consideration, even if it damages their financial returns. Companies that
follow this approach subscribe to the SAF strategy because they hold it to be the right thing to do.
The integrative logic, in turn, reconciles the profit and the social logic. Businesses are to do good for
society, but their financial health is equally important. Those that follow this approach maintain that
wealth creation is the mechanism by which companies, operating within the constraints of the current
economic system, create societal welfare. Both internal forces (moral responsibility and the values of
the decision-takers) as well as external forces (pressures from civil society, legal regulations and
industry standards) impact on and condition the implementation of SAF strategies.
Finally, so-called stage models focus specifically on how companies integrate SAF in a dynamic and
long-term perspective. They assume that organizations demonstrate different levels of acceptance,
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understanding and integration of SAF principles at different points in time, and emphasize the dynamic
and evolutionary nature of development toward SAF. Stage models generally concentrate on the
elements that help companies institutionalize SAF, including organizational structure, organizational
culture, stakeholder relationships, and leadership logic or style.
Companies transform themselves to become agents of human welfare by evolving their business
purpose and organizing principles. Business purpose is the objective underlying the existence of the
company. One can distinguish four stages in its evolution. In the first stage the traditional purpose
dominates: to maximize shareholder value by creating wealth. The second stage includes stakeholders
as major elements in the business. At this stage companies seek to create value for shareholders without
tradeoffs (create sustainable or shared value), and engage in activities of social and/or environmental
value (such as energy efficiency, waste management, community engagement, etc.). Successful second
stage companies create value for society and the environment in ways that create even more value for
customers and shareholders.
In the third stage companies move from sustainable value creation to the commitment to do good as a
way to succeed, creating human, environment, and social benefit. The mantra of companies at this
stage is becoming a force for good and/or being the best company for the world (rather than best
company in the world).. Some companies dedicated to this purpose are created specifically to address a
given environmental or social issue.
At the fourth stage the purpose of companies centers on raising the collective consciousness of the
human community. This stage represents the highest and noblest purpose of business: it embraces the
principles of oneness and wholeness as the basis of a flourishing world. A growing number of stagefour copnies are now being identified by researchers such as Laloux, Laszlo & Brown, and others.
The evolution of current business models takes off from shareholder value (the dominant paradigm),
shifts to sustainable value (creating value simultaneously for shareholders and stakeholders), then
embraces the organizing principles and purpose of the sustainable/social enterprise (business as a force
for good), to reach the highest stage where the company becomes a flourishing organization. At this
stage the company is a platform for implementing the kind of goals stated in the Fuji Declaration.
2.4 Problems and possibilities for taking practical steps in the media
2.4.1 Obstacles
As we have seen, obstacles in the way of taking practical steps to achieve the goal stated in the Fuji
Declaration are created by the still old-paradigm orientation of the principal actors in the economy and
in politics. These obstacles are addressed and partially overcome in the evolution of the purposes and
operative principles of leading-edge business companies. The obstacles are nearly removed in the
world of the media, where classical top-down models are not only challenged but are rendered obsolete
by the latest developments.
2.4.2 Evolution in the media
New developments in the media offer participation for the great majority of people on the planet.
Internet access in 2012 was estimated at 33 percent of the world population or 2.3 billion people, and is
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forecast to grow to 66 percent by 2030, encompassing 5.1 billion people. The practical significance of
this trend is that two-thirds of the people on the planet will have the opportunity to communicate their
ideas and concerns on the Internet, constituting a global platform for discussing what is wrong with the
world and what could be done to remedy it.
Optimistic assessments of the potential of the current communication revolution foresee that Internet
access by the of the majority of the worlds peoples will bring about a crystallization of ideas and
values that lead to the creation of a new civilization, possibly even a civilization that unfolds the full
potential of the human spirit in service to the human family and the web of life. For this, however, it is
necessary first, that the majority of the new communicators ( prosumers rather than consumers) be
exposed to the relevant goals and ideas, and second, that they embrace those goals and ideas with
sufficient dedication to undertake practical steps toward their realization.
This is not an automatic and self-evident outcome; it depends in large measure on the nature of the
goals and ideas circulating in the channels of information, and on the effectiveness of their
presentation. Goals and ideas that hold out the promise of a better civilization are likely to appeal to
many of the new users, as they are predominantly young people with the majority stemming from the
hitherto excluded or underrepresented poor countries. However, the chaos of rapid transformation in
the worlda revolution not just in the media but in nearly all spheres of societymeans that a great
many messages are circulating at the same time, and it is probable that many if not most of them do not
involve practicable ideas for a new civilization and are not likely to win the active adherence of a
significant mass of the prosumers.
There is a need to introduce ideas into the stream of messages in the world that have both a real
potential for inspiring the creation of a new civilization, and are attractive enough to empower practical
steps to create that civilization. Introducing such ideas does not call for formal classrooms, nor for
formal presentations. They can be embedded in documentaries of wide appeal, such as docu-dramas,
in fables for children and for grown-ups, in sci-fi adventures and in visionary explorations of the future.
They can be conveyed by computer games and can be placed at the center of debate in social networks.
The notion of a living universe is one such idea, and so is the interconnection of all things with all other
things and the quasi-miralous coherence of nature and of our own body. These are very different ideas,
and they point to a very different world, than the idea of the universe and the human being as a soulless
machine, functioning or breaking down independently of the fate of the other machines around it.
Marshall McLuhans theory that the media is the message does not hold. The same media can convey
a vast array of messages, of which the great majority is not likely to lead to positive civilizationcreating outcomes nor does it inspire practical steps in that direction. As our research study on the new
media states, having the technical ability to communicate with ourselves does not mean we will
automatically do so. The question remains open as to whether we have the collective maturity to
consciously seize this precious opportunity. The opportunity to have our voice heard on global
channels of communication is now given and it is precious, but making use of it is not only a question
of collective maturity, but of the nature of the goals and the ideas that are communicated, and of the
effectiveness of their communication.
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CONCLUSIONS
The here reviewed research studieson the economy, on politics, on business and on the mediashed
light on critical needs and opportunities in todays world. It is a world at the crossroads: at a point of
chaos and bifurcation, of unprecedented danger but also of unmatched opportunity. To move forward at
such a point calls for new thinking, since the thinking that has brought us to this bifurcation cannot take
us beyond it.. The new thinking we need is new from the ground up. It is a new paradigm for aspiration
and action in every sphere of human life on the planet.
A new paradigm is already perceived in the twin spheres of the economy and politics, but there the
hold of the old-paradigm is still too strong to permit practical steps to act on it. There are signs,
however, that a paradigm-shift is on the horizon. The task is to speed up its coming. The alternative
paradigms envisaged in the economy and in politics are the hopeful monsters biologists speak about
in regard to the mutants that appear on the periphery before the time would have come for them to
penetrate to the center.
In the world of business a new paradigm is taking shape in the thinking of a growing number of
managers. Nourishing the forces that empower the new paradigm in business and enable the spread of
its salutary effects to the civil and the civic spheres of society is the next step. When the new paradigm
reaches a critical mass in society, it will create massive change. Society is changing, and anticipating
and acting in line with that change harbors the key to success not only in the world of business, but in
all spheres of life.
The media world is the furthest along the path to the implementation of the paradigm we need in the
world. Our world needs a paradigm of interconnection and of coherence brought about through
interconnection, and in the human realm interconnection is built on communication. In complex
systems structure follows function. In todays world the function is the creation and exchange of
messages, and the structure is the network of communication that carries those messages. Messages are
now exchanged all over the world, and channels of communication are emerging on all the continents.
Now these messages need to rekindle the human spirit to inspire effective steps toward the creation of a
civilization that would unfold the potentials of that spirit.
It has been said that there is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come. Let it be said that
there is nothing as powerful as the idea of rekindling the divine spark in the spirit of humanity. It is the
idea that could shift humankind from the road to disaster to the path of a civilization of sustainability
and flourishing, bringing peace and a high quality of life to all the women, men and children who live
on this planet.
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23
Study Overview
In the Spring of 2014, The Goi Peace Foundation sought background studies in four
spheres (the economy, politics, media, and business) to show the achievability of its goals for
humanity as expressed in the Fuji Declaration, provisionally titled at the time,
AWAKENING THE DIVINE SPARK IN THE SPIRIT OF HUMANITY: For a
Civilization of Oneness with Diversity on Planet Earth. The Declaration points to the
possibility of a worldwide shift in consciousness from materialism-centered sustainability to
full-spectrum flourishing.
This report presents the background study in the sphere of business. It outlines the
path toward a Civilization of Oneness with Diversity as it is being shaped and advanced by
business. It offers clear evidence that the purpose and organizing principles of business are
evolving from a worldview of tribalism, scarcity and mindlessness to one of
interconnectedness, respect for all living things, and the divine spirit of Oneness.
In this study, we show:
The role of what we term positive institutions to awaken the divine spark in
the spirit of business
Business as a force for good: why and how companies engage in positively
contributing to society and earth.
Our findings are built on a theory construct developed in earlier research by the
authors: the arc of interconnectedness that highlights the evolution of business towards
oneness. The study identifies a profound shift in the evolutionary process of business. We
call this shift the ontological threshold because it embraces a deep transformational change
in the underlying logic of business to one that contributes to awakening the divine spark of
humanity.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
How business has contributed to the problem .......................................................................... 1
The theory behind an awakened business ................................................................................. 2
The stages of business evolution towards oneness ................................................................... 7
How companies follow the arc of interconnectedness ............................................................ 10
Crossing the ontological threshold.......................................................................................... 22
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 24
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 25
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Recently, the conceptualization of the hybrid organization has been expanded to not
only create benefit to society, but to raise the level of consciousness in all of humanity. In
doing so, these companies have been devoted to enhancing our sense of connectedness to
ones own life purpose, to others, and to the natural world in order to truly embrace SAF.
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colleagues have been pioneering the creation of a theory of change based on elevating human
virtues and/or strengths (Cooperrider & Godwin, 2011; Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987;
Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005; Cooperrider, Whitney, & Stavros, 2008). The organizing
processes under this approach for change are described as the cooperative co-evolutionary
search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them. It involves the
discovery of what gives life to a living system when it is most effective, alive, and
constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms [...] It involves the art and
practice of asking questions that strengthen a systems capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and
heighten positive potential (Cooperrider et al., 2008: 3).
In alignment with the Fuji Declaration, this theory of change is helpful to understand
the organizing processes that sustain the harmony of the whole, because it is based on
affirming the divine spark of every human being to create flourishing organizations. This
approach assumes that organizations are centers of human connectedness that nourish the
human spirit. Thus, the conceptualization of organizational life is based on a renewed
understanding of the nature of the human being (compared to traditional approaches) and
authenticity, purpose, and interconnectedness to others and to the natural environment
(Ehrenfeld, 2008; Laszlo & Brown et al., 2014).
Finally, organizational theory has evolved to increasingly consider spirituality as a
human experience that can be cultivated and enhanced as part of the organizational life
(Duchon & Plowman, 2005). Recent research in this area has shown that spirituality in the
workplace has several benefits, like the enhancement of employee well-being (individual
health perspective), the elevation of the sense of interconnectedness and community
(interpersonal perspective), and the cultivation of purpose and meaning at work
(philosophical/transcendent perspective) (Karakas, 2010). As such, workplace spirituality
provides a clear path to enhance the capacity of an organization to embrace a holistic
development of employees, which will in turn, help cultivating a generative process of
organizing that continually and consistently frees the human spirit towards oneness.
Visionary alchemists: awakening the divine spark in the spirit of business leaders
Central to the development of positive institutions is the role of organizational
leaders, because they are called to initiate and sustain the necessary transformations in
business to create a thriving and prosperous world. For addressing that ideal, organizational
leaders (at any level) have had to depart from traditional ways of conducting business (i.e.
mechanistic and hierarchical relationships), in order to capture the essence of the human
being (i.e. our divine spirit) as a way to enact the organizing principles towards SAF.
In doing so, they had to learn a new set of leadership skills, which are closely related
to personal development practices. Some of those skills are: to continually renew themselves
at work, to engage people from the heart, to elevate the strengths of a person for harnessing
his/her highest potential, and to create an elevated purpose for every organizational member
(Boyatzis & McKee, 2005; Boyatzis, Smith, & Blaize, 2006; Cameron, 2013; Covey, 2005;
Dutton, Spreitzer, & Achor, 2014; Fry, 2003; Laszlo & Brown et al., 2014; Whitney,
Trosten-Bloom, & Rader, 2010).
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In alignment with the business challenges of the 21st century, new leadership models
have been developed with the aim of sparking the generative interactions that will allow
business to become a positive institution. One of those leadership models is called spiritual
leadership, which was created to specifically address the spiritual component of human
interaction in organizations. This model entails two main components: 1) creating a vision
wherein organization members experience a sense of calling in that their life has meaning
and makes a difference; and 2) establishing a social/organizational culture based on altruistic
love whereby leaders and followers have genuine care, concern, and appreciation for both
self and others, thereby producing a sense of membership and feel understood and
appreciated (Fry, 2003: 695).
Another important model is called benevolent leadership, which was created with the
purpose to offer a theoretically sound basis to create common good in organizations.
Benevolent leadership is defined as the process of creating a virtuous cycle of encouraging,
initiating, and implementing positive change in organizations through: a) ethical decision
making and moral actions, b) developing spiritual awareness and creating a sense of
meaning, c) inspiring hope and fostering courage for positive action, and d) leaving a legacy
and positive impact for the larger community (Karakas & Sarigollu, 2012: 537). This
leadership model is unique because of the way in which it defines and integrates the
patterns of behavior that characterizes leadership practices aimed to create common good.
The benevolent leadership model constitutes a solid basis for the creation of societal welfare.
Business as a force for good: why companies engage in positively contributing to society
The historical evolution of the field of business in society has shown that, despite the
differences among the several streams of research that constitute the field (e.g. corporate
social responsibility, corporate citizenship, corporate sustainability, social issues in
management, and corporate environmentalism, among others), there are some common
elements that would help an understanding of why and how business organizations
positively contribute to society. In particular, there are three elements that are closely
interlocked and act interdependently when configuring business as a force for good (Pavez &
Beveridge, 2013): 1) value generation logic, 2) forces or drivers of business practices, and 3)
stages/levels. The first two elements (i.e. value generation logic and forces) have been used
by scholars to explain why companies engage in using business as a force for good, whereas
the third element (i.e. stages/levels) represent how business implement and accomplish the
creation of common good (Pavez & Beveridge, 2013).
The value generation logic refers to the underlying assumptions that people hold
behind the motivation to be involved in SAF strategies. Those logics have been classified as
instrumental (profit logic), normative (social logic), and integrative (combination of social
and profit logics). The instrumental or profit logic assumes that companies are instrument for
wealth creation and that is their crucial responsibility. Thus, SAF strategies are considered
means to the end of profits. Companies that follow this approach are involved in SAF
strategies because they believe it is good business (Laszlo & Zhexembayeva, 2011;
McWilliams, Siegel, & Wright, 2006; Wallich & McGowan, 1970). The normative or social
logic assumes that the relationship between business and society is embedded with ethical
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values. Under this logic companies should put their ethical obligation above any other
consideration, even if it damages their financial returns. Consequently, companies that follow
this approach decide to implement SAF practices because they believe it is the right thing to
do (Garriga & Mel, 2004). Finally, the integrative logic reconciles the two dialectical logics
previously mentioned (social and profit). Under this approach people feel a deep desire to do
good for society, but the financial health of the company is equally important. Companies
that follow this approach support the idea that wealth creation is the mechanism by which
companies, under the forces of the current economic system, should use to create societal
welfare (Gladwin, Krause, & Kennelly, 1995; Haigh & Hoffman, 2012; Honeyman, 2014).
The forces represent the drivers of business practices towards SAF. Those drivers
could be internal or external, and are helpful to understand why companies engage in SAF
strategies (Swanson, 1995; Wood, 1991). Internal forces represent the individual and
organizational motivations towards SAF strategies (e.g. the moral responsibility and personal
values of decision-makers, the social values of the company, the organizational identity, and
the internal capabilities of the firm, among others) (Clarkson, 1995; Hart & Milstein, 2003;
McWilliams et al., 2006; Sharma & Henriques, 2005; Sharma & Vredenburg, 1998;
Waddock, 2008). External forces, on the other hand, are the factors that trigger the
implementation of SAF strategies, which are beyond the boundaries of the company (e.g.
pressure from civil society, legal regulations and industry standards, among others). They
typically represent what is expected of business in terms of normative legitimacy (Suchman,
1995; Wood, 1991), as well as the mechanisms coercive, mimetic and normative
isomorphism that produce similar practices and structures across other organizations
(Campbell, 2007; Delmas & Toffel, 2004; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983).
Finally, the stage models specifically focus on how companies integrate SAF from a
dynamic and long-term perspective. These models assume that organizations demonstrate
different levels of acceptance, understanding and integration of SAF principles at different
points in time. They emphasize the dynamic and evolutionary nature of the developmental
process towards SAF, during which sustainability-related initiatives become more
integrative, sophisticated and demanding. Stage models are generally composed by the
elements that help companies to institutionalize SAF, which includes the organizational
structure, the organizational culture, stakeholder relationships and the leadership logic/style
(Maon, Lindgreen, & Swaen, 2010a; Mirvis & Googins, 2006; van Marrewijk & Werre,
2003).
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purpose is manifested in business practices that strive for wholeness and community,
supporting peoples longing to be fully themselves at work, and to be deeply involved in
nourishing relationships (Pavez et al., 2014). For example, Laloux notes an increase desire of
people to affiliate only with organizations that have a clear and noble purpose of their own.
We can expect that purpose, more than profitability, growth, or market share, will be the
guiding principle for organizational decision-making (2014: 50).
The set of organizing principles represents the underlying assumptions behind the
social processes that shape interactions among organizational members. Those modes of
organizing also followed an evolutionary path, which revolves around the nature of human
interactions that pervade the organizational design.
The first stage is characterized by an organizing style in which power and hierarchy
are salient. Interactions are design to be predictable, efficient and rigid, so they follow a
cascade of formal communication/reporting lines from bosses to subordinates. The mental
models of production are based on efficiency, so employees are treated as resources to serve
the instrumental purpose of the organization of generating profit (Daft, 2012; Lee, 2008).
The second stage is characterized by an organizing style with the underlying
assumption that effectiveness and success replace morals as a yardstick for decision-making:
the better I understand the way the world operates, the more I can achieve; the best decision
is the one that begets the highest outcome. For these companies, the goal as human beings is
to get ahead, to succeed in socially acceptable ways, and to best play out the cards we are
dealt.
The third stage is characterized by an organizing style with the underlying assumption
that employees are part of the same human family in pursuit of doing good for society itself.
The organization endeavors to increase each members wellbeing while becoming a force for
good in a broader context (i.e. the principle of caring in action) (Haigh & Hoffman, 2012;
Honeyman, 2014). Personal values and beliefs of top management and all intersecting
stakeholders hold that doing good for oneself and for others (environment included) is
integral to how the firm is organized to act.
Finally, the fourth stage is characterized by an organizing style that transcends caring
to yearn for wholeness (Laloux, 2014). Here, companies strive to bring together the ego and
the deeper parts of the self; integrating mind, body, and soul; cultivating both the feminine
and masculine parts within; being whole in relation to others; and nurturing our relationship
with life and nature (Kofman, 2013). Oftentimes, the shift to wholeness comes with an
opening to a transcendent spiritual realm and a profound sense that at some level, we are all
connected and part of one big whole (Laszlo & Brown et al., 2014; Scharmer & Kaufer,
2013; Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, & Flowers, 2005).
The organizing principles previously described are closely intertwined with the
business purpose that characterizes each stage. This suggests that they represent two
evolutionary axes through which companies evolve to become positive institutions; one
representing the contribution of the company to society (purpose) and the other one the
principles behind the social processes that shape organizational practices (organizing).
Consequently, we argue that we should look at the evolution of business toward wholeness
through the framework, The arc of interconnectedness (Pavez et al., 2014).
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This evolutionary path begins with shareholder value (the dominant paradigm),
evolving to sustainable value (creating value for shareholders and stakeholders
simultaneously), then the organizing principle and purpose of the sustainable/social
enterprise (business as a force for good), to ultimately transcend and become a flourishing
organization (business that spark the divine spark of humanity).
Notably we found a profound gap in terms of the worldview that dominates the first
two levels (shareholder and sustainable value) and the last two (sustainable/social enterprise
and flourishing organization). We called that gap The Ontological Threshold, because it
embraces a deep transformational movement that completely changes the underlying logic of
business. That movement is based on a totally different conception of the nature and relations
of being, which goes from a mechanistic and fragmented worldview based on seeing humans
as separate and selfish to a holistic and interconnected one in which we are part of the
Oneness of the world and in which caring for others and for future generations is an essential
quality of being human (Pavez et al., 2014). We will discuss the implication of that gap after
we present our findings.
The institutionalization processes towards Oneness
The two axes that frame the model of business evolution illuminate the way (how) in
which business embodies each evolutionary stage of the arc of interconnectedness. In other
words, each shift in purpose and organizing results in a different set of frames around the
institutionalization processes that a company follows to become a positive institution. We
divided the institutionalizing processes into four categories, as shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Institutionalization processes towards wholeness. Adapted (Pavez et al., 2014)
Stages /
Levels
Institutionalization
Purpose
Organizing
Structure
Stakeholders
Leadership
Culture
Shareholder
Maximizing
shareholder
value
Bureaucracy/
efficiency
Hierarchical
Contractual
Competent
manager
Complianceseeking
Sustainable
value
Deliver
sustainable
value
Effectiveness
Delegated
authority
Interactive
Strategic
achiever
Strategizing
Sustainable
enterprise
Becoming a
force for
good
Caring
Distributed
authority
Partnership
Social
innovator
Caring/
transforming
Flourishing
organization
Awakening
divine
spark
Wholeness
Fully
autonomous
Integrative
Visionary
alchemist
Flourishing
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depending of its objectives (purpose) and on the assumptions about the nature of people and
relationships within the organization (organizing). Stakeholders refers to any group or
individual that can affect or is affected by the achievement of a corporations purpose
(Freeman, 2010: 46). Leadership refers to the ability of influence a group of a vision toward
the achievement of a vision or set of goals (Robbins & Judge, 2013: 178). Culture refers to
the pattern of shared and taken-for-granted assumptions about sustainability that was
learned by organizational members as the company solved its problems of external
adaptation and internal integration. To be considered a cultural trait, that form of
understanding sustainability should has worked well enough to be considered valid and,
consequently, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel
about sustainability (Schein, 2004: 17).
The process of institutionalization is described in the following section, with
examples of real business practices that represent each element at all levels. We will illustrate
the tension between the two dialectical worldviews that represent the ontological threshold,
and how companies are moving from the fragmented and disconnected worldview to the
holistic and interconnected one.
HOW COMPANIES FOLLOW THE ARC OF INTERCONNECTEDNESS
The way we think about our purpose and approach to the environment can be
expressed in the following way: (1) we lead an examined life; (2) we clean up our own act;
(3) we do our penance; (4) we support civil democracy [by supporting environmental
campaigns and groups]; (5) we influence other companies, including our competitors to
engage with us on this prominent U.S. clothing manufacturer executive and
environmental steward.
What we find in the companies we researched are key institutionalization factors that
allow us to see more deeply how businesses evolve from utility-driven purpose and the
organizing principles of maximizing shareholder value or driving social and environmental
change only as a means of gaining comparative advantage to a paradigm with an entirely
different set of organizing principles and business purpose, to be truly interconnected.
What we find with this understanding is that each shift in purpose and organizing
results in a different set of frames around the institutionalization processes that companies
follow to become positive institutions. We divided the institutionalizing processes into the
following categories: structure, stakeholder, leadership, and culture.
Structure
How to improve the vitality of people's lives transcends everything we do from our
strategic planning process to setting our goals and objectives; to turning those goals and
objectives into division strategies rolled into department strategies, and then rolling these
into individual goals and objectives. This is how we can integrate it through all of our efforts
and assure that were truly aligned to that particular vision CEO, U.S. Products
manufacturing firm.
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Fragmented: Me
Stages
Shareholder
Structure
Hierarchical
Decisionmaking
Interconnected: We
Flourishing
organization
Delegated authority
Distributed
authority
Fully
1
autonomous
Decisions require
correct authority
and are driven topdown into
organization
Decisions have
increasing complexity;
top management
establish overall
direction and delegate
downwards
Goes outside
pyramidal model to
focus on culture,
decentralization, and
empowerment.
Structure evolves to
align with being a
force for good
Organizations are
peer-relationship
based on
perceiving whats
needed versus
predefined roles,
structures, &
activities
Work
definition
Procedures
established a priori
for efficiency;
deviation not
tolerated well
Employees work in
teams to exercise
responsibility and
authority to define
objectives
Employees work
independently to
define roles,
function, and
performance
Information
flow
Communication
flows rigidly from
top to bottom
Emphasizes informal
communication
channels
Communication is
a function of
ones whole and
authentic self
Measuring
performance
Financially
measured: past
performance used
to describe future
expectations in
purely monetary
terms
Performance described
in terms combining
financial data and
social / environmental
costs to be the best in
the world
Performance is
reflected in social
justice and
environmental terms:
to be a force for good
by being best for the
world
Performance is
evaluated on the
whole persons
growth and orgs
fulfillment of
evolutionary
purpose and
benefit to the
world
Exercise of
power
Power is exercised
depending on
location in
hierarchy; amassed
Employees have
significant power over
task execution
Employees have
significant control
over role definition
and power over task
Employees create
role definition and
task execution
Ontological threshold
Sustainable
enterprise
Sustainable value
This has also been defined as a Teal or Holacratic organization (Laloux, 2014).
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at the top
execution
Locus of
control
Bureaucracy as
controlling
function through
command and
control
Matrix management
and project teams are
the hallmark of this
level of structural
evolution
Autonomy exists
at the individual
level without
managers exerting
control over
Role of
departments
Functions are
fiefdoms and
difficult to evolve
without creating
defensiveness
moves
Department functions
are more fluid and
evolve as the business
evolves
Departments/
functions serve
the nature of the
work and come
and go by
agreement
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Anyone can initiate a project to make a positive impact in a community, like our
local Korean community, or something to impact the larger world in a positive way just by
posting it internally for everyone to see. Anyone from the company can join the project, or
sign up to volunteer for a specific activity. The company doesnt drive this from the top down.
Its self-organized because if someone forces you to do something, its not going to be
regenerative, because that has to come from within HR executive, global technology
firm.
For leaders contemplating changing their organizational structure to empower their
employees and increase employee engagement, sometimes crossing the ontological threshold
is a matter of just letting go, so that employees can connect with each other on what they care
the most about.
Another example:For the business leaders in our company who only care about the
numbers, they need to be able to take sustainability one step at a time. However, external
pressures sometimes accelerate the whole thing very nicely for us. We have one particular
business that was a steel manufacturing plant. Steel is very water-intensive and they were
drawing water from the municipality that was meant for the farming community. After
direction came from the government and a pretty big protest was organized in the village
about another business running afoul of the community, the head of steel manufacturing
asked us to help wean them off of municipality water altogether. A year later, we have a plant
that has it own rainwater harvesting and a ground water recharge system that allows them to
be water self-sufficient for about half the year. EVP, Sustainability officer for Indian
multinational conglomerate
Businesses do evolve, and we find that large corporations have institutionalized their
structures to evolve at different rates for any given point of time. The Indian multinational
firm in this case, a $30 billion (in USD) company with 150,000 employees recently launched
a reinvention of the company to become a sustainable enterprise, following Gandhian
principles of economic and social justice combined with the chairmans desire to unleash the
innovation potential of 150,000 employees to solve the biggest problems confronting Indian
and global society. To do so, this firm recognized that the institutionalization structures that
were largely hierarchical were holding the company back. The reinvention targets
leapfrogging over delegated authority to distributed authority. The senior leader reported that
empowerment was an easier change to talk about when they focused on innovation as a
institutional force compelling to rethink the role of structure. Managers at the ground level
talked about how hard it was to let employees have more freedom to make mistakes, to
experiment, and to change how they worked. This is a powerful ontological shift, especially
for a structure that is deeply imbued with hierarchy as a means of achieving firm objectives.
Additional analysis of the primary and secondary data reveals stories about how
businesses are influenced by the diversity of people and their changing expectations,
especially millennials seeking purpose and meaning, as well as expecting autonomy.
Businesses are changing in no small ways with the influence of the Internet and social media
demanding transparency, with the inclusion of women into positions of leadership and
entrepreneurship, even in cultures where women as entrepreneurs would have been unheard
of ten years ago. A review of how these companies talk about themselves in social media
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reflects purpose and vision in increasingly holistic and spiritual terms. As we continue this
line of inquiry in our broader research themes, we believe that we will see increasing
numbers of companies redefining their structural organization in ways that reflect this
interconnected worldview.
Stakeholders
A sustainability strategy should not only guide the activities development and skills,
is also a form of business relationship with customers, vendors, suppliers, shareholders,
politicians and stakeholders. Environmental sustainability is the single biggest challenge
facing our industry and society this century, because the response affects not only products
but every aspect of our business and every person in it. Chief Environmental Officer &
Chief Executive Officer of a leading Japanese multinational automaker.
Institutionalization in terms of stakeholders is the process by which a business views
relationships with those outside the firm in either a limited morality context (e.g. moral
stewardship or corporate egoist and instrumentalist) or an elevated state of consciousness
(e.g. caring and holistic) (Jones, Felps, & Bigley, 2007). Table 3 illustrates how the
paradigmatic worldviews of utilitarian and interconnectedness view relationships that serve
their business purposes.
Table 3. Institutionalization: Stakeholders.
Paradigm
Fragmented: Me
Stages
Shareholder
Stakeholders
Contractual
Concern for
others
Interconnected: We
Sustainable
enterprise
Flourishing
organization
Interactive
Partnership
Integrative
Moral stewardship
concern for others
is limited to
concern on behalf
of shareholders
Interests of relevant
stakeholders integrated
into business strategy
Company built
around developing
a greater sense of
interconnectedness
between company
and all living
systems, with aim
of leading
creation of a
flourishing world
Stakeholder
Engagement
When doing so
benefits
shareholders in an
instrumental way
Close relationships
with most
stakeholders to act as
partners of societal
betterment
Broad definition
of stakeholders
(not just ones
directly impacted
by business), and
embraces deep
collaboration
Viewing impact
upon
stakeholder
Interpreted and
treated as an
externality
Satisfying stakeholders
needs is considered
good business
Understood as central
element to enhance
positive impact of the
company upon society
Stakeholders are
highly synergistic
and collaborative,
which means that
they are actively
involved in cocreating/improvin
Ontological threshold
Sustainable value
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39
g the business
practices of
company to create
societal welfare
Relationship
type
Purely contractual
Reciprocal (win-win)
relationships to assure
success in
implementation of
business strategy
Stakeholder
relationships are
transformative in
nature. In other
words, they help
to increase the
meaning/purpose
of business actors
and enhance their
sense of interconnectedness
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40
Many of the firms we studied were focused on partnership in the way they viewed
stakeholder relationship as partners in societal betterment. In these cases stakeholders are an
opportunity to understand the whole organizational system, going beyond instrumentalism or
egoism to the ontological view of wholeness. In some cases, these firms are evolving into
integrative stakeholder relationships, as is the case of the South American recycling company
because they are transformative in nature. The recyclers, most of whom come out of
desperate poverty situations, give the business meaning and purpose, and in turn, the business
provides the same back to the recyclers, along with dignity and a sense of hope.
Another example: Because of our relationships working with farmers, we were able
to fundamentally change our entire business model from farm tech manufacturing to farm
tech prosperity. We dont look at just selling tractors and other farming equipment to the
farmer anymore, but give them end-to-end support from seeding to new technology in
farming for efficient use of water, conservation of soil moisture, interaction with a local
universitys horticulture program, and access to a 24/7 local/rural television programs. This
shift to being in the farm tech prosperity business is huge for us. We create ergonomically
tractors that women can use. Farmers taught us to modify the design so that the tractor can
be used for applications beyond the limited four to five month growing season, to use it for
other applications that could also mean transporting some heavy equipment or timber or
something from one place to the other SVP, Indian multinational conglomerate.
Here again are stakeholder relationships that allow the firm to focus on transformative
activities that could significantly change the lives of a population in India that is deeply
mired in the type of poverty and hardship associated with the fickle monsoon seasons that
make farming in India very difficult. We note that this isnt a business case aimed at selling
more tractors, nor is it an ontological perspective about utility, although utility is certainly
implied by extending the use of a piece of equipment beyond traditional farming activities.
What we find the most remarkable is that the firms relationship and business purpose with
the farmer has been completely transformed, to one of seeing the farmers situation as their
own. This suggests that an ontological threshold has been crossed, with an associated
paradigmatic shift towards interconnectedness and oneness.
Leadership
I care deeply about people sustaining their life, about people having life and
vitality. Of people being able to enjoy and live a life and feel great while they're living it.
Being in this particular role not only allows me to do that personally, but allows me to
inspire an entire workforce around the world to help others achieve the same thing Chief
Executive Officer, U.S. appliance maker.
Institutionalization in terms of leadership is how the businesses structure, design, and
view the role of leadership and the top management team to manage the activities of the firm.
Table 5 illustrates the paradigmatic worldviews of utilitarian and interconnectedness from a
leadership perspective.
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41
Fragmented: Me
Stages
Shareholder
Leadership
Competent
manager
Role of leader
Interconnected: We
Sustainable
enterprise
Flourishing
organization
Strategic achiever
Social innovator
Visionary
alchemist
Establish
standards,
procedures, and
output statistics to
regulate activities.
Strong strategic
orientation focused on
getting results; satisfy
stakeholder needs in
order to improve
business performance.
Challenge
assumptions to reach
higher performance
(social, economic, and
environmental).
Generate social
transformations
that reinvent
organizations in
historically
significant ways
Purpose of
leadership
Organize people
and resources
towards effective
and efficient
pursuit of
predetermined
objectives.
Get tangible
deliverables by
empowering and
motivating team
members.
Generate effective
organizational and
personal change
Modus
operandi
Driven by power
and logic; aware of
power dynamics,
expect people to
follow instructions;
focused on
maintaining power
structures over
affective relations.
Develops highly
collaborative
environments, and
weaves meaningful
visions with
pragmatic, timely
initiatives.
Consider the
whole system and
the long-term
consequences;
integrates all
stakeholders,
embracing that
which supports
the positive
evolution of
humanity.
Typical
leadership
style
Authoritative,
relies on top-down
approach;
distinguishes
between executives
as knowledge and
workers (source of
physical
transformation of
inputs to outputs).
Promote teamwork to
effectively deal with
managerial duties;
work with reciprocal
influences between the
company and its
stakeholders.
Empower employees
to grow and develop
personally and
professionally by
giving them
responsible freedom.
Sought out in
organization for
wisdom and
compassion;
Builds framework
of elevated human
values that guide
team members in
their daily
activities.
Primary
objectives
Focus on financial
returns and
shareholders
interest; impacts to
society are
externalities;
stakeholders
relevant when
specific issue
affects financial
returns.
Cooperate across
institutional
boundaries (wide
range of stakeholders)
for the mutual benefit
of the organization
and society (& triple
bottom-line results).
Transcend the
boundaries of
their company to
become influential
leaders of a
flourishing world.
Ontological threshold
Sustainable value
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42
We saw a change in leadership at the overall business level with the total focus on
the short-term, and we saw my CEO who was really quite visionary replaced by somebody
with a sales focus who really did not have that vision. Sustainability didnt necessarily mesh
with his management objectives, so everything we were working related to the sustainability
portfolio on became a non-priority VP, European chemical company.
Leaders who have a worldview aligned with the shareholder stage are competent
managers with a clear focus on financial returns and shareholders interests. The purpose of
leadership is to organize people and resources towards effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives. For our R&D leader above, it was a personal and professional shock
to go from reporting to a social innovator with an entirely different focus on stakeholder and
societal / economic / and environmental impacts to a leader who told him in the first five
minutes, I dont care about what you do, and I dont care about sustainability. We observe
that executive hiring committees who are not oriented to the stages of institutionalization
may end up hiring or promoting leaders into roles that are a mismatch for the organization;
often in hidden ways that arent exposed until talented staff and well-respected leaders like
our interview subject leave the company altogether.
Another example: One of the most the most important thing our leaders do is to get
on the stage every week, every single week no matter what, share their own vision, share how
our business is going, and then take a lot of questions with straight answers. I think that's
really an amazing thing to do as a leader, because its not an easy thing to do VP, HR
global technology company.
We heard a lot of descriptions about leaders who are strategic achievers, and excel at
empowering and motivating their teams. Some of the worlds top companies with
charismatic leaders like Cisco Systems John Chambers, or Li Ka-shing of Hutchison
Whampoa-Cheung Kong (Hong Kong) are legendary achievers who are well-liked by the
rank and file employees for their personal generosity. However, the goals are ultimately
about business performance, and do not enter into transformational change beyond the
bottom-line.
Another example: I remember when a CEO from a certified B-corporation that had
been acquired by a major conglomerate was invited to present in front of the entire 600person sales team. The person who was coaching him about the presentation warned him not
to waste his time talking about being a benefit corporation, but to focus on why his products
were great and how the sales team could make a lot of money. The CEOs response was You
don't get it. Our products are great and our people are great, but the reason why were
growing faster than anyone else in our business is because we're a B-Corporation. And his
sponsor told him that it was his funeral, but it was his choice. So he takes the stage, gives his
fifteen minute talk, at the end of which the six hundred sales team stood unified with a
standing ovation CEO, non-profit.
Social innovator leaders challenge us to think about company performance in terms
of social, economic, and environment. We wouldnt expect a typical sales team to respond to
a pitch about a company legal structure, but it isnt about a governance model, its about
what this acquired company stood for. The leader who can operate from a commitment to do
good for the world, while pragmatically combining meaningful visions with practical
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43
initiatives for the purposes of creating mutual benefit for the company and society will stand
out, and in some cases, receive standing applause. Why do these leaders instill this type of
reaction?
Unlike the leader who is a strategic achiever and may be very charismatic, we believe
that people instinctively respond to the authenticity of a leader who speaks from both their
head and their heart with actions that are congruent with the words being spoken. Being a
benefit corporation is a significant statement because it requires changing the articles of the
corporation and declaring to the shareholders that the firm is legally obligated to pursue
objectives that are a benefit to society at the same level of priority as financial ones. Instead
of being measured by shareholder performance, the firm is declaring that it will be measured
externally by stakeholder performance, against criteria that is objective and challenging.
When we find this type of leadership, we also find other factors of institutionalization
that map to the corresponding stage of business evolution.
Culture
Imagine coming to work for a company and in the interviewing process you're being
interviewed to find out whether you passionately believe in making the world a better place.
Because if you dont passionately believe in that, we dont really want you to work for our
company. Chief Executive Officer, multinational healthcare products.
Institutionalization in terms of culture is how the business functions by implicit and
explicit rules that are understood as this is how we do things around here. Table 6
illustrates the paradigmatic worldviews of utilitarian and interconnectedness from a Culture
perspective.
Table 5. Institutionalization: Culture.
Fragmented: Me
Stages
Shareholder
Culture
Complianceseeking
Sustainability
definition
Mission and
objectives
Interconnected: We
Sustainable value
Sustainable
enterprise
Flourishing
organization
Strategizing
Caring /
transforming
Flourishing
Sustainability is a
cost without clear
business value.
Sustainability is seen as
source of strategic
advantage.
Sustainability is
deeply woven into the
firms raison d'tre.
Culture of
company supports
a societal
transformation for
creating a thriving
& flourishing
world.
Company mission
descriptive and
built around
business objectives
and shareholder
value.
Ontological threshold
Paradigm
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business as an
interconnected
entity into the
whole.
Impact of
vision
Includes contributing to
society but employees
dont buy-in because
integration of
sustainability into
operations are
fragmented.
Employees are
attracted to the
company by the strong
sense of vision and
purpose that the
company embraces;
deep source of inner
motivation at work
Employees are
attracted to the
company because
they perceive a
strong sense of
meaning and
calling at work
which transforms
their lives.
Transmittal of
values
Values largely
unknown by
employees; used
for PR image.
Values reflect
contributing to society
but are not totally
shared by employees.
Organizational values
deeply reflect the idea
of contributing to
society and/or being
good corporate
citizens; shared by
employees.
Organizational
values deeply
reflect elevated
principles of
relating and
acting, which
impact the lives of
employees even
beyond the job.
Dominant
relationship
mode
Interactions and
relationships are
transactional with
high level of
control and power
plays.
Interactions and
relationships among
employees include
caring for emotional
wellbeing, but behind
that is a utilitarian
purpose of improving
business performance.
Interactions and
relationships among
employees are
strongly based on
caring and
compassion, and the
work environment is
highly collaborative.
Interactions and
relationships
among employees
are transformative; enables
employees to
thrive/flourish
personally and
professionally.
We were dealing with organizations like Wal-Mart that were asking lots of
questions, and we knew that if we were working to reduce the impact of our products, that
would give us a major business advantage. At one point, we had over 200 major
corporations sitting at the same table having the same discussion. Some were there because
they really wanted to make a difference, and some were there because they just wanted to
make sure they could continue to do business with Wal-Mart. SVP, European consumer
products firm.
Most of the firms we studied were aspirational in wanting to be caring/transforming,
but ended up displaying most of the characteristics of a strategizing culture. With our
European consumer products firm, sustainability viewed as a source of strategic advantage,
although this SVP and other employees wanted the impact of the vision to be around
positively contributing to society and a good corporate citizen as a caring/transforming
culture. This firm suffered from not having sustainability completely integrated into business
operations, and with the mission statement clearly articulating wanting to be the best in the
world, with sustainability as a means to an end. The challenge with being on the left side as a
utilitarian worldview is several-fold: (1) employees dont buy into the vision or values
because they are self-serving; (2) A change in leadership that is hostile to sustainable value
makes it easier for the company to retreat back to being a shareholder stage company as
discussed previously; and (3) when interactions and relationships are really a means to an end
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45
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/threshold
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47
connections, honor, and purpose as defined between the individual actor and the community
(Liu, 1955; Odin, 1992).
Interestingly, this collective process of awareness has allowed the re-birth of ancient
wisdom coming from different cultural and spiritual traditions, which constitutes a totally
different mindset for understanding and relating to ourselves, others and the natural
environment. This mindset, which has been called holistic and/or ecological worldview
(Capra, 1997; Capra et al., 1993), sees the world as an integrated whole, where matter, life
and minds are part of a vast network of mutually interlocking orders subsisting in Spirit,
with each node in the continuum of being, each link in the chain, being absolutely necessary
and intrinsically valuable (Wilber, 1995: 20). It is a worldview that acknowledges the
inherent value of human and nonhuman life, because it recognizes that all living beings are
members of ecological communities bound together in a network of interconnectedness and
interdependencies (Capra, 1997).
Besides, it has demonstrated the power of creating a radically different system of
ethics, when this perception becomes part of the daily awareness of the beholder (Capra,
1997). This has produced important advances in different scientific disciplines such as
physics, biology, cognition, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and medicine which
have tested the hypothesis of interconnectedness and holistic awareness. Those studies have
come to the same conclusion that ancient spiritual traditions has told us for a long time: we
are deeply interconnected not only to each other and all life but also to the universe and to the
spirit of humanity (Capra, 1997, 2013; Dispenza, 2010; Goswami, 1995; Maturana & Varela,
1987; Radin, Hayssen, Emoto, & Kizu, 2006; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1992; Wilber,
1995; Laszlo E., 2014).
This ontological way of being is causally related to the evolving nature of humanity
and the role that businesses play in expressing that humanity as a set of values, expectations,
and cultural norms. Hence, this worldview has pervaded the generation of scientific
knowledge and practice in the field business as well. Under this new paradigm, business
are seen as entities that should look for individual and societal wellbeing (Haigh & Hoffman,
2012; Honeyman, 2014; Mackey & Sisodia, 2013; Senge et al., 2008; Waddock, 2008),
encouraging the possibility that human being and other life forms will flourish on the Earth
forever (Ehrenfeld, 2008; Ehrenfeld & Hoffman, 2013; Laszlo & Brown et al., 2014).
This new logic of conducting business is based on the affirmation of human divinity
but is not anthropocentric, because it connects that divinity with the divinity of the whole.
The only way business can act as a force for create a flourishing planet, and a flourishing
human being, is by replacing the taken-for-granted fractured worldview with a worldview
that is more holistic, more relational, more integrative, more Earth-honoring, and less
arrogantly human-centered. A worldview, in short, that honors the entire web of life, a web
that has intrinsic value in and of itself, but a web that, not incidentally, is the bone and
marrow of our own existence as well (Wilber, 1995: 15).
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48
CONCLUSION
More than anything, we are hopeful with the exemplars we have encountered in this
research. We see leaders who made the leap of faith, in all of the countries we researched,
including Latin America, Europe, India, the United States, and in Japan. We also encountered
examples on the utility side of the ontological threshold in terms of Sustainable Value, or for
the most part, in the Shareholder stage, particularly in the West.
The organizing principles our research previously uncovered are demonstrated in our
study for the Goi Peace Foundation that show two evolutionary axes through which
companies evolve to become positive institutions; one representing the contribution of the
company to society (purpose) and the other one the principles behind the social processes
that shape organizational practices (organizing). We find that evolution of business toward
wholeness does indeed go through this framework called the The arc of interconnectedness
(Pavez et al., 2014). This evolutionary path represents a practical manifestation of the march
toward a consciousness of oneness.
In this study we show how The Ontological Threshold transforms the underlying
logic of business. This is based on a totally different conception of the nature and relations of
being, and in our study, shows how business goes from a mechanistic and fragmented
worldview based on seeing humans as separate and selfish to a holistic and interconnected
one in which we are part of the Oneness of the world and in which caring for others and for
future generations is an essential quality of being human (Pavez et al., 2014).
The key institutionalization processes we illuminated in this study show how the two
axes that frame the model of business evolution explain how a business evolves to become a
positive institution. What we find with this understanding is that each shift in purpose and
organizing results in a different set of frames around the institutionalization processes that
companies follow to become positive institutions. We divided the institutionalizing processes
into: structure, stakeholder, leadership, and culture.
Our work with the Goi Peace Foundation closes with our thoughts on the Fuji
Declaration itself. As business leaders and scholars, we are called to catalyze a shift in the
course of human history. It is time for leaders from diverse fieldsscientists, artists,
politicians, business leaders, and othersto travel The Ontological Threshold in our
personal and business evolution journey towards a stage of interconnectedness, one that
demonstrates humility, wisdom, and intention to benefit of all living things.
By so doing, we can overcome the hold of obsolete ideas and outdated behaviors in
todays unsustainable world and design a more harmonious and flourishing civilization for
the coming generations The Fuji Declaration.
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49
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Study overview
In the Spring of 2014, The Goi Peace Foundation sought background studies in four spheres
(the economy, politics, media, and business) to show how its goals for humanity, as expressed
in the Fuji Declaration, at that time provisionally entitled, AWAKENING THE DIVINE
SPARK IN THE SPIRIT OF HUMANITY: For a Civilization of Oneness with Diversity on
Planet Earth can be achieved. The Declaration points to the possibility of a worldwide shift
in consciousness, from materialism-centered sustainability to full-spectrum flourishing.
This report presents a background study about the economy. It outlines the path toward a
Civilization of Oneness with Diversity as it is being shaped and advanced by the economy.
In this study, we describe:
55
Table of Contents
1
Introduction: The world economy is growing faster than the population .............................. 2
The economic theory of (un)sustainability............................................................................. 4
Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can (John Lennon) .............................................. 8
Imagine all the people Sharing all the world.. (John Lennon).......................................... 11
The need for ecological and social resilience ....................................................................... 14
Introducing the Celestial Footprint ...................................................................................... 16
Paths of Gaining Happiness ................................................................................................. 18
(Non)material and (non)monetary trade-offs ....................................................................... 21
IPAT and the logic of Celestial Footprint ............................................................................ 22
Voluntary Simplicity: a radical, non-market strategy for increasing Celestial Footprint .... 23
Conclusions: Sustainability and interdependencies ............................................................. 26
References ............................................................................................................................ 28
56
only thirty times as much as that of the poorest 20%. By 2005 the income of the rich had
grown to seventy-five times as much, and the difference keeps growing. In the meantime, the
global population is exponentially increasing. In 1800 only one billion people lived on the
Earth and 130 years passed before this number doubled. Another doubling occurred in 47
years, another in 12 and then one more in only 9 years in total another 4 billion had been
added. The rate of increase is slowing a little, but the growth in Asia and Africa seems
unstoppable. Population growth is characteristic of poor regions.
Data concerning the increase in the productivity of agricultural work are available to the
public. In the past 100 years, while the amount of cereal grown per hectare has increased 6-10
fold, the number of working hours and thus the number of employees required per hectare has
dropped to a fraction of this (it has decreased by about 95%). It is common knowledge that in
developed countries 2-5% of the entire workforce are capable of providing the whole of the
society with food, and before long the proportion of workers employed in the industrial sector
will also drop below 5-7%. According to optimistic analysts, demands for employment will be
absorbed by the service or tertiary sector. Others predict that there will be more free time for
individuals because the same amount of work will be distributed among more people, which
will result in a double benefit more free time favors the development of the service sector
and creates demand for services.
The situation seems more complex in reflection of the statistical data. In certain regions e.g.
South America a third generation is growing up with no-one in the family ever having had a
permanent job; this generates huge social tension, and there is not much hope that children
socialized in such families will become employed as adults.
The other no less surprising fact is that employees free time is not increasing even in
developed countries; what is rather typical is that people work more than 8 hours a day and
cannot even take their vacations. When we examine the labor market, it is only with difficulty
that we can find jobs which offer 4-6 hours employment, although such working hours would
be critical for the healthy functioning of families. That is to say, changes in the labor market
do not support the more optimistic predictions; a developed economy can only manage with
well-qualified labor force that is prepared for competition, and those who want nothing but
to make a living are of no value to the current economy. Social supply systems attempt to
handle these issues using welfare states, and such problems are in theory usually easily
manageable in the economic sense. A productive economy is capable of taking care of the
physical needs of the unemployed. Ensuring the quality of life of the millions that are
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excluded from economy, however, is a more complex problem than simply satisfying their
physical needs.
58
speech he made at the Nobel award ceremony, though acknowledging the negative effects of
growth, he affirms quite clearly that two points are relevant here. First, the negative effects
of growth have never been viewed as so far outweighing its positive contribution as to lead to
its renunciation - no matter how crude the underlying calculus may have been. Second, one
may assume that once an unexpected negative result of growth emerges, the potential of
material and social technology is aimed at its reduction or removal. In many cases these
negative results were allowed to accumulate and to become serious technological or social
problems because it was so difficult to foresee them early enough in the process to take
effective preventive or ameliorative action. Even when such action was initiated, there may
have been delay in the effective technological or policy solution. Still, one may justifiably
argue, in the light of the history of economic growth, in which a succession of such
unexpected negative results has been overcome, that any specific problem so generated will
be temporary - although we shall never be free of them, no matter what economic
development is attained.
Back in 1971 Kuznets claimed that no-one had ever questioned the idea that growth results in
more good than bad, and that growth offers solutions that will offset negative effects (through
the deployment of technology). With circumspection, Kuznets presents six basic
characteristics of modern economic growth:
1. Significantly faster growth of national product per capita and population in
developed countries compared to earlier periods,
2. Significantly faster increase in work productivity as compared to earlier periods,
3. High speed structural changes in the economy, agriculture taking a back seat and the
developing dominance of industry first and the service sector later. Companies take
the lead from private enterprises, which changes employment circumstances,
4. Rapid change in social structure and associated ideologies,
5. Transport and telecommunication technologies enable developed countries to easily
access the rest of the world, which leads to the convergence of the world,
6. Despite economic growth, three quarters of the worlds population have a much
lower standard of living than that it would be possible to provide them with through
the application of modern technology.
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Kuznetss ideas were presented far earlier than the emergence of the theory of sustainable
development. While Kuznets was being awarded the Nobel Prize, the writing of first report of
the Club of Rome, entitled The Limits of Growth, was already underway. The Meadows
book was published in 1972 and expressed doubts about the long term sustainability of
growth and stated that the effects of growth are rather positive than negative (Meadows,
1972).
The authors of the Club of Rome certainly did not argue with Kuznets. If we take a close view
of Kuznetss statements, above, it is obvious that the growth theory of this economist still
considered a classic today mostly encompasses all that researchers have presented as
criticisms of growth theory in the past thirty-five years. Kuznets views technological and
social innovations as being the basis of development, but also deems natural, social and
cultural dimensions to be important by saying thus, modern technology with its emphasis on
labor-saving inventions may not be suited to countries with a plethora of labor but a scarcity
of other factors, such as land and water; and modern institutions, with their emphasis on
personal responsibility and pursuit of economic interest, may not be suited to the more
traditional life patterns of the agricultural communities that predominate in many less
developed countries.
Kuznets certainly does not interpret GDP as a welfare indicator; moreover, in his
aforementioned paper he clearly states that the conventional measures of national product
and its components do not reflect many costs of adjustment in the economic and social
structures to the channeling of major technological innovations; and, indeed, also omit some
positive returns. This shortcoming of this theory in confrontation with new findings has led
to a lively discussion in the field in recent years, and to attempts to expand the national
accounting framework to encompass the so far hidden but clearly important costs, for
example, in education as capital investment, in the shift to urban life, or in the pollution and
other negative results of mass production. These efforts will also uncover some so far
unmeasured positive returns in terms of better health and longevity, greater mobility, more
leisure, less income inequality, and the like.
Professionals have made estimates and found that the peak of the inverted parabola, the socalled turning point, is situated at very different per capita GDPs for various pollutants. For
carbon monoxide, as is mentioned above, this happens at only $35-57 thousand, and the GDP
per capita of the USA is still far below this level. For sulfur dioxide the level is $9400-11300;
this is where an improvement becomes demand.
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The situation is even more complex with water pollutants, though there is a correlation that is
clearly supportable with data concerning the change in biological and chemical oxygen
shortage or the potable water supply and sewerage of homes.
Using an understanding of economics based on the concepts of the environmental Kuznets
curves, politicians frequently think that economic growth will also solve environmental
problems. However, it has become clear by now that economic growth will not solve the
problems that exist with easily externalizable pollution for which there is little chance of
establishing the liability of the polluter (as is the case with greenhouse gases and some other
wastes), or with contamination that causes irreversible degradation or damage (e.g. the
accumulation of heavy metals, stable organic contaminants, etc. due to the shade effect),
The political optimism about the omnipotence of economic growth is overshadowed by yet
another contradiction with development. Based on several forecasts, most of the world will
not, even by 2030, reach a per capita GDP at which the quality of the environment should
start improving. According to prognoses, the most developed countries in the world will reach
and exceed a per capita GDP of $50000, while the world average may produce only $12000
and Asia28 around $8000. Even if the future deepening of the North-South crisis were
socially and politically tolerable (although obviously it is not), this situation is certainly
intolerable in the ecological-environmental sense. The figures show that without a radical
change in the conditions of distribution, squalor will remain permanent in the developing
countries to such an extent that it will pose an obstacle to positive demographic and
environmental change. Taking the delay inherent in feedback into consideration, should this
prediction come true we would most probably have to expect disaster.
The assessment is made more complex because we have no knowledge about the resources
future generations will use, or about the course of development the countries of the third
world will take. The best possible outcome and the worst possible outcome are probably very
different. Historical experience proves that there is room for optimism: this perspective
reminds us that discoveries come from people, and if there are enough people trying to solve a
given problem, they will manage to do it (Simon, 1998). The recent change in the dimension
of change, however, counters the optimistic point of view. So far the economy has been
dwarfed by the size of the biosphere, but it is now becoming dominant.
The supporters of the optimistic approach take heart in the idea that todays generation may
leave less natural resources for generations to come, but our successors will have a higher
standard of technology and greater capital.
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Regarding prognoses about the future of the Earth, it is crucial how limited we consider the
planets carrying capacity to be, and how resistant carrying capacity is to erosion.
62
In a study published in 2000 (Mont, 2000), the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
identified the following three potential paths to promoting urgently needed sustainability:
The first option is obviously impracticable in the short run since all the indications are that,
even if the growth rate of the population does not accelerate but stays stable, the global
population could reach 8-10 billion by 2100. (Walker, 2014)
Sustaining such a huge population clearly makes the second option, cutting down on
consumption, impossible. The situation is made even graver by the fact that most of the
population growth will happen in developing regions where living standards lag far behind
those seen in the developed part of the world. Improving economic performance, however,
will mean that even the citizens of poor regions will want to consume in a similar way to
inhabitants of the developed world. Moreover, inhabitants of countries that are emerging
from poverty will much less be sensitive to conservation approaches and will rather be
inclined to exploit environmental resources disproportionately to enjoy marginal
improvements in their living standards. Efforts to reduce consumption would be liable to
evoke major public dissent in countries where inhabitants already consume much more than is
required to meet their basic needs. No national government would be ready to support such
programs.
Today, improvements in eco-efficiency are partly the result of price competition. Everybody
is trying to sell products more cheaply. This creates demand for new branches and services
and, in this sense, has an important part in stimulating economic growth. In some sense, this is
also a paradox because due to improvements in eco-efficiency, the rate of increase in GDP
should be slowing down, but it seems to be gaining speed. In environmental studies, the
rebound effect is a well-known phenomenon that describes how eco-efficiency leads to
increases in consumption because any money saved by using more efficient goods and
services is recycled and invested into purchases in other areas. However, an increase in ecoefficiency could be used to favorably affect GDP growth if the economies gained from
increases in eco-efficiency were ploughed back into structural development.
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In his study into the Steady State Economy, Herman Daly (Daly, 1977) points out that
unlimited economic growth is impossible on a limited Earth. Grossman and Krueger (1994)
state that economic growth affects the quality of environment in three ways. The first is the
so-called scale effect, which refers to when large scale economic activity causes large scale
environmental degradation through the increased demand for inputs, including natural
resources, and the correspondingly higher output rate, which is indicated by the production of
waste. The second is the so-called structural effect, which may yet be environmentally
favorable in the future. The first structural changes that affected economic activity
urbanization, the shift from agricultural production to industrial production, etc. had a
negative environmental impact. Current structural changes, such as the tendency to increases
in energy efficiency, sectors with greater added value and the expansion of services indicate a
favorable change in that they reduce environmental impact per unit of GDP. The third
significant factor also brings favorable effects since wealthier countries are spending more on
research and development, which enables the replacement of polluting technologies with
cleaner ones, thus reducing environment impact. This is usually called the technicaltechnological component of growth.
In the past century, economic growth has taken a trajectory, which, regarding Earths limited
resources, cannot be maintained. There might be, however, another course to take, which
offers the economic growth necessary to create opportunities for those currently excluded
from income generation (the unemployed) to make a living, and to appear on the market with
purchasing power. There remains the possibility for structural economic growth. This
proposal is in close harmony with Grossmanns ideas, and what Weizscker and Lovins
(Hawken, Lovins & Lovins, 2013) call a shift from a stock economy to a flow economy.
Countries with low raw material consumption per capita have significantly reduced in number
over the past two decades. These countries also include some fairly opulent ones. When
observing the history of countries with rapid economic growth, like Finland or Singapore, we
may note that their sudden economic growth went hand in hand with the large scale
consumption of raw materials and resources. There are, however, developed countries, which
have also managed to create significant wealth with relatively low per capita resource
consumption. The so-called eminence of Finlands environmental position may be called into
question if we note that average per capita resource consumption in Finland is over double
that of Italys, which is considered to be a laggard in terms of environmental matters.
64
Imagine all the people sharing all the world... (John Lennon)
The idea that the main goal of mans life is self-fulfillment has become a major factor in
appraising quality of life, although there is only a thin line between self-fulfillment and
selfishness, which may be useful for boosting the economy but has little to do with human
happiness. Quality of life does not seem to be related to wealth or sustainable development;
however, in reality, cultural perceptions and messages about ones quality of life
fundamentally influence sustainability. The differentiation between wealth and well-being is
important, because if an average shopping cart contained more (and here the term is broadly
interpreted) culture, increases in wealth would require less consumption of material and
energy and thus environmental impact would be lower.
According to estimates, the population of Earth is bound to reach between 7 and 10 billion in
the following 30 years. It is also public knowledge that, at present, 800 million people are
living (or starving) on less than $1 per day, and nearly 3 billion are living on less than $2 a
day: the poverty level. That can still mean that economies remain viable because people who
work 12-14 hours a day are fairly productive and can finance well-developed social support
systems.
The frequently-mentioned notion of competition generates the illusion that every game in
life is zero-sum. If tax revenues are spent on environment protection, there will be no
resources left for building motorways. If pensions are subsidized, there will be nothing left to
support small enterprises. These suppositions that suggest that only one goal can be realized
to the detriment of another are all too familiar.
Sustainable development needs a radically different way of thinking. Sustainability means
the development of multiple dimensions. In this respect, the word or should be erased from
our dictionaries since the simultaneous development of different dimensions can only be
expressed by the words and/both. There are always favorable compromises that can be
made, and it is never true that there are only two options to pick from: inevitably, innumerable
potential options exist. The sin of dominant paradigms is that in certain periods certain
approaches are prioritized, and society is made to face a choice. This is where government
intervention comes in; a government is a system of institutions operated by society without
which there would be no environmental safety, or even a moderately tolerable environment.
Csikszentmihlyi (1997) states that, in a welfare economy, consumers care little about
existence itself but their attention turns towards experiential needs instead. That is, they
need activities to satisfy their need for practical experience. Interestingly enough, the
consumers main interest changes from merchandise to the experience of shopping itself. This
65
may have positive and negative consequences from the perspective of sustainable
development.
Sustainability means ensuring the continuous existence of something. Growth in GDP does
not necessarily mean growth in wealth, and even less that of well-being. Growth in well-being
requires the development of education, increases in healthy life expectancy, the improvement
of life and social security and even the improvement of factors like personal freedom, which
are all components of the quality of life.
According to the Easterlin (1974) paradox, the satisfaction or happiness of people is not
linearly correlated to wealth (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2008). Those who do not become
preoccupied with statistical averages but pay attention to individuals claim that over half of
the active population suffer from depression, and note that the disease tends to also attack
those who live in a state of wealth. Perhaps the illness does not only affect wealthier
nations, but they certainly constitute the basis for the diagnosis of depression as the endemic
disease of the modern age. Earths carrying capacity is limited and seems to be failing under
the environmental impact of mankind: the needless and mindless consumer habits of the rich
or the misery of the poor, since both overload the global ecosystem. Maria Csutora and her
colleagues at the Institute of Environmental Science at Corvinus University, Budapest
describe an interesting phenomenon concerning peoples environmental awareness and
ecological footprints. While one would expect environmentally-conscious peoples ecological
footprints to be smaller than those of non-environmentally-conscious people, the research
found no such correlation. In her research, which has major international resonance, Csutora
calls the phenomenon which we might label the Csutora-paradox the BehaviourImpact
Gap. The main point of the paradox is that the ecological footprints or the carbon footprints
of so-called brown (the least environmentally-conscious) and green (the most
environmentally-conscious) consumers do not significantly differ from each other. Ecological
footprints are correlated to income, but the beneficial effect of environmental awareness
cannot be demonstrated (Csutora, 2012).
Environmentally-conscious consumers are ready to undertake some self-limiting activities
(selective waste collection, turning off the tap, disconnecting the telephone recharger, etc.)
that only have marginal effects on the ecological footprint, while they typically reject making
radical changes. They do not give up flying, become vegetarians or move into smaller homes.
This certainly does not mean that environmentally-conscious consumption does not have
positive long-term effects, but rather that these long-term effects are structural in nature and
are difficult to numerically express.
66
Regarding this observation, and accepting the premise of macro-economics that says that
economic growth is a necessary condition for the growth of wealth, a major dilemma arises as
to what type of economic growth causes the least damage to the natural environment, or rather
which type best serves the goals of sustainable development. Ecological economists and
scientists deny the existence of such types of economic growth. However, there is a concept
of economic growth that serves sustainable development that we may call structural economic
growth. Eco-efficiency may be increased in a way that it simultaneously results in an increase
in the division of labor within society. Supported by an increase in the division of labor, the
consumption of services in the economy would also significantly increase at the expense of
material consumption, which would mean the replacement of the stock economy by a flow
economy. Instead of buying washing machines, refrigerators and kitchen equipment, we
would buy clean clothes from the laundry and we would eat out in restaurants. We would hire
specialists, rather than do things ourselves at home. Specialists equipped with professional
tools would clean our homes. This would promote economic growth because, due to the
division of labor, we would pay for these services: however, instead of spending our money
on buying washing machines we would only need to settle the laundry bill. These days,
television sets that offer a movie experience are available to buy: in a flow economy we
would just go to a movie theatre where 400 of us could watch the program on one set. Highincome people can afford home movie equipment because the necessary technology has
become cheap enough. A television set meeting nearly all the users needs, providing 3D
quality images, only cost three hundred thousand forints (approx. $1000) in 2014. The cost
of cinema tickets is typically a multiple of hiring a film on DVD. Technology is growing
cheaper, while services are becoming more expensive, largely due to increases in wages. But
this up-to-date home movie equipment, however, is consuming 150W of energy in the
background. According to careful estimates, this means that while we are watching our movie
at home, at least two strapping energy-slaves are required to power the equipment
(MacKay, 2008). Each is capable of keeping a 75W light bulb on. If we leave a 75W bulb on
and go to sleep in front of the TV, two slaves will be doing unnecessary work (Grossman &
Krueger, 1994). It is easy to realize what a change in environment impact the change in our
entertainment-related behavior has caused just over the past five years. The energy
consumption of a single commercial movie projector (per head) is nothing in comparison to
the energy consumption of hundreds of individuals watching TV.
The development of the economy in the past one hundred years indicates that it is capable of
more efficient development if not hindered by government or other regulations. It has also
67
been proven that the market itself is unable to successfully deal with problems such as poverty
or social inequalities. The market creates an irresolvable contradiction by attempting to
minimize the use of labor as a production factor while high employment rates are more
desirable for society as a whole. The size of an economy and rates of consumption are defined
by the size of the human population, the complexity of ecosystems, and how much, what and
in what way an individual consumes.
it recognizes and emphasizes the importance of education, social networks and locally
developed rules.
68
give prompt feedback: e.g. in the case of drought, immediate irrigation is needed with
no time spent waiting for EU support policy to change. If there is no demand for
selectively collected waste paper, its energy content must be exploited through
incineration before it degrades in a backyard. There may be no time for prolonged
discussion about the best course of action;
direct the attention of politics to better managing slow variables and processes of
accumulation, despite the fact that politicians are disinterested in these kinds of issues:
they are not newsworthy. When a river floods or a fire breaks out there always are
funds available for repairing the damage, while nobody really cares about the slow
degradation of dams or fire stations. The slow increase of nitrogen, or the
accumulation of heavy metals in the soil is a graver problem than the occasional
foaming of the River. The latter phenomenon, luckily, attracts attention, while the
previous one does not;
ensure an appropriate balance between private and public property and overlapping
rights of access. Seemingly, the state is a bad proprietor, which is why the liberal
economy wants to privatize everything. The state may be a bad proprietor in the
economic sense, but it is good in the ecological sense for example, in the case of
public assets such as drinking water; moreover, also with non-public assets (e.g.
energy supplies, where a private owner may be able to cut prices but is unable to
ensure security of supply);
create a strict system of sanctioning and a culture of honesty. The health of the
environment and society can only be ensured if an appropriate system of moral values
exists;
69
environmental destruction, the rate of which may be decreased only if suitable impact
assessments are prepared and alternative proposals are also examined;
1
2
70
As a theoretical concept, celestial footprint is not directly measurable. But as a good proxy it
is worth estimating it as a ratio of perceived subjective wellbeing and calculated ecological
footprint (happiness/gHa) over some time period.3 This concept is not sensitive to the size of
population, as by using per capita measures we produce the same ratio mentioned above
[(happiness/capita) / (gHa/capita)]. Celestial footprint is therefore a general characteristic of a
community regardless of population (ceteris paribus, changes in population do not affect
celestial footprint). As the ecological footprint usually measures privately consumable
material resources it naturally depends of the size of the population. As consumption of
celestial/non-material resources measured by celestial footprint has a communitarian (nonprivate, common good) characteristic it is the same size either for one person or a million.
Celestial footprint relates to the non-material content of the happiness of a specific
community or of a person. The higher the celestial footprint is, the less the material content of
a specific happiness level. The dynamic face of pursuing a bigger celestial footprint is easy to
recognize: this is the question of how to be happier with the same ecological load; or of
how to decrease our ecological load without being unhappier. Of course, the numerator and
denominator may change simultaneously. The question of the celestial footprint is crucial in a
materially limited and by now unsustainable world because our celestial resource pool of
happiness is by its nature unlimited. But the potential to utilize this resource is not given by
nature it is rather a question of ability, influenced by culture, attitudes, and values of
individuals (cf. Elgin, 1993; Soper, 2008).
While the concept of celestial footprint in itself seems to be clear, it is worth analyzing its
relationship to the economy and to monetary issues too. This leads us to two other important
ratios which may be identified as components (or factors) of celestial footprint in the
monetary world of economics. We now introduce the Kuznets factor (eco-efficiency)4 and the
Easterlin factor5 into our analysis.
3
We may think of this ratio as an environmentally efficient measure of wellbeing. This concept was
introduced by Dietz et al. (2009), though their method is different.
4
As the Environmental Kuznets Curve conception analyses the connection between affluence (A)
(usually measured in dollars of GDP/capita) and specific environmental loads it seems reasonable to
call the $/gHa ratio a Kuznets-factor. An increase may indicate greater monetary affluence from the
same environmental load or less environmental loading with the same monetary affluence. Of course
the numerator and denominator may change simultaneously, leading to many special cases.
5
As Ronald Easterlin (1974, 1995) first analyzed the connection between monetary affluence and
happiness in a country over time, it seems reasonable to name the happiness/$ ratio the Easterlinfactor. It measures the de-monetization of happiness. An increase in the ratio may indicate higher
levels of happiness from the same level of monetary affluence or less monetary affluence paired with
the same level of happiness. Of course, the numerator and denominator may change simultaneously
leading to many special cases.
71
It is worth noticing here that both Kuznets and Easterlin factors are indifferent to changes in
size of population (as is true for the product, celestial footprint). As increases or decreases in
the economy should rarely be ends in themselves, it is hard to say that higher or lower
Kuznets or Easterlin factors are good or bad in themselves. For example, sustainability
experts usually praise higher eco-efficiency (higher Kuznets factors) but the origins of these
increases are too manifold to be positively evaluated without additional information. Despite
these issues it is true that both the Kuznets and the Easterlin factors are factors of the celestial
footprint whose growth is always beneficial. The upper part of Table 1 summarizes all the
information regarding celestial footprint, Kuznets factor, and the Easterlin factor.
Table 1
The Celestial Footprint, the Kuznets Factor, and the Easterlin Factor; Paths of increasing
Happiness and Trade-offs between paths of Gaining Happiness
Measure
Essence
IPATa
Kuznets factor
$/gHa
non-material
dollars
(eco-efficiency)
1/Tenv
X
X
X
Easterlin factor
Happ/$
Nonmonetized
happiness
Thapp
=
=
=
celestial footprint
Happ/gHa
Non-material
happiness
Thapp/Tenv (Ihapp/Ienv)
Channel-1b
Channel-2
Channel-3
Channel-4
mat. trade-off
non-mat. trade-off
monet. trade-off
non-mon. trade-off
72
free in monetary terms).6 These possibilities indicate that there are four basic channels for
gaining human happiness.
Channel-1: Here we directly use non-material (celestial) and non-price-tagged resources
which have nothing to do with market mechanisms or the economy and which may be
regarded as storing up treasures in heaven. Warm family atmospheres, a high level of social
capital (Leung et al., 2011), the enjoyment of natural beauty or silence, or having the benefits
of a clear world-view may all have this characteristic, as does receiving an English lesson in
kind, too. This way of gaining happiness corresponds to the later-described strategy of
voluntary simplicity and increases celestial footprint through increasing the Easterlin factor
(see the middle section of Table 1).
Causality is a constant issue for happiness studies. As our model is a resource-based one we
suppose that resource use is the cause, and happiness is the effect.
73
Fig. 1 Channels of Gaining Happiness (Note: Increasing celestial footprint and decreasing
ecological footprint is always beneficial in our materially limited world.)
Channel-2: This channel uses the same non-material resource pool as Channel-1 while
resources are used via market mechanisms. In modern societies, every marketed and
monetized value added to material resources falls into this category. Eco-efficiency (or the
Kuznets factor) as a non-material source of GDP reflects this phenomenon. Economic
development without material growth also falls into this category. The monetary values of
licenses, marketed logos or cultural relics all are examples of this category, as well as the
whole strategy described earlier based on more intensive use of services and greater division
of labor (the flow economy). This way of gaining happiness increases the celestial footprint
through an improved Kuznets factor (see the middle section of Table 1).
Channel-3:repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar (Mt 22,21)/. This channel corresponds
to our main understanding of economy. Here we use material resources via market
mechanisms for buying all types of material resources, foods, clothes, etc. Critics of economic
growth familiar with the stock economy assume that: (1) this way of pursuing happiness is
the most typical and yet is unsustainable in a materially limited world, and that; (2) dollars of
GDP (or any other category of indicators of economic performance) correlate to the
ecological load of humanity.7 While this connection clearly exists, it would be misleading to
forget about the other three channels of pursuing happiness. This method of gaining happiness
does not increase celestial footprint at all, as we get happier through increasing the ecological
footprint here (see the middle section of Table 1).
Channel-4:Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into
barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them (Mt 6,26). This channel indicates our direct use
of material resources which are not mediated via market mechanisms - these resources are
free in monetary terms. Breathing fresh air and drinking free clean water are all examples of
this. What is more, in a system of reciprocity (see Polanyi, 1944), material resources are
usually exploited via the reciprocal help of a wider family net without any money transfers.
While this mode of activity may have less weight in a modern market system, it can still be
significant (housework, etc.). The importance of this way of gaining happiness may differ
considerably between countries/communities. This method of gaining happiness does not
7
For example, the sustainable de-growth movement is strongly based on this assumption (see e.g.
Martnez-Alier et al., 2010).
74
increase celestial footprint at all, as we get happier by increasing the ecological footprint, but
it restructures the relation between the Easterlin and the Kuznets factors (see the middle
section of Table 1). What the Easterlin factor gains, the Kuznets factor loses, nullifying all
effects on celestial footprint. (This way of gaining happiness along with Channel 1
corresponds to the later described strategy of voluntary simplicity.)
Of course, these channels may be the sources of different kinds of bads as well, which act
to lessen our happiness (leaking happiness). Identifying these is easy, as we only need to
reverse all the above-discussed developments (cf. Fig. 1). Analyzing these bads opens a new
way of discussing negative externalities too, which may be the subject of another paper. In
sum, these channels may be combined in almost endless variations, offering myriads of
attractive or avoidable development paths for any country/community.
75
Naturally, these types of monetary or non-monetary trade-offs still raise the important
question of which absolute level of economy (or with which economic considerations) a
society should live, or what level of connectedness between economy and society should be
regarded as sound and desirable. The strategy of a flow economy says that more dollars of
GDP and greater division of labor in a society is advantageous, while proponents of voluntary
simplicity would argue the opposite (see later). These two basic, alternative economic
strategies demonstrate the diversity of viable sustainability paths, while their commonality
relates to the human oneness declared in the Fuji declaration: we need happiness and wellbeing in a sustainable form.
76
This measurement helps us to view not just the material resource-based side of economic
activity but its positive side too. Now we are able to reformulate the classical IPAT formula
with a modified focus:
Ihappiness = P A Thappiness
It is clear that economic activity (P A) as a starting point contributes not just to
environmental load but to human subjective wellbeing as well, because increasing human
wellbeing is usually the main motive for transforming and exploiting our natural environment
through economic activity. Of course, subjective wellbeing does not exactly originate from
economic activity: lots of other subjective factors are involved and combined together
(psychological, cultural, and behavioral; see Diener et al., 2003; cf. Fig. 1); these can be
summed up in the factor Thappiness. This factor opens up a way to extend the IPAT analysis
through involving important human characteristics (cf. IPBAT: Diesendorf, 2002; IPANT:
Daniels, 2010; etc.) without sacrificing the mathematical rigor of the original IPAT formula.
Using units of measurement our equation can now be written as:
aggregate happiness = (capita) ($/capita) (aggregate happiness/$)
The Tenvironment and Thappiness concepts were combined to make the concept of celestial
footprint.
77
prevalent social-economic system (Elgin, 1993) and how they define themselves in opposition
to it.
Voluntary simplifiers strongly criticize consumer society, which is based on materialism. The
material nature of consumer society is proved by the fact that its goal is material progress and
ones identity is defined by the material goods possessed one possesses, as well as the social
position one can achieve based on these goods. According to this view, man is nothing more
than a group of molecules which exists alone and separately, other human beings are
considered to be rivals, while the living or inorganic environment is regarded as a resource to
be exploited. Voluntary simplifiers do not deny the importance of material goods butas
opposed to materialiststhey also emphasize the importance of spiritual concerns. They think
the goal of life is to co-evolve both in a material and spiritual way. A person is an inseparable
part of the universe around him/her: this view results in co-operation with other human beings
and other living beings, as well as showing respect for them. The mass media have an
especially important role in the forming of values. Voluntary simplifiers think they are
dominated by commercial interests which promote material values, although they should
emphasize a balanced diet of values and the importance of taking an ecological approach to
living. Voluntary simplifiers stress the role of personal responsibility in relation to global
problems (the importance of the aggregate effect of a lot of minor actions) and reject the idea
of shifting responsibility to the free market or government bureaucracies (that is, they oppose
extreme libertarian capitalism and communism).
There are five values which lie at the heart of voluntary simplicity: material simplicity, human
scale, self-determination, ecological awareness and personal growth (ElginMitchell, 1977,
58.).
The extent of ones material simplicity can be examined by answering the following questions
(after The American Friends Committee): (1) Does what I own or buy promote activity, selfreliance and involvement or does it induce passivity and dependence? (2) Are my
consumption patterns basically satisfying or do I buy a lot of things which serve no real
needs? (3) How much is my present job and life style influenced by installment payments,
maintenance and repair costs and the expectations of others? (4) Do I consider the impact of
my consumption patterns on others and on the Earth?
Answering these questions can help one to establish a life of creative simplicity and to free
oneself from excessive attachment to material goods, aids with national sharing of wealth
with those who cannot fulfil their basic needs (the poor), helps individuals to become less
78
dependent on large and complex public or private institutions and restores the balance
between the material and non-material components of life.
Adherents of voluntary simplicity regard human-scale living and working conditions as
important because they think that operating on a massive scale results in anonymity,
incomprehensibility and artificiality. As stated by Ernst F. Schumacher in his book entitled
Small is Beautiful (1980), living and working environments as well as supportive institutions
should be decentralized as much as possible in order to create more comprehensible and
manageable entities. Each person should be aware of what he or she is contributing to the
whole and how much his or her responsibility (as well as share of the reward) should be.
The notion of self-determination in voluntary simplicity refers to a form of consumption
which results in greater control over ones desires and suggests that one should be free one
from paying installments, maintenance costs and the expectations of others. The key
principles of this process are grow your own, make your own and do without, all of
which help to reduce (both psychological and physical) dependency on consumption. The
principles also act against the excessive division of labor.8 The aim of human labor will be
again be to produce the whole of a product, not only a small part of it, in this way making the
sense of contribution more evident. Self-determination also includes aversion to the
unnecessary intrusion of distant bureaucracies and a wish for greater local self-determination
and grass roots political action.9
Ecological awareness is the recognition of the mutual connections and interdependence of
people and natural resources. It acknowledges that the resources of the Earth are limited,
which should encourage us to conserve physical resources and reduce environmental
pollution, as well as to maintain the beauty and integrity of the natural environment.
Ecological awareness often extends beyond the issue of scarce resources and includes social
responsibility: it makes us aware of those who are less fortunate than us. The philosophy
espoused by Gandhimeans that one should avoid wanting what the least fortunate
inhabitant of the Earth cannot afford. In this way the philosophy of voluntary simplicity
extends beyond the boundaries of a nation, making it less isolated and self-centered than it
otherwise could be.
This strategy is clearly different from that of the flow economy which was described earlier. By following the
principles of voluntary simplicity, GDP would be reduced, but humans may nonetheless be fulfilled, and nature
preserved.
9
This effort, termed subsidiarity, has been part of the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church since the
1930s.
79
For a lot of people, taking up a materially simple way of life means personal growth; it can
help one with clearing up external chaos and exploring ones inner life. The abovementioned basic values of voluntary simplicity encourage one to grow both psychologically
and spiritually. If all you do is maintain yourself physically and forget about personal growth,
then life becomes merely about not dying. Numerous advocates of voluntary simplicity
think that American society (in the 1970s) became occupied with sustenance and forgot about
the non-material aspects of life (cf. Scitovsky, 1976). Though personal growth often includes
a spiritual component, it should not be associated with any particular philosophy or religion
it can embrace views ranging from humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, Eastern
meditative traditions and feminism, as well as fundamental Christianity. This tolerant
approach clearly points to support for human diversity and to the divine spark in the heart
and mind of every human being that is highlighted in the Fuji Declaration.
Modelling is being used more and more extensively in order to predict economic and social
processes. One often finds forecasts that contain different scenarios. Models are suitable for
implementing sensitivity tests as well. It is interesting that predictions that have been based on
models frequently contain outcomes that could not occur, in reality. For instance, fossil fuels
may run out, in theory; in practice, however, this cannot occur because we would "cook" the
Earth before we got to that point. In other words, significant portions of the Earths continents
would become unsuitable for human life before the potentially-available fossil fuel was
80
consumed it would not be possible for 9 billion or even more people to live on the Earth. If
there were fewer than nine billion people, the demand for energy would be less and this
train of thought can be continued in a similar way. One can make predictions about the
development of air travel or tourism but data-based estimates are unrealistic as it is impossible
that as many passenger air kilometers will be travelled or guests accommodated as is shown
by such predictions. Thus the problem is that investigations and models are narrowed down to
examining independent problems and the fact that the phenomena under investigation
mutually affect each other, and there is a connection between almost everything, is generally
left unexamined. Politicians and economic experts are concerned to a great extent with ageing
and collapses of the welfare system but if we take into account tendencies in the migration of
the worlds population, it becomes clear that Europe will not get older but will rather become
more multicultural due to its young, non-Christian immigrants; what may become an issue is
whether we will be able to create an institutional system that is able to maintain the level of
social solidarity that we are used to in Europe. The issue is not so much the ageing of the
population, but rather the question whether immigrant youth from Africa, China and India
will be willing to work in Europe in order to provide for an older generation which did not
have enough offspring to support itself.
This group of problems that stems from cultural diversity is probably unresolvable without the
paradigm change defined by the Civilization of Oneness principle of the Fuji Declaration.
At the same time, it is obvious that an equally radical paradigm change is necessary in the
area of the economy. On the one hand, for those who are radically opposed to the current
market-based civilization, the voluntary simplicity movement seems viable. On the other hand
complementing, rather than contrasting with this trend more market- and GDP-friendly
economic scenarios can be delineated for less radical citizens. According to these, what
should be made the focus of the economy is employment rather than profit; the fulfillment of
needs rather than ownership; and the creation of durable and safe products and services rather
than products and services that are subject to planned obsolescence. These changes will help
to maintain and increase human wellbeing and quality of life, while at the same time
preserving our finite natural environment for future generations, fulfilling, as it were, the
principles laid down in the Fuji Declarations and completing the necessary economic
paradigm change.
81
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
p.3
Media in Transition
p.4
p.6
p.10
p.12
p.14
p.15
p.17
p.19
p.21
Conclusion
p.23
2
86
Introduction
Since the beginning of the 21st Century especially the media landscape has undergone a
profound transformation. The growth and spread of global communication technologies
has helped to foster a new terrain - a new playing field - that supports a whole wealth of
new actors and players who are participating in changing the face of our media
landscape.
One of the most significant aspects is the transition from a top-down media landscape,
dominated by major global media conglomerates, to a horizontal, distributed, and
decentralized model. This new model encourages the participation of individuals from
across the globe who would otherwise be excluded from the old model of media
production and distribution. What is now emerging is a new superpower - one that is
arising from the combined voice and conscience of the worlds citizens monbilized
through the revolution in global networks of communication.
In this report we aim to:
1) map the emerging media landscape
2) offer a longer-term view of how we see the influence and potential for
transformational impact by the new media
3) reflect upon the obstacles in the merging of digital and physical lives
4) consider how this profound transition will re-write the narratives and stories that
frame our own understanding as an emerging global species. Also, how the new
emerging superpower of citizen-centered media is destined to re-write the script of
the human story.
3
87
Media in Transition
It was our ability to communicate that enabled us to evolve from awakening huntergatherers to the edge of a planetary, species-civilization, and it will be our ability to
communicate that will enable us to make it through this time of challenging transition.
To place this process in perspective, it is useful to step back and review the great
revolutions that have brought us to this turning point in human history.
The First Industrial Revolution that began in Great Britain (1750-1850) revolutionized
social, cultural, and economic conditions by shifting from the energy resource of wood
to coal. The scope of communication was expanded with the invention of the first
practical steam engines, roads and canals for travel. It was also the period when the
telegraph was invented and brought into use.
The Second Industrial Revolution (1850-1920) marked the emergence of a significant
shift in the way humans communicated on a more extensive scale. The early
technologies of communication -- expanded telegraph, telephones, radio, and then the
television -- brought the world even closer together. These new technologies of
connectivity also triggered a reorientation in human perspective. A new perception of
the dimensions of space and time gave birth to a consciousness that could now begin to
look, reach out, and connect beyond the borders and horizons of the physical frontier.
From these technological innovations arose an expanding commercial media landscape
that blanketed much of the Earth. Understandably, it was not long before consolidation
and centralization produced a close-knit handful of media empires.
The main players in this new late twentieth-century western media landscape were:
Disney, News Corp, Time-Warner, Viacom, Vivendi Universal, and Bertelsmann.
The mainstream news media that is disseminated via the above media conglomerates is
largely fed by two global news services; Reuters (now Thomson Reuters) and
Associated Press. This constitutes a centralization of news gathering and dissemination.
Now, we are in the midst of a Third Revolutiona Communications Revolutionwhere
a new form of participatory consciousness is arising among people that perceive a way
of connecting that is more egalitarian and engaged. The earlier technologies of radio and
television produced a passive audience through a one-way model whereby people were
consumers of information. However, the new model of media is based upon people
engaging as prosumers -- as producers of their own content that is then published and
disseminated through the distributed networks of our global communications.
YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, blogging, podcasts, etc, are the platforms and channels of
the new media landscape. These burgeoning media networks have matured
tremendously over the past decade, spreading locally-produced content through the
electronic nervous system of the planet . A more mature form of collective social
intelligence is beginning to manifest around the world as the shift increases from the
consumption of information to the creation, production and participation in a more
4
88
fluid, dynamic, and interactive mode of media. This game-change in how media is
produced and published is already having a marked effect upon traditional media
platforms. As Buckminster Fuller so aptly described - You never change things by
fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete.
It is an error to think the communications revolution is primarily serving only developed
nations. In many cases the reverse is in progress. This technological revolution has had
some of its most startling impacts in empowering the poorer regions and peoples.
In 2012 the planetary population was around 7 billion and the number of
registered Internet users was 33% or approximately 2.3 billion people.
Looking ahead only five years, nearly 3 billion new minds will be tapping in to the
information flowsand thats billions of new creative problem solvers, innovators, and
visionaries! What is more, the majority of these new minds will be coming online from
Asia, the Middle East, and developing countries. These will be mostly young minds; and
minds with necessities, with the urge for social betterment. A tribesman in Africa with a
mobile phone now has access to better communications than did President Reagan 25
years ago. Furthermore, if they have a smart phone with Internet connections, they have
better communications access than did President Clinton 15 years ago. This shows the
power of exponential change.
What is more, it is the consciousness of the creative, young minds behind these
technologies of communication that are the true source of power. Can we imagine the
collective potential of these creative minds entering the new media landscape, many of
them thinking outside of the old patterns and paradigms? Imagine living in a world
where a few humans can touch the lives of millions. This world has already arrived!
Citizens living in poorer countries will be able to leapfrog over the previous industrial
revolutions and jump directly into the digital age. As billions of people from developing
countries become increasingly connected they will join with others through a vastly
expanding array of citizen-centered media. In many ways, the established social order is
little prepared for what lies ahead. They were already taken aback when the networked
protests of the Arab Spring erupted in 2011. In todays digitally-connected world a
single individual can connect with and catalyze thousands, if not millions, of people
around the world within this new landscape.
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Thanks to communication capacities that are intensely interactive, highly intelligent, and
virtually instantaneous, the citizens of the Earth now have the power to communicate
together and express a shared vision for the future.
For the first time in human history, people from all over the world are acquiring a way
to listen to and talk with one another as members of one family. As we start to connect
with each other across continents, we begin to see that humanity has the potential for an
evolutionary leap forward. However, having the technical ability to communicate with
ourselves does not mean we will automatically do so. The question remains open as to
whether we have the collective maturity to consciously seize this precious opportunity.
It is imperative that we learn, and share, how to become conscious and responsible
citizens of the planet.
The mass media are a primary window through which we see the world. If the mass
media present diminished images of ourselves as isolated consumers who only want to
be entertained, then we will tend to fulfill that self-image. However, if we see portrayals
of ourselves as citizens of the Earth who are actively engaged in a heroic journey of
transition, we will tend to fulfill that self-image. Because the mass media are so
powerful in presenting and reinforcing our story and self-image as a species, it is
critically important to use the dominant story telling machine of mass culture to tell
ourselves bigger stories about where we are, who we are, and where we are going.
Learning to see ourselves in the collective mirror of the mass media is as important as
learning to see ourselves in the mirror of our personal consciousness. Once there is
inclusive and sustained social reflection, we can build a working consensus regarding
appropriate actions for a promising future. We are a visual species; we cannot
consciously build a positive future that we have not first collectively imagined. When
we can see a sustainable and promising future, we can build it. Actions can then come
quickly and voluntarily. Self-organizing actions will be vital to success, as hundreds of
millions of people are being challenged to act in cooperation with one another. With
local to global communication, we can mobilize ourselves purposefully, and each can
contribute their unique talents to the creation of a life-affirming future.
At the very time that humanity requires a dramatic, new level of communication, the
emerging media are making the world more transparent to itself. Particularly with the
Internet, the world is bursting with conversations from the grass roots and bringing an
entirely new layer of conversation and connection into global culture. Through the eyes
of these new media, we can see climate disruption producing crop failures and famine in
Africa, the destruction of rain forests in Brazil, coastlines eroding from hurricanes in the
United States, violent conflict fueled by religious differences in the Middle East, and the
impact of fluctuating energy prices around the world. This new distributed media
makes every person a global witnessa knowing and feeling participant in world
affairs.
Although we now have access to the world more than ever before, we must be mindful
of the weakness inherent in the very strength of the Internet. The vast outpouring of
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views and voices from the grass roots is flooding the Internet with an overwhelming and
confusing avalanche of messages. Without a way to aggregate hundreds of millions of
voices and views and discover an ongoing, working consensus, we will be
paralyzed. Therefore, to combine our collective sentiments, we require regular
opportunities for mass communication where millions and even billions of persons can
gather to explore our common future. The scope and quality of our collective attention is
the most precious resource we have as a human community. If we dont pay attention
while decisions of monumental importance are being made, then we effectively forfeit
our future. The bottom line is this: if we are to take practical steps to awaken our
society, then citizens must make their voices heard by creating a more reflective and
responsive media environment.
Many people feel profoundly disempowered when it comes to current media
institutions. It is now time to move beyond disempowerment: As the media goes, so
goes the future. The media are the most visible representation of our collective
mind. As our collective mind goes, so goes our collective future. Currently, our
collective mind is being programmed for commercial success and evolutionary failure.
Building cultures of sustainability will require as much creativity, energy, and
enthusiasm as we have invested in building cultures of consumption. It is vital we begin
conversations about sustainability at a scale that matches the actual scope of the
challenges we faceand often these are of regional, national, and global scale. The
world has become intensely interdependent. Our consciousness and conversations need
to match the scale of the world in which we live. This is a time for rapid learning and
experimentation locally, while being mindful of how we connect and evolve globally.
The business-as-usual focus of global media on commerce and entertainment needs to
be replaced by planetary-scale truth telling where we humans work to heal the wounds
of history and then, together, forge a workable vision of a sustainable and meaningful
future. It was communication that enabled humans to evolve from early hunter-gatherers
to the verge of a planetary civilization, and it will be communication that enables us to
become a bonded human family committed to the well-being of all.
At the very time that we need an unprecedented capacity for local-to-global
communication, we find we have the necessary tools in abundance. New media
networks are blossoming from the local to national to global scale and making the
sentiments of the body politic highly visible. When everyone knows the whole world is
watchingwhen economic, ethnic, ideological, and religious violence is brought
before the court of world public opinion through the Internet and citizen mediait will
bring a powerful corrective influence into human relations. As groups and nations see
their actions scrutinized and judged by the rest of the world community, we will become
more inclined to search for ethical and nonviolent approaches.
Because communication is fundamental to our common future, it is critical that the
human community work to consciously bridge the digital divide, extend the
communications culture to all corners of the globe, and build an effective social mirror
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for the human familyone that authentically reflects back both the adversities and the
opportunities of our times. All cultures will be nakedtheir history forever exposed in
a world made transparent by decentralized and accessible mediaand confronted with
the need to make amends for wrongs committed in the past if there is to be release into a
promising future. A supreme challenge will be to hold a steady and undistorted social
mirror as we struggle for collective understanding, respect, and reconciliation. Societies
without a tradition of freedom of speech will find this both liberating and extremely
demanding as new skills of inclusion and reconciliation are required to participate
effectively.
One of the most helpful and powerful actions we can take as we move through this
transition as a species is to increase opportunities for conscious reflection from the
personal to the planetary scale. Personal reflection refers to seeing ourselves in the
mirror of consciousness as individuals and to observe the unfolding of our lives. By
analogy, social reflection refers to seeing ourselves in the mirror of collective
consciousness by using the tools of a new media landscape.
The more widely and accurately our time of initiation is witnessed by the people of the
Earth through global media networks, the more powerfully the lessons of this time will
be grounded in our collective lives and memory. In turn, the less likely it is that we will
have to relearn these lessons in the future. As societies, we can learn through our
collective imagination by showing ourselves visions of the future we would not want to
enact in our actual experiencesuch as a world in a whole-systems crisis that descends
into the meanest form of survival mentality and utterly devastates the biosphere, leaving
a mutilated and crippled planet for generations to inhabit for the indefinite future. If we
can see the outlines and dimensions of disaster in our social imagination, we may not
need to manifest it in our direct experience.
Ultimately, with social reflection we can explore core questions such as Who are we as
a species?, and What kind of journey are we on? As our capacity for social reflection
grows in scope and depth, we can choose our social conversations more wisely and look
for promising pathways ahead. Actions can come quickly and voluntarily as we develop
a shared understanding and a working consensus for a promising future.
With a shared vision, each person can contribute his or her unique talents in creating
that future. Voluntary, self-organizing action will be vital to our success. Our swiftly
developing world situation is far too complex for any one individual, group, or nation to
understand the remedies that will work for everyone. While being mindful of the
conditions and needs at the global scale, we can work creatively at the local scale to
adapt to changing conditions. This is a time for diverse, local experimentation
undertaken in a context of rich communication from the local to the global levels and
involving the participation of many young new minds.
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6. China. China has the most rigid censorship program in the world. The
government filters searches, block sites and erases "inconvenient" content,
rerouting search terms on Taiwan independence or the Tiananmen Square
massacre to items favorable to the Communist Party.
7. Syria. Bloggers who "jeopardize national unity" are arrested. Cyber cafes must
ask all customers for identification, record time of use and report the
information to authorities.
8. Tunisia. Tunisian Internet service providers must report to the government the
IP addresses and personal information of all bloggers. All traffic goes through a
central network. The government filters all content uploaded and monitors emails.
9. Vietnam. The Communist Party requires Yahoo, Google and Microsoft to
divulge data on all bloggers who use their platforms. It blocks websites critical
of the government, as well as those that advocate for democracy, human rights
and religious freedom.
10. Turkmenistan. The only Internet service provider is the government. It blocks
access to many sites and monitors all e-mail accounts in Gmail, Yahoo and
Hotmail.
In countries with unrestricted access to the Internet, any individual or organization can
launch a campaign on social media. However, starting a successful movement is not that
simple. A campaign that appears to be self-serving won't resonate with others and is
unlikely to have a significant impact. The greater the authenticity and flexibility the
greater the chance of virality and, ultimately, success.
Jean Dobey founder and CEO of Hibe - has listed five elements as key aspects when
it comes to creating a social media campaign that engages with people on a human
level:
1) Pick a cause you believe in
The obvious first step is to pick a specific cause such as raising awareness of a
political concern, fundraising for a charity or highlighting an environmental issue.
The important thing is that it's something you genuinely believe in.
2) Define the goal of the campaign
The aim of the social media campaign must be clearly defined. This objective will
influence everything from the language used, the platforms that are leveraged to
how people engage with the campaign. Determining the ultimate goal will also
help to create a compelling call to action. By giving people something they can
respond to and rally behind, you greatly increase the chances of the campaign
going viral.
3) Show what the cause means to you
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Looking at the condition of our world, a revolution in social media is vital for
awakening our collective imagination and for building a collective consensus
affirming that it is important for us to connect and communicate. As diverse citizens of
our communities, countries, and cultures we have a larger responsibility to step forward
in sincere dialogue about our concern for our common future. We now have the public
reach and the tools -- in abundance -- to do just that. In 2014, Internet is accessible to
more than 3 billion people . Within five more years, it will be accessible to more than 5
billion peoplea majority of citizens on the planet. The tools for giving the people of
the Earth a voice that transcends the gridlock of nation-state politics are now
availableand it seems vital for our collective future to develop them consciously.
Using the Internet and digital tools for choosing our pathway together into a more
promising future is a now core challenge of our times and our species. We are being
asked to reveal and then to heal age-old differences - and then to vote, together, on
choices that are genuinely pivotal to the lives of countless generations to come and to
the future of the Earth.
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The youth of the world are entering an evolutionary phase of immense responsibility -and opportunity. Todays youth represent the first generation who have grown up with
digital technology and spent their entire lives using computers, videogames, mobile
phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Combined with social media
platforms, these technologies are rapidly wiring the global brain and supporting the
awakening of a new level and quality of collective consciousness. Children coming of
age in this new media context will show marked differences in their consumption and
production of media. They will be active prosumers of media content, not only
consumers. The following are a number of key changes that we foresee in the media
landscape over the coming years:
1) Young minds will tire of a fear mongering, fear-sponsoring media. The
programming that dominated mainstream media in past decades often presented
crudely commercial content that delighted in high-tension and stressful drama:
in conflicts, murder, and sexual exploitation. Such mind manipulating
programming will cease to inspire a new younger generation.
2) There will be a shift in media programming toward what elevates a person
rather than what promotes fear and greedy materialism. The minds and hearts of
the new generation will increasingly reject negative news and stories, and
naturally shift away from such primitive programming. The mainstream media
will be forced through declining viewership and advertising revenues to
broadcast more inspiring and uplifting programs.
3) The age of top-down, corporate-controlled media will no longer be the
dominant force as self-produced content becomes increasingly the norm. Megamedia corporations will continue to merge and consolidate as they find it
difficult to perpetuate their old style of broadcasting in a media environment that
is increasingly people-centered, locally produced, globally distributed, and with
a positive orientation.
4) Young people will become their own journalists - creating, producing, and
out-sourcing their services. Individuals will not only contribute stories and news
items to the mainstream media, but will also create their own media platforms.
Many new voices will become recognized as credible sources of information
and understanding. Young media activists from around the world will supply
information faster than mainstream journalists. Also, they will report from areas
that mainstream media either cannot, or will not, go to such as local violent
conflict zones or selective communities. Peer-to-peer programming will become
more popular as people prefer to produce and share their own news, stories, and
events.
5) Transparency will become the new watchword as mainstream media and
governments make closer ties. As online content becomes increasingly
monitored by governments, and doctored by media conglomerates, transparency
and integrity will become a central issue. Younger generations of people will
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turn their back on attempts to control and manage the flow of information. The
media landscape will never be the same again as the power of the image is taken
from the hands of the few into the digital fingertips of the many.
Transforming Education in the New Media Environment
Education as well as news information is being transformed by the new media. The
structure, content, and connectivity for this new educational platform is already
emerging and it is opening a new phase in collaborative learning at a global scale.
Traditional educational systems are becoming antiquated and are being forced to
radically re-think and re-envision their roles in response to students changing needs and
attitudes. We are moving into a new world that requires a new kind of learning to
provide students with new skillsacademic, collaborative, and inner development. Here
is what we envision:
1) Classrooms will no longer be contained within the confines of physical
rooms; instead, learning spaces will be diverse environments wired to connect
with students and teachers around the world. In a virtual world of learning,
connections, collaborations, and experiences will span the planet. Without the
need to create the brick and mortar physical spaces for learning, the cost of
education will plummet, bringing millions of students into classrooms that
would have otherwise been completely unaffordable.
2) In a world of virtual learning, entirely new approaches to education will be
developed: Collaborative learning spaces will connect students with one another
around the planet, fostering a new level of global consciousness and concern.
Multi-media presentations will replace the traditional text-book with voice,
music, photographs, films, and more. Interactive learning will accelerate with
gaming technologies that teach with hands-on student engagement in areas
ranging from society, to ecology, business, biology, and far more. These new
learning environments will foster social innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership
skills, collaboration skills, creativity, and whole-systems design adapted to a
rapidly changing world.
3) Not only will students have virtual access to the worlds finest teachers across
diverse disciplines, they will also have the opportunity to learn from peers
around the world. Teaching will be transformed as it engages other students in
collaborative learning but also older persons, retired persons, and uniquely
skilled volunteers from around the world. Guests from varied occupations
business leaders, creative artists, biologists, cosmologists, etc will regularly
join online learning forums to interact with students and to pass on their own
learning and knowledge. These mixed learning environments no longer called
classrooms will be able to place students of varying ages and abilities together.
In this way older, more learned students, can also assist in the learning process
of younger and newer students. We can build a new world if we can collectively
imagine what a world of sustainable prosperity looks like and how it works. We
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are building a new future for the Earth in our collective and collaborative
imagination.
4) The Internet combined with new technologies and software is opening the
online world to three-dimensional platforms where students can have immersive
learning experiences. Imagine putting on a headset and being offered an
immersive experience of traveling to places around the world, seeing important
events through history, and exploring the universe, including the realms of the
very small and the very large. The learning process will be a lot more fun as
well as more connecting and collaborative. Students will use an array of virtual
games and online problem solving activities to exercise creativity. Multiple
player platforms will also allow many students to work together and collaborate
to solve challenges and quests -- similar to video gaming yet with constructive
goals and outcomes.
5) The development of realistic virtual worlds will transform the relationships
among students throughout the Earth. Imagine a pod of 10 to 20 students, who
physically live all around the world, coming together in virtual space with
avatars that represent who they are. Beyond making friends with students in
radically different cultural, social, and physical environments, these virtual
worlds will make it possible for students to collaborate in co-creating a future
world that reflects their collective preferences. In cyber-space, students can
create a distinctive eco-village with a unique architecture, set of economic
activities, ways of growing food and providing energy, expressing their artistic
sensibilities, and much more.
6) Learning will become more individually oriented and customized. Students
will have more choice in directing their learning process according to their
needs, wishes, and motivations. A new world confronts students with challenges
ranging from climate change and species extinction to energy transition. New
skills will require new ways of establishing competencies. The older
examination system will be replaced by a variety of comprehension measures
and capacity assessments from both teachers and fellow peers. Understanding
will be increasingly measured by ones comprehension and individualized
capability and less by standardized grades. Stress and self-doubt will be
replaced by enjoyment and self-confidence.
These media-based, educational platforms will support a new generation of learners in
creating radically different competencies and capacities that fit the changing world in
which we live.
The Transforming Power of Computer Games
Over the past few years hundreds of millions of people around the world have become
immersed in virtual worlds and online games. While the economist Edward Castronova
calls it a mass exodus to the game spaces, the world-renowned creator of ARGs
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(Alternate Reality Games) Jane McGonical points to the fact that games and virtual
worlds can be designed to improve real lives and solve real problems.
Game developers know better than anyone else how to inspire extreme effort and
reward hard work McGonical says. They know how to facilitate cooperation and
collaboration at previously unimaginable scales. And they are continuously innovating
new ways to motivate players to stick with harder challenges for longer and in much
bigger groups. These crucial skills can help all of us find new ways to make a deep and
lasting impact on the world around us and inspire us to work together to accomplish real
change.
When the ecologist and internet pioneer Steward Brand launched the Whole Earth
Catalog of tools and ideas to shape the environment he wrote: We are as Gods and
might as well get good at it In 1996 he co-founded The Long Now Foundation. A San
Francisco-based foundation dedicated to long-term thinking and responsibility for the
earth and for the survival of the human species. Co-founder of The Long Now
Foundation Danny Hillis, who developed the massive parallel architecture of the
current generation of supercomputers, is now building the Clock of the Long Now - a
monumental size mechanical clock designed to keep time for the next 10000 years. If
we want to stay on this planet for anywhere near that long Brand says, we have to
become better at strategically affecting our ecosystem. We are forced to learn planet
craft.
Jane McGonical claims that gamers have a head start on this mission, because they have
been mastering the art of planet craft for years. Theres actually a genre of computer
games known as God games she explains, which is world and population simulations
that give a single player the ability to shape the course of events on earth in dramatic
ways, over lifetimes. What all of these god games have in common, is that they
encourage the players to practice the three skills that are critical for real planet craft:
1. Taking a long view. In God games players are operating at scales far larger
than we would ordinarily encounter on our day-to-day lives. They have to
consider their moment-by-moment actions in the context of a very long future:
an entire simulated human life, the rise and fall of civilizations, or even the
entire course of human history.
2. Ecosystems thinking. In God games you get to understand the world as a
complex web of interconnected interdependent parts. A skilled player will
study and learn how to anticipate the ways in which changes to one part of the
system will impact other parts often in surprising and far-reaching ways.
3. Pilot experimentation. In God games you learn the process of designing and
running many small tests of different strategies and solutions in order to
discover the best course of action to take. When you have successfully tested a
strategy, you can scale up your efforts to make a bigger impact.
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The complexity of our rapidly expanding digital infrastructures and connected lives also
reveal a less positive and more menacing side. The growing deluge of information and
the tyranny of schedules, for example, demand that we stay connected to an always-on
lifestyle, which has proven to cause stress and anxiety.
It is said that today there are more young children who play computer games and
browse the web than there are young children who swim or ride a bike. There are also a
number of cases where children and adults alike are suffering from what is referred to as
nature-deficit disorder reduced awareness and a diminished ability to find meaning
in the life around us. Those people who live in big cities especially and thus who dont
have the opportunity to play freely in nature are finding recompense by retreating into
the digital world. When we observe the frantic lives of those around us, we see just how
many distractions there are and how addictive our on-line behavior has become. The
problem is that as we spend more time in the digital realms we are spending less time in
the natural one and this can lead to an unhealthy imbalance.
Yet a further imbalance can also occur when our exposure to the digital realms
interferes with our grasp on reality. A number of extreme cases have already made the
headlines. These include the case of a 22-year-old South Korean man who, in February
2010, was charged with murdering his mother after she nagged him for spending too
much time playing online games. After murdering his mother the young killer then went
to a nearby Internet caf to continue playing his games. Another extreme event is that of
a young couple, again in South Korea, who in September 2009 returned home from an
all-night 12-hour gaming binge to find their three-month-old daughter dead. The couple
were later arrested and charged for starving their daughter to death after it emerged the
couple were more interested in raising an online baby (called Anima) in a popular roleplaying game called Prius Online. Research published in the UK in February 2010 also
showed evidence of a link between excessive Internet use and depression.1 Whilst it is
recognized that online gaming material can stimulate childrens brains through complex
puzzle-solving and strategy-based games, it must also be recognized that more
menacing aspects lie close by. It is imperative that in our vision for an empowering
digital media landscape we remain aware and mindful of the potential hazards
associated with emerging technologies.
Gopi Kalayl, chief evangelist at Google Social for Brands, presents an antidote in the
form of daily rituals that focus on personal well-being and inner-balance, such as yoga
and meditation, as a way of counteracting the influence of the Internet by connecting to
ones own inner-net. This is just one perspective in how we can re-calibrate our lives
to successfully merge the digital and physical realms. In order to cope and engage with
the accelerating change thrust upon us, it is essential that we develop the tools we need
to integrate our inner and outer worlds with the new information technology in a
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balanced way. Essential for this positive balance and calibration is the need for new
stories and narratives.
New Stories for our Future
At this pivotal time in human evolution, it is vitally important that messages in the mass
media serve our psychological and spiritual health and not distort our collective
intelligence, imagination and evolution. We face big challenges and it will take an
equally big vision to transform conflict into cooperation and draw us into a promising
future. The most difficult challenge facing humanity is not devising solutions to the
energy crisis or climate crisis or population crisis; rather, it is bringing stories of the
human journey into our collective awareness that empower us to look beyond a future of
great adversity and to see a future of great opportunity.
Without stories to orient us, we are literally lost. When we are lost, it is easy to be
frightened and to focus on security and survival, to look for threats, and to pull together
into safe enclaves. Collective and powerful stories of the human journey can serve as
the social glue to pull us together in common effort and take us in a regenerative
direction. We do not seem to have those common stories now; however, the stories we
seek are already present in biology, psychology, cosmology, mythology, technology,
and more.
It is time to gather wisdom for the human journey from diverse sources so that we can
better understand our time of profound transition and the promise that lies ahead. As the
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has stated recently, we are in a period of Great
Transition. This is a rare moment in human history when we are beginning to develop,
for the very first time, the "story of, by, and for all of us." There may be no more
important task for humanity than to cultivate narratives in our collective imagination
that can serve as beacons for guiding us into a promising future. Such new narratives
may touch upon the following themes:
relate to the world around me? By exploiting that which is dead on behalf of
those who are most alive (ourselves). Consumerism and exploitation of the
Earth are direct and predictable outcomes from the perceptual paradigm of a
non-living universe. Alternatively, if we regard the universe as a living system,
then it is only natural that we look for our happiness in the juice of alivenessin
our relationships with others, with nature, and within ourselves. To live in a
living universe, we are motivated to consciously reduce needless busyness,
complexity, and clutter in the material areas of our lives so that we can have the
gift of time and space to engage the non-material areas. As experiential sources
of satisfaction become more engaging, consumerism loses its appeal.
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The new media landscape is not only about cultivating stories that resonate and engage
with the outer world of the Internet but also narratives that inform and empower the
landscape of the inner-net. Our sense of self-worth as human beings -- and as planetary
citizens -- is crucial to the new media narrative.
New Media and the Politics of Conscious Citizenship
We cannot create a new world in the cultural context of the old media programming.
The old media is selling a culture of consumption. The new media must serve a culture
of conservation and compassion. As we think, so we will become. If we fill our social
mind with old media, there is no room to imagine new possibilities. Communication is
the lifeblood of democracy. To choose a sustainable future, citizens need to be able to
communicate among themselves about the future they want to bring into existence. We
require a conscious democracy that pays attention to what is going on and that uses
the modern tools of local to global communication to enable citizens to engage in
unprecedented levels of dialogue and consensus building about our future. A healthy
democracy requires the active consent of the governed, not simply their passive
acquiescence. Democracy has often been called the art of the possible. If we dont know
how our fellow citizens think and feel about policies to create a sustainable future, then
we float powerless in a sea of ambiguity and are unable to mobilize ourselves into
constructive action. The most powerful and direct way to revitalize democracy is by
improving the ability of citizens to know their own mindslocal, national, and global.
By combining televised dialogues on key issues with instantaneous Internet-based
feedback from a scientific sample of citizens, the public can know its collective
sentiments with a high degree of accuracy. With regular Electronic Town Meetings or
ETMs, the perspectives and priorities of the citizenry could be rapidly brought into
public view and the democratic process revitalized. When a working consensus emerges,
it would presumably guide (but not compel) decision makers. The value of ETMs is not
as a vehicle for citizens to attempt to micromanage government through direct
democracy; rather, its value is as a vehicle for citizens to discover their widely shared
priorities that can guide their representatives in government. Involving citizens in
choosing the pathway into the future will not guarantee that the right choices will
always be made, but it will guarantee that citizens will feel involved and invested in
those choices. Rather than feeling cynical and powerless, citizens will feel engaged and
responsible for our future.
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development investments in poorer nations, build new energy systems, and in many
other ways build a promising future.
With a witnessing consciousness or observers perspective offered by the new media,
citizens can cultivate the detachment that enables us to stand back, look at the big
picture, and make the hard choices and trade-offs that our circumstances demand. With
a reflective consciousness we look at our situation objectively and see how imperative it
is to begin the process of healing and reconciliation. The communications revolution
plays a critical role in this global consciousness raising and consensus building. With
the rapid development of sophisticated communication networks, the global
consciousness of humanity can awaken decisively. The Earth has a new vehicle for its
collective thinking and invention that transcends any nation or culture. From this
communications revolution can come a trailblazing, new level of human creativity,
daring, and action in response to the global ecological crisis.
Rather than feeling cynical or powerless, citizens feel engaged and responsible for
society and its future. As citizens are empowered to cope with mounting crises and to
participate in decision-making, democratic processes are revitalized. With a free and
open exchange of information and visions, and with safeguards to prevent any one
group or nation from dominating the conversation of democracy, a foundation for
building a sustainable future is firmly established.
A revitalizing society is a decentralizing society, with grass-roots organizations that are
numerous enough, have arisen soon enough, and are effective enough to provide a
genuine alternative to more centralized bureaucracies. Eco-villages and smaller
communities can take charge of activities ranging from education, housing, and crime
prevention, to child care, health care, job training, and many more. The strength and
resiliency of the social fabric can grow as local organizations promote self-help, selforganization, a community spirit, and neighborhood bonding. With control over many
of lifes basic activities brought back to the local level, a strong foundation is
established to compensate for faltering bureaucracies at the state, federal and global
levels.
By breaking the cultural hypnosis of consumerism and using the new media as a potent
tool for active social learning, a new cultural consensus could emerge rapidly.
Industrialized nations could move beyond the historic agenda of self-serving material
progress to a new, life-serving agenda of promoting the well-being of the entire human
family. Despite enormous economic, ecological, and social stresses, an overarching
vision of a sustainable and satisfying future flourishing in a world of new media could
provide sufficient social glue to hold humanity together while working through these
trying times. A new sense of global community, human dignity, goodwill, and trust
could be growing. Although problems may continue to abound, a new springtime for
humanity could be emerging.
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Conclusion
We are now participants in a profound cultural epoch of transition, change, and
recalibration like never before in human history. What makes this moment so pivotal is
that, as a global species, we are on the cusp of becoming a planetary society. As stated
in the Fuji Declaration Awakening the Divine Spark in the Spirit of Humanity: For a
Civilization of Oneness with Diversity on Planet Earth (provisional title), we have the
possibility now to witness a worldwide shift in consciousness and collaboration .
The recent revolution in global communications is having a profound effect and impact
upon human consciousness and the collective mind of our species. Increased physical,
digital, and emotional connectivity through our global-social networks appears to be
catalyzing the emergence of an empathic species mindset. The spectacular rise in a new
global media landscape also reflects a new form of participatory consciousness,
especially among younger people. This emerging landscape of connectivity,
communication, collaboration, and consciousness reflects a distributed engagement and
relational approach to living, rather than hierarchical. In this era the individual is no
longer constrained to be merely a passive receiver of information but can now be both
the user and the producer of knowledge: we have entered the era of the prosumers.
In this study we have drawn attention to a new media landscape in profound transition:
social media as a powerful tool of collective awakening; the rise of an Earth Voice
movement and a global citizen superpower; transformative approaches to global
education; the creative potential of computer games; the politics of conscious
citizenship; and the need for inclusive and transformative new stories for our collective
future. We have also, as a counterbalance, pointed to the hazards of living in an
always-on media environment. Overall, however, this study has mapped and
highlighted the emerging terrain of a new media landscape that has incredible potential
for nurturing and sustaining a diversified, yet unified, human planetary society.
Unlike any previous time in human history, an unprecedented opportunity for change
and betterment is now present. The human community has a responsibility for rising to
this time of opportunity as the many media factors described above may never be
present again at exactly the right moment when they are so badly needed. The human
species is a witness to and participant in a time of great transition at an individual,
community, national, and planetary level. The new media landscape is critical for
building a promising future based on new cultural narratives of hope and change. As a
maturing species, we have a profound responsibility to actively engage in this time of
great transition with an awakening consciousness that informs practical visions of a
promising future.
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and by the explicit or tacit consensus of both social scientists and political analysts. In most
cases analysts deal with each crisis as separate, isolated phenomena. This negligence and
restricted perception (based upon the paradigm of the sovereign nation state and doctrine of
independent academic disciplines) is greatly responsible for the present global turmoil which
is at its heart a civilizational crisis (Miszlivetz and Kaldor 1985, 2009).
The concern lately of nation states, the EU and global multilateral organizations, has
been to minimize irrational panic in response to crises and it can be argued that this reveals a
dysfunctional pattern of thinking. The real challenge is not the particular crisis of the
financial system which everyone talks about, but lies in the pattern of derivitive thinking that
has sustained the system and denied its problematic nature all along. Is the sovereign debt
crisis and its consequences for financial and political systems and societies an indicator of a
dysfunctional mode of thought in which we collectively participate today? Alternatively, can
the crisis of confidence better be understood as a credibility crisis? A major danger is the
current assumption that the only "confidence" that needs to be (re)built is defined by market
terminology and not by democratic terminology. Why are "solutions" only being dreamt up
after a crisis has struck? Does our way of thinking deny the existence of other systemic
challenges and repress consideration of potential implications in other areas? Can a more
vigilant analysis of the financial crisis as it evolves, and the language used in "saving the
system" help to develop a framework to analyze emergent crises that have been subject to the
same neglect through "derivative and not "innovative thinking.
It is important to identify the systemic role of actors (states), instruments (financial
mechanisms and authorities), concepts and dynamics, as well as how long and short-term risk
is managed in a context of fear, mistrust and a false notion of what has happened and why.
The question is whether more vigilant analysis of crises as they evolve, and the language used
in "saving the system" can be used to develop a framework to analyze developing crises
that have been subject to the same neglect through derivative and not innovative
thinking.
One of the major negative results of this is the lack of responsibility taking for global
or transnational disasters by the dominant players and stakeholders from national and
regional political leaders and institutions via institutions of knowledge creation and
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distribution including eminent social scientists.1 Alternative voices are emerging, but the
question is whether it is too little, too late.
This institutionalised irresponsibility and indifference surrounded by a tacit concensus
about dividedness as an unchangeable given is to a significant degree reponsible for
undermining and emptying out democracies as well as for endangering the future of human
existence on the planet. The recent return of the nation state and accompanying nationalistic
cliches and prejudices within Europe and all around its borders resulted in the rise of
rightwing and religious extremism, populism and an increasing rejection of multiculturalism.
Xenophobia, racism and anti-semitism has been growing not only in the peripehries but also
in the core countries of established democracies of affluent societies.
One of the key challenges is the demand for new and innovative ways of thinking to
resolve the threats to the sustainability of our social relations, environment and economies.
New knowledge is required by the social sciences to meet the demands of technological
innovation, management and public policy. New knowledge accumulation, or informational
capital, would include the important contribution of civil societies.
Paradigm Shift
Our whole world society appears to be following a distinct pattern that occurs very
rarely in history, one that has led in the past to total reinventions of the world within
very short periods of time. In short, we are in the midst of a classic paradigm shift and
are fast approaching the tipping point of the whole process.
Shacker 2013: 31
All of the present crises are connected by a mechanistic world view that has
dominated for the past 300 years and endangered the environment and quality of life, societies
and individuals. In a mechanistic world view, we all become parts of the machine and mere
objects. The fatal flaw of a mechanistic world view is eloquently elaborated by Michael
Shacker (2013) in his work, Global Awakening, New Science and the 21st Century
Enlightenment. Referring to William Barrets (1979), Illusion of Technique, he explains that
1
E.g., the Euromemorandum group, The European Trade Union Confederation, the Manifesto
of Appalled Economists in France, the Be Outraged Manifesto constructed by an international
group of economists and social scientists, manifestations of the Occupy movements across
Europe and the US, etc.
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the smooth operation of the machine becomes everything in the mind of the technician; and
since there is no meaning that can be derived from a machine, life becomes meaningless.
Our whole mechanistic society now reflects this meaningless and purposeless world
view. The illusion of technique helps us understand this fatal flaw of mechanistic
dogma and how it fails to confront reality. In short, the lure of the machine outweighs
the mounds of scientific data showing the fragile interconnections of Earth and its
biosphere. Social, environmental and health concerns are swept under the rug and
ignored. The mechanistic paradigm is thus dysfunctional at its core so we find
ourselves in the mechanistic dilemma (Shacker 2013: 29-30).
He continues by addressing the necessity of more-than-ordinary thinking and action
to transcend the mechanistic dilemma to extract the planet and humanity from its current
precarious situation.
The crisis is further exacerbated by the collusion between big business and
increasingly nationalistic governments who, in order to maintain their power positions and
monopolistic control of market forces, will not willingly relinquish their power positions. This
is clearly seen in the increasing incidents of state violence by state sanctioned police forces
against populations that have arisen to protest against economic and social inequalities
resulting from the crisis of the world system, as well as aspirations for a more democratic
politics of participation.
What is common in these in many ways different old/new bubbling up movements and
political worldviews is the strong insistence to historic dividedness and cultural differences as
well as the complete lack or rejection of the holistic approach in dealing with grave social,
political, and ecological problems. Threatened in their existence and legitimacy, old
institutions, interest groups and other powerful global, regional and national stakeholders are
keen to entrench themselves and fight one another to secure their interests and survival. The
new wave of desintegration and self-isolation is a result of the failure of global and regional
institutions such as the UN, the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF or the European Union.
Instead of contributing globally and regionally to more democracy, equality, peace and human
security, these institutions themselves contribute to the survival of the old paradigm of
unequal dividedness, onesided dependency and manifold insecurity. Therefore, the New
Norm should establish the perception of oneness of the human race and with the planet on
which we live. This means the acceptance and understanding of the inevitability of a holistic
view of humankind, together with its self-created institutions, markets, nationstates and means
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of violence. The vision and practice of a wisdom based society (Falk 2013) that turns
knowledge into organic and holistic practices has to replace gradually the old paradigm of a
knowledge-based society that was established on the premise and special historical
understanding of fragmentation and un-alterable dividedness. Awareness of increasing
interdependence in various spheres of our common existence is a slow process that needs to
speed up. The discussion of the dynamics of interdependence, of those in the center and those
in the peripheries, needs to be translated into action, thus empowering communities through
knowledge and legitimation. In order to challenge existing power structures, organizing those
marginalized groups and communities that have been historically left out into solid alliances
at the local level, such as women, racial-ethnic and religious minorities, gender and age-based
groups and indigenous populations, has increased over the past forty years (Wallerstein 2008),
but it has not been enough.
From a Medieval World View to a Mechanistic World View to an Organic World View
Every world view needs to answer the fundamental questions of who we are, how we
got where we are and where we are going that are delivered in a new story or narrative frame.
The current crisis of world view requires a paradigm shift which will move humanity into a
new world system and mind-set. Paradigm shifts or flips have occured before, from the
Medieval to the Mechanistic world view via the Enlightenment, towards a future Organic
worldview according to Shacker (2013). The composite tables are provided here to review
these paradignamic shifts:
Table 1: Comparison of Medieval and Mechanistic World Views (Shacker 2013: 36)
Medieval World View
God is responsible for all events on earth.
Gods creation only 6000 years old.
Two sets of laws: one for Earth, one for
heaven.
Geocentric universe: Earth does not move.
King and nobility have devine right to rule.
Medieval laws and value system designed to
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Table 2: Comparison of Mechanistic and Organic World Views (Shacker 2013: 41).
Mechanistic World View
If we look at the four stages of social transformation as outlined by Kuhn (1962), we see
that first of all, there is the emergence of an anomaly that contradicts the existing world view
and new science and philosophical concepts shock the existing world with radically new ideas
to account for the anomaly. A revolutionary period ensues that upsets the stability of the
system. The 1960s have been represented as a precursor in terms of beliefs and behavior that
underpins the movement from one system to another. Perhaps, the discussions and analysis
related to global warming could be considered in the contemporary context as one of the focul
points for the emergence of radically new ideas related to humankinds place in the world.
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The new sciences and the study of micro-worlds (e.g., quantum physics, complexity and
chaos theories, string theory) confront the scientific world view with a new view of
humankinds role in the universe.
Subsequently, the second phase can be described as the conservative backlash period that
sets back the new paradigm with fundamentalist conservative and political counter-reactions.
There is a paradigm resistence from old scientists and bitter paradigm wars are fought
between the new realities presented by the new world view, and the ideology and rhetoric of
the old world view. In the contemporary sense, the rise of the new right and conservative
governments in the 1970s in reaction to the movements of the 1960s can be viewed in this
context. At the same time, anomalies and scandals related to the workings of the old world
view mount and create pressure on existing structures (large bail outs starting in 1984 of the
Savings and Loan industry, invasion of Lebanon, rise of Sadam Hussein, neglect of AIDS and
womens rights, increasing environmental catastrophes Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl, Bhopal).
These incidents and the underlying neglect of addressing increasingly pressing social,
political, economic and environmental issues, with adequate responses from institutons and
authorities contibutes to undermining trust and belief in the system. They underscore that the
mechanistic world view can never solve the problems of its own making.
What follows is an intensive phase that continues the polarized culture war between world
views. Again, it can take the form of regressive and reactionary governments (as in the US in
the 1990s-2000s), and the increasing evidence of corporate world domination both in the
economic and increasingly in political spheres where the ramifications of coporate-state
collusion have devastating consequences for democracy in both old and new democracies.
New thinkers begin to construct and popularize a new narrative for the new era that explains
the emergent anomalies. The new narrative engages and activates societies that, once they
reach a critical mass, provide the tipping point for transformation to the new world view. In
fact, our contemporary period is also characterized by the greatest global mobilization of
populations in opposition to perceived systemic injustice endemic to the old world system and
institutionalized political and economic power relations. The Occupy movement and the
breadth of its organization and impact is only one example. Other organizing principles are
discussed later in this chapter. But besides new movements and new methods and forms of
mobilization, new formulations are emerging and taking shape in the areas of global
education, integrative/holistic healthcare and medicine, and in regenerative regional planning.
These new perspectives and strategies contribute to the formulation of the new narrative in
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science and societies and help to push the new paradigm further forward. This phase
encompasses basically the contemporary period from the early 1990s until today.
The last stage is the transformational phase. This is what is beginning today. In this phase
new conflicts may arise, but also increasing solidarity/cohesion/one-ness at the local and
global levels. The old ideology, system and structure are replaced with the underlying
precepts of the new world view with its correspondent scientific models and changed sets of
rules. This can take decades to realize and could, in the present circumstances, as it is
predicted, last up to 50 years. This is when a regenerative revolution proposes new, alternative
economic models, and new technological and social models replace the macro-economic
machine models with organic/regenerative/holistic development models based on the axiom
of the interdependence of life processes.
Where there is great inequality, there is great injustice and where there is great
injustice, there is the inevitability of instability.
Marshall (2013)
After 2007, when the financial crisis surfaced, and in its aftermath, it became
increasingly clear that for a critical mass of world society existing economic and financial
models were seriously limited, oversimplistic and overconfident and actually helped to create
the crisis. This is a combination of opinions not from people who are skeptical of capitalism
but who actually work at the heart of finance: a governor of the European Central Bank, and
from the head of the U.K. Financial Services Authority.
What is implied in these opinions is that we do not understand the complexity or
interdependence of, for example, our economic systems that drive our modern societies. In
reality, we are surrounded by interconnected and complex systems. Complexity theory tells us
that what looks like complex behavior from the outside is actually the result of a few simple
rules of interaction. To begin, therefore, to understand a system you need to look at the
interactions.
Complex systems have a unique characteristic that is called emergence which means
that a system as a whole cannot be understood or predicted by examining the components of
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the system, because the system as a whole starts to reveal a particular behavior. Therefore,
the whole is literally more than the sum of individual parts.
Networks also represent complex systems and the nodes in a network are its
components and the links are the interactions. Applying this analysis to economic networks is
new and reveals a surprising gap in the literature. The following analysis was originally
presented in the work entitled The Network of Global Corporate Control in 2011 (Vitali,
Glattfelder, Battiston 2011). Starting with a list of 43,060 TNCs identified according to the
OECD definition,2 and taken from a sample of over 30 million economic actors contained in
the Orbis 2007 database, they singled out, for the first time, the network of all the ownership
pathways originating from and pointing to TNCs. The resulting TNC network included
600,508 nodes and 1,006,987 ownership ties.
The center contains about 75% of all players, and in the center there is a tiny but
dominant core of highly interconnected companies. Although they only make up 36% of total
TNCs, they make up 95% of the total operating revenue of all TNCs.
After computing network control, they found that global corporate control has a
dominant core of 147 firms radiating from the center. Each of these 147 firms own shares in
one another and together they control 40% of the wealth in the TNC network. The top 737
shareholders have the potential to collectively control 80% of the TNCs value. Keep in mind
the value of the 600,000 nodes of interconnections, and that these 737 top players make up
0.123%. These are mostly financial institutions based in the US and UK and together they
have the collective potential to control 40% of the TNCs value.
[TNCs] comprise companies and other entities established in more than one country and so
linked that they may coordinate their operations in various ways, while one or more of these
entities may be able to exercise a significant influence over the activities of others, their
degree of autonomy within the enterprise may vary widely from one multinational enterprise
to another. Ownership may be private, state or mixed (OECD 2000).
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This level of hyperconnection is dangerous because of the extremely high degree of control,
and because the high degree of interconnectivity of the top players in the core could pose a
significant systemic risk to the global economy. Any kind of disturbance felt in the core
would expand exponentially like a virus to the other parts of the system.
The study concludes not with a global conspiracy but rather likens this development
with such biological structures such as fungus and weeds. The study concludes that the
network is probably the result of self-organization which is an emergent property and that the
network depends on the rules of interaction in the system. By emergent property what is
meant is that the system as a whole reveals behavior that can not be understood or predicted
by looking at the individual components of the system. In fact, the whole is literally to be
understood as more than the sum of all parts. Beyond the potential for catastrophic instability,
the system reveals an undeniable imbalance in terms of power and wealth. The study does not
attempt to derive implications in terms of inequality and increased potential of social unrest,
nor in terms of political instability and costs to democratic representation and practise. In
what follows, we will endeavor to illustrate the consequences for politics, economies and
societies of the anomalies that have been identified in the old world view that have been
elaborated so far.
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The worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in
the phenomenon of global political awakening.
Brzezinski (2008)
In 2014, Oxfam reported that the worlds 85 wealthiest individuals had a combined
wealth equal to the collective wealth of the worlds 3.5 billion people, at USD 1.7 trillion. At
the same time, the global top 1% owns about half the worlds wealth at USD 110 trillion.
Oxfam commented:
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Global Justice
Rights of People
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Source: world protests in media sources 2006-2013 as of July 31st 2013 (Ortiz et. al. 2013:
21)
The report forcefully concludes that
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summary the manifesto states that united in diversity, people demand global change, global
democracy and global governance by the people. They call for a global regime change
replacing the G8 with the whole of humanity. They criticize undemocratic global institutions
like the IMF, WTO, global markets, multinational banks, the G8/G20, the European Central
Bank and the UN security council. They demand that the citizens of the world take control
over the decisions that affect their lives, from the global to local.
Occupy Central (Hong Kong). The Umbrella Revolution: The ongoing pro-democracy
protests in Hong Kong have very specific local goals to achieve democracy but not in a broad
ideological sense. What they want explicitely relates to universal suffrage, elections,
reinterpretation of Hong Kongs constitution by Beijing and the resignation of the current
chief executive. They do not claim to be a revolutionary movement.
Occupytogether. This is the internet face of the #occupy movement. The website
frames the international movement as by people with a variety of backgrounds and political
beliefs who feel change must come from the bottom-up, and not from distrusted political
institutions. It aims to fight back against the system that has allowed the rich to get richer and
the poor to get poorer. The main issues they address are corporate influence, corporate
personhood, student debt, wrongful foreclosures, too big to fail banks, living minimum wage
levels, and budget cuts.
The New Abduction of Europe Congress in Madrid (February-March 2014). The
Congress was intended to mark a turning point in the recent history of European and
Mediterranean social movements. It was to close the so-called revolutionary period
(initiated by the Arab Spring, the events of 2011 in Spain, Greece and other Southern
European countries). These were the countries who experienced the most social turmoil as a
result of the economic crisis. A new period of a pan-European coalition of old and new
social movements, political and non-governmental organizations and public cultural
institutions was to be initiated at the conference. This new coalition is aimed at a democratic
and open Europe as an alternative to both the market-oriented technocratic vision of the EU
advocated by the Troika and the anti-European trends associated with increasingly strong
national tendencies.
MORELIKEPEOPLE. Their recent publication (Anarchists in the Boardroom) calls
for changes in the way social movements organize today in order to be more in touch with the
people and the cause they represent. At the same time, lessons have been learned from the use
of social media and technology from the new social movements that could improve impact
and change the world. The publication travels from worker-run factories, to Occupy
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encampments and non-violent direct actions, and even to some forward-thinking companies.
More like people activists propose that social media and new technologies can help NGOs,
charities, trade unions and voluntary organisations to both stay relevant during the current
period of transitions.
Indigenous Movements: The objective of most of these movements is to protect the
sovereignty and control of land and resources. Indigenous peoples organizations recognize
the need to reach out to other movements and groups around the world because the nature of
globalization requires a global response. In Latin America, for instance, there has been a very
explicit effort of indigenous peoples to link with the environmental movement, and the
campesino movement, and other social movements. Their strategies involve legal action, i.e.
changing national laws and national constitutions, and using international law, direct action,
voicing their cause to the international arena as well as entering government. One fascinating
and successful group is the Pachamama Alliance begun among the Achuar people of Ecuador
and Peru who began building a world alliance in 1995. The Pachamama Alliance is a global
community that offers people the chance to learn, connect, engage, travel and cherish life for
the purpose of creating a sustainable future that works for all.
Food Safety and Food Sovereignty Movements: These groups typically address the
WTO, the World Bank, IMF, and multinational corporations like Monsanto and the roles they
play in agricultural production, at the same time advocating the rights of peasants. One such
group is the international movement Via Campesina. The movement operates in Asia, Africa,
America and Europe and comprises and coordinates 148 organizations of small and medium
sized agricultural producers and workers, rural women and indigenous communities. The
coalition of small producer organizations from around the world operates programs of seedsharing. They protect seeds against Monsanto patents and against genetic modification.
Two other notable examples are the food sovereignty movement and the zero waste
movement. Both movements exhibit features where the traditional meets the globalized world.
They are locally driven but organize widely across the globe. The food sovereignty movement
is largely comprised of small-families, peasants and landless farmers. Their activism fights
against the World Trade Organization and its role in agriculture, and the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund and their roles in destroying local agriculture through the spread
of corporate production.
The proponents of the zero waste movement are trying to find ways to step outside the
consumption model of capitalist-produced goods. They are finding ways to regenerate what
they need from what they have within their societies already, and thereby also produce
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cooperative forms of income that foster community development and cohesion. They are
international in their reach and scope, and they are very clear and explicit in their analysis
about the role of corporations and the international financial institutions in destroying their
ways of life and lands.
Alternative Economic Models: There is a growing list of economic alternatives to
capitalism which include the green economy, blue economy and the global Zeri network,
Buddhist economics (aims to clarify the harmful and beneficial range of human activities
involving production and consumption in order to enhance human ethical maturity), Muslim
economics (where taxation is imposed in order to reallocate resources to the needy in
societies). These models already exist and more alternative economic models are emerging
with innovative tools and frameworks, like the sharing (mesh) economy or the participatory
economy.
Cultural Creatives A Cultural Movement: The term was coined by Paul H. Ray and
Sherry Ruth Anderson (2000) in their famous book Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million
People are Changing the World. Ever since the books publication, a self-awareness has
formed in groups that promote innovative, non-mainstream lifestyles outside the flows of
global capital and that now call themselves cultural creatives. They have web sites, as well
as social media presence, and the movement has grown into a subculture, also known as
LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability). It aims to promote creative forms of
capitalism and actively participate in making a better world. It is estimated that in America
more than 40 million identify with the movement, and in Europe around 60-80 million people
are involved with the cultural creatives (www.elasticmind.ca/innerpreneur/index.php/culturalcreativity/).
It is a mentality as well as a way of setting up and conducting businesses and living an
organic life style. The attributes of being a culturally creative person are also formulated (see
website above) and its primary values are authenticity, social activism, idealism, globalism
and ecology, consciousness (feeling empathy and sympathy for others, understanding
different viewpoints, valuing personal experience), and personal growth. The collective
awareness of people advocating such values is not historically new, but the wide scale of this
collective identity, and the number of people it connects are rather unprecedented even with
the common tendency that they are often isolated and not well-informed about each other.
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not often connected to a larger super-structure of a hierarchical movement and they are not
always articulated as anti-capitalist or anti-globalization. There has been a clear surge in
attempts to create real alternatives. This is being done by stepping outside the current system
of relations and creating more fulfilling parallel micro-systems. This can also take the form of
overcoming obstacles to fulfill needs within the dominant system, or changing unjust
structures altogether.
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companies, global financial and trade institutions should be. They also have to develop a new
attitude and practice towards horizontal (civil lateral) systematic cooperation. During the past
50 years there were many forecasts, warnings, protests and one issue movements and
crossborder initiatives to discuss, influence and alter questions of public concern. These
initiatives (professional, intellectual or political) were largely ignored or quickly forgotten
partly because they hurt the interests of unaccountable global marketplayers, the mainstream
media and public authorities, and partly because of self-imposed isolation and narcissistic
ideological divisions and the shortsightedness of civil organisations, NGOs and social
movements. This attitude and non-cooperative behaviour might change for the positive as the
negative impacts of global challenges and crises continue to accumulate. There will be fewer
and fewer convincing and credible answers given by democratically elected governmnets for
solving them.
In a globalizing world of instant and constant communication the utilization of
collective synergies is better suited to meeting the challenges than individual visions and
pursuits. The acceptance of constant change and intransigence must replace the compulsive
desire for permanence, which is only illusionary in any case. New frameworks and strategies
need further development to assist the confrontation and management of complex and
interdependent crises in a coalition of stakeholders (governments, business and civil society).
Another path leading to changing norms is a fundamental restructuring of our
educational systems. We need holistic, inter-and transdisciplinary methods and interpretation
of the growing uncertainties, social, political and religious-cultural polarisation, ecological
catastrophies, unsustainability and amorality in the world today. We need a new appraoch to
science and research that is embedded in, speaks to and is relevant for societies, not isolated
in ivory towers of so-called objectivity. Compartmentalisation and fragmentation of
knowledge into disciplines and higher education kept under the control of national
authorities fundamentally hinders the development of the much needed new knowledge that
might develop into collective wisdom that serves the future of all humankind. We need
completely new institutions with horizontal and open structures that can be called Futureuniversities where the generation and accumulation of knowledge serves the interests of local,
regional and global societies, instead of irresponsible and uncontrolled global political and
market actors.
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For many years, Immanuel Wallerstein has written about the two cultures of
scholarship, that is science and philosophy. The gulf between these two cultures of thought
was deliberate and a clear product of 19th century thinking. Science was assigned the task of
looking for truth; while philosphy and what become know more generally as the humanities
(history, and later economics, sociology, and political science) was positioned to search for
goodness. The progress of the last 200 years has tried to reunite the search for truth and the
search for goodness under the label of social science as it was established in the 19th century.
Wallerstein observes, that rather than reunifying these two cultures, social science has itself
been torn apart by the dissonance between the two searches.
Wallerstein recognizes two remarkable intellectual developments of the last two
decades that constitute something and perhaps provide evidence of a process of overcoming
the split of the two cultures, and in the terms of this study, point towards a movement of oneness in scientific analysis. The first is called complexity studies in the natural sciences,
examples of analysis found in this paper; and the other is called cultural studies in the
humanities. The reason complexity studies was given that name is because reality is complex.
It rejects the Newtonian science (found in Table 2) that assumed that there were simple
underlying formulas that explained everything.3 Complexity studies argues, rather, that all
such formulae can at best be partial, and at most explain the past, never the future
(Wallerstein 1997). The universe is filled with ever evolving structures which reach points at
which their equilibria can no longer be maintained and bifurcation takes place where new
paths are found and new orders established, but we never know in advance what these new
orders will be.
If physical scientists and mathematicians are now telling us that truth in their arena is
complex, indeterminate, and dependent on an arrow of time, what does that mean for
social scientists? For, it is clear that, of all systems in the universe, human social
systems are the most complex structures that exist, the ones with the briefest stable
equilibria, the ones with the most outside variables to take into account, the ones that
are most difficult to study (Wallerstein 1997).
Cultural studies do not study culture as such, but rather how, when and why they were
produced in the forms they were, and how they were and are received by others, and for what
3
Einstein was unhappy that e=mc2 explained only half the universe. He was searching for
the unified field theory that would in an equally simple equation explain everything
(Wallerstein 1997).
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reasons. Thus, the study of cultural products has moved away from traditional humanities into
the realm of the social sciences and the explanation of reality as a constructed reality.
With the move of natural science towards social sciences via complexity studies, and
the move of humanities towards the social sciences via cultural studies, we are in the process
of overcoming the two cultures through the social scientization of knowledge that
recognizes reality as constructed. With this movement, we are in the process of overcoming
the artificial construction of hard and separate disciplines and are moving towards a
unification of scientific and human endeavor, overcoming 19th century constraints, and
providing the basis not only for holistic scientific enquiry, but for the basis of new,
regenerative educational models.
In academic scholarship (research as well as education), particularly in the social
sciences, there is an increasing recent tendency to try to bridge the fragmentary nature on
knowledge to create truly transdisciplinary methodologies. New methodology is needed that
is not tied to compartmentalized disciplinary categories that reflect and reproduce a
mechanistic world view. Knowledge produced through the cross-fertization of tools,
information and methodologies requires a new type of university that can aid in the
production of a complex understanding of contemporary global challenges.
In addition to Wallerstein, Christopher Chase Dunn (2005) and others repeatedly make
the plea for the necessity to transform the social sciences and make them more global or
cosmopolitan (Beck and Sznaider 2006). They convincingly argue that there is a necessity to
renew the dialogue within the social sciences between activism (as public sociology) and
scholarship (as professional scientific sociology). The two should not be thought of exclusive
realms in conflict with each other, but rather as realms that are complementary and are thus
equally necessary (Dunn 2005). Since contemporary social change can only be
comprehended in its world historical context, Dunn emphasizes the importance of taking a
more comprehensive, global (and less nation-based, reductive) perspective as it yields a
deeper and more accurate understanding of the larger processes of an emergent global system.
He develops a typology borrowed from Michael Burawoy (2005) i.e., professional, critical,
policy, and public that could be used to make the social sciences relevant, 4 applicable and
Burawoys typology is summarized by Ericson (2005: 365-366) as the following:
Professional knowledge refers to institutionally defined and regulated theories and
methods of sociology. Conceptual frameworks and methods are agreed upon. Scientific
knowledge [produces] theories that correspond to the empirical world (Burawoy 2005:
276). This he calls mainstream sociology to differentiate it from critical sociology.
Critical sociology, on the other hand, largely defines itself by its opposition to
4
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accountable in describing todays complex global realities like the crisis of and challenges to
neoliberalism and neoconservatism, and the dynamics of core and periphery. The
responsibility of a global public social science could be enormous in explaining global
historical processes to people while actively engaging with global civil society. Dunn
maintains that the institutional boundaries between contemporary social science disciplines
are annoying obstacles to a scientific understanding of social reality as well as politically.
Instead of abolishing the disciplines, however, he proposes a more effective transdisciplinary
approach for both professional and public sociologists, who know the basic theories and
methods of several social science disciplines.
He describes the following sub-fields for sociology as follows:
Global professional Social Science is a field that studies social realities on a global
scale incorporating the methodological tools and theoretical perspectives of various
social sciences.
Global Critical Social Science is a field that critiques, deconstructs and reformulates
important global social science concepts (e.g. globalization) and global institutions
and proposes critical ways of categorizing social forces, contradictions and
antagonisms in ways that are intended to be of use for transnational social movements
(e.g. Hardt and Negri 2004, Starr 2000).
Global Policy Social Science is responsible for formulating global policies that plan
ways and strategies to cope with global economic, social and political forces (e.g.
Global Policy Institutes).
Global Public Social Science comprises social scientists who use their research skills
and analytic abilities to address global civil society and also serve transnational social
movements (e.g. teaching and writing textbooks for students). Many universities have
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One of the drivers for a revolution in the social sciences and eduation is the
conceptualization of a Future University. A Future University needs to be different in
fundamental ways from todays obsolete, out-of-touch, and petrified institutions. New
institions should be learning and not just teaching institutions where the co-creation of
knowledge is translated into programs that promote self-reflection and self-correction, in
systems, policies and societies. This way new knowledge hubs can steadily reconfigure their
own capacities to include new partners and methods to assess and address changing realities.
The social and natural sciences, as well as technical innovations, should also be
socially responsible. In the first place the question needs to be asked: does the research serve
the interests of societies and if so, in what ways will it be useful identifying and providing
relevant alternatives for the solution to problems. The Future University:
1) should not only be a teaching institution, but also a learning institution that offers
space, infrastucture and connectedness for creation and co-creation. The co-created,
new knowledge produced and disseminated should be translated into developmental
programs. That way research is connected to practice directly contributing to social,
institutional and ecoonomic reforms and policies as well as to new, integrative and
complex regional and city development strategies;
2) should benchmark social responsibility. The recent global crisis brought to the surface
legitimacy questions caused by the lack of social reponsibility in scientific research.
Academia should become one of the strongest stakeholders in finding alternatives to
the negative spirals and destructive tendencies of globalization. Researchers of
humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and technical innovation should ask the
same questions before starting a new project: does our research and if so in what way,
contribute to finding the proper answers to increasingly intertwined, complex
problems and challenges;
3) should be built upon the principles and methodologies of inter- and transdiciplinarity.
Divided knowledge undermines the solidarity of humanity and impedes development
and achievement (UNESCO 2013). Complex problems caused by the pervasive global
transformation cannot be understood and therefore solved without a new complex and
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holistic approach and methodology. New visions of sustainability will not be provided
by divisive and one-sided scientific paradigms. This presupposes a move from multiand interdisciplinarity towards transdisciplinary thinking and research;
4) should be open towards all of the decisive actors of the globalizing world such as
global and local market actors, including MNC-s and international financial institions,
representatives and experts from local via national to regional and global
governmental institutions, as well as towards representatives of civil society and all
forms of Media. The representatives of these seemingly separate but de facto in many
ways interconnected spheres should be active participants of the new process of
knowledge co-creation. An institutionalized dialogue among these artificially
separated spheres of production, reproduction and interpretation might pave the way
towards a new common language and vocabulary of the emerging global culture of
problem solving. Looking for solutions to common global problems such as
environmental crisis, poverty and growing social polarization needs the broadest
possible understanding, the details of which can only be provided by the broadest
spectrum of stakeholders. A conscious development co-creation of a new common
language might also be an inevitable precondition for new - global, regional and
local social contracts;
5) should be responsible for its own human products for that reason the walls and
boundaries between different levels of institutionalized learning and teaching should
be eliminated. This open and integrative nature of Future Universities would guarantee
the effective, rapid and broad new knowledge dissemination to the spheres of culture,
society, economy and politics. The broad, effective and rapid socialization of
knowledge, combined with guarantees of feedback mechanisms might be the base for
the co-creation of a new widom based society.
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certain spheres of existence and human activities within the geographical units called nation
states. It does not exist in institutionalised forms on global or regional/transnational levels. In
political reality the idea of equal nation states as independent actors possessing the same
rights is overwritten by the rule created by the biggest and mightiest actors.
The cognitive sphere of this world is equally dominated by separation: knowledge
production and distribution is realized by so called disciplines which usually guarantee the
maintenance of a fragmented and one-sided academic picture of the world. This is why
mainstream social sciences or academia as such has little to nothing relevant to say about the
complexity, nature and potential impacts and consequences of damaging and intertwined
processes we usually call crisis. In fact we are in the midst of a great global transformation
without adequate explanatory and intellectual tools. Nation state authorities are themselves
having trouble understanding the complexities of their own positions and potentials of both
conflict and cooperation. All these creates a dangerous and fragile Weltzustand in a world
without global leadership and well-functioning, accountable and predictable international
economic, financial, and political institutions. The world system is unbalanced and reached
the phase of bifurcation.
There are, however serious signs of fundamental change both in the functioning of the
world system and in the way of thinking about it and analyzing it. Since the breakout of the
global crisis in 2007, there is an identifiable new set of social and polical movements,
protests, networks and individual initiatives that are formulating the core of a democratic
global civil society. Revolutionary developments in ICT, the very new phenomena of social
media, gives space for entirely new versions of self-mobilization, expression and the sharing
of opinions and for transnational, regional or global deliberation. This new family of antisystemic players is not yet chrystallized but is gaining a new level of self-awareness, selfunderstanding and self-confidence. Their criticism has reached the official sphere of
dominating institutions; their new vocabulary and narrative is more and more often echoed
from international institutions such as the IMF or the World Bank and their representatives. In
other words, we are witnessing a cognitive revolution whose outcome is yet unpredictable.
Powerholders and opinionmakers have an increasingly hard job to maintain the ideological,
intellectual and institutional pillars of the old world order. The new paradigm of a possibly
more democratic and just future world order can already be identified in the thinking,
behaviour, networking, and associations of the new players.
We can and should make efforts towards re-unifying or integrating artifically
separated elements of the whole (one-ness) in the different spheres at one and the same time:
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In our cognitive sphere of existence representatives and believers of complex and integrated
thinking can pursue inter- and transdisciplinary research projects and re-configure existing
institutions such as universities and research institutes accordingly or simply create new ones
like the one we call the Future University. A new ethical base for social sciences is emerging
worldwide and has begun to seriously influence academic discourse within international
institutions such as UNESCO and the UN. For institutions under nationstate surveillance, a
breakthrough seems take longer and be more troublesome, but cracks can be identified in the
walls of old and obsolete knowledge factories as well. The need for new thinking and acting is
growing worldwide. The concept of the Future University could integrate the fragments of
these conscious or often unintended efforts of redefining the meaning and role of knowledge,
academic research and scientific innovation in our lives.
In the sphere of real politics and action the changes are more obvious and dramatic.
From the late 1970 s the world has wittnessed the emergence of new social movements, civil
society networks, protest and resistance against dictatorships and authoritarian rule. The new
way of thinking and strategy of civil society was based on nonviolence and open, rational, and
continous dialogue with authorities representing power systems. This new civil culture of selfmobilization has reached a global dimension and global consciousness today. Strenghtening
networks of civil initiatives, movements and organizations can pursue public dialouge with
global players if they find the right strategies of cooperation and coalition building and
withold their narcissistic-individualistic attitudes. On the basis of this new thiniking and
acting, complex and global strategies can built which can result in a new socal contract on all
global, regional and local levels. This might lead us towards the notion of species
consciousness that binds us all together with the other life forms on the planet we share.
How we have used and abused the Earths physical resources in the pursuit of economic
performance and profit at the expense of ethical values and societal and environmental wellbeing is the narrative of our societies that explains how we got to where we are today. We
need to re-engage with our capacity to wonder by intuiting the resonance of a world alive with
energy and a relentless spirit of creativity. A world of instant global communication, where
time and place are no longer central, is a world less suited to individual visionaries and more
to the synergy of collective action. The new narrative expalining who we are and why we are
here is in the making. It has been proposed that humanity is finally reaching the level of
concsiousness. Scientists are studying the effects of our combined consciousness in, for
example, the Global Consciousness Project. They say that Large scale group consciousness
has effects in the physical world. Knowing this, we can intentionally work toward a brighter,
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more conscious future. The construction of a new narrative to take us into the future requires
the input of each of us, and the time for action is now.
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30
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