From Global to Local
This is really two books in one. The first is an account of Korten's spiritual journey as he sought to find a way out of humankind's late twentieth-century predicament. Fans of the Catholic theologian Thomas Berry and those scientists of like mind such as Brian Swimme, co-author with Berry of The Universe Story will applaud Korten's embrace of their way of looking at life as interconnected, dynamic, self-organising, and purposeful. This reveals another side to Korten's nature as contemplative, philosophical, even spiritual.
After burying global capitalism once and for all in the opening section of his book, he takes his readers on an "incredible journey" as he recounts Life's Story emerging from the pioneering work on living systems by leading-edge thinkers" in the field of biology. The rest of the book is Korten's effort to apply the insights he has gained from his "incredible journey" to the world of political, economic, social and spiritual change. "Envisioning a Post-Corporate World" includes chapters on "Mindful Markets", "Economic Democracy" and "The Rights of Living Persons".
Another chapter, "The New Storytellers", in which he tells us about some people and groups that have made a difference and another on "Life Choices", in which he describes concrete ways in which we can change our lives and make them more compatible with values such as sustainability and equity, are both inspiring and positive. His final chapter, "Engaging the Future", sets out concrete actions we can all take "to create a just, sustainable and compassionate post-corporate world."
Korten has come a long way from his days as a Harvard Business School faculty member. His metaphor of capitalism as a cancer that must be exorcised firm in the body politic is particularly telling. But he does not tell us how to deal with the predator class - that is, those whose lust for power is so great that they will assert it regardless of the prevailing economic system. And, notwithstanding its positive qualities, Korten's book has a number of such shortcomings, perhaps inevitable in a work of such scope. Thus he sometimes gets carried away with his own rhetoric. Consider this passage (pp. 280-281):
"However, to take this step requires that we put capitalism and the institutionalised irresponsibility of our adolescence behind us and align ourselves and our technologies with life's continuing quest to know itself through the transcendent actualisation of yet unknown possibilities."
On a more substantial scale, he appears to be ambivalent about the role of power in realising the transformation for which he argues so eloquently throughout his book. I do not think that he has forgotten Lord Acton's dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely or Frederick Douglas' insistence that those who wield power will never give it up without a struggle. But I wonder whether his assertion that the task ahead depends more on our spiritual rather than our political awakening, is going to get us from here to there.
Although Korten seems to have intended that his book play to a global audience and he does provide a number of examples of people and movements working for positive change in the Third World, this is a book primarily for North American readers. I tried to think how the victims of the world's worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, India, would relate to Korten's vision of a brave new world centred on celebration of life. Their struggles for survival are so encompassing and so primordial that they would have great difficulty connecting with his vision.
But notwithstanding these limitations, this is an important work that seems destined to move in new directions the debate about how we can save ourselves and all the other inhabitants of the biosphere.
