12 February 2012
What We Need Now
Posted by Admin under: Leadership; Organization; People; Story; Sustainability .
What kind of leadership we need for sustainability is really dependent what the world needs right now—which is a broad and deep transition to a new way of life, a new way of doing business, new kinds of social organizations, and a fundamental shift in our awareness of nature and our relationships with each other.
I recently had the opportunity to watch Inside Job, about those responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown, and at the showing someone handed me a copy of Zeitgeist: Addendum, a title that only makes sense when you know the producers had made two previous films and this one came out in 2008. I haven’t watched the most recent one, or the older ones yet, but it’s already clear that this series of movies is dedicated to a profound shift in our consciousness and a corresponding change in our social organization.
The fundamental conclusion I draw from both of these films is that the system is rigged in favor of an elite corporatocracy that controls the media, governments, financial institutions, oil companies, the military, and the rest of the prison-industrial complex we call the economy.
Well, yes, it is, but this doesn’t necessarily represent a conscious or criminal conspiracy. The financial meltdown of 2008 was the result of excessive risktaking, arrogance, and pure fabrication, but it was not exactly in the interests of the 1% either. The financial community experienced a genuine panic, realized it had no hedge against a total loss of confidence in the system, and watched half of the capital wealth on the planet disintegrate over the coming months.
At the bottom of all this is more than a culture of moral corruption on Wall Street, on K Street, and in the Congress; it’s a genuine failure of the corporate elite to sustain a pattern of economic growth or to recognize the need for its fundamental transformation.
Everyone is getting hurt in this process.