So I plan to post about once a week – I welcome your thanks, feedback, criticisms, objections, fears, beliefs, judgments, amens, hallelujahs, and comments.
I apologize for not posting the past two weeks. I’ve recently returned from Santiago, Chile where I met twenty-four members of AVINA’s network of leaders for sustainable development. These are wise, committed people from Latin America, who lead organizations working on a range of issues relevant to sustainability concerns – promoting free legal clinics, supporting rural community development, addressing gender violence, and shifting corporate practices toward greater social and environmental awareness.
AVINA itself is an inspiring example of multi-sectoral collaboration, linking the socially responsible business sector to leaders in the civil society sector. The AVINA network receives its funding from a consortium of large businesses in Latin America called GrupoNueva. GrupoNueva is run with a strong ethic of corporate social responsibility, and takes great pride in funding the work of AVINA’s leaders.
I was there to talk with these leaders about the concept of “evolutionary leadership for a Great Transition.” A Great Transition has been explored in some detail in past blog posts co–authored with Paul Raskin, President of the Tellus Institute - What Future Will We Choose? and Who Will Change the World? – in which we argued humanity has the technological prowess and resources needed to make a transition to a future of human well-being and a healthy planet. But this Great Transition will not happen unless tens of millions of citizens are actively engaged in bringing it about. This is the role of “evolutionary leadership” – a commitment to supporting the conscious evolution of our planetary civilization to a new stage in harmony with the natural world, human rights, and the requirements of sustainability.
Evolutionary leadership is distinguished from traditional notions of leadership in several ways:
• First, anyone can be an evolutionary leader – no matter what position you may hold or what organization you work for.
• Second, evolutionary leaders operate with a systemic understanding of global challenges, knowledge of the scientific requirements of sustainability, and a plausible vision of a hopeful future.
• Third, evolutionary leaders seek to serve as citizen diplomats (pdf), forming bridges from their organizations and communities to foster collaboration. This is made easier when evolutionary leaders recognize their counterparts across the business, government and civil society sectors.
• Fourth, evolutionary leaders engage the hard work of adaptive change within their organization and communities – stimulating their own constituencies to squarely face-up to troublesome realities and rise to the challenge of doing something about global warming, environmental degradation, human rights abuse, poverty, and the numerous problems that effect us all.
One of the major tasks facing evolutionary leaders is to advance an optimistic vision of our future that can counteract the despair and apathy that has gripped millions of otherwise concerned citizens. The key point is to empower people to be citizens shaping the outcome of this period of rapid transition we are all living through.
An essential piece of this is the shift in consciousness that accompanies the awareness that humanity and the earth can not be separated – we are interdependent with the fate of all life on this planet. This is what Deborah has termed the human world ; in other words, we are Earth. We are not parasitical invaders – a radical environmentalist perspective for some – nor are we here to subdue, dominate, and exploit – an orthodox religious perspective for some. Taking care of Earth is taking care of ourselves, and our grandchildren.
This shift in consciousness is becoming increasingly mainstream. The weekend after I returned from Chile, I attended the Apeiron Institute’s annual Rhode Island sustainable living festival. Suburbanites and urbanites had come to find out the latest techniques of sustainable living — natural building, alternatives to lawns, solar energy, composting toilets, and much more. Momentum is building around the idea that changing how we live can be fun, healthy, and exciting. I felt a certain sadness to see that so many of the festival participants were young couples with children.
These and other efforts mushrooming up around the world are indicative of a vast interest in real alternatives to our life destroying civilization (i.e. massive extinctions caused by human activity). Literally life destroying, as we find out that seafood may be wiped out by 2050, bees are dieing off without explanation, amphibians are in decline, along with record numbers of other species, while billions of people persist in absolute poverty without adequate access to water, housing, and health care. But please don’t interpret what I say – as Hunter Lovins recently did in an on-line exchange hosted by the Presidio School of Management – as a traditional Leftist attack against Capitalism. While I would agree that corporations need to be reinvented to serve the broader public interest, there are no doubt numerous leaders within corporations pushing for visionary new approaches to sustainability and even bucking the short-term demands of next quarter’s share price.
Systemic transformation of the business sector – including improved and targeted government regulation, reform of corporate governance and finance, and increasing pressure from civil society groups – could be seen as allied with those leaders within corporations seeking to promote new ways. Thus rather then pitting one sector against another, or viewing one sector as an obstacle, we should see that there are leaders within all 3 sectors (business, government, and society) who need each other’s support. This is what we are beginning to call the community of evolutionary leaders.
Orion, are you saying that anyone can be an evolutionary leader … first by having what some have called a “global mind shift” … and then by working toward sustainable solutions at any level, in any arena, with any focus you choose?
I guess I’m asking … can you define in a sentence or two what I means to be an evolutionary leader? Is it a path that’s open to all of us?
Deborah
Deborah,
Definitely a path that is open to anyone, but there are certain core competencies that are crucial:
1) a scientific understanding of the requirements of ecological sustainability
2) systemic thinking - especially as it applies to the human-ecological system
3) an understanding of the power of language, especially how narratives (or visions) shape the realm of the possible
4) conflict transformation — engaging conflicts for the sake of learning, collaboration, and growth
5) a plausible hopeful vision to counteract despair and apathy
Each of the above is really an expanding area of study, and we are constantly faced with our limits of understanding even as we seek to act.
I do think the key is to identify as an evolutionary leader and work in collaborative community with others who are doing the same. We are all learning, and it is our commitment and courage which matter most.
I like your five core competencies. I had to laugh to myself about number one, however, (a scientific understanding of the requirements of ecological sustainability) because I just began a new job where I basically sift through all the news from different sectors of technology and environmental science. The one thing I have learned since beginning this work is that there are lots of new ideas and new approaches to sustainability, alternative energy, and global development, and NO ONE agrees with anyone else. It feels like chaos, but I’m hoping a pattern will emerge.
Which brings me to number five (a plausible hopeful vision to counteract despair and apathy), which I can work on within myself even amidst the controversy of ethanol, fuel cells, hydrogen, agri-fuel, and green imperialism.
Suzanne,
Absolutely — the controversy is part of science. Being knowledgeable and informed as to the issues, and the boundaries of the real scientific debate, is crucial for an evolutionary leader.
Climate Change is a good case study. Should we aim for 450ppm CO2eqv or 550 or 600 ?? Depends on who you read, and what level of risk you feel is acceptable. From what I can make out though, 450ppm (or less!) is probably what we want to aim for, assuming we want to keep global average temperature to a 2 degree increase from pre-industrial times. But is a 2 degree increase even a reasonable goal? The impacts of such a temperature increase could be catastrophic, there is just so much uncertainty. (btw, I highly recommend the essay by Paul Baer and Tom Athanasiou, called Honesty About Dangerous Climate Change: http://www.ecoequity.org/ceo/ceo_8_2.htm)
And then, should we think about using nuclear power, fuel cells, ethanol? The goal of the evolutionary leader should be to stay abreast of these debates and form an educated opinion — one that is open to shifting as new evidence is presented. Of course, the solution to climate change can not be found in technology alone — and this is where the competency of systemic thinking is so crucial.
Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Orion, have you done some of the coursework in at the Center for Evolutionary Leadership, which you linked to in this post?
Is it a national trend? Global?
I’m just trying to understand what it’s about …
Deborah
One last thing - I wanted to provide a link to an article I read today.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/features/daily-features/article2715156.ece
Here’s my own summary of the most relevant points:
“Behind the climate crisis lies a global issue that no one wants to tackle: do we need radical plans to reduce the world’s population?
Worldwide, the birth rate is about six per second, and the death rate stands at three per second. UN figures foresee numbers levelling out at a point when we have between 8 and 10 billion humans by 2050 - that’s roughly a 50 per cent increase on today’s figure.
This is not comforting news. Even at current levels, the World Health Organisation reports that more than three billion people are malnourished. And it is the airborne waste from our energy production that is driving climate change.
If debate is started, some will say that we need to stop the world’s population booming, and to do so most urgently where the birth rates are highest - the developing world. Others may argue that it is in the developed world, where the impact of individuals is highest, that we should concentrate efforts. A third view is to ignore population and to focus on human consumption.
Programmes that seek actively to reduce birth rates find that three conditions must be met. First, birth control must be within the scope of conscious choice. Second, there must be real advantages to having a smaller family - if no provision is made for peoples’ old age, the incentive is to have more children. Third, the means of control must be available - but also to be socially acceptable, and combined with education and emancipation of girls and women.”
Hello Deborah,
I am responding to your question about evolutionary leadership.
Is this a national trend , a global trend ?
At this time, the concept of evolutionary leadership is being offered by a small group of people like myself, Alexander and Kathia Laszlo, and some others. There is a growing trend national and global to use an evolutionary perspective and evolutionary knowledge to make sense and make meaning of our cosmic and human journey. For example people like Brian Swimme, use an evolutionary perspective in explaining our role on planet earth.
I think of evolutionary leaders as anyone who takes a stand for a better future for humanity, right now, in my opinion the guiding principles for designing a better future are :evolutionary science, social sustainability/ social justice, environmental sustainability, and human and or spiritual development.
best,
Manuel Manga
Thank you Manuel, for this response and for your forward-thinking approach to living in the 21st century …
Deborah
hi there,
i enjoyed your commentary, and the notion that everyone can be an environmental leader, no matter their position.
i also wanted to know where that picture was taken…it reminded me of upstate new york!
Hi,
Do you think the following essay comes from a person who exemplifies evolutionary leadership? Perhaps others have better examples.
THE NEED FOR TRANSCENDENCE IN THE POSTMODERN WORLD
By Vaclav Havel
In this postmodern world, cultural conflicts are becoming more dangerous than at any time in history. A new model of coexistence is needed, based on man’s transcending himself.
There are thinkers who claim that, if the modern age began with the discovery of America, it also ended in America. This is said to have occurred in the year 1969, when America sent the first men to the moon. From this historical moment, they say, a new age in the life of humanity can be dated.
I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble.
Periods of history when values undergo a fundamental shift are certainly not unprecedented. This happened in the Hellenistic period, when from the ruins of the classical world the Middle Ages were gradually born. It happened during the Renaissance, which opened the way to the modern era. The distinguishing features of such transitional periods are a mixing and blending of cultures and a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or rediscovered. They are periods when there is a tendency to quote, to imitate, and to amplify, rather than to state with authority or integrate. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements.
Today, this state of mind or of the human world is called postmodernism. For me, a symbol of that state is a Bedouin mounted on a camel and clad in traditional robes under which he is wearing jeans, with a transistor radio in his hands and an ad for Coca-Cola on the camel’s back. I am not ridiculing this, nor am I shedding an intellectual tear over the commercial expansion of the West that destroys alien cultures. I see it rather as a typical expression of this multicultural era, a signal that an amalgamation of cultures is taking place. I see it as proof that something is happening, something is being born, that we are in a phase when one age is succeeding another, when everything is possible. Yes, everything is possible, because our civilization does not have its own unified style, its own spirit, it’s own aesthetic.
Science and Modern Civilization
This is related to the crisis, or to the transformation, of science as the basis of the modern conception of the world.
The dizzying development of this science, with its unconditional faith in objective reality and its complete dependency on general and rationally knowable laws, led to the birth of modern technological civilization. It is the first civilization in the history of the human race that spans the entire globe and firmly binds together all human societies, submitting them to a common global destiny. It was this science that enabled man, for the first time, to see Earth from space with his own eyes; that is, to see it as another star in the sky.
At the same time, however, the relationship to the world that modern science fostered and shaped now appears to have exhausted its potential. It is increasingly clear that, strangely, the relationship is missing something. It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality and with natural human experience. It is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning. It produces what amounts to a state of schizophrenia: Man as an observer is becoming completely alienated from himself as a being.
Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only dimension, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it became. Today, for instance, we may know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did, and yet, it increasingly seems they knew something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us. The same thing is true of nature and of ourselves. The more thoroughly all our organs and their functions, their internal structure, and the biochemical reactions that take place within them are described, the more we seem to fail to grasp the spirit, purpose, and meaning of the system that they create together and that we experience as our unique “self.”
And thus today we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation. We enjoy all the achievements of modern civilization that have made our physical existence on this earth easier in so many important ways. Yet we do not know exactly what to do with ourselves, where to turn. The world of our experiences seems chaotic, disconnected, confusing. There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.
When Nothing Is Certain
This state of affairs has its social and political consequences. The single planetary civilization to which we all belong confronts us with global challenges. We stand helpless before them because our civilization has essentially globalized only the surface of our lives. But our inner self continues to have a life of its own. And the fewer answers the era of rational knowledge provides to the basic questions of human Being, the more deeply it would seem that people, behind its back as it were, cling to the ancient certainties of their tribe. Because of this, individual cultures, increasingly lumped together by contemporary civilization, are realizing with new urgency their own inner autonomy and the inner differences of others.
Cultural conflicts are increasing and are understandably more dangerous today than at any other time in history. The end of the era of rationalism has been catastrophic: Armed with the same supermodern weapons, often from the same suppliers, and followed by television cameras, the members of various tribal cults are at war with one another. By day, we work with statistics; in the evening, we consult astrologers and frighten ourselves with thrillers about vampires. The abyss between rational and the spiritual, the external and the internal, the objective and the subjective, the technical and the moral, the universal and the unique, constantly grows deeper.
Politicians are rightly worried by the problem of finding the key to ensure the survival of a civilization that is global and at the same time clearly multicultural. How can generally respected mechanisms of peaceful coexistence be set up, and on what set of principles are they to be established?
These questions have been highlighted with particular urgency by the two most important political events in the second half of the twentieth century: the collapse of colonial hegemony and the fall of communism. The artificial world order of the past decades has collapsed, and a new, more-just order has not yet emerged. The central political task of the final years of this century, then, is the creation of a new model of coexistence among the various cultures, peoples, races, and religious spheres within a single interconnected civilization. This task is all the more urgent because other threats to contemporary humanity brought about by one-dimensional development of civilization are growing more serious all the time.
Many believe this task can be accomplished through technical means. That is, they believe it can be accomplished through the invention of new organizational, political, and diplomatic instruments. Yes, it is clearly necessary to invent organizational structures appropriate to the present multicultural age. But such efforts are doomed to failure if they do not grow out of something deeper, out of generally held values.
This, too, is well known. And in searching for the most natural source for the creation of a new world order, we usually look to an area that is the traditional foundation of modern justice and a great achievement of the modern age: to a set of values that — among other things — were first declared in this building (Independence Hall). I am referring to respect for the unique human being and his or her liberties and inalienable rights and to the principle that all power derives from the people. I am, in short, referring to the fundamental ideas of modern democracy.
What I am about to say may sound provocative, but I feel more and more strongly that even these ideas are not enough, that we must go farther and deeper. The point is that the solution they offer is still, as it were, modern, derived from the climate of the Enlightenment and from a view of man and his relation to the world that has been characteristic of the Euro-American sphere for the last two centuries. Today, however, we are in a different place and facing a different situation, one to which classically modern solutions in themselves do not give a satisfactory response. After all, the very principle of inalienable human rights, conferred on man by the Creator, grew out of the typically modern notion that man — as a being capable of knowing nature and the world — was the pinnacle of creation and lord of the world.
This modern anthropocentrism inevitably meant that He who allegedly endowed man with his inalienable rights began to disappear from the world: He was so far beyond the grasp of modern science that he was gradually pushed into a sphere of privacy of sorts, if not directly into a sphere of private fancy — that is, to a place where public obligations no longer apply. The existence of a higher authority than man himself simply began to get in the way of human aspirations.
Two Transcendent Ideas
The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet, I think it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is to be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed in the language of a departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the world.
Paradoxically, inspiration for the renewal of this lost integrity can once again be found in science, in a science that is new — let us say postmodern — a science producing ideas that in a certain sense allow it to transcend its own limits. I will give two examples:
The first is the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Its authors and adherents have pointed out that from the countless possible courses of its evolution the universe took the only one that enabled life to emerge. This is not yet proof that the aim of the universe has always been that it should one day see itself through our eyes. But how else can this matter be explained?
I think the Anthropic Cosmological Principle brings us to an idea perhaps as old as humanity itself: that we are not at all just an accidental anomaly, the microscopic caprice of a tiny particle whirling in the endless depths of the universe. Instead, we are mysteriously connected to the entire universe, we are mirrored in it, just as the entire evolution of the universe is mirrored in us.
Until recently, it might have seemed that we were an unhappy bit of mildew on a heavenly body whirling in space among many that have no mildew on them at all. This was something that classical science could explain. Yet, the moment it begins to appear that we are deeply connected to the entire universe, science reaches the outer limits of its powers. Because it is founded on the search for universal laws, it cannot deal with singularity, that is, with uniqueness. The universe is a unique event and a unique story, and so far we are the unique point of that story. But unique events and stories are the domain of poetry, not science. With the formulation of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, science has found itself on the border between formula and story, between science and myth. In that, however, science has paradoxically returned, in roundabout way, to man, and offers him — in new clothing — his lost integrity. It does so by anchoring him once more in the cosmos.
The second example is the Gaia Hypothesis. This theory brings together proof that the dense network of mutual interactions between the organic and inorganic portions of the earth’s surface form a single system, a kind of mega-organism, a living planet — Gaia — named after an ancient goddess who is recognizable as an archetype of the Earth Mother in perhaps all religions. According to the Gaia Hypothesis, we are parts of a greater whole. Our destiny is not dependent merely on what we do for ourselves but also on what we do for Gaia as a whole. If we endanger her, she will dispense with us in the interests of a higher value — that is, life itself.
Toward Self-Transcendence
What makes the Anthropic Principle and the Gaia Hypothesis so inspiring? One simple thing: Both remind us, in modern language, of what we have long suspected, of what we have long projected into our forgotten myths and what perhaps has always lain dormant within us as archetypes. That is, the awareness of our being anchored in the earth and the universe, the awareness that we are not here alone nor for ourselves alone, but that we are an integral part of higher, mysterious entities against whom it is not advisable to blaspheme. This forgotten awareness is encoded in all religions. All cultures anticipate it in various forms. It is one of the things that form the basis of man’s understanding of himself, of his place in the world, and ultimately of the world as such.
A modern philosopher once said: “Only a God can save us now.”
Yes, the only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the earth and, at the same time, the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respect for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values the right to be a part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value himself and his neighbors, and thus honor their rights as well.
It logically follows that, in today’s multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies, or sympathies — it must be rooted in self-transcendence:
* Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe.
* Transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world.
* Transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction.
The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.
About the Author
Vaclav Havel is president of the Czech Republic. The text of his speech was provided by the Czech Embassy in Washington, D.C. The speech was made in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 4, 1994.
From THE FUTURIST July-August 1995
I want to put forth my explanation of why some species die off for what seems no logical reason. My explanation is that some species are not as efficient in living as other species. The Panda is a good example. From watching “The Discovery Channel”, its intestines are not as efficient as other animals of extracting nutrients from its food (bamboo) as other animals. Its is just following evoluion of surival of the fittest.