CHAPTER ONE

       Three Stories of Our Time

       When the stories a society shares are out of tunewith its circumstances, they can become self-limiting,even a threat to survival. That is our current situation.

      DAVID KORTEN, The Great Turning¹

      On May 7, 2001, journalists gathered for a press briefing at the White House. Ari Fleischer, President Bush’s press secretary, had nothing to announce that day but invited questions from the assembled crowd. Rising energy costs quickly became the lead topic, with one of the early questions evoking a strong response.

      JOURNALIST: “Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?”

      MR. FLEISCHER: “That’s a big no. The President believes that it’s an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life.”²

      While presidents come and go, Mr. Fleischer’s “big no” remains a powerful force in our society. It is the voice that doesn’t question the way we live. This conviction grows out of a particular story about how things are in our world. By story, we don’t mean a work of fiction but rather the way we make sense of the events we see happening.

      In this chapter we identify three stories being enacted in our time, as mentioned in the introduction. The first assumes that our society is on the right track and that we can carry on with business as usual. The second reveals the destructive consequences of the business-as-usual mode and the progressive unraveling of our biological, ecological, and social systems. The third is about the groundswell of response to danger and the multifaceted transition to a life-sustaining civilization. Recognizing that we can choose the story we live from can be liberating; finding a good story to take part in adds to our sense of purpose and aliveness. We will explore how these stories shape our response to global crisis.

      THE FIRST STORY: BUSINESS AS USUAL

      Of the food you’ve eaten in the last twenty-four hours, how much is based on ingredients produced hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away? For most of us living in industrialized countries, the answer is lots of it. The average carrot, head of lettuce, or box of strawberries sold in supermarkets in Iowa, for example, is likely to have traveled more than eighteen hundred miles.³ And it’s not just our food: many of the things we use have traveled vast distances to reach us. Transportation costs are a major factor in making ours the most energy-costly era in history. Ari Fleischer might think of this as the American way of life. But it isn’t just American. Increasingly, for those living in affluent parts of our world, it is becoming the modern way, the accepted way, the one we think of as normal.

      This modern life we’re describing holds many attractions. It’s common for people to take vacations in faraway places and to have their own cars, computers, televisions, and fridges. Just a few generations ago, such comforts, if attainable at all, would have been seen as the preserve of the super-rich. Nowadays advertisements give the impression that everyone should have these things, and progress is measured in terms of how much more we have than we used to or how much farther and faster we can go.

      One way of thinking about our times is that we are enacting a wonderful success story. Economic and technological development has made many aspects of our lives easier. If we’re looking at how to move forward, the path this story suggests is “more of the same, please.” We’re calling this story Business as Usual.

      This is the story told by most mainstream policy makers and corporate leaders. Their view is that economies can, and must, continue to grow. Even in the face of economic downturns and periods of recession, the dominant assumption is that it won’t be long before things pick up again. Expressing his trust in the path of economic growth, in November 2010 President Obama said, “The single most important thing we can do to reduce our debt and deficits is to grow.”⁴

      For a market economy to grow, it needs to increase sales. That means encouraging us to buy, and consume, more than we already do. Advertising plays a key role in stimulating consumption, and increasingly children are targeted as a way of boosting each household’s appetite for goods. Estimates suggest that the average American child watches between twenty-five thousand and forty thousand television commercials a year. In the United Kingdom, it is about ten thousand.⁵ As we grow up, we learn by watching others. Our views about what’s normal and necessary are shaped by what we see.

      When you’re living in the middle of this story, it’s easy to think of it as just the way things are. Young people may be told there is no alternative but to find their place in this scheme of things. Getting ahead is presented as the main plot, supported by the subplots of finding a partner, fending for your family, looking good, and buying stuff. In this view of life, the problems of the world are seen as far away and irrelevant to the dramas of our personal lives.

      Transmitted by global media, this story of modern living is catching on around the world and arousing an increasing appetite for consumption. Before 1970 just four items were regarded as essential purchases in China — a bicycle, a sewing machine, a wristwatch, and a radio. By the 1980s a growing consumer class had expanded this list to include a fridge, a color TV, a washing machine, and a tape recorder. A decade later, it had become normal for more and more people in China to have a car, a computer, a mobile phone, and air conditioning.⁶ And it’s a list that’s still growing, as Joe Hatfield, CEO of Walmart Asia, explains:

      We started out with four feet of skin care; today it’s twenty feet. Today we don’t have deodorants, but someday down the road we will have deodorants in China. Five years ago perfumes were not a big business here. But if you look today it’s the emerging market…there’s a lot fewer bicycles, so that takes away from the exercise side of it, so people are getting larger, so what’s that tell you? Sales of exercise equipment’s getting good, exercise wear, jogging outfits, and at some point, we’ll have Slimfast and all those type of products.⁷

      Some view this as progress.

Box 1.1. Some Core Assumptions of Business as Usual

      • Economic growth is essential for prosperity.

      • Nature is a commodity to be used for human purposes.

      • Promoting consumption is good for the economy.

      • The central plot is about getting ahead.

      • The problems of other peoples, nations, and species are not our concern.

      Why