Abstract

David Korten¹ asks us to consider that we are at a moment where we can make some important choices. He asks if future generations will speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unravelling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth's capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet's resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or if they will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth? He asks us to make the defining choice.