MAIN STREET

Beyond our varied races, religions, nationalities, and languages, we humans share a collective dream of a world of healthy, happy children, families, communities, and natural environment joined in peace and cooperation. The greatest barrier to achieving this world is the fabricated belief that we are by nature incapable of cooperating in the common good…The institutions of the Wall Street economy not only champion a perverse morality by celebrating and rewarding the qualities of individualism, materialism, greed, and violence characteristic of our lower nature but also actively suppress our realization of the qualities of caring and compassion of our higher nature. These institutions are a collective choice and creation of those whose life experience has thwarted the development of these higher-order capacities. They are not our collective destiny…It is within the means of the more functional majority to make a conscious collective choice to bring forth a New Economy that champions a positive morality and that cultivates and rewards our distinctive human capacity for cooperation and reason in service to all…Those who join in the work of navigating a great turning from a Wall Street phantom-wealth economy to a Main Street real-wealth economy embark on a bold and courageous journey to a destination beyond the horizon of our immediate experience. (Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, David C. Korten, 127)

Let’s turn the page and begin to move forward from phantom wealth to real wealth, to be caring and responsible, and to serve the greater interest of the community where folks engage in cooperative, caring problem solving every day within local communities, organizations, and government entities. We simply bring the caring and cooperative aspect of our nature to the surface, accept responsibility for our relationship with the Earth’s biosphere, and restructure the institutions of the economy accordingly. Even with significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, we are faced with significant, possibly permanent disruptions of food production due to climate changes, collapsing fisheries, water shortages, and the loss of topsoil. Absent targeted, planned efforts, plague, famine, and deepening violence are predestined. (Korten, 138) The Wall Street Economy excels at increasing demand, increases inequality and prefers investment in phantom-wealth vs real wealth, and it loves population growth for labor and market expansion…all at the expense of Earth’s resources. With focus on the almighty dollar, we are shielded from resource exhaustion that is right before our eyes. A climb out of the foxhole, coupled with a helicopter view of our deteriorating global resources and processes, is quite revealing.

Today’s media platforms reveal that America’s three-legged democracy stool is missing its third leg. Economics and politics are thriving; and the missing third leg, morality—ethics, empathy, character, compassion, decency, goodness, courage, trust, honesty, integrity, self-restraint—is blatantly obvious. Witness polarization, attacking fellow human adversaries, suppression of voting rights, mass and social media untruths, cyber warfare, inequitable wages, healthcare and childcare shortcomings, systemic racism and casts, LGBTQ rights questioned, environmental degradation, untreated mental health, home grown terrorism, immigration overload and inhumanity, thriving white supremacy, inequitable tax systems, education state-of-the art and funding deficiencies, insane gun control, absence of political leadership, conspiracy theories, et al.  The danger is continued and deepening division, fear, and autocracy; and the opportunity is to look beneath the behaviors and confront narcissistic, unhealthy ego driven behavior; improve common good as individuals; and merge and participate in interactive, needs based dialogue and collectively manifest the missing third leg of the stool, morality, for all Americans. As Jonathan Sacks offers in Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times,

Recovering liberal democratic freedom will involve emphasizing responsibilities as well as rights; shared rules, not just individual choices; caring for others as well as for ourselves; and making space not just for self-interest but also for common good. Morality is an essential feature of our human environment, as important as the market (economics) and the state (politics), but outsourceable to neither. Morality humanizes the competition for wealth and power. It is the redemption of our solitude. (20)

A personal sentiment for a strategic objective, a solid, three-legged stool—economics, politics, and morality—is to have democracy that inspires measurement, evaluation, and incentives based on achievement of common good, “… what is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community, or alternatively, what is achieved by citizenship, collective action, and active participation in the realm of politics and public service.” (Wikipedia)

Morality has become a lost virtue, and narcissism is on the rampage in America. Mass media headlines offer only the tip of the iceberg. A question for reflection: How can cultural morality be restored? One step at a time! Individually, we each need to become passionately inspired to get our own house in order and to show up for the common good. Collectively, we can merge with groups to facilitate contributions to common good and one can choose to purchase products and services from organizations that have chosen to be measured, evaluated, and incented via a common good report card. A common good baby step can be uncovered with action—walk the talk—using the genius of Marshall B. Rosenberg in Speak Peace in a World of Conflict,

Peace requires something far more difficult than revenge or merely turning the other cheek; it requires empathizing with the fears and unmet needs that provide the impetus for people to attack each other. Being aware of these feelings and needs, people lose their desire to attack back because they can see the human ignorance leading to these attacks; instead, their goal becomes providing the empathetic connection and education that will enable them to transcend their violence and engage in cooperative relationships…When people get connected to their needs, they don’t have this anger that drives them to want to punish others. We do need to make evaluations about our needs: Are they being met or not? But we do this without going into our heads (Per Joseph Nguyen, Don’t Believe Everything You Think, our thinking, the “mind chatter,” catalyzes our suffering.) and making enemies and villains out of people who in some way are not fulfilling our needs…Every time we go up into our head and make a judgment of others instead of going into our heart and seeing the needs, we decrease the likelihood that other people will enjoy giving to us…The fact remains that when people get connected to the needs behind anger, frustration, and violence, they move into a different world. (134-135)

Simply take time out to observe, touch into feelings, and identify needs under the anger, frustration, fear, and violence carpet…the world can change. As Rumi noted, “…beyond ideas of righthood and wrongdoing there is a field: I’ll meet you there.” (135) The next time you are either angry or frustrated with yourself or another, take the time to stop, lift the carpet, and note what need is there waiting to be satisfied. Be a change agent, not a catalyst for more turmoil. Together, let’s turn the page to Main Street economy and enjoy real wealth of family, friends, community, and business, not Wall Street’s phantom-wealth economy of corporations, capitalism, markets, commercials, %’s of growth, the rich, and the poor. Joy is not about freedom from but freedom to…As Korten reminds,

We are awakening to the reality that we inhabit a wonderous but finite living planet and that our lives are inseparably interlinked with all of Earth’s species. We must learn to live by the biosphere’s rules and restructure our economic systems accordingly, which presents an epic test of our human capacity for creative innovation, collective choice, and self-organization. (Korten, 127)