Change the Story, Change the Future

Two different reading groups at my local UU church are now focusing on Korten. In one we're reading Change the Story, Change the Future, in another we're discussing the video below. One of Balder's concerns in this and the FB forum is that some of us turn every discussion into capitalism. But as Korten notes, capitalism is a religious matter because it is the defining and organizing story of our culture. It so permeates every discussion of any domain because of its dominant yet unconscious big picture worldview. Recall LP's very similar definition of religion.


Put in kennilingus we might say that capitalism is the formal operational (instrumental rational) level's form of religion. But to merely discuss postformal expressions of religion without also examining how they might still carry this unconscious worship of capital is to not just taint said postformal religious expression, but also to unwittingly carry forward capitalist religious premises.

So Korten rightfully calls the capitalism story the gospel of sacred money and markets and makes conscious that religion, how it operates and influences every aspect of our lives. We need to do that in order to change that story, to replace it with another one. And yes replace, not transcend and include. There's no room for conscious capitalism in the new story.