First National Conference on the
Future of Australia's Country Towns 		The Regional Institute

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Reconstructing Country Towns for Thrival in a Planetist Future

Dr Peter Ellyard

Preferred Futures International, Melbourne.
Adjunct Professor of Intergenerational Strategies, University of Queensland,
Chairman, MyFutureFoundation

Rural and Regional Communities in Crisis

Rural and regional communities is declining all over the world With some spectacular exceptions, they are victims of globalisation rather than beneficiaries of it. Big cities are part of the global economy whilst rural communities are struggling.

The three big change agents of globalisation, tribalisation and technological change are interacting to make victims of many rural and regional. But these very forces can empower communities, to create prosperity which would not have been possible in earlier eras.

Governments are being weakened by globalisation. Their capacity to make a difference is weaker than ever, and it will become weaker. Governments cannot rescue communities: communities need to understand the possibilities and opportunities presented by global change and rescue themselves. 'Rich' communities are those which fully participate in the global economy.

If one thinks about the dominant economic structure of most developed countries at the beginning of the 20th century they were food and fibre production, smokestack manufacturing,textiles and clothing and mining If one looks at rural Australia today these industries still dominate except that often smokestack manufacturing and clothing and textiles have gone and have not beeen replaced by anything, except in some places, tourism and education. It is as if the whole of the 20th century bypassed rural and regional Australia. All the new industries of the 20th century found their home in Australia's cities. It is hardly surprising that the 20th centuryr has been dominated by rural-urban migration. There has never been any strategic industrial development policy designed to put new and emerging opportunities in rural and regional areas. This is a product of a refusal of governments to understand the relationship between the role of governmentsand the emrgence of new industries. Only twice in the last century has rural and regional development been a major focus of government policy at the National level. Both were under Labor governments ,in the post war reconstruction days after World War 2 and during the term of the Whitlam government,

Now we have another chance. Seventy percent of the job categories, and products and services of the year 2020 have yet to be invented. There is no reason why these can't be placed in rural and regional Australia. I am Chairman of a new organisation the MyFutureFoundation which is organising a new mostly private sector intitiative called MyTown which is designed precisely to do this.

Rural and regional communities feel that there are two major conderns which they have. One is that while they might be able to survive there is little hope for their children. There is intergenerational decline and most governmental support provides little more than palliative care The second concern is that it is the brightest and most motivated of the young who leave never to return. These are the very people who ,if they stayed would help rural and regional communities reinvent themselves.

In the early phases of globalisation, infrastructure is (of course) first available to the cities, and it is these places which have become the places in which the globalising interdependent economy has been created. Providing an equivalent telecommunications infrastructure to rural and regional communities is expensive and of much lower priority to telecommunications. National competition policy ensures that competitive organisations will spend their investment where they maximise return on investment rather than provide for the national interest.

There are two main reasons why individuals or communities change their behaviour - fear and hope.

At present fear dominates the Australian political climate, and rural and regional communities are suffering. They feel victims of change. Victims are created partly by changed circumstances and partly by an inability or unwillingness to adapt to new conditions.

Most rural and regional communities are angry with governments for failing to arrest their decline in fortune, where they see their children leaving for greener pastures, and where very few new economic opportunities materialise.

Rural and regional communities generally react to, rather than shape, change. To shape change there must be vision of a preferred future appropriate for future global and national conditions and realities, opportunities and threats, and which describes a community future which thrives in those future conditions and realities.

The next 20 years

By the year 2020 a new post PostModern paradigm will dominate. I call it Planetism. Planetism will shape the job categories, products and services and work organisations of the first quarter of 21st century. The values of Planetism will determine what is valuable. This will in turn determine early 21st century markets including labour markets. Children entering school today will graduate from tertiary education in about the year 2015. They will spend their whole lives in this Planetist world. Educational planners will need to understand more deeply the nature of this world and the values and skills which will be needed for thrival in this world. Education and learning will also need to be dramatically changed: changes will need to be made to what people learn and how people learn. Seventy percent of the job categories, products and services of the year 2020 have yet to be invented. Many of these will develop to transform the Modernist and PostModernist world of the 20th century into a Planetist world of the 21st century. If we are to seriously design learning for thrivability in a Planetist world we will need to develop and foster learning and innovation cultures in individuals and organisations. These learning and innovation cultures will be outlined, along with the new industries and enterprises which are likely to emerge during the first quarter of the 21st Century. If our students enter adulthood with the values of a planetist, have grown their leadership capabilities, are adherents of the learning and innovation cultures which are described in is paper, it is my view that they will have the tools of future thrival and thrivability.

I have invented the word thrival, its meaning is clear. It is clearly a much higher aspiration than "survival" The fact that we don't have such a word as thrival and I have had to invent the world is illustrative of the lack of loftiness of the aspirations of English speaking people. To think thrival rather than survival requires an appropriate mindset and I will be talking a little about this today. Thrivability is of course the ability to thrive rather than merely survive. If I wanted to characterise the challenge for the creation of both thrival and thrivability, it surely must be to endow our young people in particular with the ability to thrive in the Planetary 21st century. If our students enter adulthood with the values of a Planetist, have grown their leadership capabilities ,are adherents of the learning and innovations cultures which are described in is paper, it is my view that they will have the tools of future thrival and thrivability.

When young people ask me about career options for the future, they are almost always being forced to choose between existing job categories, many of which will not exist when they are in the middle of their working lives. Many others say I have to study something that will give me a practical job at the end of my formal learning period. In a world that is so rapidly changing this is of course absurd. Those of you who are older might remember a phrase from my childhood, "A rolling stone gathers no moss". In other words one should stay put for life and not change too much. In today's world, such an attitude is probably an act of economic suicide. It would be better to say that "the rolling stone gets ahead" . This key thought focuses on the second part of my talk which will be about preparing oneself so that one can be successful in the world of work, even when things are changing so rapidly. However behind this is a mindset issue. If we are to create a high proportion of the 70% of the job categories which have not yet been invented here in Australia , we have to change the way we think about the present and plan for the future. Another thing I tell young people is to follow their passion rather than their pension. I ask them if they want to think about their future careers they must follow their destiny. Then the second challenge is to try to find ways to make income from these activities. They therefore must be job makers rather than merely job takers. Therefore they also must understand the difference between Leadership and Management.

The Planetist Future

There are three major global forces which are shaping our future. These forces can be described in three core words: Globalisation, Tribalisation and Technological Change.

As we approach the threshold to a new millennium, we are witnessing the birth of a new planetary culture. The Earth is becoming more interdependent and cooperative. This new planetary culture is being moulded by a combination of political, economic, technological and ecological forces of great power which are all working synergistically to create it. My grandparents grew up identifying themselves with Western Australia and New South Wales rather than Australia. My grandchildren will identify themselves with their planet as much as their nation.

To illustrate the magnitude of the changes, consider these three historic processes which dominated global politics in the mid 1990s

A global trading system is being born through the GATT Uruguay Round and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The first stage is now complete. In the next few years further agreements to ensure that international trade does not reward traders who plunder the environment and exploit labour will be enacted through the WTO. The WTO is now discussing the drafting of rules to prevent nations and companies from gaining an economic or trade advantage through the exploitation of human labour or despoiling or inadequately protecting the environment are now being negotiated will be agreed to in the next few years.

It is certain that the reaction to the international financial destabilisation caused by hedge funds in mid 1998 is a significant reason why the negotiation of the MAI was postponed but not abandoned. The need for complete global financial reform has never been greater. The newly interdependent global financial system is vulnerable to pirate actions such as those by hedge funds, just as a just-in-time interdependent manufacturing system is vulnerable to a strike, act of terrorism or natural disaster. The more interdependent the system is, the more efficient it is, but the more vulnerable it is also to sabotage, piracy, or natural disaster. There is now a recognition is that a much bigger agenda of reform of the worlds financial system is now necessary. At the end of 1998, it was clear to most of the world's leadership that a total restructuring of the global financial system is necessary. This would become the first total rethink of the system since the Breton Woods conference in the last months of World War 2. A new global financial agreement which will guide the development the global financial system for the first decades of the interdependent 21st century will be negotiated in the next five years, and is likely to begin operating about 2005 or even earlier. This new negotiation will encompass all the issues which were components of the now postponed MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) negotiations. It will also provide guidelines for the management of short term capital transfers such as those initiated by hedge funds, it will ensure the protection of labor rights and environmental protection, it will provide rules for the prevention/containment of corrupt behaviour by people involved in capital transfers including politicians in capital recipient countries. Some short term transfers of capital which have nothing to do with wealth creation in recipient countries but a lot to do with the wealth creation of the currency speculators will be either banned, or rigidly controlled and heavily taxed .The new financial arrangements which will be negotiated in the next few years will define the limits of national sovereignty in the 21st century, which is really the balance between national government individualism and global communitarianism, between independence and interdependence. These are only parts of the rapidly evolving infrastructure of international trade and economic cooperation which is creating a single planetary wide market place. The small business transnational corporation , which would have been impossible a decade ago ,is a reality today. Anybody who creates a new product or service will want to market it all over the world, not just into a small domestic market.

A new International Criminal Court is being formed. It first will concentrate on providing a venue to try people who commit crimes against humanity. In the near future other categories of crimes will be will be added, such as crimes against nature.

At the same time, a new planetary environmental order is being realised through the Montreal Protocol (relating to the phasing out of ozone-depleting substances), and the outcomes of the 1992 Earth Summit, including the Conventions on Climate Change and Biodiversity, and subsequent meetings such as the recent Climate Change Summit in Kyoto. New International agreements on environmental matters are being added to global administrative infrastructure every year.

The World is also being united by ecologically driven fear - fear of global ecological disaster. For centuries fear has divided humanity. Now it is beginning to unite it. Fear, traditionally a force which prevents change and reform, is now becoming a major factor in encouraging cooperation, change and reform. The fear of unpredictable climatic change and an ozone-depleted atmosphere is forcing people to think 40 years ahead, and to cooperate on an unprecedented level.

Finally, a new planetary security system is also struggling into existence. In 1946, Australia's Foreign Minister, H. V. Evatt, played a leading role in the development of a United Nations Charter which gave the United Nations the responsibility of playing the role of both planetary peacemaker and peacekeeper. The Cold War prevented the United Nations playing the peacemaker role totally, and severely restricted its peacekeeping role. Machinery to permit the UN to fully play these roles have yet to be established. Meanwhile, the UN has started to act in an ad hoc way. The UN's rather inadequate performance thus far will improve, as permanent peacemaking and peacekeeping machinery is put into place. The failure of the world to come to deal adequately with the ugly realities of Bosnia , Kosovo, Rwanda,and East Timor will reinforce the need for the creation of effective global peace-making machinery. In more recent times the world disapproval of the SLORC regime in Myanmar (Burma) and the Military dictatorship in Nigeria should be noted. Both are developing global pariah status.

Despite the resistance and difficulties which each of these three historic changes is facing, all are likely to be consolidated and in place by the end of the first decade of the 21st century. These three global agendas are major contributors to the creation of a planetary society.

At the same time the European Community is being formed. Soon it will invite Eastern Europe to join it. The rise of national fervour in Eastern Europe and Western Europe in such places as Catalonia, Scotland and Chechnya is related to the break up of the old security arrangements formed in the Cold War. This is not a disintegration of Europe, as some people have maintained, but a painful breakdown of old arrangements before the formation of new ones. The Slovenias and Latvias of Europe have recently shifted from a status of dependence to that of independence. In the next few years they will seek to become part of an integrated European Community, just as Luxembourg has been for many years. They will soon be followed by the Catalonias, Scotlands and Chechnyas. Soon the last will be added to by Makulu, Aceh and Irian Jaya as the Indonesian (Javenese) empire breaks up, and by Tibet as the first stresses are placed on the Chjinese (Han) empire. It is important to remember which side global public opinion is on is these conflicts.

In North America, economic union is also coming. The leaders of the USA, Canada and Mexico have signed the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which is the first stage of a single economic community, "from Alaska to Argentina" which will be completed by 2005 at the latest. In South America the Mercusor Agreement creating a common market between Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay has begun its operations. In our own region, the Bogor Declaration in 1994 committed the APEC region to complete economic and trade integration by 2020.

At the opening of the Atlanta Olympics there were 197 nations present. Fourteen of them were not present in Barcelona, just 4 years earlier. They were countries such as Slovakia, Slovenia and Moldova. Chechnya will be present in sydney. This illustrates the simultaneous tribalisation as well as globalisation of the planet. With tribalisation come increased reverence for cultural/ethnic diversity. By 2020 there will likely be about 300 members of the UN, most of them tribal states locked into global and regional interdependence.

For more than a century, a continuous process of globalisation and internationalisation has been under way. During this time, people have transferred their primary loyalties from their town or city to their region or state, and finally, to their nation. In the 1990s, the final step to the development of a new planetary culture, the transfer of primary loyalties from nation to planet, will begin.

These globalisation/tribalised forces are being added to and encouraged by the forces of technological change. Information and communications technology is building a single, highly networked world. By the end of the century everyone on Earth will be able to witness, and to a degree participate in, a single event somewhere on the Earth's surface. Space separation and time zones no longer prevent people working together. Teleconferencing, e-mail, multi-media workstations and faxes are only some of the new tools of planetary cooperation and dialogue. New computer software is now assisting cooperative dialogue and decision-making independent of space and time. One of the biggest areas for innovation in information technology in the 1990s will be work which uses information and communications technology for cooperative and collaborative work, including work where participants are separated in space and time.

The Internet connects millions of people around the world. It provides them with electronic mail, a news service, remote computer access, remote database access, and many newer services. We are evolving towards cyberspace, a word and concept coined by William Gibson in his science fiction classic, Neuromancer.

The Internet is now becoming a major factor in trade and commerce. This has led to the creation of a new phenomenon: the small business transnational corporation. It is now possible to have a small business in a country town and trade directly with your customers all over the world, without interference from governments of "middle men". All one must be able to do is to market a product or service which is sufficiently special that people in other countries want to buy it.

We are hearing and sharing the same news around the world by the courtesy of modern technology, and it reminds us that we share one small and vulnerable planet. A Minamata, Chernobyl or Exxon Valdez catastrophe reminds us of this shared fate and responsibility, even if we do not appear to be directly affected. We know more about what is going on all over the planet than ever before. John Donne's famous Devotion of the year 1620, has never been more true.

No man is an Island, entire of itself;
Every man is part of the continent, a part of the main;
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
As well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were;
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne, `Devotions upon Emergent Occasions' XVII

From Modernism to Planetism

In 1967 Kenneth Boulding wrote a famous essay called The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth and in 1969 Buckminster Fuller wrote a book entitled Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Both authors drew on the metaphor of the Apollo Mission, and particularly the famous picture taken from Apollo 8 which showed the beautiful, blue and white, fragile Earth against a lifeless moonscape in the foreground. Just after the near disaster of Apollo 13, which was the subject of a recent film, the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant used the metaphor of the Apollo Mission that nearly ended in disaster to promote the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, indicating that the whole planet was indeed in the situation of Apollo 13.

The dominant paradigm of the 20th century has been Modernism. This is so deeply entrenched that we have taken it for granted. Modernism meant the triumph of the western european way over everything else. It crushed cultural diversity through the forces of colonialism, religious evangelism and the power of western science and technology. A component of Modernism has been the concept of progress, which for most of this century has been something which we felt we shouldn't or couldn't stop. As the century proceeded, the attitude accompanying the utterance that "we can't stop progress" changed from unbridled enthusiasm in the 1950s to increasing scepticism, even cynicism and sarcasm, in the 1970s. By the 1980s, we needed to modify Modernism, as its dark side had become too significant to ignore, so we invented Post Modernism, in which we borrowed deconstructed parts of previous eras and built them into the new. We had recognised that some forms of progress involved throwing out babies with bath water. However, most of these additions were superficial, as the functionality did not change. We recognised that modern ideas and Modernism and their basis in western thinking and science and technology, did not hold all the answers. Therefore we began to listen and to learn about the wisdom of indigenous people ,the very people we has been hell bent on crushing, and we borrowed ideas from the East and incorporated them into our Western mandates. In the last decade, we have even tried to create a new synthesis of theology and science - something which would have been inconceivable in the Modernist era PostModernism is the process to reconstruct Modernism into something more appropriate to a globalised tribalised planet, and for creating a new paradigm which will consolidate in the early 21st century. I call the new and coming paradigm Planetism.

Kenneth Boulding introduced the idea that the Earth needed to change from a "cowboy economy to a "spaceship economy " if life on the planet was to survive.Today at the mid point of the 1990s humanity is mid way through a transition between what can be recognised as a disappearing Cowboy Culture and an emerging Spaceship Culture in the 21st century. We now recognise the Cowboy Culture as an unsustainable society and the Spaceship Culture as a sustainable society. The Cowboy and Spaceship Cultures have the following characteristics:.

From 1950

To 2020

The Cowboy Culture/Modernism

The Spaceship Culture/Planetism

Individualism

Communitarianism

Independence

Interdependence

Autocracy

Democracy

Humanity against nature

Humanity part of nature

Unsustainable production & consumption

Sustainable production & consumption

Patriarchy

Gender Equality

Intercultural & interreligious intolerance

Intercultural & interreligious tolerance

Conflict resolution through confrontation

Conflict resolution through negotiation

Reliance on Defence

Reliance on Security

The journey from the shoot out at OK Corral and life on the frontier, to negotiated sustainable living in the Spaceship is a metaphor used to describe the journey humanity is already making and will most likely be completed by about the year 2025. By the mid 1990s it was already clear that communitarian cultures such as Japan, Korea and Germany were achieving greater economic success in the new global economic environment than individualistic Anglo Celtic cultures such as the UK, USA and Australia. This will still be the outcome despite the current and temporary set backs caused by their failure to reform their financial sectors fora globalised interdependent planet. This is partly because their core cultures were more compatible with the emerging interconnected interdependent world of the 21st century.

The 19th century was the century of dependence, most of us lived in colonies. The story of the 20th century has been one of independence. The last European empires, the Russian and Serbian empires crumbled, and others such as China and Indonesia could follow. The story of the 21st century will be one of interdependence, living and collaborating on an networked planet. In the evolving spaceship. Spaceship Culture the 1990s the individualistic formulas which had produced success in the past no longer working as they used to. The word interdependence is a key word to describe our evolving just-in-time, environmentally sensitive society: interdependence between men and women, between tribes and nations, between enterprises, between employer and employee in our work places, and between humanity and nature.

In the case of the environment, the message of Modernism and progress was clear, even if it was rarely specifically stated. In the 1950s one did economically well by doing ecological ill: environment and development were incompatible, and to thrive we needed to exploit the environment and in most cases people as well. By the 1990s, we were aiming to do economically well by doing ecological good, or at least while being environmentally benign. Now we wish to utilise the environment, sustainably. One consequence of interdependence is that a global company can no longer build a clean plant in Indiana and a dirty one in India. We can't poison those of lower socio-economic status, for while doing it we poison ourselves. Not to create a sustainable society in the 21st century would threaten all of us, for we share a common future. In terms of the environment, we recognised that much which was desirable, even essential, for future and present well being was being obliterated by progress and by the dark side of Modernism.

Many of the new industries and enterprises of the early 21st century will design and innovate the products services and technologies to transform the world's peoples from cowboys into cosmonauts.

All of us, and particularly leaders need to understand the future of values if we are to understand the markets of the 21st century and what customers will ask of you or anybody else. Values will define what people find valuable and what people find valuable will determine markets and what people will want to buy and sell. I now want to talk about the future of values.

The issues of globalisation, tribalisation and technological change all have huge implications for health and wellbeing. Globalisation is creating a more interconnected and interdependent world and this has big implications for example for the transmission of disease from human to human and from other species to humans. Tribalisation is emphasising the richness of cultural diversity. Difference cultures have approached health and wellbeing in very different ways and in the PostModernist late 20th century it is the non Western approaches that are being adopted as widely in developed countries as Western approaches are being adopted in developed countries.

The world's religions have been slow to recognise this extraordinary shift. The world religions seem to be splitting in two: into a progressive part, which is moving into the 21st century , and a reactionary part which is in a state of future shock, and which wants to return to the 19th century or even earlier. .

Religious fundamentalists are religious cowboys who still believe in patriarchy, authoritarianism and even killing in the name of religion. The world's religions are like everyone else, they are divided between adherents of the cowboy culture and adherents of the spaceship culture. For example the battles over issues such the ordination of women represent a major challenge to church cowboy patriarchy. Therefore we have two kinds of religions on the planet, dominated by what I call religious cowboys, the fundamentalists who are seeking a return to the security of the past and the religious cosmonauts who are seeking to adapt religion to the emerging nature of the 21st century..

Equally Tribalism is developing in two streams, what we can call Cowboy Tribalism and Cosmonaut Tribalism. In a place such as Bosnia we have the two living side by side, but it is the Cowboy Tribalists who are doing the damage and it is the emerging Cosmonaut majorities in the developed world who are seeking to place Cosmonaut order and tolerance on these Cowboy Tribalists.

The emergence of the spaceship culture is advantaging women. I believe this is one of the main reasons girls are now outperforming boys in schools. They were massively disadvantaged in the Cowboy culture, but they are more at home than men in the emerging Spaceship Culture. Feminists, who until recently, have focussed on the development of gender equity and on moving women from dependence to independence, are now beginning to move on to interdependence, at least in those part of the planet where the Spaceship culture is already beginning to dominate. In the remainder of the Planet which is still dominated by the cowboy culture, women are still in as much trouble as they ever were, they are still caught in the web of dependence ..

The transformation of our society of the last 20 years from one which promoted individual rights over community rights has changed to the point were community rights are now seen to be more important than individual rights. The battles in the 1990s over smoking in public and gun ownership are just two manifestations of this battle between community and individual rights. The community has won in each case but not without bitter conflict between the community and some defenders of individual rights.

The gun control debate is continuing to focus our attention on the issue of community violence. In reality it is my view that the world is actually not more violent, but thanks to technology, its capacity to do damage has increased immensely. In the cowboy days, the enemy tribe lived in another territory and tried to take our land by force, he came over the hill with guns blazing. Defence is the form of protection for a cowboy era. Now the enemy might live amongst us, a fellow passenger on the spaceship. We are now moving from an era of defending the territory from invasion (ie defence) to protecting ourselves from threats from within (ie security).

The tragedies in Dunblane and Port Arthur in 1996 have led us to the conclusion that we really needed to consider this issue of escalating violence. Finally we are concerned the violence of our mass media and from Hollywood in particular. All these are manifestation of the promotion of cowboy cultures in a world which is increasingly adopting the values required for life the spaceship The tragic massacre in Port Arthur in May 1996 and more recently in numerous US secondary schools have lead to some heated debate amongst the Australian community. With a majority of 90% of Australians in favour of gun control it seems irrational for there to be any debate at all. However the debate is really not about gun control, it is instead about individual rights versus community rights, or the battle between independence and interdependence The Australian public heard some elected politicians, such as Bob Katter Jnr claim that the Port Arthur massacre would not have occurred if all the people present in Port Arthur that day had been armed and could have shot the gunman dead before he killed anybody. He was promoting a genuine cowboy cultural solution, in an Australia the majority of which are already at least partial adherents of the spaceship culture. Many of these spaceship dwellers found Bob Katter Jnr's solution offensive, tragic and even ludicrous.

If we are to succed inpreparing the young for success in he Planetist future I believe that we must give serious attention to reinventing initiation .The reinvention of initiation is needed to aid the transformation from child to adult, and more particularly, to facilitate the development of cowboy children into adult cosmonauts. Initiation should be the major focus of education during the years of puberty, and this transformation should be widely celebrated as in former years. Initiation involves some gender specific learning. It takes dependent people and moulds them through a formal educational process into independent people who are also able to recognise the central importance of interdependence for tribal or community wellbeing. Initiated people understand that community responsibility requires the sacrificing of independence for interdependence when necessary.

Traditional cultures have used the initiation process to reaffirm their culture to their young by having them learn their cultural myths, and to prepare them to be effective and responsible adults and parents. Australia's Aboriginal people are more fortunate than European Australians in this regard for there are many who know about, and still practise, initiation. In the Aboriginal culture the traditional initiation process accomplishes two things. First, it affirms and promotes the Aboriginal culture and Aboriginality; secondly, it provides the Aboriginal people with the skills and capabilities to thrive in their adult world. The first aim is still relevant but the second was only appropriate for Australia before European settlement. That aim needs to be reinvented by the Aboriginal people to provide the mindsets and tools to assist young Aboriginal people to become successful Aboriginal adults who can both celebrate their culture and also thrive in the multicultural Australia of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Aboriginal people recognise the central importance of initiation, yet to my knowledge there is no program or vision for the reinvention of initiation in the way I have described. This situation probably applies to most indigenous people who have been damaged by the processes of colonisation. As part of the process of reconciliation between indigenous and immigrant Australians, and between immigrant and indigenous cultures all over the world, it is important to create new initiation processes containing culturally specific (that is, tribal components) and national and global components. We can call processes which educate immigrant peoples about indigenous cultures `indigenisation'. Indigenisation should be a component of all initiation processes where immigrant-indigenous relationships are damaged and must be healed to enable the development of a future relationship based on interdependence. In the Post-Modern era many immigrant cultures have been attempting to make agreements with the indigenous cultures which they have dispossessed in the past. There are emerging cosmonaut majorities who favour reconciliation processes and this is aided by emerging Planetist global opinion. But there are still cowboy minorities who want to continue the dispossession, often led by immigrant landholders in rural areas who have trouble coping with the lack of `certainty' in the new order.

Civilising Globalisation: the roles of governments, communities and corporations

In an article published in The Australian on 1 January 2000, Nelson Mandela, in his role as a Nobel Peace Laureate said:

Together we live in a global neighbourhood and it is not to the long term benefit of any if there islands of wealth in a sea of poverty. We need globalisation of responsibility as well . Above all that is the challenge of the new century."

Mandela expresses his concern in these remarks that so far globalisation is not delivering sufficient equity between the Earth's peoples. This concern can also be seen with a renewal of public opposition over the past two years to the establishment of some of the new institutions of global governance, including the postponement of negotiations on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in 1998 , and the street protests in Seattle against the proposed Millennial Round of trade negotiations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)in late 1999. There are also some positive responses to these same concerns such as the Jubilee 2000 campaign to forgive the indebtedness of developing countries. Some of those concerned are opponents of globalisation itself and like King Canute's courtiers have to be persuaded that some things are indeed unstoppable. Others are more realistic, and seek to modify or "civilise" globalisation in to a process which will deliver more equitable outcomes, such as providing a better deal for developing countries, safeguarding the global environment, and protecting workers rights in developed countries.

The current juggernaut of globalisation, tribalisation and technological change is delivering many victims. Victims sometimes make matters even worse for themselves because they hold on to old mindsets, fail to see the opportunity in change, lose their belief in their capacity to help themselves and expect for others to come to the rescue. Therefore any mission to civilise globalisation must include measures to transform the psychological state of victims, and provide them with tools which will empower their capacity to help themselves. In a nutshell this involves exiting a world of dependence and entering one of independence.

Globalisation is trade and human interaction on a single global stage. Cowboy globalism involves independent people exploiting dependent people. This is the world of Buckminster Fuller's "Great Pirates" who believed that trade could only be exploitative by nature . Cosmonaut globalism or Planetism involves the creation of a global environment of true interdependence. Right now these tow forms of globalism coexist side by side.

Any arrangement which is based on interdependence should of course produce win/win outcomes or mutual benefits. This is what interdependence is: it involves mutual benefit, not the exploitation of one party by another. Shimon Peres , also in his role of a Nobel Peace Laureate said the following about the internet, but he could be referring to globalisation generally.

The internet has turned out to be more important than the plough. It does not cleave furrows across the world , but creates one large field where all crops can thrive.

The internet does not of itself cause exploitation or benefit , but of course it can be used for exploitative purposes. Whether these crops are planted and thrive will depend on the mindsets and skills of the people who are using the Internet.

People will thrive if they are able to create the new , and seize the opportunities created by globalisation, instead of buttressing old mindsets and declining industries and enterprises. Therefore part of any response should be made the promotion of leadership, learning and innovation cultures in these communities and nations .

Nelson Mandela's challenge involves the cosmonautisation of the global trading system. The tools which civilised capitalism in the past, such as the creation of the social safety net through the state welfare system and the use of trade union power to create fair conditions in the workplace, are no longer as effective, and their effectiveness is continuing to decline. New innovations are needed to replace these tools which are declining in effectiveness. and they must be innovations which are able to civilise the emerging global industrial/trading system. Some of these innovations will modify the way the global trading system itself operates. Others will enable people, as individuals, groups and communities, to become more effective at using the global system for their own benefit while simultaneously enhancing global interdependence and equity.

However a more civilised trading system , embracing the outcomes of , for example, of reforms to the system such as the MAI , the Millennial Round of the WTO, or the Jubillee 2000 Campaign , will be of only limited benefit unless operates under a regime of Planetist ethics . In Russia the reason that capitalism is more cowboy than say in Western Europe, is because it is run by cowboys. One can't blame the process itself for the inequality of the outcomes, any more than one can't blame the arrival of democracy and the collapse of the command economy in the Soviet Union and its replacement with a crude and brutal market economy, for its impoverishment of a large proportion of the population and the for the hijacking of the economy by a corrupt ruling elite, and by organised crime. That globalisation is delivering as much inequality as it is because there are still too many cowboys utilising it for their own advantage.

It is ironic that some proposals which are part of the civilising institutional proposals such as the MAI and the Millennial Round of the WTO have met with such opposition. It is clear that some opponents have not fully thought through the consequences of their actions or they have not given due respect to the motivations of the initiators of these proposals. There is an assumption that the architects of these proposals are seeking to entrench exploitation rather than fairness in the global trading system. Certainly some participants in any dialogue will be seeking to turn the negotiations to their own advantage. However it is a pretty poor view of humanity which says that all who seek to be involved are doing so for their own narrow interests. From my own experience of advising the UN system for 25 years, I know that the huge majority of these people are driven by essentially Planetist perspectives and are deeply committed to the creation of a civilised society on the planet. They see their work as part of their commitment to achieving this..

This civilising process must focus on people as much as on the process itself. The provision of an opportunity for one person will provide a mechanism for the exploitation of another. For example, in rural communities, the provision of internet services could either produce a superhighway both in and out of the community, or a superhighway in and a pony track out. Whether the internet is used productively and effectively by the people in that rural community to grow new opportunities, or it provides an open door which permits the exploitation of the community by others will be determined by the mindsets and skills of the people in that community. Just as any technology, such as biotechnology, can be used for good or evil, globalisation can be a force for creating both greater or less equity. That too many people blame a technology rather than examine how it is being used by people says as much about the people who are condemning the technology, as it does about the technology itself.

Victims of globalisation are being created in developed and developing countries alike. The five kinds of undesirable economic growth which I outlined in the first chapter are all cooperating to produce these outcomes. These are all examples of how commerce and trade can become exploitative. In early 2000 it is now clear that the opponents of globalisation are becoming more effective. For the most part they are not yet well organised, but they will become more so. Their increased power has been made possible by the very democracy and openness of new technological systems, such as the internet. These same people often claim that the forces of globalisation are favouring the rich and powerful , including transnational corporations, while evidence to the contrary exists right before their eyes. They are not usually rich and powerful, but they are very effective in stalling and sometimes demolishing the negotiations of the rich and powerful, because the very connectivity created by the same juggernaut , such as the internet, is providing an unparalleled system for communication , knowledge sharing, and for the building of new movements.They are also adept at using the global media to transmit their message to a global audience.

Although governments are being steadily disempowered by the globalisation, they will continue to be responsible for helping nations to adjust successfully to the new global order. Thus far the major response has been in the economic and structural adjustment . Most of this work involves the use of the tools of economic rationalism described in previous chapters. This aims to create business environments which ensure that the nation is competitive in attracting capital and new businesses to its shore, and that local businesses are not driven overseas. While much of this economic/industrial reform has been proactive , the social justice response of governments to the challenges provided by globalisation has been much more reactive, and often problem centred as well. The social justice response has usually been in the form of social/community welfare which concentrates on helping the victims, rather than its mission directed alternative , social /community development which is designed to develop more nurturing , supporting and resilient social environments. Those countries with strong social welfare systems are using these systems to provide support to them so that they are able to keep bread on their tables. However, the response has been of the problem centred and of the "repairing the old" variety. It primarily seeks to protect declining jobs rather than create new ones.

Those national governments who promote restructuring of the mission directed "creating the new" variety in disadvantaged communities and groups will assist these communities to help themselves.

Many communities are not producing sufficient income their incomes must subsidised by government until they are able to be self sufficient and self reliant again . However funding should be provided in ways which do not increase welfare dependency : it should be provided as "help out" or catalytic funding as part of a community development strategy , rather than directly to the most disadvantaged individuals in the community as "hand out" funding. In Australia there is a current debate within aboriginal communities as to whether social welfare funding will ever permit indigenous communities to reinvent themselves, or just keep them indefinitely dependent on hand outs. Many aboriginal leaders are saying that Aboriginal communities cannot transform themselves for success while government social welfare is directed to individuals in the community. They claim that this form of welfare divides and does not bind communities. They believe a communitarian approach is needed. I agree with them..

Any funding should be provided as part of a program of community based restructuring and community self transformation for success in a Planetist future. Whether there is supplementary funding from government or not, it is likely that governments will play a smaller proportional part in helping communities to restructure themselves in the future than in the past.However community self transformation can be increasingly achieved through direct collaboration between communities and the private sector. Government should also be involved, but this is not as essential as it was in the past. This is the reality of the new conditions of the globalising planet. This especially applies to rural and regional areas

If those who benefit from globalisation are only those in urban areas, in dominant cultures, and among the well off and highly educated, then a great opportunity for long term prosperity will be missed and the seeds will be sown for a divided and angry 21st century. This argument applies in both developed and developing countries .

The public protest in Seattle against the WTO and the temporary setting aside of the MAi is understandable. However the stalling of these necessary reforms could help to produce an outcome which is more inequitable than would be the case if imperfect reforms were introduced. Half a loaf is better than no loaf and there is always the opportunity to get the rest in another round of negotiations. The postponement of the establishment of the instruments which seek to civilise and regulate the functioning of the global system such as the WTO Millennial Round , the MAI, and the new International Criminal Court will create more civilise outcomes but less. There must be more tolerance of imperfection if it is the best available option. Likewise seeking to return to the past is not an option. Most people don't believe that the reintroduction of a command economy and even a Stalinist state will would be a good way to solve the significant problems created by cowboy capitalism of Russia, and particularly the huge increase in socioeconomic inequity.

There are seven areas where globalisation has thus far caused significant collateral damage and increased division between interest groups,or might cause future damage if changes to civilise the system are not introduced.

First all are the concerns of developing countries that the new global order could permit a new form of economic imperialism by rich nations and powerful transnational corporations. These nations are worried that any decisions in the WTO relating to workers rights and the environment will be used by developed countries to erect new barriers to the exports from developing to developed countries.

Second there is the increasing concern about job losses in the developed countries,because jobs are being exported from developed to developing countries. This is especially affecting jobs in the declining rust belt or smokestack industries where unemployment has already significantly increased already because of downsizing in these industries, as these industries use technology to replace people, in their attempts to remain competitive. Others jobs are in the highly protected agricultural sector , particularly in Japan and the European Community. Most of the people affected do not have the skills and education to compete for jobs in emerging knowledge based/advanced technology industries. the people who held these jobs are primary victims in the economic restructuring of developed countries towards a knowledge intensive industrial base. Globalisation has exacerbated this problem by providing a mechanism for many of these jobs to be transferred to developing countries. These workers , such as in manufacturing in the USA and Australia ,and in agriculture in Japan and the European Community are placing increased political pressure on their governments, and this political power has resulted in resistance to change by some developed counties in global forums such as the WTO. Many manufacturing workers were in the streets of Seattle. If the meeting had been held in Paris , the major protesters would have been farmers.

Third there are increased division between urban and rural/regional areas in both the developed and developing countries. Globalisation is assisting and promoting the migration of people from rural to urban areas. Rural communities all over the world are loosing people, and most of all, its most promising and best educated young people. In the past, rural/urban migration was caused by the automation of agriculture and the growth of large scale manufacturing in the cities. Then the automation of these industries in the cities a generation later have thrown these people out of work Now the most ambitious people in rural areas are seeking opportunities in the city which are often booming because they have become major players in the globalising economy, while rural areas are being left behind. The ambitious people leave, the less motivated are left behind, and the very capacity of rural communities to reinvent themselves is significantly decreased. The emerging leadership group therefore tends to leave and there tends to be a continuous wasting of leadership.

Many communities which are in decline have leadership which lacks the capacity to assist the community to restructure and reinvent itself: there is a lack of leadership, and of learning and innovation cultures in such communities. The response to crisis tends to be problem centred, seeking to repair the old, rather than mission directed and seeking to create the new. At the same time if there is a vision at all of what these communities could become in the future it is usually a marginal change to more of the same. Very few rural communities are radically restructuring themselves towards a knowledge based future. Governments more often than not provide assistance to these rural communities which could be best described as palliative care, rather than assistance to encourage these communities reinvent themselves for success in a global society. Successful Globalisation in its initial phase has favoured those in the city . We have global cities, but very few global rural communities.

The Fourth area is the concern that the environment will suffer because it is not seen as important by the bureaucrats designing the global trading system, and that environment protection could become a dispensable item in cost cutting or efficiency seeking measures driven by international competition. If the current cowboy trading system persists this would indeed be likely. However if it evolves to a cosmonaut one, the environment and its protection, repair and nurturing will become one of the biggest items of global trade.in the next decade.

The fifth area of collateral damage from globalisation is the ripping off of the globalised system by financial cowboys, hedge funds and the like , who use the global financial system and its imperfections in its current forms, as a casino for speculation on the value of money, rather than as a legitimate mechanism to invest in real projects all across the planet. Although they are legal, it is likely that these funds have had a negative impact on global wellbeing of similar magnitude as that of organised crime.

Sixth there are concerns that trade globalisation has been accompanied the globalisation of crime which is now increasingly shaped by tribal cowboy gangs such as the Triads, Yakuza, Sicilian Mafia , or the Chechen , Romanian, or Columbian crime syndicates. The globalisation of crime has been more successful than the globalisation of crime prevention and law and order.The internationalisation of crime and of terrorism, both political and criminal, have been one of the major features of the last 20 years , during the period of intensive globalisation. It is now believed the drug trafficking driven by organised crime is the biggest industry on the planet. The failure of the international community to deal with these threats to global security must constitute one of the biggest failures of the past 20 years.

The seventh area of concern involves increased divisions between dominant and minority cultures and tribes in developed and developing countries. This occurs in divisions between dominant and minority cultures such as Russia, China, Malaysia and Indonesia, and divisions between immigrant communities and indigenous communities in countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia , New Zealand, Peru and Brazil.The benefits of globalisation are being captured by some dominant cultures who are not sharing it with minority cultures.

The eight area of concern increasing divisions between the educated and less educated in all parts of the world. As the global industrial system becomes more and more knowledge dependent this gap is creating many more victims. Globalisation has been made possible by the very success and breadth of mass education. That Planetism is an emerging culture is an outstanding testament to the success of mass education. Most mass education and the mass media have made people aware that they are all part of a planetary family which celebrates both its cultural diversity and its human unity, and who are adherents of cosmonaut tribalism . The global telecasts linking more than 60 countries on the 1999-2000. New year is a good example of this . However it is also the lack of education as well as resources which is preventing many people and communities from actively participating in this new emerging global trading system. As I indicated in Chapter 4, education and learning will be the biggest single industry on the planet in the 21st century. While there is now more equality between people in terms of access to knowledge than ever before in human history, it is also a fact that lack of education and learning opportunities is a cause of present inequalities.

Globalisation might be unifying the global industrial base, but it is also opening up many divisions in communities all around the world . The consequences of this cowboy globalisation is creating many widening divisions between these different interests.

Globalisation in its current forms has the potential to increase all these divisions, and a global backlash against further reform is possible. However there has been considerable progress in many, if not most, of these areas of concern

Those nations which do not have to sap their energy and focus by having to deal with internal national divisions will have the opportunity to gain the biggest gains from globalisation. As I outlined in the first chapter this opposition to globalisation is both national and international. National groups which are resisting change include political ones such as in Russia ( the Communist Party), and France (the National Front). Alternatively they are based on economic sectors such as in Poland (the Farmers resistance movement) and some parts of the trade union movement in the USA and Australia. Some of these are trying to resist the irresistible. However there are also many international NGO's which have sought to civilise globalisation. Many of these have an essentially Planetist outlook. These include some church and religious NGO's, overseas aid NGO's and environmental NGOs. All of these are co-operating on the Jubilee 2000 campaign. This represents a massive collection of potential opponents of the furthering of cowboy form of globalisation, who are also committed to civilising it.

The opposition to the continuing reform of the global system has been further encouraged by an unwillingness of some of the architects of these new proposals, such those promoting the MAI and the Millennial Round to consult widely, particularly with NGO's which are motivated by public concern, rather than having a direct economic interest in the outcomes . In the case of the MAI all the initial discussion was kept in the membership of the rich nations club, the OECD, and a small number of invited developing countries. This arrogance rightly resulted in a storm of protest from both developing countries international NGOs

The first two of these concerns ,namely that of divisions between developed and developing counties over trade barriers , and the concerns of workers in developed countries about the export of jobs to the developing world of course are interrelated , and to a degree in conflict. These concerns are emerging simply because globalisation has to some extent already increased the opportunities available to developing counties. There has already been a transfer parts of the manufacturing sector which is based on lower knowledge levels to developing countries, and because of the partial opening of developed country markets to agricultural produce from the developing world.. This is putting pressure on the agricultural sector of developed countries. For example because of the NAFTA agreement, jobs are being exported from the USA to Mexico. However jobs have also been exported from Korea to Mexico , because Korean firms are also anxious to take advantage of NAFTA to get its export into the USA via Mexico. Mexico is benefiting in both ways. Developing countries are increasingly able to sell these products and services into developed countries. These changes should be supported by all who wish a fairer global trading system to emerge, but of course it also understandable that people who lose will complain particularly if governments, in their adherence to the primacy of market forces, are unwilling to help those communities which are losing out to restructure themselves. Markets cannot restructure, communities and nations can. Their grievances should be directed more at the governments who are failing their citizens ,rather than the WTO who is trying to create a fairer world. trading system. Transnational corporations which have assisted this transformation , because they have moved investments from developed to developing countries, are also often the recipients of the anger of people who have been disadvantaged by the process of building the new international trading system. Like technology, transnational corporations can be both good and bad. While of course self interest is a motivation for the corporations concerned, it is also clear that many developing countries are also beneficiaries. Many of the best of these corporations are also motivated by playing a role to create a more equitable global future. The best of them are now being forced to answer to shareholders who are increasingly Planetist in terms of their expectations about corporate ethics and performance. Some transnational corporations deserve condemnation, but many do not , and their proportionate number is increasing. Likewise all corporations are now subject to consumer boycotts as well as higher shareholder expectations . A coordinated boycott organised through global media and the internet can have devastating consequences for transnational corporations who live by cowboy ethics. Among these expectations of global responsibility are those relating to the creation of reasonable working conditions particularly in developing countries , and the development of sustainable operations and sound environmental practice.

It is impossible to look after the interests of these workers in developed countries by protecting these jobs, and at the same time creating new opportunities for workers in developing countries. Any compromise could not possibly keep both groups happy. Globalisation is therefore successful because it is already creating jobs in developing countries. The response in developed countries should be continue to grow the knowledge intensive sector and to let these jobs be transferred to developing countries as part of a global process to equalise of opportunity. Naturally most transnational corporations would not be interested in moving from developed to developing countries unless there were significant rewards for doing so, one of the biggest of these is the lower wages which employees in developing countries will demand. However if the new jobs transferred to developing countries involve the implementation of very poor working conditions or even slave conditions, people everywhere have a right to be concerned. The decision which must be made is what constitutes a reasonable level of working conditions and what working rewards are fair to both the workers themselves and to the developing countries in which they live. If wages of developed country levels are introduced into developing counties too quickly, it is likely that the labour markets of developing countries will be badly distorted , and undermine the long term capacity of these countries to prosper. It could be ruinous, for example, if a worker were too highly paid for work in a manufacturing plant of a transnational company of a developing country, because the working conditions are decided by parity with similar work in a developed country ,and because this work contributed directly to the global economy because its produce is exported to developing countries. All salaries in any country must have parity with local conditions. Otherwise a worker in such a manufacturing plant in a developing country could take home more pay than a doctor in a public hospital , a teacher in a publically funded school, or a public servant Department Head in that developing country.

Nobody is suggesting that working conditions in developing counties should immediately have parity with working conditions in developing countries. Therefore a transnational company will be able to be more cost efficient after transferring to a developing country. The issue is how big should be the differential and how long should any transition phase last. What is needed is an intelligent balanced outcome between these interests. These are the issues which will be dealt with over the next decade in the WTO and in other forums and it will not be easy to produce a mutually beneficial outcome for both developed and developing countries. .

of environmental responsibility and ecological sustainability will be dealt with in detail in Chapter 7. Environmentalist are concerned that trade agreements will lead to international corporations being given opportunities to degrade the environment in developing countries, because environmental administrations in developing countries have less clout with their governments. This is sometimes a real concern, although to assume that all developing countries have weaker environmental administrations is nonsense. What is of concern however is whether developing countries should be given permission to pollute or destroy the environment , which is part of a global commons, simply because they are poor. For example it is absurd that developing countries should be able to pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases when other less pollution or zero polluting alternatives should be used by everybody, not just the rich. It is absurd to suggest, for example, that poor people should be able to smoke in public while rich people should not. Ultimately it is the management of the global environment which must receive first priority, not deciding who keeps or loses the right to degrade the environment. Again the response must be communitarian ,not individualistic. I will say more about this in Chapter 8.

The Nation state is being disempowered by globalisation , and this functional disempowerment will continue. With the exception of the USA, and possibly China and Japan, most individual governments cannot play a critical role in determining outcomes. The delivery of social justice is one of the major traditional roles of governments. The functional disempowerment of nation states is now limiting the ability of governments to protect its own people from becoming victims of globalisation. They are now not able to introduce a tariff barrier to protect a dying industrial base, except in a short term way as part of a transitional arrangement .

This is very true with agriculture. Japan has been effective because of its global clout. It has been able to protect its inefficient rice farmers and the European community, acting as a collective, has been able to protect its rural communities. While their actions are understandable, trying to prop up the old without consciously setting out to create the new in rural areas, will finally mean that these protected communities will be the last to adapt to the new global realities, and will ultimately be disadvantaged. As Europe spreads eastwards for example, the cost of its Common Agricultural Policy threatens to lessen the capacity of Europe to be effective in the global market place, subsidising agriculture means fewer resources are devoted to critical elements such as education and knowledge based industry. The economic/social externalities generated by The Common Agricultural Policy in Europe are actually even high than it is commonly believed. Externalities are the costs which must be borne by the tax payer to repair some of the collateral damage caused by agriculture, such as pollution of water ways from fertilisers, illnesses such as Mad Cow Disease, loss of amenity caused by transport. Many of these are correlated with high population densities in Europe, compared with densities in other major agricultural producers.

However efficiency is not and should not be the only determinant. . Some people claim that the subsidisation of primary production in places such as Japan and Europe, is actually ensuring the long term sustainability of the soils and the general productivity of rural environments. Australia, on the other hand, in its quest for efficiency could be, in fact, mining its soils and water resources , and undermining the ecological sustainability of its primary production in the long term. International competition could lessen the capacity of rural communities to be viable in ecological and social terms , but so then could continuing subsidies as the producers become supported by welfare to maintain a rural lifestyle and promote inefficient production. Eventually the subsidies will go and the adherence to propping up the old will lead to collapse, because slow and continuing adjustment has not been promoted . The collapse could be as severe for rural communities in Europe as the collapse of the Soviet Union was to most Russians. Propping up the old meant the maintenance of all of the old mindsets and an unwillingness to embrace the new. On balance it is likely that the efficient producer will be better able to provide for long term sustainability than the subsidised one . The efficient is in control of his own destiny while the subsidised producer relies on the continued support of another. International markets are already paying a market premium for organic food produced more sustainably. So the market is able to build in and respond to an issue such as ecological sustainabilty. Cost is not the only determinant of market

Charting the destinies of Rural and Regional Communities into a Planetist Future

Success will go to individual, organisations and communities who get to the future first.

Rural and regional communties can become this vanguard if they undersatnd what is happening in terms of long term change and develop a vision and strategic action plan to enable them to thive in a Planetist society.

Once we recognise that national governments are losing their capacity to deliver social justice it is incumbent on us to derive new mechanisms appropriate for the new conditions. Many of these will be based around community empowerment. While national governments are being disempowered by globalisation, communities and corporations are becoming empowered. Whether this is real or remains potential, however, depends on the mindsets and skills of the corporations and communities themselves. Thus far corporations have been much more successful in reinventing themselves for success in an interdependent planetary society than have communities.

There is very little which will prevent a community from charting a new course in a globalised world. Governments are no longer acting to control local self help initiatives as they once did. The worst excesses which discouraged initiative such as the command economy or the some of the more extreme policies of the welfare states ,are things of the past. These encouraged dependence, and discouraged independence and the chance ever to become interdependent. Governments will continue to be willing to be the catalyst of change , provide it does not engender long term and open ended commitment . This is the difference between helping out and handing out.

There are a number of steps which a community must take however if it is to successfully re-invent itself for prosperity in the 21st century. The first element is vision. The first thing which a community must do is consciously choose its future. The future is part chance part choice and too many communities which are in decline have let the balance tip toward chance.

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If rural and regional communities want to thrive in a generations time, they must ensure that their strategic plans are more mission directed, creating the new, and less problem centred, repairing the old. Most of the job categories and products and services of the year 2020 have yet to be invented. There is no reason that many of these cannot be created first and best in disadvantaged communities if there is a mission to make this happen.. In my work with rural communities in Australia over a number of years, the development of a Preferred Future Strategic vision is quite easily undertaken. Creating a vision is the first step towards self empowerment and self realisation.

Rural communities, and many other disadvantaged communities as well, often tend to suffer from three mindsets which limit the ability of rural/communities to reinvent themselves.

Three characteristics of rural mindsets are still significant in rural and regional Australia.

  • Colonial cringism - other countries have more talent or expertise than us, for example, turning wool fibre into wool-based fashion is the unique talent of the Italians.
  • Cargo cultism - the government will come along and provide the next generation of jobs and opportunities. It is the responsibility of government to provide solutions, and it is the responsibility of communities to lobby them to do so, rather than generate their own solutions.
  • Tall poppyism - people who seek to be outstanding or different are suspect and should be pulled down. Those who seek to take the community in a direction which is different from "business as usual" should be discouraged. There is virtually no search for excellence or commitment to create exemplars.

An community committed to collective self help can be most successful. I am Chairman of a new organisation the MyFutureFoundation The goal of the foundation is to "enable communities to choose their future and thrive in an interdependent Planetary 21st Century". The major project of the Foundation is called MyTown. MyTown will work primarily with rural and regional communities to assist them to create and implement strategic visions for prosperity in the 21st Century. MyTown will provide the envisioning and strategic planning tools online to enable communities to achieve this. Prosperity is measured in economic, ecological, social and cultural terms. A significant proportion of the effort is looking at the community's traditional economic base and to test its appropriateness and survivability in the 21st century. It involves the community looking within itself to choose its destiny, what it is good at (aptitude) and what it loves doing (passion). It then involves making conscious choices about its future economic base in the context of a 21st century Planetist market place. As all new industrial futures emphasis is on an increase in knowledge and on the role tertiary education and research and development in its creation. If, for example, the community plans to become a world leader in a new industry called "X", then it is imperative that a local tertiary institution have excellence in "X".

If communities want to reinvent themselves and create prosperity for themselves it will be up to themselves to do it. However mindset changes will be needed and it is becoming easier to do this. More and more it will require collaboration between communities and corporations, utilising support from government only as a secondary form of support. As corporations become more and more Planetist they will want to enter long term commercial relationships with communities. In an era of open competition corporate enterprises are looking for long term relationships with their suppliers and their customers. A community which enters a long term contract with a corporation as part of its strategic plan can create a strategic alliance, an interdependent relationship which is mutually beneficial.

In all communities a significant proportion of the income spent by the community, leaves it. Over time, this has tended to increase, and in rural communities a very high proportion of the community's financial resources are used to pay for products and services provided externally. Therefore over time the power of communities has tended to decrease as there has been a decline in the capacity of communities to decide how the capital resources they have created are expended. Over time, more and more money leaves the community, never to return. This financial leakage has been a major factor in the decline of rural and regional communities.

A community which collectively develop a Preferred Futures vision and a strategic plan to realise this vision, can now implement policies to ensure that this leakage is minimised and in order to increase its ability to finance it's own development, from it's own resources. In the MyTown initiative each community is creating a Community Development Fund, which can be used to finance the implementation of strategy to realise a Preferred Future vision. The community can collectively bargain with external providers of community services, in the same way a trade unions bargain with an employer. In any community a significant proportion of the communities financial resources leaves the community as payment for services provided to that community. The community can restructure itself organisationally to minimise this "leakage" and retain more of their own money in their own community. MyTown is providing expertise to show communities how to achieve this.

This restructuring can be achieved without a cent of government support. This process recognises the reality that the 21st century power will increasingly reside with community and corporation, and less with governments. This is a completely different model to the traditional model whereby governments provide the machinery and finance for the provision of social justice. In chapter 8, I will be talking about another aspect of community empowerment wherein social welfare is not directed from government to individual welfare recipients but to the communities who provide social welfare rights through a program of mutual responsibility.

Communities which get to the future first , and together, will become the successful communities in the 21st century.

Typical of the questions which are asked of communities during the envisioning phase if MyTown are:

  1. The year is 2020, and this community is world famous for "X". " X"is a product or service , unknown in the 1990s, is now sold on world market.what is "X"
  2. The year is 2020, and this community is now thriving. So much so that the best and brightest of its young, now return to spend most of their lives in the community after some years away undertaking education and work experience. Name a quality, facility or opportunity which has been added to the community to make this difference.

This principle can work for communities in rich and poor countries alike, all kinds of communities including indigenous communities.

There are many large transnational corporations who are willing to be involved, as they see it in their long term viability to be good planetary/community citizens. No government funding is needed for this model to work, but of course this is welcome. However the model for community development which is used is the one based on the 21st century reality of strong communities and corporations, and comparatively weak state and national governments.

Some communities will continue to blame governments for not coming to the rescue if nothing is done. This is because many people in rural areas and in disadvantaged groups continually believe that their sole pathway to social justice is through the redistributive role of government. Of course some of this will continue but it should be relied upon for topping up rather than funding the basic program. Some will find it incredible that I am proposing that communities and corporations can work together to solve their problems, and even without the cooperation of the nation state. However this is the reality of the emerging global society

While my comments have focussed on rural/regional communities, they apply equally to indigenous communities or any community which is currently being disadvantaged by current cowboy globalisation. The development of community based responses, based on collective decision making about their Preferred Future, and collective bargaining with service providers, together with the development of community financial resources, by the lessening of financial leakage, can provide the mechanism for communities who are currently becoming victims of globalisation to prosper in these circumstances.

The decline on the relative capacity of governments to provide social justice means that new mechanisms must be invented to ensure that social justice is delivered in the new globalised system. The utilisation of the traditional means to deliver social justice will no longer be possible. For example the delivery of a social justice objective , such as the protection of jobs in developed countries, will be interpreted as the erection of a barrier to free trade by developing countries The power of the government driven social welfare system and the labour union is declining. However the need for machinery to provide social justice is as great as ever. If we are to civilise Globalisation , we must rely less on Governments , and create community based systems , which encourage communities to bargain collectively with governments and corporations to ensure that they are able to reinvent themselves for success in a Planetist 21st century, and also ensure that communities get to the future first and together to minimise inequity within communities. These principles apply in both developed and developing countries.

Some of the steps that all communities should take if they want to find prosperity in an era of globalisation, and at the same time contribute to the process of civilising globalisation, are: :

  1. Becoming Planetist first and collectively so that communities are able to understand the requirements of the Planetist market place, and create a thriving 21st century community for itself. It requires that communities develop mission directed and committed to "creating the new and emerging" rather than prop up the "old and dying' , or accept from government or others assistance which is in essence, a form of palliative care.
  2. Consider their destiny : what they are good at (aptitude) and what they love doing (passion), and consider this destiny in terms of new emerging opportunities for the provision of products and services for Planetist markets.
  3. Helping themselves by developing preferred future visions based on the community's destiny and initiating, through the development of a strategic action plan new ways to fund their new initiatives, such as by the minimisation of the financial leakage from the community.
  4. Installing high capacity connectivity , such as via the Internet to connect communities with potential customers elsewhere who will be interested in their products and services.
  5. Ensure that this connectivity is available to all, irrespective of capacity to pay.
  6. Seek to grow its intellectual property in areas which it chooses to excel by investing resources in research and development, and innovation in its area of chosen excellence, so that the community can ensure that it remains a leader in the field. The aim of each community should be to ensure that effective transnational organisations are nurtured and keep their Head Office in the community. These should nurture appropriate brand names and other ways of differentiating its products and services so it can maximise its chances of being a price maker, rather than a price taker in a globalised market place. .
  7. Continuously promoting leadership, learning and innovation. Communities should restructure its leadership , from a traditional "control" form of management , to an "empowering" form of leadership. In the "empowering" form, the traditional leadership adopts a mentoring/elderhood mode , and empowers the young best and brightest to assist the community to reinvent itself. This most effectively combines the wisdom of the old and the energy of the young. It is form often used in Japanese corporations, to ensure that old leadership ,which is naturally conservative, does not prevent innovation and the implementation of creating the new strategies in the corporation. In rural and regional communities the leadership is often conservative, and a closely tied to the old and declining industrial order. It often struggles to embrace a newer industrial order. As well as leadership, the other main cultural issue which needs attention is the promotion of an enterprise/learning culture. In particular entrepreneurship should be promoted and affirmative action programs in these areas should be introduced for disadvantaged members of the community.
  8. Encouraging the rich and successful to show greater loyalty/responsibility to their communities by investing more and providing mentoring to their own communities. Successful communities often have a culture of community philanthropy and community responsibility by the community's most successful members, including those who have become expatriates from the community and have become successful during their time of expatriation . In my work with communities I often suggest that the community invites its successful expatriates to return to the community as a "mentor in residence" for a few months to assist the community reinvent itself for future success.
  9. Ensuring that the NGO sector which is the ethical/moral watchdog on the behaviour of the global trading system and of social justice at the national and community level as well is sufficiently empowered to be effective in this role . This includes community and global NGOs such as Greenpeace international , Amnesty International , Transparency international, Religious Social Justice organisations, International Aid NGOs and the like. This will ensure that new international institutions such as the international Criminal Court, and UN agencies are able to be more effective in their critical work. It will be NGOS who will increasingly be the people who will oversee the work and development of the global system of governance.. They can operate as they see fit, and not constrained by the limitations posed by the consensus or "least common denominator" based negotiations which constrain the effectiveness of negotiations between governments.

Growing Leadership

All of us are part leader, part manager. It is important that young people learn the difference between them and to utilise both of these roles in their lives, not just one of them. Australia is currently an overmanaged and underled country. It constantly puts managers in positions where leaders are needed. Many Australians fail to understand this critical difference between leadership and management.

  • Managers respond to change and problems, whilst leaders envision , create and shape change.
  • Managers are concerned about doing the thing right , while leaders are concerned about doing the right thing.
  • Managers reflect about fate. Managers reflect about destiny

Henry Ford said

"The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one's destiny to do, and then do it" "

Destiny has two qualities, what you are good at and what you love doing, it is about aptitude and passion. Most people leave school without having any real idea about these qualities because they have not been encouraged to look within. Fulfilling one's destiny is about growing your aptitude and passion in the context of emerging possibilities and opportunities. Destiny is different to fate. You might like top contemplate the difference between these. In Australia we contemplate fate too much and destiny not enough.

  • Managers control , Leaders facilitate
  • Managers work in the organisation, while leaders work on the organisation.
  • Managers and Leaders also have different kinds of visions and ask different questions about the future.

The manager is most comfortable asking ask "What will the future of our community be. I call this the Probable Future question . In over managed and under led Australia it is the question most Australians are comfortable with.

An alternative question is "What should our community be like the year 2020 I call this the Preferred Futures question. It is the question leaders tend to ask. It is also the question that the average Korean, Japanese, Malaysian or Chinese will ask. It is the question for people who let their dreams play a role in how they think about the future.

You will appreciate that there is a big difference between these questions.

  • Mangers are Probable Futurists, and contingency plan for Prospective Futures.. Leaders are Preferred Futurists contingency plan for Possible Futures.

What people who ask the probable future question are really indicating is that they have very little influence on the future of Australia. It is a fatalistic view, based on the thought that the future will just happen, and that one cannot shape the future, merely not get run over by it, or if one is smart, make a dollar out of it.

A second way people look at the future involves the process required to get there. The current approach of most people most of the time is a Problem Centred one. This is usually the way of the manager. This involves working towards a future where present problems are lessened or removed. The aim is to remove or lessen present "bads" from the future rather than positively create "goods". The alternative way is to take a Mission Directed approach to the future: to create "goods" in the future, to set out to create a positive future. This is the way of the leader. As it is with the imbalance between probable and preferred futures, there is an imbalance between Problem Centred and Mission Directed approaches. The excessive weight given to Problem Centred approaches makes it very difficult to achieve anything like an optimal result. Again all of this involves using management skills where leadership skills are needed, or because we appoint managers to positions of leadership.

  • Managers are Problem Centred people, Leaders are Mission Directed people

There are many other examples of imbalances between Problem Centred and Mission Directed approaches. The emphasis of medical approaches to health over health promotion is one, the emphasis on pollution control over pollution prevention is another. In the area of structural adjustment of our economy, most of the concentration goes to the Problem Centred repairing the old (modernising the existing industrial structure and infrastructures), rather than the Mission Directed creating the new (designing and building new industrial structures, industries and enterprises appropriate for the 21st century).

Many of the so-called economic and unemployment problems of Australia have neither economic causes nor economic solutions. They are cultural problems with economic, social, cultural and environmental consequences, and the solutions must be found at the cultural level. The biggest problem is the imbalance between Probable and Preferred Futures thinking, and between Problem Centred and Mission Directed approaches to the future.

People change their behaviour for two basic reasons: fear and hope, and their more extreme soul mates, desperation and inspiration. Fear and desperation are the tools used too often by the manager to create change. Hope and inspiration are the tools of the leader .

The leader uses the following process to create change: they develop vision, which is used to create hope, hope is used to create inspiration, and inspiration is used to create commitment .

This is what Goethe said about commitment.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too... Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it,. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now

If young people enter adulthood after being given the opportunity to grow their leadership capabilities as well as their management capabilities they will be able to first determine their own destinies and shape their own future in a changing world where government's are less important, but communities and individuals are more important.

The core qualities of leadership:the eight Cs:

Leadership involves what I call `neck down' components including the heart, as well as the intellect The leader embodies six qualities which come from the heart rather than the head. The leader should be:

  • confident: having self belief but without hubris.
  • courageous: going where others dare not, overcoming self interested opposition.
  • committed: doing what must be done, being assertive not aggressive.
  • considerate: listening and responding to the opinions and views of others.
  • courteous : showing respect in conversation.
  • compassionate : responding with empathy to victims and the disadvantaged.

Management on the other hand is largely `neck up', an intellectual exercise. It does not seek to engage the emotions in work. To these six C's we can add two more Cs which are necessary for effective leadership. Leaders must also be able to :

  • conciliate: building and nurturing interdependence and relationships by facilitating compromises which realise win-win outcomes in negotiations.
  • communicate: articulating with both head and heart, ensuring both non verbal and verbal forms of expression convey the same message. Leadership therefore embodies eight qualities and capabilities: confidence, courage, commitment, consideration, courtesy, compassion, conciliation and communication.

The leader in action:The six Vs:

I have already mentioned the eight Cs of leadership-the internal characteristics of good leadership: confidence, courage, commitment, consideration, courtesy, compassion, conciliation and communication. This is what the leader is. However it is also the performance of a leader , what the leader does, which is equally critical. A leader who does not get results, or only gets them in ways which alienate the crew or undermine the long term capacity and capability of the crew, is a poor leader.

I want to describe the leader in action by using a metaphor: the leader as a commander of a spaceship leading a culturally diverse and interdependent crew on a mission to a chosen destination

The leader is the facilitator of mission-directed/preferred-future strategies, of mission building. The critical components of mission building are:

  • Vision
  • Values
  • Virtues
  • Venturers
  • Voyages
  • Vehicles

Vision: this involves choosing one's destination. The first task is to develop the preferred future destination: `Where do we want to go and when do we want to get there?' The journey is being made in an environment of change that is driven by both external processes and internal mindsets and behaviours. The second task is to understand and recognise that the spacecraft is already journeying to the probable future, which will be the destination if current trends (`business as usual') are pursued and an alternative destination is not chosen. The leader will also recognise, however, that the leader and the crew are not omnipotent and do not have unlimited resources. Although the leader will undertake measures to improve organisational capacity (financial resources available) and capabilities (human resources available), it may not be possible to achieve the preferred futures goal within the required time-frame. The leader and crew might, therefore, need to select a possible future destination based on a recognition of limitations imposed by the capacities and capabilities as well as by the competition.

Values: this involves asking the questions of `What are the shared beliefs of the crew?' and `What are the rules which determine how the crew behaves and relates to one another during the mission?' Some of these values will be desirable for the completion of the mission and some will not be desirable It is important that the leader and the crew explore the core values (both desirable and undesirable) which define the ethos of the crew and the rules which govern relationships between crew members and between the crew and the external world. For example,`tall poppyism ', "cargo cultism" or "cultural cringism" would not be desirable. Without a clear understanding of shared values, a culture of mutual trust and interdependence will not develop between the crew members, and commitment by the crew to the realisation of the mission will not follow. The crew and leader should examine core values (both desirable and undesirable) and develop strategies to nurture the desirable ones and transform the undesirable into more desirable Before a crew can determine what virtues it will actually practice, it must first determine what its core beliefs are and assess them in terms of both ethics and performance. Values which undermine or elevate ethical behaviour or which will diminish or improve performance, should be specifically identified . Then strategies for nurturing the desirable and transforming the undesirable would then become part of the capability building strategy to be discussed below under `Vehicles'..It is the role of the leader to stretch and challenge values which are no longer appropriate for future needs or which are undermining desirable transformations in behaviour, and to advocate value shifts which can enhance future thrivability. A leader who merely reflects current values, or even a time warp of past ones, and encourages people to be " relaxed and comfortable" with them , such as Australian Prime Minister John Howard will not earn respect. People know that rapid change is always challenging and stretching values and that know they need guidance making value shifts which necessary. They know it is a delusion to sit comfortably holding on to old and dated value systems in a rapidly changing world. The leader must challenge and stretch value systems.

Virtues: these are desirable values that are practised unquestioningly and automatically. They must be desirable and appropriate for the development of a successful mission. Behaviour can be perceived by others but inner beliefs cannot be seen; other people cannot see one's values but they can see one's virtues. Virtues involves behaviour rather than beliefs. It is possible that a leader can harbour an undesirable value such as racism, but this is not of consequence unless this value influences the leader's behaviour. Virtues are values which are actually practiced: even if they are not believed. It is important to take core desirable values and ensure that these become practised virtues. The leader must be a practicing exemplar of organisational virtues. A leader who does not "walk the talk" or "practice what the leader preaches" will earn disrespect. This is the flaw of President Clinton : he is a good leader in terms of the seven C's but is not virtuous: he fails in practice. The leader must be an practitioner/advocate of these virtues, and work to ensure that desirable values become practiced virtues and undesirable values remain unpractised. In the context of ensuring prosperity and thrivability in the twenty-first century these virtues should include the values of Planetism.

Venturers: answer the question `Who will participate in the mission or support the purposes of our mission as allies?' People change behaviour or direction or commit themselves to undertaking a mission for two basic reasons: fear and hope. Fear is the tool of the manager and is over-used; it undermines trust. The creation of an environment of hope is the major tool of the leader. Provided there is trust, vision leads to hope, and hope leads to inspiration. Inspiration will lead to the making of a commitment to the mission. Commitment comes from the heart not from the head, therefore the leader must be able to move the hearts of his crew and this, in turn, delivers the energy required for commitment. The head then comes into the commitment process by bringing intelligence to assess the wisdom of making a commitment. So both head and heart are involved. Management involves the head but not the heart. It is therefore not surprising that the majority of mission statements developed by management gather dust on shelves. They have been developed without an attempt to gain the commitment which comes from the heart.

The leader should promote a climate of organisational interdependence between venturers. There are two particularly important group of venturers who are critical to the success of any mission. The first group consists of champions who are the `true believers' among the crew, the most strongly committed to the mission and those who will try to ensure other crew members become equally committed. The second group of venturers are external to the crew but are equally committed to the mission. These are allies of the mission who are committed to working towards the same or a similar destination. They will provide external support, intelligence and knowledge and wisdom for the mission. They are also a group who have vested interests in the mission and can be used to counteract vested interests against the mission who might try to stop it or slow it down.

Voyages: involve asking the question `What course should the spaceship take and through what environment ?' Many events occur during the voyage. Futurists often use a process called `backcasting'. This process describes a journey into the future but it is written as a history from the perspective of the future. It is the opposite of forecasting which identifies major events and their timing and weaves them into a narrative. In this `Future History' of the voyage there are three kinds of events: obstacles, deeds and heritages. They are described in the past tense as events which have occurred and are being detailed after the mission is completed:

  • obstacles are constraints and barriers which stopped, slowed down or side-tracked the mission and which were overcome. Descriptor words which can be used include reduce, abolish, overcome, annul, cancel, negate, retard and extinguish;
  • initiatives are new infrastructures and actions which were developed and implemented , and qualities, opportunities and facilities which were created during the mission. The descriptor words include establish, initiate, organise, found, increase, encourage, achieve, attain, negotiate and elevate.
  • improvements are the changes we make to existing infrastructure, qualities, facilities and opportunities to improve performance and outcomes. Descriptor words include improve, redesign, renew, revitalise, better, enhance, enrich, amplify, fortify and strengthen.
  • heritages are priceless elements and qualities relating to the mission, the crew and its culture which must be nurtured and treasured during the mission and for the future. We need to do this so that we do not throw out babies with bath water while we are changing everything else. Descriptor words include protect, defend, nourish, enhance, bolster, support, care for and sustain.

Vehicles: involve answering the question `Which vehicle(s) do we use to reach our destination?' To answer the question we must decide the means by which the mission will be achieved, including the development of new innovations to provide those means. Many of the means will already exist, but it would be foolish to assume that they are all that will be available to the crew. New means will be created in order to realise the mission and these, in turn, will create new opportunities. The Apollo mission, for example, led to the creation of many new innovations. One of the most exciting aspects of mission building is to recognise that mission building is a process of design and innovation. There are two kinds of innovation:

  • There are innovations to the crew itself. These are called capacities and capabilities. They serve to improve the ability of the crew and their allies to complete the mission. Capacities refer to additional resources such as financial and technological resources which are identified and utilised to improve the success of the mission. Capabilities involve improving the human resources element, the skills, knowledge and experience of the crew, so that the crew-both as individuals and as a collective-are able to perform at a higher level. A combination of improving capacity and capability will assist the crew to arrive at the preferred future destination, or to move a possible future destination closer to a preferred future destination. The development and maintenance of learning and innovation cultures are important factors relating to capacities and capabilities. Without these cultures the crew will not have the capability to renew and reinvent itself, to adapt, to develop new tools, new means and new resources to fulfil the mission.
  • There are innovations which need to develop to realise the mission. The two major vehicles are ways and ware. Ways includes the values, virtues, ethics, beliefs, paradigms, behavioural patterns, customer preferences and professional practices necessary to complete the mission. Many of these ways can be developed through learning and the most effective way to do this is to develop a learning culture. Ways can also be shaped or limited by laws which promote, permit or prohibit actions or things. Incentives and disincentives, both financial and non-financial, are other means of promoting appropriate ways and discouraging inappropriate ways. Ware includes designs, products, services and technologies which will be needed to realise the mission. The development of ware will be most successful if an innovation culture is nurtured. Different ways and ware can be developed for different strategic purposes and their development will provide opportunities for the innovative and enterprising. For example, the ways required to realise a sustainable future can be called `green' ways, while the ware for the realisation of a sustainable future can be called `green' ware. Likewise, we can have health ways and health ware, learning ways and learning ware, and so on. The totality of all the ways and ware for emerging Planetist markets can be called Planetist Ways and Planetist Ware .

The way of the leader therefore involves embodying the eight Cs internally and implementing the six Vs externally. It involves creating a climate of hope as the major causal agent of change, instead of utilising a climate of fear. It involves adopting mission-directed, preferred future strategies instead of problem-centred, probably future strategies, or the way of the manager. Those who thrive will be those who fully understand the opportunities provided by the change process initiated by globalisation, tribalisation and technological change, how these trends will develop in the next few decades and who understand the nature of, and practice the values of, a Planetist future. However, they must also be leaders not managers. The world needs management and managers-but not as commanders of spaceships.

How people should Learn for Thrival in the 21st Century

Another major cultural shift we need in our learning centres to ensure thrival and thrivability is the development of a new culture of learning. In 1996 I completed a project with Victorian State Secondary Principals. We wrote a report called Education 2010. In this document we described what I call the Learning Culture of the year 2010. Such a learning culture is needed for the creation of a knowledge based industrial structure in the 21st century and for the development of life long learning, learner driven learning individuals in Australia.

The following is a scenario which describes some elements of the Education System of the Year 2010.

Many policies and programs in the 1990s were dedicated to the promotion of life long learning and to the creation of learning organisations. We knew that in the rapidly changing world of the late 90's and early 21st century, each person would be required to learn continuously in order to adapt to changing circumstances and to develop new skills and capabilities to thrive in a rapidly changing world. We also knew that any enterprise which sought to be successful in the knowledge based industrial system of the 21st Century would need to be led and managed in ways which maximised organisational learning. As a result the education system decided to promote the creation on a broad learning culture which consisted of 8 elements.

These 8 elements were:

  • Life long learning (LLL) was well established by the mid 1990s.The old system of early in life learning has been replaced by continual life long, womb to tomb learning. A corollary of the acceptance of LLL was the recognition that learning would have to become, in the main, a pleasurable activity again. We had grown up with the idea that most of our education occurred early in life during the period of compulsory education. Under these circumstances we could force-feed learning into often unwilling educational consumers. This was education as a factory. When we created our education system most jobs were low or no skill ones It didn't matter if students were so alienated by school that they vowed that they would never expose themselves to the education system again. Now we have a knowledge based society, and this early in life learning has been replaced by life long learning. Therefore we developed and promoted a pedagogy to ensure that learning was either enjoyable or the context of learning encouraged students to persist with learning pathways which were less enjoyable. Life long Learning facilitates flexible career paths, promotes adaptability and empowers the personal development required in our rapidly changing world.
  • Learner Driven learning (LDL). From the years of puberty the learner not the KN initiates and manages the learning processes, utilising appropriate learning and educational technology and with the guidance of KNs and Mentors.. Even in childhood the learner shares the responsibility with Mentors and parents for initiating learning. LDL is guided by both the Mentor and the student's support group. The learner is empowered by the purchasing power of the Educard to initiate and negotiate learning from education providers.
  • Just-in-time learning (JITL). The concept of Just-In-Time started in the manufacturing and retail sectors. This was an altered method of production and operation which meant that enterprises did not need large stockpiles of all components which were needed for assembly into a particular product. Components were sourced at a rate that was Just-in-Time for their assembly into the final product. We applied this concept to education as we were anxious to ensure that learning occurred mostly when there was a high motivation to learn and a desire to know. Modern technology permitted us to provide such a learning system. For the most part people learn what they want to learn, when they want to learn, thereby reinforcing both LLL and LDL. The net result of these changes is that curiosity is again a driving force for learning.
  • Customised learning (CL). People are different and so people think and learn in different ways. Some are visphiles, some are audiophiles, some prefer to learn by right brain processes and some prefer left brain processes. Because of the encapsulation of knowledge in the written word, education and learning has in the past favoured people with preferred left brain thinking and learning processes. Now modern technology enables us to package learning modules to suit people with different thinking and learning preferred styles and learners can choose the way they wish to learn.

In this way the quality of learning has been dramatically improved for many people who were disadvantaged by the old system because their thinking and learning preferences were not fully catered for by that system. Educational products, services and technologies are designed to meet different learning preferences and capabilities. Educational packages can be customised as needed by the learner to meet the particular needs of individuals and groups. Thus modern technology allows both different learning and thinking preferences to be catered for, and for whole brain thinking and learning to be promoted.

  • Transformative learning (TL). Learning should transform people and challenge and change belief systems and behavioural patterns to meet new needs and opportunities, and to overcome disabilities and disadvantage. Assessment systems can now measure transformation as well as evaluate knowledge and therefore people are now able to fine tune learning to achieve more effective transformation of belief systems. A major goal of learning is to encourage the transformation of individual value systems from that of a Cowboy Culture to a Spaceship Culture
  • Collaborative learning (CL). Over the last 20 years there has been an increasing emphasis on effective collaboration and team building which has now largely replaced the individual Ramboism of the 1980s. In the 1980s individualistic IT dominated. In the 1990s collaborative forms of IT began to emerge.. In today's more communitarian interdependent culture collaborative learning is as valued as individual learning. Today all IT, KT and WT encourages collaborative behaviour. Our work organisations are communitarian and cooperative and most workplaces emphasise the importance of collective organisational learning. In the modern world it is impossible for any of us to know everything, and the depth of knowledge required for specialisation is too deep for everyone to be able to know and understand complex issues. Certainly modern technology means that we can seek to be very effective generalists and use sophisticated knowledge. However we also need to be able to work in multi disciplinary teams. This is a basic part of our current interdependent culture.
  • Contextual learning (CXL). Our experience tells us that learning is most effective if it occurs in an environment which makes the learning relevant and to the experience and expectations of the learner. In schools in the 20th century learning rarely occurred in this way. Traditionally learning was centred on promoting knowledge in ways that were often removed from experiencing the use of that knowledge in life . We used to sit in class rooms and be told about the nature of things. Now learning occurs throughout the community learning and is more often accomplished in real life environments
  • Learning to learn. (LTL) Until recently, if one assessed the time devoted to these activities, education seemed to assume that people did not need to learn to learn and learn to think. If people know more about how they learn and how people think they will be better placed to improve both their capacity to learn and their capacity to think. The teaching of thinking and learning is now a major component of our education system. This develops the capability in individuals and groups to understand and more effectively plan, manage and realise their own learning.

There are immense opportunitiesfor innovators to produce the Learning Ways and Learning Ware to realise to the fullest possible extent, this learning culture.

Learning to be an innovator

Invention is having a good idea. Innovation is turning that good idea into a tradeable product or service. Innovation involves the capacity to do and create new things. Part of this innovation involves doing old things in new ways: in other words creating continual improvement. This is what innovation is to most people. However there is another side to innovation, this involves doing new things first and best. This involves for example, understanding the nature of the emerging Planetist culture and developing the products and services needed to help the transformation from the Cowboy to the Spaceship culture. In the last part of my talk I am going to be listing some of the 21st century industries, which are now emerging to help in this transformation.

An innovation culture develops a nation of job makers rather than job takers. An innovative person is a job maker, not only a job taker.

Australian folklore is rich with stories of bright Australian ideas being lost to Australia because of insufficient entrepreneurial and financial support, and these ideas being used to generate wealth for people in other countries. Economic success now depends on knowledge and it is even more dependent upon brainpower than previously. Ultimate economic success in a planetary society will go to those countries, institutions, companies and individuals who best use their inventiveness, intelligence and cleverness. In the 1980s we talked about establishing a clever country. However we failed to develop a coherent structure to realise this vision. The fact that Australia in the 1990s is still not a clever country is not due to economic causes. The emphasis in the 1980s and 1990s on micro economic reform, important though it is, fails to fully recognise the critical importance of cultural factors. Economists continue to believe that our economic problems have economic causes and prescribe economic solutions.

Education in the 1990s still produces many people who are being prepared for jobs which are not there. This is because our structural adjustment overly emphasises modernising the existing industrial base with a related downsizing of labour, without emphasising the envisioning and establishment of new 21st Century, industries which would employ most of the high quality graduates of our educational system. Therefore we need to look ahead to anticipate what longer term future markets want and then create the innovations and enterprises to best service those future markets.

Innovation has two elements, being creative and being enterprising. An innovative person is one who is both creative and enterprising. The great bases of creativity are the disciplinary groups of the arts and humanities, the natural and social sciences and the technologies. In the 1990s most Australians are still not knowledgable of the major principles and concepts in all three areas. There is a convergence within each of these three disciplinary groups and between them, however this is not reflected in the education system, which still separates the three great disciplinary areas of creativity. In the late 1990s there is a recognition that new interdisciplinary approaches are needed to deal with products of this convergence, such as mechatronics, optoelectronics and multimedia. We must now promote an education system which engenders respect for all these three great areas of creativity and in depth knowledge in at least one of them. We must also promote the capacity to integrate knowledge from all these bases into new integrated forms of knowledge.

A considerable part of modern scientific and technological innovation relates to the development of new products, services and technologies based on the four great technological revolutions of our time:

  • Cyber technology including IT based on the silicon chip or microprocessor, and what I believe will be its successors, Knowledge Technology (KT ) and Wisdom Technology ( WT)
    • Data plus purpose equals information
    • Information plus culture equals knowledge
    • Knowledge plus experience equals wisdom
  • Biotechnology based on the manipulation of the DNA molecule. this will eventually lead to the development of IT, WT, and KT based on the element carbon instead of silicon. The awesome power of biotechnology is now only beginning to be realised. with wide applications in medicine, agriculture and veterinary medicine,in mining and in environmental protection, bio technology is at least as important as IT in terms of innovations for the future.
  • Advanced Material technologies based on the development of a number of new materials with exciting new characteristics in areas such as electrical conductivity (superconductivity) and magnetism.
  • Nano and Micro Technology which involves the development of miniaturised systems, including new, minute machines and systems which are no bigger than the molecules upon which they operate. Many of the biggest contribution will be in biotechnology which is in fact an organic nano technology.

Many innovations in the 21st century will be based on the use of these four generic or enabling technologies. These will include innovations in traditional fields such as agriculture, medicine, manufacturing, transport, tourism, energy, environment and education. In the environment field, for example, information technology can help to assess the use and conservation of land, forests and fisheries through remote sensing from satellites. Biotechnology can help to develop more effective bacteria to consume oil spills, create proteins which can alter the function of T cells to stop the onset of AIDS or prevent the development of auto immune diseases such as MS, Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis and child onset Diabetes, or to protect plants and make them immune to destructive insects, thereby obviating the need for insecticides. New materials and technologies can produce powerful new magnets to be used in highly energy-efficient levitating trains. While I have emphasised technology here, innovation involves growing our capabilities not only in technologies, but also in the arts and humanities and the social and natural sciences as well. All people while they might be particularly good in of these areas should have enough knowledge of and respect for the other areas so that they can work successfully in collaboration with people with greater expertise in these areas.

In a 1988 paper, written for OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), Colin Ball introduced the concept that, if people were to thrive in the 21st century they would need to simultaneously develop capabilities in three different educational arenas. He named each of these Educational Passports., based on the idea that a passport, helps to define a person's right of passage. He suggested that these three Passports are:

  • an academic passport which is the traditional role of education, The visas in this passport consist of the capabilities of literacy and numeracy, and cultural linguistic, scientific, artistic, technological and social knowledge which enables a person to play a meaningful and self fulfilling role in society and culture .
  • a vocational passport which focuses on the specific education necessary for the effective performance of work, such as technological, financial, management, and marketing knowledge, in a world of rapid technological and social change.
  • an enterprise passport which contains the curriculum to promote the development of enterprising people. Colin Ball and his colleagues developed the following description of an enterprising person:

An enterprising individual has a positive, flexible and adaptable disposition towards change, seeing it as normal, and as an opportunity rather than a problem. To see change in this way, an enterprising individual has a security born of self-confidence, and is at ease when dealing with insecurity, risks, difficulty and the unknown. An enterprising individual has the capacity to initiate creative ideas ... develop them, and see them through into action in a determined manner. An enterprising individual is able, even anxious, to take responsibility and is an effective communicator, negotiator, influencer, planner, and organiser. An enterprising individual is active, confident, and purposeful, not passive, uncertain and dependent ... (Ball,Plant and Knight,1989).

In previous decades many of our people were unenterprising by this definition, and so we sought to create a nation of enterprising people. The Finn, Mayer and Carmichael Reports, which introduced the concept of competencies, were presented to the Commonwealth Government in 1991 and 1992. These reports did however commence the journey towards the development of a innovation culture. They made a mistake however of placing competencies under the existing vocational passport rather than in a new and separate enterprise passport of equal value to the other two passports .

Many people tried to list the capabilities or competencies which are needed for the development of an enterprising individual. One list, which is based on an initial list developed by David Turner includes:

  • Making decisions
  • Working cooperatively in teams and groups
  • Planning time and energy
  • Carrying out agreed responsibilities
  • Negotiating
  • Dealing with power and authority
  • Solving problems
  • Resolving conflict
  • Coping with stress and tension
  • Evaluating performance
  • Communicating both verbally and non-verbally
  • Developing strategic visions for self and organisations
  • Thinking and intervening strategically and systematically to shape the future

All these competencies can be developed by practice.

New Industries of the 21st Century

I already have said that 70% of the job categories, products and service for the year 2020 have yet to be invented. What follows is a scenario set in the year 2010 which outlines some of the emerging industries of the 21st century. A large proportion of these are required to create a planet of Cosmonauts and a Spaceship Culture. They emphasis elements such as ecological sustainability and humanity as part of nature, and finding the means for creating intercultural tolerance and the celebration of cultural diversity in an interdependent tribalised and globalised planet.

The year is 2010.

In the 1990s Australia's industrial restructuring policies concentrated on making the mostly mature industries of the 20th century more efficient and internationally competitive, through changes to work organisation and culture, the introduction of advanced technology, and the downsizing of the work force. There was no clear policy designed to establish the new industries to furnish products and services for the markets of 2010 and beyond. Meanwhile the education system continued to develop the talents and skills of the most educated generation of Australians even for jobs which were not there. However in 2001 a new policy was initiated: policy was directed to establishing in Australia many of the newer industries which were beginning to emerge to service these future markets. Australia is now a global leader in some of these industries..As a result unemployment in 2010 is not the problem many predicted in the 1990s that it would be. These new industries collectively provided the products and services needed for the creation of a sustainable society, a spaceship culture.They included.:

Industries and technologies which improve the knowledge and capabilities of individuals and organisations.

By the year 2020, the Human Development Industrial sector will become the single biggest industrial sector of all. The sum of all activities which increase human knowledge and capabilities is now bigger than both the natural resource-based and manufacturing industrial sectors. The development of learning and innovation cultures in organisations is already demanding significant attention from organisational leadership and this will increase even further . This sector utilises modern technology such as multimedia, cybertechnology and cyberware. It includes a Mindware Industry based on the integration of cognitive psychology, mindscience based on Asian philosophies and practices such Buddhism, Taoism and Yoga, physiology and biochemistry, learning theory, artificial intelligence and information and communications technology. Information technology (IT) has been replaced by Knowledge Technology (KT) and Wisdom Technology (WT) In the 1990s it had already been recognised that there is a hierarchy in conceptual thinking, namely:

  • Data
  • Information
  • Knowledge
  • Wisdom

The success of individuals and organisations is now determined by the capacity to effectively marshall knowledge and wisdom. In the 1990s, when a talented employee left an organisation, the information stayed behind on the organisation's computers, but the knowledge and wisdom walked out the door with the employee. Therefore as workforce turnover increased and short term contracts increased, organisations in the 1990s increasingly lacked a capacity to retain high quality organisational memory. This fact has led to the creation of markets for KT and WT. KT and WT have also revolutionalised learning. The Expert systems of 10 years ago represented the first generation of KT and WT. Data plus purpose is information. Information plus culture is knowledge. Knowledge plus experience is wisdom.

Now hardware and software are being designed by cognitive scientists, artists, philosophers and people drawn from a diverse range of backgrounds, as well as engineers . Mindware, KT and WT, together with the development of virtual reality technology to create new modes of experiential learning, is now the basis of a new generation of Learning Technologies.

Industries which create sustainable modes of development, production and consumption.

The journey towards creating a Sustainable Society on the Planet, which is needed for a Spaceship Culture, is now well under way. The realisation of a sustainable future requires that new Green Ways and Green ware s be produced for all of these new industries A number of new industries were created over the last decade or so to help its realisation. These include :

The Earth Repair Industry which restores and rehabilitates degraded, polluted or even totally obliterated ecosystems such as rainforests, coral reefs and rangelands, and their soil, water and biotic components when they have been degraded by development such as mining or by over-exploitation. It also rehabilitates degraded and contaminated urban areas, and polluted lakes and rivers, seas and airsheds.

The Environmental Survey Industry assesses, monitors and audits ecosystems.This industry works from the macro level (such as from space through the use of remote sensing), through to micro and nano levels (eg surveying contamination at molecular levels) The industry provides instant and detailed information and management knowledge relating to forests, fisheries, wildlife and other biota, and the management of atmosphere, seas and fresh water resources, and soil and land.

The Resource Renewal Industry which is dedicated to working towards the complete elimination of waste. In nature there is no waste. One species' waste is another's food. This industry facilitates the reduction in use, and the reuse and recycling of resources and the management of wastes. It seeks to turn all waste into food.

The Sustainable Energy Industry researches, develops and markets those energy products, services and technologies which are based on the utilisation of renewable resources, and continuously improves energy conservation and efficiency. Its aim is that, by about the year 2020 all major processes will be able to operate within the energy limits posed by solar income. It also aims to steadily increase the proportion of energy drawn from renewable resources and conserve energy use.

The Sustainable Communities and Cities Industry involves the design of sustainable communities including the evaluation of the basic health and well being needs of people living in urban areas. A guiding science for this industry is human ecology. This integrates the work of the architectural, building, industrial design and planning professions in the design and construction of sustainable schools, shopping centres, transport systems, homes and the like.

The Clean/Green Food Industry produces and processes food ,from both dry land and irrigation agriculture. Clean means that food is uncontaminated by toxic substances pesticides or radioactive materials , while green means that it produced in ecologically sustainable ways. The industry utilises mineral fertilisers and natural soil nutrient cycles (biodynamic or organic production modes), and reuses and recycles waste products such as garbage and sewerage. It efficiently uses, reuses and restores water. It also emphasises the use of sustainable processes in the production, processing, transport, storage and consumption of food.

Industries which promote intercultural harmony and personal wellbeing

The combined forces of globalisation and tribalisation, mean that the worlds's cultures are increasingly becoming both interlinked and interdependent, while at the same time they are celebrating their tribal differences and needing to coexist peacefully. To achieve an ultimate spaceship culture, the world of the 21st century needs ways of achieving individual wellbeing with a minimisation of stressful living, intercultural harmony through increasing intercultural knowledge and understanding, and ways to peacefully resolve conflict.

The Intercultural Comfort Industry helps us to trade across an increasingly culturally diverse world . It devises products and services including language, art and culture exchange, education and learning, and sport to make cultures more comfortable with each other and respectful of differences. It also involves the cultural customisation of products and services such as food. Australian food exports are not culturally customised for a large number of different cultures. The innovation needed for intercultural comfort and the related intercultural cusomisation of products and services such as food can be called Intercultural ways and Intercultural Ware.

The Mediation/conflict resolution Industry operates in areas of conflict between nations and tribes down to conflicts in workplaces and families. As many conflicts are due to religious differences, religious organisations have become heavily involved in this field. The innovations needed by this industry are Mediation Ways and mediation Ware.

The Wellbeing Industry facilitates the creation of health rather than the treatment of illness and the development of inner journeys. This is achieved by a multicultural integration of a wide variety of approaches to promote wellbeing. These include mineral spring resorts, the utilisation of Yoga, Meditation T'ai Chi Chuan, Tae Kwon Do, Counselling and many other systems of human renewal and development, and various forms of recreation and enjoyment centres such as surfing, bushwalking golf and equestrian sports. It integrates western medicine with alternative approaches such as Ayuvedya, Shiatsu, Acupuncture, Chinese Traditional Medicine, indigenous medicine and a wide number of cultural approaches to healing and the creation of Wellbeing. The aim of the Wellbeing industry is to empower people to effectively create their own personal wellbeing, to deal with drugs and to generally deal with distress and stress which are often a causal agent of conflict .This involves the innovation of Wellbeing Ways and Wellbeing Ware.

The Security Industry in the 1990s began to replaced the old Defence Industry . The concept of Defence was based on the concept that our enemies lived in other territories and would seek to conquer us by force. This was a piece of the old cowboy culture. In the emerging spaceship culture of today we recognised that the enemy is likely to be somebody with evil intent who lives amongst us; those who blow up buildings in terrorist raids and place poison in subways in Japan. The concept of security involves not only military security, but also security of food production, security from environmental hazards and catastrophe, and security from the espionage of intellectual property. The cowboy form of response to a threat is the Grozny solution, destroying a whole city and killing many innocent people to punish a few evil Chechens. The Spaceship security response is the smart bomb, which aims to destroy the evil people but not wreck the whole town , or the neutron bomb which destroy a people but does not wreck the spaceship itself. The industry involves the assessment of, and planning for, risk. The innovations required for a more secure furture are Security Ways and Security Ware.

The Home Services Industry allows financially poor, time-rich people to provide services to financially rich, time-poor people. Like land, time is something we cannot make more of. Therefore busy (and well off) people, improve their own wellbeing by buying more home services from others and are therefore able to spend more time with their loved ones. They are able to make a single phone call to an agent and have a wide variety of home services provided. These include childminding, gardening, home repairs and maintenance, cooking, caring for pets and so on. The agent then invoices the client on a monthly basis for the wide variety of services provided.

Two other industries which support these other industries are:

A Smart Components or Smart Parts Industry which manufactures intelligent components based on a synthesis of information, advanced materials and micro- and nano-technologies. This industry provides components for a wide variety of industries. As robots are merely combinations of smart components, this has since become the robotics industry.

The Contract Research and Development Industry and the related Professional Services Industry. Australian intellectual resources, including those in universities and in the public sector research laboratories are used to investigate problems - under contract - for corporations and institutions in Australia and in other countries. The Professional Services Industry in Australia provides services to Asian countries and elsewhere, including those of the integrating professions such as engineering, architecture, planning and industrial design, while at the same time assisting their development in Asian countries.

Conclusion

If communities in rural and regional Australia want to build their pathway to thrival in a Planetist future then they must understand the leadership culture, practice the 8Cs and 6Vs, promote the learning and innovation cultures and become committed Planetists . Communities must develop a preferred future vision to determine where they want to go ,after having first looked inside to consider their destiny. The MyFutureFoundation and the MyTown programme has been established to do all of this , and we have strong corporate support to help us achive it. There are immense opportunities for imaginative and enteprising people to acheive success by getting to the future first,by understanding the nature of the Planetist market place and by providing the Ways and Ware to service these markets

When young people ask me about future careers and ask me what they should study at TAFE or University, I tell them to ignore jobs. I ask them to "follow their heart". In the world of learning, do what turns you on, not what you think will generate a job. If the education system helps develop learning innovative Cosmonauts, success in the 21st Century will be assured. This applies for both individuals and communities. The emerging Planetist paradigm is already shaping the world around us. It is up to us to understand these trends and position our individuals and communities for thrival in the 21st century. It is up to those involved in shaping economic and industry policy to understand that there are plenty of jobs available if governments set out to shape Australia's destiny by ensuring that the Planetist future arrives earlier in Australia than elsewhere. This is the challenge for all of us. We can either embrace a Planetist future, grow the jobs which will result from the emergence of Planetism and thrive on the opportunities it generates, or fall back into a society divided between Cowboys and Cosmonauts and succumb to a grim future.

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