Korten identifies a trinity that writers can use to change the world

Field's End May 2009 Roundtable presenter Dr. David C. Korten

Before a full house at the Bainbridge Public Library last Tuesday evening, visionary and author Dr. David C. Korten outlined a multi-tiered strategy for writers to follow if they want to change the world through their words.

Korten, who chairs the Positive Futures Network and contributes richly to the local magazine: Yes! Building a Just and Sustainable World, has spent his adult life helping to promote change from the grassroots upward.

This ran counter to early expectations: from his own background, growing up in a family who operated a music store in Longview, Wash., Korten first imagined he would take over the business as a young man. He did not portend his move toward what he described at the Roundtable as “an intellectual activism,” the move that would ultimately define his career path.

Korten has authored several books, including The Great Turning and Agenda for a New Economy, which have each contributed in some way to an expansion of free thinking among the mainstream over the last two decades.

Korten posited that three things need to work in concert with one another for a writer’s words to light a spark that can lead to meaningful change:

1. A big idea. This could be the big question a writer is always returning to in his or her own work.

2. The attachment of that big idea (and the manuscript it evolves into) to a movement. If a writer’s words can advocate for a movement, that writer may be able to find more readers and supporters in the same way that grassroots movements spread and take hold.

3. Access to media. This used to be a problem for writers, but not with the advent of the Internet, new publishing and information technologies, and social networking (Web 2.0, even Web 3.0). Freedom of expression has never been easier to disseminate than it is today.

A fourth element, Korten pointed out, might also be a combination of good luck and timing.

Korten also drove home the point that activism is only one part of the larger conversation about change. Even as he confirmed himself an activist, he was quick to point out that ”Resistance alone is futile.”

“Human beings need story,” he maintained, suggesting that despite this, the stories that human societies already share, our “cultural myths,” are often what prevent us from reaching our potential. When looking more closely at our shared cultural mythologies, Korten said he discovered that, in truth, “our cultural story doesn’t offer any good reason for why the human species should survive.”

Based on this understanding, he asserted that it is up to writers and artists to help change the frameworks of those cultural stories in order to invite movement beyond marching and sit-ins and sign-carrying. Various diverse modes of expression can lead to an amplification of a resistance movement beyond its grassroots beginnings, he said.

Korten also pointed out that, once new truths found their way out to the masses through small pockets of activism and grassroots organizing, it didn’t take long for them to spread and be embraced by the mainstream. These messages, once unified in the public sector, almost certainly demanded a kind of social mobilization, he asserted.

But writers have their work cut out for them. “How do we change the whole frame” of our cultural stories? he asked, suggesting that writers turn to the grassroots with their big ideas as a testing ground for challenging large-scale models.

For his part, writing has always evolved around answering the question, “Why are human societies failing?”*  From his perspective, this is not a dreary conversation. In fact, Korten has turned the dialog in a more proactive direction by framing his answers in positive solutions, perspectives, and stories, working toward what he and his cohorts have called “The State of the Possible.”

This, perhaps, is the destination that all writers interested in change-making should consider as they research and compose in order to answer their own big questions.

Links:
David Korten
Postitive Futures Network
Yes! Magazine
Agenda for a New Economy
The Great Turning
“The State of the Possible”

*This actually worked in the reverse for his most recent book, Agenda for a New Economy; he was led by the answer first to develop the manuscript, which was composed, produced, published and released almost instantly in the late fall of 2008

Kathleen Alcala brings Seattle Noir to Bainbridge Island

Kathleen Alcala joins Curt Colbert and Brian Thornton to discuss SEATTLE NOIR

Island author Kathleen Alcala, who recently examined nonfiction Page Ones and taught a discussion on the writer as witness at the 4th annual Field’s End Writers’ Conference, will read her work from a new anthology, Seattle Noir, at Eagle Harbor Books on Bainbridge Island on Thursday, May 28 at 7:30pm.

From the Eagle Harbor Books website: “This evening we celebrate short fiction from the seamy underside of Seattle. Join contributor and renowned Bainbridge author Kathleen Alcala and anthology editor Curt Colbert—himself the author of a series of hard-boiled private detective novels set in ’40s Seattle—… for glimpses of crime in Seattle from its days as a hardscrabble seaport to its present incarnation as the cosmopolitan home of Microsoft and Starbucks. Alcala will read from her selection, which involves a soldier back from Iraq caught up in a swirl of events in Seattle’s Central District.”

Remember, Eagle Harbor Books is the excellent independent bookshop on the island which has long supported Field’s End’s various efforts to enrich and unify the local and regional writing communities. They are the official bookseller for the writer’s conference and 20% of proceeds from book sales at that event benefit Field’s End.

You won’t want to miss out on this event!
More info • Directions to Eagle Harbor Books

David Korten asks, How Can A Writer Change the World? and Fran Korten chats with the Dalai Lama

David Korten presents “How Can A Writer Change the World?” for the Field’s End Writers’ Roundtable for May 2009.

The Roundtable begins at 7pm Tuesday May 19 at the Bainbridge Public Library.

David Korten

David Korten is the author of The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. His previous books include the international bestseller, When Corporations Rule the World, and The Post-Corporate World: Life after Capitalism. Korten is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! A Journal of Positive Futures. He is founder and president of the People-Centered Development Forum, a board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and a member of the Social Ventures Network. He holds an MBA and Ph.D. from Stanford Business School and has thirty years’ experience as a development professional in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He is known internationally as a visionary proponent of a planetary system of local living economies based on the organizing principles of healthy ecosystems and properly regulated market economies.

In related news, Fran Korten, also of the Positive Futures Network, will present Dalai Lama Renaissance: A Documentary by Khashyar Darvich at the Lynwood Theater on Sunday, May 17 at 7pm. All seats are $9.

The film is narrated by Harrison Ford. Fran Korten will host a post-film Q & A,  and freshly minted DVDs of the film will be available in the lobby.

RE: There is no success without great volunteers

Students absorb the lessons of one workshop of many at the Field's End Writers' Conference. Photo by Sue Hylen.

The Fourth Annual Field’s End Writers’ Conference brought writers from all over Washington state and beyond for practical lessons, inspiration, and community last April 18.

The 10-hour event 

rolled through the daily smoothly and without any major hitches. Even the weather cooperated!

Many attendees to the conference remarked later about the successful organizing of the gathering, which not only offered 4 full sessions of workshops, but two speakers, three meals, two panel discussions, an end-of-conference reading, and new programming, such as a collage workshop, freewrite session,  and moderated open mic.

Such gatherings do not happen successfully without the work of a lot of people. The Field’s End core team was responsible for the actual organizing of the “content” of the conference. A devoted crew of more than two dozen volunteers helped to keep logistics moving smoothly behind the scenes. The Kiana staff performed its usual high quality service while being nearly invisible throughout the day. Sue Hylen chronicled the day with terrific photos, and Brett Ness made sure the AV equipment worked effectively across four rooms.

This conference would not have moved so easily from one session to the next were it not for the hard and capable work of all of these people, who deserve kudos for putting the word “community” to life with their efforts.