Center for Land Based Learning, Winters, California
October 14, 2008
On behalf of Roots of Change, its staff, funders, and Stewardship Council, I want to welcome you all, the second annual class of Roots of Change Fellows. We are excited and enthused by you and we are focused on providing you an environment and experience that will enrich your lives and your work and the future of California. We appreciate your commitment to the food system and to this Fellowship. I know you all signed a contract and to me that says a great deal about your commitment.
You are in important investment in the Roots of Change world. We see you as people with a future, people integral to the needs of the State as it pertains to food and community. We believe in you based on your demonstrated abilities, your expertise and focus. We believe in you because you are diverse in perspective, culture, age, and geography. We are investing in you because we feel that you are a key to the State’s future food security, health, and wealth. We want you on our team and we want to be on your team. Most of all, we want to form a very big team that will ensure a sustainable food system by the year 2030.
We think that Roots of Change could be an ally in your work. It is not just about us providing money, because we think our ability to attract money depends on our ability to unify an army of people in the State committed to the concept of a new mainstream in food, farms and fisheries. Roots of Change by itself cannot raise sufficient money to transform the food system by 2030. It is not possible and in my view it is inadvisable. It would create just another power imbalance, a top down approach.
Rather, we believe our purpose is much more about providing several forms of facilitation or support for the work you are doing in your specific areas of practice. We can provide space to dialog, plan and implement. We can provide tools, technologies, and practices that increase your productivity, your influence and power to succeed. We can help identify and then advocate for funds. We can make grants, contracts, and fellowships. All of these possibilities require your participation.
We know that most, if not all of you, like us at Roots of Change, are constrained in your freedom to act by time, treasure, tools and talents. Based on this understanding of normal limits, there is a method in our madness in convening you all. We bring you all together for 9 days between August and December for a real reason. But, before I get to that specific goal or purpose for the Fellowship, I want to speak about the moment in which we find ourselves. I want to speak about my deep beliefs about the realities we face, the challenges, and some approaches I feel will afford solutions over time.
Who among us remembers a time in their lives more dramatic economically, ecologically, militarily, and politically than this moment right now. I would posit that there were times when one or two of these spheres were dramatic simultaneously, but not all four. I want to read a passage from a very interesting book, which I hope many of you will feel moved to read. It is entitled, The Fourth Turning: what the cycles of history tell us about America’s next rendezvous with destiny.
The book is by two authors, William Strauss and Neil Howe. Strauss is a political commentator and Howe is an historian and economist. They write about historical cycles and generational archetypes or typologies. They describe a four-phased cycle of history. They call each cycle a “turning.” The first turning is called the “high” because it is when maximum unity and national purpose reign. We believe in our leaders, our way of life, and there is broad acceptance of a clear set of values. The “high” is followed by the “awakening,” wherein the dominant values, spiritual and social conventions are challenged. These challenges plant seeds of a new national identity. The “awakening” is followed by the “unraveling,” in which the questions raised during the “awakening” divide the nation and lead to maximum disunity, to polarization. During the “unraveling” our people struggle over the nation’s values and purpose. This erosion of national cohesion leads to the fourth turning, which Strauss and Howe call a “crisis.” Each turning lasts roughly 20 to 25 years, the whole cycle 80 to 100 years. The first set of 4 turnings began with the American Revolution, the Second with the end of the Civil War. The third, ended with the US entry into World War II.
Strauss and Howe draw upon the work of many historians: Arthur Schlesinger Sr. and Jr., Walter Dean Burnham, Paul Allen Beck, Samual Huntington, Frank L. Klinberg, George Modelski, Kevin Phillips, and many others. If you are into history, it is a fascinating and convincing read. Let me quote a very powerful, even astonishing passage that begins on page six. By the way, this book, written in 1996 and 97, was published in 1998.
"History is seasonal and winter is coming….A fourth turning [crisis] can be long and difficult, brief but severe, or (perhaps) mild. But like winter it cannot be averted. Here in summary is what the rhythms of modern history warn about America’s future.
…Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire. Yet this time of trouble will bring seeds of social rebirth. Americans will share a regret about recent mistakes—and a resolute new consensus about what to do. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.
The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort, in other words, a total war….
Yet America will also enter the Fourth Turning with a unique opportunity to achieve a new greatness as a people….As the old civic order gives way, Americans will have to craft a new one. This will require a values consensus and, to administer it, the empowerment of a strong new political regime. If all goes well, there could be, a renaissance of civic trust, and more….Americans could enter a new golden age, triumphantly applying shared values to improve the human condition….America’s post crisis answers will be as organically interconnected as today’s pre-crisis questions seem hopelessly tangled. The rhythms of history do not reveal the outcome of the coming crisis; all they suggest is the timing and dimension."
Does that feel familiar to you? It does to me. Some may think it over the top, unlikely. But just three weeks ago, no one felt that three of the nation’s five largest investment banks would collapse in a week or that the market would drop nearly 780 points in one day, wiping out $4 trillion in wealth. Two years ago few of us imagined $145 dollar-a-barrel crude oil or $4-per-gallon gasoline. Four years ago no one would have predicted that our president’s approval rating would be down to 23%. Six years ago, a minority of people cared about global climate change, fewer still believed it was real and upon us. Eight years ago, only a small handful of people believed a loose terrorist network could bring down the twin towers and spark two wars. We are living in a dramatic moment in our nation’s history.
What does all this have to do with us here in this room?
Good leadership requires clear perception of reality. One reason Ronald Reagan was so popular is that his stated perceptions about the Soviet Union were widely accepted and there was little contradictory evidence. In contrast, the current President’s stated perceptions of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the situation in New Orleans, and now the economy have proven to be inaccurate to a majority of Americans. Effective leaders do not allow themselves to be judged by their followers as living in illusion. They use their clear perception to chart a course through the challenges. As long as people trust a leader’s perceptions, they tend to follow.
The leaders that spawned Roots of Change have been focused on the realities of the food system for over a decade. They have identified the challenges and are seeking to rally support to overcome those challenges prior to a shocking crisis in the system. Roots of Change has a view that the system is ill and in need of reform. I personally believe, we are in a pre-crisis phase of the food system, about where the economy was in 2002-03, when the reality beneath the 2001 Enron collapse became clear to everyone. A food system crisis could start from a protracted California draught, a devastating disease in livestock that effects humans, or in a blight in core commodity like corn, an oil price shock that forces food prices to untenable levels and shortages become worldwide, or more likely it would be a combination of these all at once.
Regardless of whether I am right or wrong, I would bet that we in this room could agree that today the food system works well for two few people. Too few people think deeply or care sufficiently about the food system. Too many producers, communities, and businesses are suffering due to weaknesses in the system. Too many resources are used and too many ecosystems are degrading at rate faster than nature’s own regenerative process. There are too many outbreaks of e-coli or other tainted food. We have had seven major scares in the last 12 months. Too many farmworkers and rural communities suffer unacceptable levels of poverty.
I am not saying this is true of all elements within the food system. There are many positive and emerging examples of people, companies, and communities doing it well. They are fixing their pieces of the whole. But, if what I am saying were untrue, there would be less media coverage, less lawsuits, less poverty, less pollution, less obesity, less public debate, and many more healthy companies because the system would be working better for more people. So, in short, I would submit, that we could describe the current food system as ill and need of adjustment, improvement, or reform. Please pick your own word, one that fits your perception of the need for change.
The Leadership of Roots of Change believes you are the antidote to the system’s ills. You have the knowledge, the relationships, and the capacities to heal the system. You can do it by linking with one another in a larger more dynamic network that shares information, resources, skills, specific goals, and projects that return a healthy equilibrium, a sustainable balance to the system.
We trust you can do this because we have worked with others in many counties and in Sacramento who are working in a similar way, but with less intensive support on the part of Roots of Change.
In short, we want you to become the vital core, the most active part of a Changemakers Network that we hope will be 40,000 strong by January 2012.
So before ending, let me lay out a vision for success that I hold for the 2008 Fellows. I encourage all of you to conjure up your own and to share it with others as I am doing. I would bet that your skilled facilitators, Joseph McIntyre and Eric Peng, will provide moments and exercises appropriate to such sharing. I say this because I have faith that a synthesis of these 25 to 30 visions will be much more powerful than my own, or any single vision. Reality is very complex in this day and age and I increasingly believe that collective perception, vision, and decision making is required to deal with the complexity we face. But working collectively is hard. We all have much to learn about it. This Fellowship is one path to more knowledge about how to lead powerful organizational collaborations.
So success would have two elements. First, the assigned task of forming four action groups to tackle major levers of change in the system, which emerged from the work of the 2007 Fellows, would be acceptable and exciting for you all. I am hopeful that you take to it with enthusiasm, gusto and creativity and that you bond in the process of sharing and struggling for common values that will allow unified actions.
Second, I am envisioning that ongoing projects will emerge and thereby demonstrate the accuracy of Roots of Change hypothesis, which says that the currently rather dispirit elements of the system can accelerate the rate of transformation by converging their energies.
I believe if you do this, we can be most effective in attracting foundation, government, business, and individual investment in your work. But this unity requires that we all soften or boundaries and beliefs and biases so that a new, more powerful alignment occurs.
In essence, I see you all as going through a process described by Strauss and Howe in the Fourth Turning, but going through that gate of history, as they call it, ahead of the rest of the nation. You are the pioneers, the prophets of the next manifestation of the American dream. You can forge the action that in time could become mythology. I mean this.
And this where I will get a bit biblical with you. Regardless of my personal beliefs, I am a student of history. And what I say now emerges from decades of personal study and reflection.
Early Christian history has been of particular interest because the emergence of Christianity was a moment of huge shift in human consciousness, a paradigm shift if you will. When I read the old and new testaments, I see reflections of values, but more importantly, realities related to human evolution in consciousness.
I have two reflections to share from my read of history and the founding myths of Judeo-Christian culture. The first relates to the old Testament story about the fall from the Garden of Eden. The basic action in that story is that humanity leaves the garden. I interpret this to mean that we came to conceive ourselves as separate from nature. I would say that today in the world, we have evidence to support the reality of this belief that we are separate. Most people in the world are out of touch with the fact that food production is the human activity that puts our species in most contact with the natural world. It is the place of greatest mutual vulnerability between Mother Nature and humans. If we produce food in the wrong way we destroy her. If we do it the right way, we act as stewards, we husband the resources, become the midwives of evolution.
I believe that a new myth of biblical proportion, if it is to emerge, will be the one that describes how humanity reentered the garden, but with the knowledge gained from millennia of experience away, outside the garden, which has allowed us to gain essential perspective on how the garden works. Sometimes, we must leave home to actually see home.
The second reflection is that early Christians used the meal to teach principles of their new religion. In fact, most religions have meal-based systems for communicating meaning and belief. The Sadder dinner of the Jews captures the entire history and ethos of the Jewish people. Early Christians broke out of the biases of their age through the sharing of food with those who were deemed as unclean or untouchable, and by attaching meaning to food. The eating, in the form of the Last Supper, became a means to help people ingest and internalize Christian principles, the teachings of Jesus, as they saw them.
I feel that we are in a similar moment in history, when a shift in consciousness is evident. It is a moment in which we will again use the meal to teach the lessons required by the context in which we find ourselves. The lessons will revolve around reality-based economics that are rooted in place not paper. The lessons will pertain to community and human health, stewardship of the land and resources, justice and fair play for all in the system. The meal becomes the manifestation of our reentry into the Garden.
All of these lessons are required from our culture if it is to make it through the gate of history we all stand before. And I am confident that you will help to tell that story, in part, as a result of your work within this Fellowship this year and beyond. This is, by the way, only the beginning of the Fellowship. It will continue for as long as you remain committed to the values, principles, and goals that form the core of our work together.
Thank you for being here and exploring the possibilities available to us all.
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