SCARCITY-MIND OR ECO-MIND: Where Do They Lead?

By Frances Moore Lappé The Solutions Journal Volume 4 | Issue 2 | May 2013

 

Julie Falk/Flickr

 

Anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology increasingly recognize that human beings are “soft-wired” for profoundly social behavior, says the author. This puts a better world within reach.

 

In Brief Humans see the world through largely unconscious frames that determine what we believe our nature to be and therefore what we believe to be possible. To address our biggest global challenges, we can shed this non-ecological mental map—what the author calls “scarcity-mind”—based in lack and fear. Locked in scarcity-mind, we remain blind to our own power and end up creating together a world that none of us, as individuals, would choose. But humans can actually change how we see, moving from a frame of lack and limits to one of alignment with nature. Based on research in neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology, this article explores a world seen with the emergent “eco-mind” in which possibility is all around us. Thinking like an ecosystem, no one is bereft of power.

 

Key Concepts

• Humans see the world through culturally formed filters that determine what we can and cannot see and what we believe to be possible.
• Based on core assumptions of separateness, stasis, and scarcity, we see ourselves in perpetual competition with other selfish creatures.
• These assumptions drive a political and economic system characterized by concentrated power, a lack of transparency, and a culture of blame.
• Based on assumption of connection, continuous change, and co-creation, we can move away from this toward Living Democracy, which is positively aligned with our nature via the continuous dispersion of power, transparency in human relations, and cultures of mutual accountability.

It’s the GDP-obsessed growth model, many reformers argue, that’s leading us to perdition. They decry the irresponsibility of a relatively few taking more than their share, who are profligate with the earth’s dwindling resources. Certainly this “we’ve hit the limits” framing rings true, for, inarguably, human societies have exceeded the limits of destruction, depletion, and disruption our planet can sustain without massive human and nonhuman loss and suffering.

 

But is there a more effective way of understanding the roots of our predicament?

 

Here’s a possibility.

Click on the link to read the full article: http://thesolutionsjournal.anu.edu.au/node/22191