This article originally appeared in the World Business Academy’s monthly publication Currents in Commerce. Join our mailing list to receive Currents in your inbox.
Love, Fear and the Destiny of Nations: The Impact of the Evolution of Human Consciousness on World Affairs (Vol. 1, 2012), by Academy Fellow Richard Barrett, is a wide-ranging and profound book that provides valuable insight into the process of cultural transformation.
Richard states that we must shift from development as economic growth because we are pushing against “the carrying capacity of the Earth and its biosphere.” Shifting to development as the evolution of human consciousness is the only way we can create the mindset and the social structures that are necessary to solve our most pressing global challenges.
Richard explains why development as democracy is insufficient. He also explains why development as human well-being, and development as happiness are “promising approaches, but either do not get to the real motivations of human development, or are largely ineffective in identifying and managing societal change.” The real motivations for human development are “the needs that people are trying to satisfy, and the values they are seeking to experience in their lives.”
In Part 1 of the book, Richard describes patterns and universal stages of evolution and shows how they relate to individual human development and societal evolution. He shows how his Cultural Values Assessment instrument can be used to map the values of nations and their level of cultural alignment and cultural entropy.
In Part 2, “The Pathway to Full Democracy,” he describes the values journey necessary for humanity to move along the democracy continuum “to a full-blown, high-trust liberal democracy.” Members of the many democracies in the world that are struggling with governance problems will find this section particularly interesting.
In Part 3, Richard examines the cultural values that a nation needs “to achieve the third stage of human evolution—cooperate with other like-minded nations to form a higher-order entity, first at the regional level, and then at a global level.”
We look forward to his upcoming Volume 2, which will document his team’s experience in supporting local partners’ work to transform nations’ cultures.
Richard is the Chairman and Founder of the Barrett Values Centre and the creator of the internationally acclaimed Cultural Transformation Tools® which he has already used to support the transformational journeys of thousands of organizations and leaders in more than 50 countries.
