Based on concepts from ELEVEN by Paul Hanley, business can be seen as both an active and passive participant in a world at risk due to consumerism and its consequences, and economic planning based on an ethos of never-ending growth. In his book ELEVEN, Paul Hanley uses multiple sources to present a clear and logical description of the genesis of the current paradigm and where it is inexorably leading. Science informs us that the current economic order is unsustainable. With the world population projected to rise another 50% to 11 billion by 2100, current economic and environmental issues will deepen and turn catastrophic. As the notion that there is a spiritual aspect to reality fades into anachronism, the sustainability crisis deepens. The core proposal of the book and the learnshop is that the solution to the seemingly insurmountable and catastrophic issues facing the world today can be found through a comprehensive public education approach that leads to profound ethical-social-ecological transformation. Such a program can be spearheaded by responsible business and their activities in the community —for example, supporting neighbourhood grass roots initiatives. Business can play play an enabling role in this process. It can reorient advertisements that suggest how consumer goods should not define us and symbolise who we are, and instead promote environmental and moral values that result in a sustainable future. Instead of a focus on profits only, business can support communities to transform, and demonstrate by example that “avarice and self-interest (need not) prevail at the expense of the common good.” Ultimately, in order to realistically address world issues, businesses will need to live a new morality, contribute to a reduction in excessive consumption, and renounce the paradigm of continuous economic growth. A sustainable, values-based reality needs to be made visible through education, particularly moral education, starting with children and youth. What new insights or learning do you hope your learnshop will provoke? To investigate the present environmental and economic issues so that our awareness is improved, and that we can clearly explain why a change in paradigm is essential. The learnshop will seek to gain insight and understanding about the issues facing the world and the role of business. Through discussion and sharing of ideas we hope brainstorm what could and should be done to address these issues – both the possible and the desirable. Which values/virtues are present and absent in the current paradigm? How to select a plan of action in the face of confusing messages and “false news.” Which virtues or values, if implemented, have the greatest potential for affecting constructive change? Finally what are the barriers to change that need to be overcome. What are the main themes that can be effectively addressed by the business community and what methods and materials are needed to address them?

1. Is the world order collapsing
under its own weight?
Is business part of the problem,
or part of the solution?

2. Climate
Current Events
Doomsday Scenarios
Creative Alternatives to Issues
Messages from the Universal House of Justice
The Death of Expertise
Strange Sleep
Activists

3. Observe and Sense
Major themes of “Eleven”

4. 7.3
BILLION We need the equivalent
of the annual
renewable biocapacity
of 1.6 Earths to support
present levels of
consumption and
emissions
With 7.3 billion people, we
are already overshooting
Earth’s biocapacity by 60%

5. We have to return to a 1975 footprint
But, we’ve only just begun

6. CO2 350ppm
15% cropland
4,000 km3 pa
35 m tonnes pa
276 Dobson units
2.75 aragonite
10 species/m pa
NINE PLANETARY BOUNDARIES
Source: Rockström et al 2009
11 m tonnes pa

8. The Agropoly. It’s not a family farm anymore.
A handful of corporations
control world food production

9. Lack of consumer consciousness has led to
the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970
(PVPA), Food “Aid” PL-480, and much more

10. Four grain and soya traders –
Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge,
Cargill and Dreyfus – control
around 75 % of the world
market. In 2004, they bought 75
% of the maize harvest, 62 % of
the wheat, and 80 % of the
soya harvest; in many regions
there is only one single trader.
Through joint ventures (e.g.
Cargill with Monsanto, Bunge
with DuPont) the trade
corporations extend their grip
on the value chain to the seed
and pesticide sectors.

12. The words of Paul
Mazur, a leading Wall
Street banker working
for Lehman Brothers in
1927, are cited: "We
must shift America from
a needs- to a desires-
culture. People must
be trained to desire, to
want new things, even
before the old have
been entirely
consumed. [...] Man's
desires must
overshadow his needs."

13. In societies dominated by modern
conditions of production, life is presented
as an immense accumulation of
spectacles. Everything that was directly
lived has receded into a representation.
Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord (1967)
Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves …
as a separate pseudoworld..
The specialization of images of the world evolves
into a world of autonomized [self-governing] images
where even the deceivers are deceived.

14. Definition – Economic Growth
• Increase in the production and consumption
of goods and services (typically expressed in
terms of GDP)
• facilitated by increasing:
–population
–per capita consumption
• Not the same as economic development

15. Perpetual economic growth is
neither possible nor desirable.

16. • The uneconomic nature of growth is promoted by faulty
national accounting. Growth is the current paradigm. The
idea of a steady-state economy is restricted to a radical
minority.
• Growth now makes us poorer, not richer; e.g.
exploding financial debt,
biodiversity loss, and
destruction of natural services, most notably climate
regulation.
• Poverty reduction will require sharing in the present, not the
empty promise of growth in the future. (Economist Herman
Daly)
• Values such as frugality, moderation, and humility— spiritual
values—were abandoned and replaced with a materialist
perspective.

17. 25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Shareoftopdecileinnationalincome
The top decile income share rose from less than 35% of total income in the 1970s to almost 50% in the 2000s-2010s.
Sources and series: see piketty.pse.ens.fr/capital21c.
Figure 8.5. Income inequality in the United States, 1910-2010
Share of top decile in total income (incl. capital
gains)
Excl. capital gains

23. Presensing
Where is
the future
heading?

24. A. Will product creativity, new methodologies to
address issues, CSR, Social Entrepreneurship,
CrowdFunding, or other progressive movements
change the paradigm?
B. Is massive transformation starting at the local level
to organically grow a different paradigm the
solution?
What is the role of business and
EBBF?

25. The real crisis is cultural and psychological, not objective and
scientific
Values
Symbols
Systems
Ideologies

26. • we are learning the fundamental principle that ethics are
everything
• moral principles governing appropriate conduct— that will
determine whether we make the world work for billion
people.
• Reading our current social-ecological reality, it is evident that
we must accelerate the rate of our moral development
• we can become aware of the wider ethical implications of our
behaviour, deepen our ethical understanding, and reinforce
our commitment to live ethically in a world of 11 billion.
Striving for unity is a
virtuous cycle

27. Virtues Project in Guta
ethics/virtues for children, and youth

28. A Six-Step Virtuous Cycle (Hatcher’s change model)
While primarily aimed at the level of individual relationships, the model applies to their role in institutional or community change as well.
• Step 1 - Investigating the Present Reality – increase our awareness of the present condition…what are our
goals? what is being done to achieve them? how am I behaving? Is this part of an entrenched pattern? Do
we really want change?
• Step 2 – Gaining Insight and Understanding – seek explanations, interpretations, and causes…..from
descriptions to theories, what are the most reasonable explanations for why we act the way we do? What
are the assumptions we are working on?
• Step 3 - Envisioning What Could and Should Be – Now we envision the ideal, both the possible and the
desirable, and compare our understanding of the current reality with it….evaluate the current reality, judging
and assessing it in the light of an ideal standard. Which values/ virtues are present and absent in the
current situation?
• Step 4 – Selecting a Plan of Action - From among these various possible ideal configurations we formulate
a plan of action. Which virtue, if implemented, has the greatest potential for affecting constructive change?
• Step 5 - Identifying and Anticipating Barriers to Change – How can I/ we prepare to face and overcome our
own and others resistance?
• Step 6 – Executing the Action, then Evaluating the Reaction – ….may call for a return to Step 1.

29. reality today is predicated on false
premises and business encourages this
paradigm
• avarice & self-interest prevail at the expense of the common good
• income & opportunity are spread unevenly both between nations &
within nations
• consumerism is now the“spectacle” in our lives, falsely representing
reality
• ‘notion that there is a spiritual aspect to reality is now an anachronism
• urbanism and the agropoly
• constant economic growth, a receipt for disaster.
• banking and monetary issues

30. 1. We need to study, and be acquainted with, current conditions
and problems.
2. Business is part of the problem; can it become part of the
solutions.
3. Corruption is fuelled by business. Is consumerism a result of a
business strategy?
4. Economics is failing us.
5. Wealth and poverty extremes will lead to conflict
6. Constant growth, a receipt for disaster.
7. Banking and monetary issues

31. PanarchyModel
Transformation inevitable in any system

32. Respond with diverse adventures in
living
A Major Pulse of
Transformation
Coming

33. From consumers to prosumers

34. SUSTAINBLE URBAN DESIGN
Västra Hamnen, Europe’s first
carbon-neutral neighbourhood.

35. 800 million urban gardeners/farmers

36.
Whole nations are changing
German Energiewende

37.
Everything
that needs to be done
to make an 11-billion world
just and sustainable
is being done
somewhere, successfully, already
Why aren’t they being adopted
universally?

38. Baha’is have been given a
framework to understand reality
which gives us a headstart.
John Hatcher

39. Issues
• Anthropocene, the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment
• Ecological footprint 1.6x
• Ecological, Environmental
• Climate change, natural loss events, species dying
• When human attention is preoccupied by the self-interested acquisition of things and power, the social sphere and ecosphere are
increasingly fragmented
• “A stubborn obstruction, then, stands in the way of meaningful social progress: time and again, avarice and self-interest prevail at the
expense of the common good.”
• “Unconscionable quantities of wealth are being amassed, and the instability this creates is made worse by how income and
opportunity are spread so unevenly both between nations and within nations. But it need not be so.”
• Consumerism (materialism). “If we find an answer to the important questions in life –“who am I,” “what is the purpose of my life” and
“how much is enough,” we may then choose to live a simple life and determine to resist the consumer mentality and the tendency to
buy the latest models when the old ones still function.”
• the Spectacle, Materialism, and its meaninglessness. Our consumer goods come to define us and symbolise who we are, both to
ourselves and to the world. Consumerism is the new “opiate of the people.”
• With the rise and apparent success of materialism, the notion that there is a spiritual aspect to reality fades into anachronism.
• Urbanisation, rural culture being replaced by global agribusiness
• extent of economic control by the super rich was quantified by a group of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology who undertook a comprehensive study of ownership patterns in the global economy. classic conspiracy theory, or simply
fact?
• slide from capital in 21st century

40. Ideas
• The outer world reflects our inner world
• Collective focused human attention is needed
• Role of business to effect transformation
• Ethical revolution
• Reconstructing civilisation
• Transforming food, agroecology. “The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, it is
the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” (Masanobu Fukuoka)
• Cultural transformation through education
• the transformation to a post-growth, post-consumer society is not a project to be achieved by
means of economic policy and technology so much as changing our mental infrastructure
• merely transferring knowledge— no matter how progressive and attractive that knowledge
may be— is not an effective means of helping people or communities transform
• children, youth, young adults ———————> pensioners

41. 20%
25%
15%
35%
25%
30%
40%
30%18%
30%45%
including: the next 9%
("well-to-do class")
Table 7.3. Inequality of total income (labor and capital) across time and space
25%
Very high
inequality
(≈ U.S. 2030 ?)
Medium
inequality
(≈ Europe 2010)
Low inequality
(≈ Scandinavia, 1970s-
80s)
7% 25%
Share of different groups
in total income (labor + capital)
High inequality
(≈ U.S. 2010, Europe
1910)
60%35%
The top 10%
"Upper class"
50%
10%
including: the top 1%
("dominant class")
The middle 40%
"Middle class"
20%
0.49
In societies where the inequality of total income is relatively low (such as Scandinavian countries during the 1970s-1980s), the 10% highest incomes receive
about 20% of total income, the 50% lowest income receive about 30%. The corresponding Gini coefficient is equal to 0.26. See technical appendix.
0.26 0.36 0.58
Corresponding Gini coefficient
(synthetic inequality index)
25%
The bottom 50%
"Lower class"

42. including: the top 1%
("dominant class")
including: the next 9% ("well-
to-do class")
30%
Share of different groups
in total capital
20%
The top 10%
"Upper class"
Medium-
high
inequality
(≈ Europe 2010)
60%
35%
5%
Medium
inequality
(≈ Scandinavia,
1970s-1980s)
50%
20%
30%
Table 7.2. Inequality of capital ownership across time and space
35%
Very high
inequality
(≈ Europe 1910)
High
inequality
(≈ U.S. 2010)
Low
inequality
(never observed;
ideal society?)
10%
40%
25%
90%70%
50%
45% 40%
10% 5%
5%25%
35%
5%
35%
The middle 40%
"Middle class"
The bottom 50%
"Lower class"
25%
In societies with "medium" inequality of capital ownership (such as Scandinavian countries in the 1970s-1980s), the top 10% richest in wealth own about 50%
of aggregate wealth, the bottom 50% poorest about 10%, and the middle 40% about 40%. The corresponding Gini coefficient is equal to 0.58. See technical
appendix.
0.33 0.73 0.85
Corresponding Gini coefficient
(synthetic inequality index)
0.58 0.67

45. • Better Not Bigger (http://www.steadystate.org/wp-content/uploads/Better_Not_Bigger.ppt). Makes
the case for a steady state economy that strives to be better rather than bigger.
• What is a Steady State Economy? Why do we need one? How do we achieve it? (http://
www.steadystate.org/wp-content/uploads/SSE_GeneralPresentation2011.ppt). Describes why
perpetual economic growth is neither possible nor desirable, describes a positive alternative to
economic growth (i.e. a steady state economy), and discusses the policies that would be needed
to achieve such an economy.
• Changing the Paradigm: The Transition from Uneconomic Growth to Sustainability (http://
www.steadystate.org/wp-content/uploads/ChangingTheParadigm.ppt). Calls for a new economic
paradigm and provides the theoretical basis and empirical evidence in support of it.
• GDP and Quality of Life: Measuring What We Care About (http://www.steadystate.org/wp-content/
uploads/GDP_and_Quality_of_Life.ppt). Critiques GDP as a measure of progress, reviews
alternative measures and initiatives to supplement GDP, describes barriers to overhauling national
accounts, and outlines a path forward.
• The Fundamental Conflict Between Economic Growth and Wildlife Conservation, Including
Considerations of Technological Progress Gives basic arguments for the limits to growth, especially
with regard to conservation of wildlife and ecosystems (http://www.steadystate.org/wp-content/
uploads/Economic_Growth_for_Wildlife_Biologists.ppt)
Powerpoints STEADYSTATE.ORG

46. • The consumer society is a
product of an economic model
that requires continuous growth;
• the consumer economy based
on an ethos of never-ending
growth;
• it has become our false god.