There’s a lot of talk about hope and change these days. And let’s be honest, things are changing faster than most of us can follow. Alvin Toffler called it future shock — the inability to cope with the pace of change that’s emerged in response to technological and social evolution. Too much information, too much awareness, too fast. Now we’re left with a limp, increasingly undifferentiated mental landscape where the only defense against the flood becomes cheap distraction, frivolous extremes, ruthless consumption, and willful ignorance.



It wasn’t long ago that most people never ventured more than 50 miles from the place where they were born. Small communities and tribal realities were all that existed for most people. Now we are connected to one another through satellite and fiber-optic networks and a global media network that insists on telling us every damn thing that happens anywhere and everywhere. It’s no wonder that we’re all feeling a little overwhelmed. The world is changing fundamentally, and so are we. We’re bringing back the feminine; we’re working together in new ways; we’re giving up on competition and coercion in exchange for mutual benefit; we’re living locally and thinking globally; and we’re reclaiming our bodies and ourselves just as we are reclaiming our place in the world.



There are five million theories and concepts that try to explain the change we’re experiencing. But we have room to explore only five. If you’re not into futurism, feminism, pluralism, humanism, globalism or localism, you best just stop reading now. It’s about to get real thick.

The return of the feminine

The first and perhaps most important emerging theme in our maddeningly morphing world is resurgence of the feminine. We’re not talking Gloria Steinem here. This isn’t laughing at one more comedy superstar getting kicked in the nuts. We’re talking about social, spiritual and cultural frameworks that are actually bringing us closer to one another.



Sociologist and psychologist G. Rattray Taylor claimed that various cultures swing between masculine and feminine forms — matrist and patrist were his terms — and that each has overarching themes and memes. Patrist cultural attitudes include limited freedom for women, inhibition and fear of spontaneity, separation, fear of pleasure, and general dominance by political and religious authority. More feminine or matrist cultures value more permissive attitudes toward sex, freedom for women, democratic political leanings, spontaneity, welcoming of pleasurable pursuits, and progressive and/or revolutionary social values.



If we’re going to be overly simplistic about it, patrist eras are defined by rigid power structures, and matrist eras are defined by collaboration and relative personal freedom. Think the Dark Ages versus the Renaissance.

The end of the zero-sum game

If that’s too abstract, consider the experience of a family of local organizations that gathered in Tacoma recently to provide assistance and to support so-called women in transition — women who have immigrated to the United States, women living in poverty, women facing barriers to education, for example. Seven organizations — Catherine Place, Tacoma Goodwill, Tacoma Urban League, Tacoma Community House, Phoenix Housing Network, Clover Park Technical College, and New Phoebe House — all gathered in a rotating series of circles to exchange ideas, solutions, struggles, and hopes. They called the event We-Can.



Among event organizers and participants was organizational consultant Sherry Helmke, who says the event was indicative of a profound, re-emerging way of living. Instead of sitting at a boardroom table with some designated hierarch at the head, participants gathered in circles. Participants employed emerging theories about leadership that suggest anyone willing to participate can be a leader. Fading are the days when one person, usually a dude, runs the whole show. We are entering an era where co-creation and collaboration are essential, she says.



“Leadership rotates,” says Helmke. “The circular principle is much more about each voice being heard with a central, collective vision. Responsibility is shared. When we’re sitting there, we’re not looking outward to someone else, and (we) know that we have a voice and a role to play in the situation. And we’re very aware of it.”



Operating from that perspective empowered participants, says Helmke. People who may not have felt like they had anything to contribute suddenly found purpose. Removed from the burning eye of some pontiff or company president, everyday people found themselves in leadership positions, sharing responsibility and sharing resources that might not have emerged in a boardroom or a political caucus. One woman who was facing personal financial struggle and needed some essential supplies received a gift from another participant that met her need, no questions asked — something that probably would not happen at your average business junket.

The economy of the gift

This gifting, sharing of resources without explicit demand for anything in return, is another feature of our changing world. The idea of the gift economy is an old one. Native potlatches where everyone brings something to the table and cooperative barn raisings among the Amish are examples of this new way of exchanging goods and services.



In a more modern vein, consider that some of the largest and most profitable companies in the world are now operating from a similar though still profit-based perspective. Semiconductor giants, health care conglomerates, software and technology developers such as IBM and Sun Microsystems, research giants such as Weyerhaeuser, even petrol companies such as Chevron are collaborating with one another to develop products. In some cases they’re even sharing the profits. The free and open-source software movement — hunchbacked computer jockey’s making and distributing free versions of popular software programs — is another great example of the emerging gift economy. Harvard Law School Professor Yochai Benkler calls it commons-based peer production. He describes a new model of economic production in which large numbers of people coordinate and pool creative energy to produce large, often profoundly meaningful and useful products. It all happens outside any traditional company structure, creates enormously valuable and useful products — such as the Linux software platform — and often makes no money for the people involved.



“People participate in peer production communities for a wide range of intrinsic and self-interested reasons,” says Benkler is his book, The Wealth of Networks. “Basically, people who participate in peer production communities love it. They feel passionate about their particular area of expertise and revel in creating something new or better.”

Local living

In Tacoma, this concept can be seen in the vast body of volunteer efforts, collaborative projects and community action occurring every day. This kind of free exchange and conviviality works best, and its effectiveness can be seen most clearly on the local level. From local food networks to Farmers Markets to credit unions to the ubiquitous Go Local effort, local living is where many of these emerging principals are finding their greatest expression.



Go Local President Patricia Lecy-Davis characterizes Go Local as a sort of social thread that connects businesses and all of the other business organizations. Go Local, says Lecy-Davis, is about creating connections beyond the framework of monetary exchange. It’s about creating connections between people, businesses and organizations. Those connections and the sharing of resources and ideas become fuel for prosperity. Efforts such as Go Local are blossoming all over the country, creating a sort of critical mass of community action and community elevation.



The “think globally, act locally” bumper sticker has finally begun to manifest.

Efforts such as Go Local create immediate, real and tangible value from interaction between people, collaboration and relationships. Interestingly, programs such as Go Local have been shown to produce profound economic impacts as well. The city of Tacoma founded its Economic Gardening program after seeing the success of similar programs in other cities and offers a small suite of services, such as free market data and mailing lists, to help grow businesses that have already planted themselves within the city. This is a shift from the traditional role of many economic departments, which tend to focus on attracting new businesses to relocate to their area.



Tacoma’s program is based on a model that started nearly 20 years ago in Littleton, Colo., a suburb of Denver. At the time, Littleton was facing massive unemployment and downtown retail vacancies. Littleton’s City Council had expressed displeasure at having the community’s future being dictated by out-of-state corporations and directed staff “to work with local businesses to develop good jobs.” Employment in Littleton increased dramatically — from 15,000 to more than 34,000 jobs between 1990 and 2005. Local sales taxes went from $6 million to $19 million — a 300 percent increase versus 37 percent in nearby Denver. Local businesses reported sales increases in the millions. And city officials hadn’t spent a dime recruiting businesses.

Personal empowerment

Ultimately, that’s what this new machine is all about — bringing everything back into focus for the sake of prosperity — not just monetary prosperity, not just community prosperity, but personal prosperity. On the really, really micro level, in the realm of everyday life, all of these transitions and changes are about reclaiming our health, our selves, and our communities. The final frontier, the real battleground, occurs right here at home. All of this emerging freedom, collaboration, local emphasis, and downsizing — forgive the borrowed term — is finding its most tangible expressions in our individual lives. Fading are the days when people are expected to sacrifice their health and happiness for the sake of some impersonal money-making machine, ideology or authority. Personal freedom, self-expression, and individual empowerment are increasing in conjunction with our growing awareness of our place within the whole. Whether it’s financial freedom, sexual freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, or the freedom to be healthy, happy and alive, we are fine-tuning our own machine, mastering it, and making it our own. We’re wrestling our communities and ourselves back from a world that seems to be growing out of control, a world that seems too big and complex for us to handle. We are coming back to life so the world we live in can follow.