Spring comes, the earth warms, and the multi-foliate greens of fresh buds emerge from branches, stems and soil. People venture freely from the confines of their dwellings and shelters, shed unnecessary clothes, and embrace the outdoors with an optimism and trust that should be remembered throughout the rainy and cold seasons. In this time of opening and promise, as our planet tips itself to the welcoming warmth of the sun, we come closest to realizing our intimate bond with nature.

This memory lives in the spring rituals of tilling and planting, of celebrating and feasting, of travelling and adventuring. May Day, hidden beneath another misnomer called Queen Victoria’s birthday, is actually the modern incarnation of an ancient festival of rebirth and renewal, the traditional honouring of the fertility and revival that occurs every spring. People gather together in open places to parade, make music, dance and — in some remnant places — to dance around the Maypole.

Anthropologists note the symbolic significance of this event. The phallic pole is decorated with coloured ribbons as young children — pubescent girls in ancient history because they are the most vivid symbols of regeneration — skip and wind the ribbons in complex patterns around this erect pole. The intricate lacing and unlacing of the dance represents the biological urge of life inventing, spending and then repeatedly reinventing itself as the male and female energies of egg and sperm, of stigma and stamen, of flower and pollen, replicate themselves to perpetuate life. It’s a time of hope and a definition of our essential selves as participants in the endless rhythms of nature.

We, of course, are intimate partners in the living fabric of the most unique place in the universe. This is a role we have played relatively well for most of our history as a species, the proof of which is simply our survival, adaptation and refinement for more than a million years. Indeed, we have played this role remarkably well. Seven billion of us now occupy the planet, imposing ourselves in every possible piece of its geography, wielding such influence that we are now altering geographies, ecologies and even weather and climate. The effect of our success is currently so great that we are naming this epoch in Earth’s history after ourselves — the Anthropocene, a term that reflects both our power and our responsibility.

As children dance around the Maypole, enacting a primeval ritual and reaffirming our bond to nature and its imperatives, we photograph them with digital cameras, amplify the music with the magic of electricity, and dress in miracle fabrics made by the alchemy of technology. When we choose to travel, we can fly faster, higher and farther than birds, or we can speed along highways more swiftly than cheetahs. Within the confines of dwellings, our ingenuity can turn night into day and winter into summer. The foods of our feasts commonly come from distant corners of the world, brought by vessels that seem to defy the limitations of distance and time.

And yet, the common grass, so fresh and green beneath the feet of the dancing children, is essential to our sense of belonging and meaning. So, too, are the surrounding trees, the nearby ocean, the flowing river, the billowing clouds, the blue sky, the company of distant mountains and the companionship of animals, birds and insects — all are crucial ingredients in the richness we call the marvel of life.
Would our sanity survive if these natural things did not accompany us on our journey from the light of birth to the darkness of death? Could we live fully and contentedly within the mechanical shapes of cities, only wandering within the squares and angles of our buildings, always walking on the hard streets of asphalt and concrete? Just as an imprisoned animal confined to a cage, we would suffocate little-by-little even though we continued to breathe. We should not be surprised, therefore, to discover that we learn better, heal faster and relax more in the company of nature. Or that we protect ourselves from our own destructive inclinations by preserving nature in gardens, greenbelts and parks.

So something sacred pulses in the bodies of the dancing children as their ribbons wind and unwind around the Maypole, as their feet so playfully touch, leave and then return to the living soil. This is the contact that always was and always must be if we are to retain our sanity and our civilizations. We cannot escape the home of our origin and our destiny. The dancing, the parade, the music, the spring festivities — whatever they may be — all affirm that the familiar and unfamiliar members of the community are gathered together as more than neighbours, as more than citizens, as more than shoppers and consumers in the cold machinery of commerce.

The Maypole is an earthy and hopeful reminder that we belong to a more lasting and profound heritage than our tragic wars and our tangled squabbling over economics, finance, philosophy and religion. We all share the same fragile planet, each of us participating in the intricate steps of its timeless and sacred dance.

The Hunger Games have arrived, a storm of popularity that is selling millions of books and filling movie theatres. Suzanne Collins’ dystopian story is about North America in ruin after an unspecified cataclysm leaves the rich in absolute power and the poor as their slaves. The story has a credibility because it extrapolates from the present, with the roots of its chaos, poverty, injustice, savagery and heroism firmly anchored in today’s economic, political, social and environmental conditions.

Granted, The Hunger Games is a story written for young adults by an adult. Literary critics correctly note that it ingeniously possesses all the formulaic attributes that appeal to youthful minds in the turmoil of full adolescence rebellion against the wisdom of adults. But its success is something more than marketing cleverness. Adults have also taken an interest in the story because it fits the multigenerational cynicism of our times and is wholly compatible with the deep uncertainty that haunts the promise of a safe, secure and prosperous future.

If The Hunger Games were an anomaly, if it stood alone as a one-of-a-kind dystopia, it could possibly be dismissed as a culturally meaningless entertainment. But it is part of a trend that has obsessively occupied 20th century literature and thought. Therefore, it is significant.

The 20th century did not begin well. The dysfunctional values of the 19th century stumbled into the disaster of World War I. Then came the financial recklessness that caused the Great Depression of 1929. World War II followed, then the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the protracted Cold War with its tense threat of global nuclear annihilation. While hundreds of loaded intercontinental ballistic missiles still sit poised for firing, we are welcomed into the 21st century with enough serious environmental stresses — population, pollution and pillaging — to shake the confidence of any civilization.

The psychological and philosophical impact of all these stresses can be tracked by culture. War poets, playwrights, writers, painters and musicians have tried to understand the wholesale inhumanity unleashed by the mass tribalism of war. The Dada movement of 1916 simply abandoned understanding altogether and resigned existence to meaninglessness. The Existentialists abandoned society for the sanctity and burden of the lonely individual. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) castigated a society numbing itself with drugs and escapism. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) warned about the machinery of state victimizing societies by centralized control. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) also cautioned about totalitarian rule. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) captured the dark and destructive instincts lurking in the heart of humanity. Neville Shute’s On the Beach (1957) dramatized the devastating consequences of a global nuclear war. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) was one of a flood of more current dystopian novels.

Now environmental fear has been added to the list — terrorism is tragic to individuals but it doesn’t threaten the structural foundations of society like the looming and troubling ecological upheavals that scientists predict. So bookstores, television channels, movie theatres and media commentary propagate warnings of climate change, ocean acidification, species loss, excessive population, food shortages, societal havoc — choose your preferred worry. No wonder that The Hunger Games has appeared as a prevalent theme in the literature of young adults.

Phyllis Simon, co-owner of Vancouver’s Kidsbooks, notes that “the top five or six [bestsellers] are dystopias,” all linked to climate catastrophe (Maclean’s, Apr. 16/12). The theme of Exodus is a world drowning in rising sea levels because of melting ice. The Way We Fall explores society on the verge of collapse because of an escaped killer virus — the same threat, incidentally, that Stephen Hawking identifies as his choice of immediate dangers facing our civilization. The theme of The Hunger Games is just one expression of a fear that is infecting all levels of society, from children and young adults to senior citizens.

Such worrisome cultural markers are supported by empirical evidence that our affluence may not be as satisfying as we are induced to believe. Mental health issues cost Canada $50 billion per year in lost production and efficiency. Psychiatric illness in Europe, the New Scientist reports (Sept. 10/11), is the continent’s largest health problem. “Almost 40 percent of the region’s population — around 165 million people — experience a mental disorder each year, such as depression or anxiety…”. Anxiety is the most prevalent at 14 percent, followed by insomnia at 7.0 percent and depression at 6.9 percent. About 10 percent of other psychiatric conditions complete the spectrum of disorders linked to the stress of our lifestyles — not exactly ringing endorsements for a materialistic, consumer society that is busily wrecking the many of the planet’s crucial ecologies.

When our recent and present behaviour is considered in its totality, it reveals an undercurrent of apprehension about the strategies that are guiding our collective lives. The material wealth we have used as the dominant measure of our success hasn’t dispelled a growing doubt about the wisdom, prudence or sustainability of continuing on our current course. The economic, social, political and environmental conditions in which we presently find ourselves are disquieting and stressful, not a source of happy contentment but of worry and tension. The Hunger Games is just the latest expression of this mood.

For a glimpse into the strategy, psychology and ethics of the corporate world, read the Dilbert cartoons. They can range from humorous and ironic to cynical and chilling as they reveal the deviousness of the human character unleashed by the influence of power, authority and money. A recent example from March 17, 2012 is particularly poignant.

Dilbert and Alice are sitting at a board meeting while their boss is outlining the corporate response to proposed government legislation. “Our company opposes passage of the new internet law because it would be bad for our business,” he pronounces. “But that sounds selfish,” he adds, “so we’ll issue a press release saying the new law would impinge freedom of speech.” Alice, with her usually caustic bluntness, summarizes, “So…we’re selfish liars.” To which the boss retorts, “You can’t get more free than that.”

A few moments considering this exchange will yield unsettling results that are, unfortunately, substantiated by recent research.

The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, together with the University of California, Berkley, recently published studies in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that substantiate the inclination of the wealthy to lie, cheat and break the law. The studies conclude that, “It’s people at the top of the income scale for whom honesty, integrity and generosity seem to be a challenge” (Ibid.).

The authors of the paper are quick to provide the qualifier that these findings do not necessarily describe or predict the behaviour of single individuals. Like all such sociological studies, the conclusions are a generalization. But they do confirm the findings of other studies that wealthy people “have a reduced concern for others” (Ibid.) and that CEOs of large corporations can have higher psychopathic profiles than prison inmates “diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders” (Guardian Weekly, Nov. 18/11).

This is not a mere academic matter. For consumers, for governments, for voting citizens and for society as a whole, it is an advertisement to be cautious of promises, claims and guarantees made by the rich and the powerful. In our economic, industrialized and technological world, this usually means investors, corporations and their representatives. Generous offers commonly come with hidden attachments that, if not devious, can be misleading and hollow. Assurances of environmental safety, economic improvement and social benefits are often exaggerated or patently false. Risks are routinely minimized while merits are maximized.

The promotion of smoking by tobacco corporations is a classical example. It boggles the ethical mind how an executive with information that cigarettes cause cancer and death could diligently defend and promote such a product. A more current example is the funding by the fossil fuel industry of anti-science movements with the sole purpose of confusing the global warming issue so that corporations can delay regulations on their profitable extraction of gas, oil and coal — climatologists argue, with increasing desperation, that we must change energy sources and cut greenhouse gas emissions immediately to avoid catastrophic consequences.

Ethics hasn’t dissuaded the wealthy from investing wherever the returns are highest. The quest for profit seems disconnected from the negative social, cultural and environmental consequences. Those with money to invest seem undeterred by the inevitable oil spills that will result from the Northern Gateway pipeline and the subsequent stream of super-tankers enticed into demonstrably dangerous waterways. Salmon farming, against withering scientific evidence of extensive damage to marine ecologies, doggedly continues to operate their open net-pens. Industrial fishing of our oceans represents a pillaging that can only end in ecological and social disaster. Genetically engineered crops and the centralized control of seeds by transnational corporations are proving to be exercises in power and profit rather than being of benefit to humanity.

Indeed, the subject of wealth and ethics has become particularly relevant during the last few decades given the shift in economic power away from the lower and middle classes toward the affluent few. Whether or not this trend is a measure of their consolidation of influence and control is a moot point. But the pressures of lobbying, financing and investing seem to be eroding democratic processes while favouring the ascent and security of the wealthy.

All this has environmental implications. If most people in a society have concerns about the health and viability of the ecologies that sustain and enhance the quality of their lives, but the power structure is indifferent to those concerns, then the machinery of industry and investment will continue to exploit and abuse nature in the interests of profit.

The environmental result, so far, is a deepening planetary mess, mostly because of the initiatives of the wealthy and influential. Of course, society has also benefitted hugely from their ingenuity and assertiveness. The comfort, safety, convenience, affluence and health of our collective well-being owes much to the wealthy and their initiatives. But their ethical lapses have also led us into an intensifying ecological crisis that is becoming entrenched, structural, systemic and dangerous. Indeed, unless these negative effects are dramatically curtailed by a redirection of initiative, investment and governance, the consequence could be catastrophic for everything we know and value. Perhaps the time has come for the wealthy to realize that Earth and all its inhabitants can no longer afford their kind of freedom.

Civilizations are like corporations. At some point in their evolutionary rise as innovative and unique organizations, they fail to adapt to changing circumstances and drift into fatal vulnerability. History, of course, is crowded with the wreckage of civilizations that declined into oblivion after failing to rejuvenate themselves. Corporations follow the same route, as outlined in the ideas of Professor Noam Wasserman of the Harvard Business School and Christine Comaford, an expert on corporate structural dynamics (Globe & Mail, Jan. 28/12).

As Wasserman notes in his book, The Founder’s Dilemma, corporations that are rapidly successful because they have discovered new and unorthodox strategies or products often find that their “strengths early on tend to become pitfalls, [their] Achilles heel.” Comaford reiterates this observation with terms such as “Founder’s Syndrome”, “Founderitis”, and “severe reality distortion field”. All refer to a corporation’s inability to adapt to changing competitive circumstances because its old successful vision no longer fits evolving realities.

The corporate world is littered with vivid examples of Founder’s Syndrome. Despite selling 10 million cars by 1924, the Ford Motor Company almost collapsed in bankruptcy when its founder, Henry Ford, failed to embrace the fresh engineering that was remaking the auto. And when Walt Disney died, the stock value of Disney rose dramatically, apparently because his founding influence was blocking innovation. The latest victim of this dynamic is the maker of the Blackberry, Research in Motion, a corporation whose original ideas are being outdated by other electronic designs.

So, how is Founder’s Syndrome avoided? For Comaford, “the key is to establish a vibrant set of outsiders who ask tough questions.” For Wasserman, “you need people internally who push back and consider not just the best-case or expected scenarios, but worst-case situations, where you might have to adjust the vision radically.” The corporate trick for survival is constant evaluation and criticism — even of the founding principles that everyone holds sacred to the corporation’s identity.

Now transpose this corporate dynamic to our present civilization. Our modern
era is essentially founded on the principles of the Industrial Revolution. About 250 years ago, Europe underwent a dramatic change as human and animal energies were replaced by fossil fuels — first coal and then petroleum. Human effort was amplified enormously. (To test this notion, simply try pushing your car instead of moving it with the engine.) And the sophistication of the entire process was heightened by the marriage of industry with science, a partnership we call technology.

The consequences were incredible: massive production and distribution of consumer goods, huge utilization of natural resources, unimagined growth in food production, exponential generation of wealth, global travel and communication. But, like a corporation that has found an especially successful niche in the business world and risen with meteoric speed, our civilization is now showing cracks of vulnerability — the attributes of its success have now become its weaknesses.

Marvellous as this technological civilization is, serious indications are now
evident that the environmental impacts of this success cannot be absorbed by our planet’s ecosystems. The sustainability of unrestrained growth, powered by ever-rising quantities of fossil fuels, has become a legitimate concern. If this unfolding crisis of civilization were a corporate problem, Comaford would recommend, “a vibrant set of outsiders who ask tough questions.” Or for Wasserman, “you need people internally who push back and consider not just the best-case or expected scenarios, but worst- case situations, where you might have to adjust the vision radically.”

These “outsiders”, of course, are the environmentalists, climatologists, biologists, other scientists and critics who are asking “tough questions” and pushing for a radical change of “vision”. To those who are supporting and perpetuating the founding principles of the Industrial Revolution, together with its existing economic system, these “tough questions” are interpreted as subversive irritations that are undermining the success of a seemingly good idea. How can those who clearly benefit from such success, doubt the generous and lavish rewards that come from it?

The journey from a peak to a valley down a cliff  can be very sudden and very brief. Ask RIM. Ask Kodak. Or ask Yahoo that almost instantly lost over $20 billion in value because it refused to innovate in a changing communication world.

We live on a planet of rapidly deteriorating ecosystems. The disturbing environmental destabilization being unleashed by our civilization is pervasive, structural and profoundly serious. More than destabilizing, the results could escalate to fatal if they are not addressed immediately and dramatically. The critics who are trying to alert the system to these dangers are not enemies but merely perceptive “insiders”, fellow members of the corporate body who care profoundly about the well-being of humanity and the natural world that contains, sustains and enlivens everything we hold rich, dear and sacred.

As a civilization, indications are that we are facing Founder’s Syndrome, an outdated vision of success so fixated on past accomplishments that it fails to see their shortcomings. The warning signs are flashing for those astute enough to notice. If these alarms are disconcerting, so be it. Failed civilizations are far more tragic than failed corporations.