"We are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history – a change in the actual belief structure of Western society. No economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind. By deliberately changing their images of reality, people are changing the world.
But the task is not easy. People are threatened by the awareness…of impending change in their lives. The prospect that ‘truths’ they have known all their lives might be superseded by some other beliefs can be especially threatening. Thus there is a tendency to ‘fight back’ – to actively oppose the change.
I believe the key challenge is not to try to resist a change that may well be inevitable, nor is it to be zealous in fomenting a change prematurely. It is, rather, trying to help our society understand the nature and necessity of the forces of historical change we are experiencing, to go through the change with mutual cooperation and caring, with as little misery as possible."
". . . basic assumptions, starting with the prevailing reality view. Since modern culture ascribes no ‘reality’ to inner experience, transcendent values have no power and materialistic values prevail. Thus it seems reasonable for society to be characterized by economic rationalization of an ever-increasing fraction of social behaviour and organization . . . Economic rationality becomes predominant in social and political decision making, even when the decisions it leads to are unwise by other standards (such as the well-being of future generations) . . . Humankind’s relationship to the Earth is essentially an exploitative one.
He goes on to argue:
Even the most powerful institution can change or crumble when there is a strong challenge to its legitimacy . . . The basis for such a legitimacy challenge is typically a combination of one or more of the following: The old order is not functioning effectively to achieve agreed-upon goals, it is not functioning in accordance with consensually approved values, or it was never duly constituted in the first place. What passes relatively unnoticed is that the modern growth-based capitalist economy fails on all three counts. It is not achieving societal goals . . . economic values are an inadequate guide for an institution which so powerfully affects all aspects of society; and the corporation was never originally chartered to have such freedoms as it currently enjoys."
“Global Mind Change: The Promise of the 21st Century" by Willis Harman