ABSTRACT
Organizations, businesses, and whole systems like societies—or even the global governance infrastructure, which is different from global government and currently is largely voluntary—also experience dualisms or tensions of the opposite. That is, they too encounter the paradoxes of sustainability on which we focus, further breaking the human chain, that is, our deep connection to nature. In terms of moral intensity, the perceived degree of moral imperative in a particular issue, there is not enough temporal immediacy around sustainability for individuals, organizations, or nations to act. The “linear character of modern time presents new problems for social systems because the contingency of an open future threatens continuity in the form of ‘what comes next’”. This perspective has huge implications for sustainability as the needs of future generations are discounted. Partnership economies, in contrast, are grounded in beliefs of abundance that should be widely shared, as are Nature’s healthy ecosystems, thereby spreading the wealth around.
