Stephan A. Schwartz - The 8 Laws of Change: How to Be an Agent of Personal and Social Transformation

For Ronlyn,
Who felt strongly this book should be written

The 8 Laws of Change

The 8 Laws of Change is written by a sensational man and teacher, Stephan Schwartz. This book is a must-read for anyone wanting to change their lives personally or create change on a collective scale. Stephan clearly discusses the blocks to positive change and how to overcome them to attain interpersonal peace and peace on the planet. This book is a treasure trove of wisdom to draw on over a lifetime.

JUDITH ORLOFF, M.D.,
AUTHOR OF EMOTIONAL FREEDOM: LIBERATE YOURSELF
FROM NEGATIVE EMOTIONS AND TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE

I know of no book that is comparable to Stephan Schwartzs The 8 Laws of Change. This book is a loving, compassionate, life-affirming gift from a great mind, someone who cares deeply about our future. All genuine wisdom is simple, clear, inspiring, and beautifulthe hallmarks of The 8 Laws of Change. Quite simply, this book left me pleasantly stunned and happily inspired. You will be too.

LARRY DOSSEY, M.D., AUTHOR OF ONE MIND:
HOW OUR INDIVIDUAL MIND IS PART OF A GREATER
CONSCIOUSNESS AND WHY IT MATTERS

The 8 Laws of Change addresses the most important question in the world now and, like Charles Eisensteins work in sacred economics, is truly unique and hopeful.

BILL KAUTH, COAUTHOR OF
WE NEED EACH OTHER: BUILDING GIFT COMMUNITY

To reveal the human element that is so critical in the dynamics of change has given us a great gift for our work in student debt relief. Stephan Schwartz has captured the essence of community action, and the world will benefit immeasurably from learning it.

MARY GREEN SWIG, COFOUNDER OF
THE NATIONAL STUDENT DEBT JUBILEE PROJECT

No one tracks human megatrends better than Stephan Schwartz does in his Schwartz Reports. Now, in his The 8 Laws of Change, he has given us a sweeping, coherent view of ways in which we can meet our worlds primary challenges. He has done us a wondrous service.

MICHAEL MURPHY, FOUNDER OF
THE ESALEN INSTITUTE CENTER FOR THEORY & RESEARCH

If you are concerned about proliferating social, cultural, and planetary crises, read The 8 Laws of Change. This book shows how Margaret Mead could say, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, its the only thing that ever has.

ROGER NELSON, DIRECTOR OF
THE GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS PROJECT

Finally, a book that shows us how lasting change for social good really happensby starting with our own thoughts and minds! A luminous contribution to social and moral progress.

WAYNE B. JONAS, M.D., PRESIDENT AND
CEO OF THE SAMUELI INSTITUTE

Acknowledgments

All authors know that their books could not be written were it not for the help of others. First, I want to thank my wife, Ronlyn, to whom I have also dedicated the book, because it was her absolute certainty that this book should be written, and I should write it, that encouraged me to seriously focus on this project. She has also read every word through several versions, making sure commas are in the right place and sentences make sense. I also want to thank Arthur Hill, a dear friend of many years, for his careful, old-school copy editing.

Without the help of Torkin Wakefield and Rex Weyler the BeadforLife and Greenpeace chapters could never have been written, and I am deeply appreciative of the time they spent with me and the insider insights they shared.

I thank my agent, William Gladstone of the Waterside Agency, who supported the book and found it a good home.

And my sincere thanks to Lynn Willeford, Rick Ingrasci, Larry Dossey, Sam Crespi, and Peter Morton, who offered very useful suggestions.

Finally, I very much appreciate the editorial support of my publisher, particularly Jeffery Lindholm and Mindy Branstetter, for helping me to give the manuscript its final polish. They have been a pleasure to work with.

INTRODUCTION

The First Priority

Four times in my life I have been involved with significant changes in history. In the 1950s and early 60s, it was civil rights. I was one of hundreds, and then thousands, of people sufficiently disturbed about Americas racial policies to take to the streets in nonviolent protest. It gave me the privilege of standing in the sun one daya few feet from the foot of the Lincoln Memoriallistening to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. give his I have a dream speech. It was the most extraordinary public spectacle of my life. Only President Kennedys funeral touches it, with the black horse, the empty saddle, the boots in the stirrups backward, spurs glinting in the sunlight. But one was a beginning, and the other an ending.

In the 1970s, I was appointed special assistant to the chief of Naval Operations and played a more central role in the transition of the American military from an elitist conscription organization to an all-volunteer meritocracy. It was the beginning of the military we have todaywhere who your father is, or where you went to school, or how much money your family has, or what race or religion you are plays no role in your opportunity for advancement. Colin Powell, a man of color, born outside of the United States, and a nonWest Point graduate who rose to be the most senior military officer in the nation and one of its most respected citizens, is the iconic example of what we sought to accomplishand have.

In the 1980s and early 90s, I was part of what became known as the citizen diplomacy effort, a backdoor approach to relations between the former Soviet Union and the United States, which was begun informally by ordinary citizens appalled at the frozen relationship between the two superpowers. Both governments came to appreciate and use our citizen diplomacy as backdoor channels, despite early and distrustful opposition.

And, through it all, down to the present day, the consciousness movement and its ecological first cousin, the environmental movement, which is a loose association of organizations, laboratories, and philanthropies, both see all life as interconnected and interdependent and, from that realization, in a hundred ways support national policies reflecting that life-affirming worldview. The consciousness movement is a large but inchoate demographic, one of the largest in the United States, although it rarely is discussed in the media. We do not have a single message, a dogma, or a sense of persecuted self-righteousness. Our inclusivity tends to diffuse us, but when we do coalesce, we are large enough to create any change we want. How that can be done nonviolently and with compassion is the subject of this book.

We have reached a critical confluence of trends: climate change and water, too much or too little; the collapse of antibiotic medicine and the rise of superbugs; the rise of the virtual corporate states, replacing nation-states as the center of power; the transition out of the carbon era; and the realization that for the first time in our history being born white will no longer confer privilege, to note some of the most powerful trends. We are in a semimanaged crisis of transition.

Underlying most of these negative trends is the same issue: profit is our principal and often only social priority. The data, I think, are telling us we must replace profit with wellness. The well-being of each individual, family unit, group, community, nation, and the planet must be the first priority. The challenge is how to make profit by creating wellness. And great fortunes will be made, just as a group of people barely out of their teens created the cyber revolution, making themselves multibillionaires in the process. It will happen because it must happen; Earths metasystems demand that we change. So its not really a question of if we will make this change, but how much pain must be self-inflicted before we do it. Personally, I would prefer to make the pain phase as short as possible. And that is why I have written this book.