On May 22, 2022, the world lost one of its original sustainability advocates, Hazel Henderson. Henderson was a prolific author and a relentless advocate of economic practices that are in harmony with the planet. She was a rare Second Tier thinker in the sense that she understood the sequential aspects of second tier ascendance and what the Yellow system has to do first. She intimately understood the limitations of current economic ideologies and shamed the field into changing its subsistent ways by seeking higher inclusionary values. Her philosophy made her into a visionary for some but earned her the ire of the economics community. She proudly proclaimed that “economics is a form of brain damage” due to its proprietary and myopic first tier nature. She wore the badge of the “most dangerous women in America” with pride when she called on corporation to stop externalizing the costs of their operations to the environment. This is the rare Yellow courage that Second Tier leadership requires. 

While much of the practices in the Turquoise system seek to make current practices obsolete by working on a new advanced system, in my study of Henderson’s work, she was a Yellow-first-then-Turquoise advocate who approached systems change collectively and systemically. She fully recognized the nature of the work that the Yellow system has to do in order to align current first tier practices onto a sustainable, long term trajectory. She was the general in the Yellow system who understood that the transition to Second Tier must be led by those who have a deep understanding of the dysfunction within the first tier in order to articulate second tier solutions more effectively. But her wisdom didn’t stop there, her advocacy over the decades has made her into one of the pioneers of the newly emerging Turquoise field of studies, the only one that matters for the survival of our species. It’s the Economics of the Anthropocene. 

Henderson was a friend to Spiral Dynamics and MEMEnomics. She was among the first prominent people to endorse the MEMEnomics framework for its ideas.   Her endorsement of my 2013 book appears in the left column of this website.

Thank you Hazel for your wisdom and rare courage. The world is a better place because of your time in it. 

For more on Henderson’s work, please visit  https://www.ethicalmarkets.com