David Korten | July 16, 2025
Introduction
A disturbing film, a forgotten history, and a deeply personal journey through Indonesia helped my wife Fran and me better understand both the horror and hope that dwell in the human spirit—and what that might mean for healing the divisions we now face in the United States. Many […]
Newsletter – September 27, 2023
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Dear Friends,
It’s clear, from even a cursory scan of the headlines, we’re in big trouble. Current standard economics prioritizes growing consumption and financial assets, ignoring the now demonstrated fact that perpetual growth in consumption on a finite living Earth exacerbates inequality, destroys Earth’s capacity […]
(This article was originally published by YES! Magazine for their Fall 2008 issue, “Purple America.”
The good news: The changes we must make to avoid ultimate collapse are identical to the changes we must make to create the world of our common dream.
The story of purple America is part of a yet larger […]
(Commentary originally published by YES! Magazine, November 11, 2020)
A few days ago, I participated in a webinar that introduced me to Paul Chappell, a thoughtful peace activist with an extraordinary history. Born in 1980, Chappell grew up in Alabama, the son of an immigrant Korean mother and a violent mixed-race father traumatized […]
In 2019, we must move beyond the myth of the lone individual to recognize our deep interdependence and responsibilities for one another and nature.
(Commentary originally published by YES! Magazine, Dec 31, 2018)
It’s not likely that many of us will mourn the passing of 2018. It’s been a deeply troubled year defined by wildfires, […]
This paper was presented to the 12th International Forum on Ecological Civilization – Ecological Civilization and Symbiotic Development, April 27-28, 2018, Claremont, CA, USA
We have arrived at a defining moment in the human experience. Either we find our common path to an Ecological Civilization that meets the essential material needs of Earth‘s human population in […]
We evolved to be connected to nature and to one another, but our exploitative global economy is severing those relations.
As I was reading the current series of YES! articles on the mental health crisis, I received an email from Darcia Narvaez, professor of psychology at University of Notre Dame. She was sending me articles being […]
David Korten prepared this paper for the 78th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Aug 10-14, 2018, in Chicago. The theme of the Meeting is “Improving Lives”. (The PDF version of this paper is available for download HERE.)
We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when […]
Some CEOs are getting the message that even though the economy is growing, they need to serve their communities, too.
(This commentary was originally published by YES! Magazine on February 20, 2018.)
Laurence D. Fink, founder and chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest institutional investor, recently set the financial world abuzz with a