Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth

David C. Korten

Feb 2015 · Berrett-Koehler Publishers

About this ebook

The international bestselling author of When Corporations Rule the World shares a vital new vision for changing humanity’s self-destructive course.

We humans live by stories, says David Korten, and the stories that now govern our society have set us on a self-destructive path. In Change the Story, Change the Future, Korten offers a new story that lets us reimagine society and navigate the critical needs of our time.

Korten calls our current story Sacred Money and Markets. Money, it tells us, is the measure of all worth and the source of all happiness, while inequality and environmental destruction are unfortunate but unavoidable. Although many recognize that this story promotes bad ethics, bad science, and bad economics, it will remain our guiding story until replaced by one that aligns with our deepest understanding of the universe and our relationship to it.

To guide our path to a viable human future, Korten offers a story he calls Sacred Life and Living Earth. It is grounded in a cosmology that affirms we are living beings born of a living Earth itself born of a living universe. Our health and well-being therefore depend on an economy that works in partnership with the Earth's community of life. Offering a hopeful vision, Korten lays out the transformative impact adopting this story will have on every aspect of human life and society.

About the author

David C. Korten is a cofounder and board chair of YES! Magazine, a cochair of the New Economy Working Group, the founder and president of the Living Economies Forum, a member of the Club of Rome, a founding board member emeritus of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, a former associate of the International Forum on Globalization, and a former Harvard Business School professor.