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David Korten

Living Economies, Vibrant Communities

It's a joy to meet again with so many friends in the First Unitarian Church. Congratulations to Living Earth and Betsy Toll and to all the many local groups and individuals who've come together around this event to educate us about their programs and to strengthening alliances in the cause of creating living economies and vibrant communities in Northwest Oregon.

I love the framing: Living Economies, Vibrant Communities. This is what we are all working together to achieve. Ultimately our work is about life; about how we want to live. From one perspective it looks like a beautiful mosaic, with each of our individual pieces contributing to a larger whole. From another perspective it appears we are growing a new social organism dedicated to defining and creating together the community and the world we want through a process that flows from a deep sense of our connection to one another and to the earth.

Portland is an icon for America of active citizens working to demonstrate the possibilities for creating a model of a livable, people-friendly, life-friendly city. I love it and I'm delighted to be meeting with you this weekend. Countless similar gathering are happening around our nation and around the world; people coming together to create the communities that can be as building blocks of the world that can be.

So here we are—and we have our work cut out for us. Aren't these great times? People keep telling me things will have to get worse before they get better. So how bad can it get? Only a few years ago America was abuzz with talk of the new economy of high tech start-ups, lean and mean management, heroic CEOs creating wealth for shareholders, increasing productivity, and an ever-rising stock market. We had won the Cold War, we were at peace, and the economy just kept expanding. New billionaires were being created faster than Forbes magazine could count them. The old rules no longer seemed to apply. Politicians and pundits told us that business cycles and environmental limits were relics of the past. We in America had become masters of a perpetual wealth machine.

Yet even as the economy boomed throughout the 1990s we were finding we could no longer afford many of the things we once took for granted, like leisure time, family life, education, health care, retirement, parks, clean water, and job security. A single working adult can no longer support a family. Even families with two parents working three or more jobs struggle to make ends meet. One in four American children lives in poverty. Minority youth are more likely to go to prison than to college. Drug use—both legal and illegal—is increasing. Many teachers face growing class sizes, outdated textbooks, and run down facilities.

As medical costs soar, doctors and nurses find it ever more difficult to give their patients proper care and more people find health insurance beyond their means. A combination of sprawl, strip malling, and traffic congestion separate us from nature, uglify our public spaces, and increase the tension in our lives. Extreme weather events, and the related floods, drought, and fire storms bring home the grim realities of climate change and leave us increasingly fearful of what the future holds for our children.

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