Duane Elgin (born 1943) is an American author, speaker, educator, consultant, and media activist.

Early life and education

Duane Elgin grew up near

Wilder, Idaho Wilder is a city in Canyon County, Idaho, United States. The population was 1,533 at the 2010 census. Wilder is part of the Boise City–Nampa, Idaho Metropolitan Statistical Area. History Wilder was established in 1919, and was named fo ...

. He attended the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

in Paris for one semester in 1963 and earned a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

from the

College of Idaho The College of Idaho (C of I) is a private liberal arts college in Caldwell, Idaho. Founded in 1891, it is the state's oldest private liberal arts college and has an enrollment of over 1,000 students. The college's alumni include eight Rh ...

in 1966. He received a

Master of Business Administration A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accoun ...

from the

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in ...

in 1968 and a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Th ...

in economic history from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1969.

Career

In the early 1970s, Elgin was a senior staff member on a joint Presidential-Congressional Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. The commission's task was to look ahead from 1970 to 2000 and explore challenges of urbanization and population growth. Elgin moved to California, where he worked as a senior social scientist with the "futures group" at the Stanford Research Institute (now

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic ...

) and co-authored studies of the long-range future. His report on ''Voluntary Simplicity'', co-authored with Arnold Mitchell, was published by SRI in June 1976. The report was expanded and republished with a survey in

CoEvolution Quarterly ''CoEvolution Quarterly'' (1974–1985) was a journal descended from Stewart Brand's ''Whole Earth Catalog''. Stewart Brand founded the ''CoEvolution Quarterly'' in 1974 using proceeds from the ''Whole Earth Catalog.'' It evolved out of the o ...

in 1977. More than a thousand pages were received in response to the survey. These first-hand accounts formed the basis for his book ''Voluntary Simplicity'', which appeared in 1981. Elgin left SRI International in 1977. During the 1980s, he co-founded two non-profit non-partisan organizations concerned with media accountability and citizen empowerment. The national one was called "Choosing Our Future" and the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

organization was called "Bay Voice". Their mission was to give citizens a greater voice in their community by using the public airwaves for interactive "electronic town meetings". Elgin continues to promote citizen use of mass media for dialogue about the future. In 2012, Elgin and a small team launched Great Transition Stories, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people understand ongoing societal transitions.

Media activism

Over the past thirty years, Duane Elgin has co-founded two non-profit organizations dedicated to the promotion of media accountability. In 1981, he co-founded "Choosing Our Future" (COF), a national organization with members in 26 states. COF objected to the renewal of licenses of all the major broadcast TV stations in the San Francisco Bay Area on the grounds they were not serving the communication needs of citizens. After the FCC sided with broadcasters and renewed their licenses, Choosing Our Future then created an inclusive "community voice" organization called "Bay Voice". In 1987, these organizations put an interactive Electronic Town Meeting (ETM) on the air in the Bay Area during prime-time, working with the local ABC television station. The "ETM" was seen by over 300,000 people and six votes were taken from a pre-selected, random sample of Bay Area citizens. Elgin has written extensively on themes of media and democracy since the 1980s.

Awards and honors

In 1999, a group of roughly 30 'evolutionary leaders' met with the

Dalai Lama Dalai Lama (, ; ) is a title given by the Tibetan people to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and current D ...

in Dharamsala, India over a period of five days to explore "Synthesis Dialogues" and themes of the new paradigm and building a sustainable and a spiritual future for humanity. In 2001 Elgin was awarded an honorary PhD for work in "ecological and spiritual transformation" from the

California Institute of Integral Studies California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) is a private university in San Francisco, California.Otterman, Sharon. "Merging Spirituality and Clinical Psychology at Columbia". ''New York Times'', Aug. 9, 2012Aanstoos, C. Serlin, I., & Greenin ...

(CIIS) in San Francisco. He is also a member of the CIIS "Council of Sages". In 2006 Elgin received the annual Goi International Peace Award in Japan in recognition of his contribution to a global "vision, consciousness, and lifestyle" that fosters a "more sustainable and spiritual culture". Elgin has been a visiting scholar at

Denison University Denison University is a private liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio. One of the earliest colleges established in the former Northwest Territory, Denison University was founded in 1831. The college was first called the Granville Literary and ...

in Ohio in May, 2004 (for a 5-day workshop on theme of “Simplicity and Envisioning a Positive Future”). He has also been a 'distinguished scholar' at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida in 2012 where he spoke to both public and student audiences about our time of "great transition". Duane Elgin was described in April 2009 by the '' Ecologist Magazine'' as one of the ten leading visionaries with "big ideas for a better world".

Selected publications

Long-range futures

* Co-author
''Alternative Futures for Environmental Policy Planning: 1975 – 2000''
prepared by SRI International, Menlo Park, California, for the Environmental Protection Agency, 1975, Contract NSF/STP 76-02573. * Co-author
''Assessment of Future National and International Problem Areas''
prepared by SRI International, Menlo Park, California, for the National Science Foundation, 1977, NSF/STP76-02573. * Elgin, Duane
''Limits to the Management of Large, Complex Systems''
prepared for the National Science Foundation by SRI International, Menlo Park, California, 1977, Contract NSF/STP76-02573.

Ways of living

* Elgin, Duane, ''Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich'', (published in three editions, 1981, 1993, 2010), Harper, January 5, 2010, . * Co-author with Arnold Mitchell, ''Voluntary Simplicity'' for the Long Range Planning Service and Business Intelligence Program at SRI International, Menlo Park, California, June 1976, Report No. 1004. * Co-author and project director
''City Size and the Quality of Life''
An Analysis of the Policy Implications of Continued Population Concentration, prepared by the Stanford Research Institute for the National Science Foundation and United States Senate, Washington, D. C., 1974, NSF Contract GI.138462. * Elgin has written a number of blogs for Huffington Post on the theme of simplicity and sustainability; including: ''Simplicity is Not Sacrifice!'', 6/7/11, ''Thriving in a Post-Consumerist Society'', 6/12/11, ''Eight Expressions of Simplicity for Healthy Living'', 8/15/11, and Four Misconceptions About the Simple Life, 8/27/11.

The human journey

* Elgin, Duane, ''Awakening Earth: Exploring the Evolution of Human Culture and Consciousness'', published by Wm. Morrow, 1993, . * Elgin, Duane, ''Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity’s Future'', published by Wm. Morrow (now Harper), 2000, . * Co-author: Elgin worked with a small team of scholars, including Joseph Campbell, to co-author the major report, ''Changing Images of Man'', prepared by the Stanford Research Institute for the Kettering Foundation, 1974, and published as a book by the same title by Pergamon Press in 1981, . * Author
''Global Consciousness Change: Indicators of an Emerging Paradigm''
prepared by Duane Elgin with Coleen LeDrew for the Fetzer Institute, the State of the World Forum, The Institute of Noetic Sciences, The California Institute of Integral Studies, and the Brande Foundation, 1997.

The Universe as a living system

* Elgin, Duane, ''The Living Universe: Where Are We? Who Are We? Where Are We Going?'', published by Berrett-Koehler, 2009, . * In 1988, Elgin published the extended article, Author, “The Living Cosmos: A Theory of Continuous Creation” published in the journal ''ReVision'', Volume 11, No. 1, Washington, D. C., Heldref Publications, Summer 1988. * Elgin, Duane, "The Paradigm of a Living Universe", published in 2000 in the ''Journal of World Futures'' and presents a scholarly summary of his cosmology. * Elgin has also written a series of blogs for Huffington Post on themes including science and spirituality, preparing for death, and more. For example: ''Consciously Recognizing Ourselves Before We Die, 5/16/11, Science and Spirit Converge in the Now, 5/29/11, ''Humanity's Second Spiritual Age'', 6/5/11, and ''Can Death Become Your Ally?'', 7/3/11.''

Videos

* ''Pete and Duane’s Window'' is a series of seven, half-hour programs produced in 2009 and 2010 that explores our world in transition and includes topics such as: conscious evolution, global trends, mass media and mass consciousness, and more. Peter Russell (author of ''The Global Brain'') and Duane Elgin co-host. * ''Before War'': Elgin produced, directed and edited this half-hour video in 1992 for MPAC (Mid-Peninsula Public Access) TV in Palo Alto, California, interviewing six professionals working in the area of conflict resolution and offering diverse, non-violent ways of responding to the crisis in Iraq and the middle-east.

References

External links

*
Great Transition Stories website

primary blog site on Huffington Post

Pete and Duane’s Window, a series of half-hour programs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elgin, Duane Simple living advocates American male writers Living people University of Pennsylvania alumni SRI International people 1943 births People from Wilder, Idaho Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania alumni College of Idaho alumni