Future Insights: We Are Nature
In this series of short interviews, we ask the Future Works Council of experts from various areas about their insights for the future, discuss available solutions, and learn how to avoid mistakes.
A conversation with Andreea Magdalina about getting comfortable with your true nature, future technology, gender equality, and biohacking.
0. Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you living right now, who do you live with, and what you are currently working on?
I’m originally from Romania, went to university in London where I ended up living for 7 years before moving to Los Angeles in 2014. I live with my husband whom I’ve been married to for 6 years. We have a music company together that he’s mostly looking after at the moment, while I’m currently focusing on shesaid.so and Future Works.
1. What are your hopes for the future?
I hope that we will just keep getting better and better as humans; there are so many things we need to work on. I like to think that I’m a part of that journey towards getting better and contributing in my own lane or the few lanes I’m on. Shesaid.so as my fight for gender equality is one of them. My hope for the future is to see equality across genders, ethnicities, sexual identities, and orientations — regardless of who you are. I want to see a world that offers anybody a fair chance.
I also really hope that our industries will genuinely reinforce the things that we’ve already known for a long time that we need to do to put the planet on a better course. And, well, just seeing more peace and happiness, what else is there?
Can you shortly describe how do you take action in the area of change that you’ve chosen?
I contribute to the fight for equality primarily through my community, shesaid.so, a global community of over 10–15,000 women and gender minorities in the music industry. We create mentorship and educational programs. We identified mentorship to balance things out from an equitable perspective and help more women and minorities enter and stay sustainable in the music industry through mentorship and through our contacts. We do that through lobbying with other organizations and applying pressure on the government and other industry agents to implement change at regulation levels to protect the rights of those who typically get discriminated against. That’s the hardest part. It’s crucial to operate at the legislative level. Otherwise, how do you keep organizations accountable (and that very same approach applies in the sustainability space, too. The change can only happen by introducing penalties to companies who damage the planet)?
That’s where I act. But even just talking about the problem, raising awareness, educating is a way to play a significant positive change.
The worst thing you can do is nothing.
2. What are your fears about the future?
My fears are that we don’t make enough progress fast enough. Especially in the sustainability space because that’s directly impacting our livelihood, health, and very existence. Even if that’s not necessarily impacting me, it will affect my children — should I decide to leave a tiny seed on this planet. Regardless of whether it will be for my kids or not, I definitely want to leave a good legacy for future generations. I really hope we get our shit together in time.
The other fear is that we let technology take over us. I don’t imagine it as robots taking over and stuff (although maybe that’ll be the case). But instead as letting ourselves be led by algorithms, manipulated by them. The question is, where does that leave free will? That’s a pretty fundamental thing. I really hope that we put the proper rules in place to make sure that doesn’t happen. We were already pretty late with big tech and controlling it in a way. It’s ridiculous how companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon are so powerful. It’s kind of scary if you think about it. We know that those kinds of monopolies are just not good for anybody. I want to be optimistic, though.
That’s the best way to be, although it’s hard given the crisis we’re facing.
Yeah, well, meditation, yoga, being in nature, all that stuff helps with the day-to-day stuff. To stay positive daily.
3. What are you most excited about 10 years from now?
I think hacking our minds is the one thing that I’m most excited about in the next 10 or 30 years.
Biohacking?
I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I guess from a more biological & physiological perspective, how do we take our mind out of our bodies and expand its abilities. Typically we use between 10 and 30% of our brains capacity, and I just feel like we could definitely make more of it with technology (such as VR), spirituality, and psychedelics.
That’s what they call biohacking — expanding your mental abilities through the use of mushrooms, psychedelics, and specially designed techniques and programming, etc. These boost your physical and cognitive performance.
Yeah, exactly. I’ve always been intrigued by what psychedelics do to our brain. I enjoy that experience myself, and I always looked at it as not a drug experience. It was more about expanding my own awareness of what life is, connecting to something greater than ourselves (which some people call gods, some people call energy-matter, I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure there is something). It’s such a fascinating question.
4. What trends do you think will form our future?
From a micro perspective, it’s hard to tell. Still, at a macro level, obviously, we’re all moving towards a more sustainable place, towards a place where we blend our authentic selves with our digital selves more, whatever that means. And there are so many things that go into that, including biohacking, I guess.
Ultimately I do think that everything that’s manmade imitates nature, to some extent, even if we’re not really aware. I’m pretty sure all that technological solutions already exist in some mono insect world. All the knowledge we’re trying to build in a non-organic way is already there in nature, I think.
It’s just really fascinating how the world that we’ve managed to create for ourselves with our cities, which are all kinds of made-up structures, and how societies work, and governments, and law — they, to some extent, imitate biological life, including technology that we’ve created. So that’s why I feel like we’re just like going back to where it all started with all of our progress, and it’s so cool.
Agree! I also think that we will reach the point where we would have just done too much. I think, frankly, we are not yet there (although very close, most likely). But the circle will start to close, and we will start coming back to where we come from, to the roots.
Yeah, exactly, and I really hope that the moment of closing the loop isn’t gonna be apocalyptic. It could be an implosion; maybe it’s what happened to the Mayans, I don’t know. It might be cyclical for sure.
5. Fast forward 30 years. What will be the key changes for humanity?
If we don’t get our shit together in the next 30 years, who knows what the hell is gonna happen. And whether we do or not, it’ll all depend on what we’re going to change in the next 10 years.
We know that it’s those communities that I keep trying to fight for and create more equality or equitable opportunity for — those are the ones that get impacted first. They tend to be lower-income, with less access to resources, information, knowledge, etc.
It’s been more than 50 years that we’ve been warned about all this danger. As much as I’d like to say super high tech, futuristic things about what’s gonna go down 10 years from now, realistically speaking, we really need to focus on the Planet and the natural environment, ensuring that at that point, in 30 years, it’s in good shape.
The whole notion of trying to colonize space… come on. Sure, it’s a fun idea, and it’s gonna happen eventually. But we have 7 billion people here who are not gonna make it the space on time. We really need to focus on what’s here, in front of us.
We’ve recently moved to a place with a small garden, and every day I go outside to sit and look at nature, listen to the birds, stare at the sky. I feel very much connected to the whole natural world then. And so, I feel more and more committed to rescuing it.
It’s for sure important to feel that connection; without it, our actions toward limiting climate change and helping rescue the Planet can appear on a very superficial level. Finding true commitment prevents greenwashing. If you feel connected to the natural world, then even if you don’t see the immediate results or personal benefit of your actions, you are more likely to continue them anyway. And so, without true commitment, efforts might be quite short-sighted and not sustainable in time.
Well, you’re right. And it’s hard to find people who are genuinely committed to anything really in that sense. People choose to stay on a pretty superficial level of this relationship for whatever reason. Maybe because they’re not connected with themselves in the first place.
Thank you for reading!
Interviewer: Justyna Cyrankiewicz, Creative Content Curator and Writer.
Proofreader: Joe Foxton, New Business.
- To see our projects, go straight to our website: Future Works 🚀
- For more inspiration and stories, follow us on our Instagram, Facebook, and here, on Medium 🏝
With love, Future Works 💛
