Inhabiting the Future by Robert Gilman
The following article is an excerpt from the book “ReInhabiting the Village: Co-Creating our Future”. www.reinhabitingthevillage.com
As we reinhabit the villages in our lives, we are surrounded by a deep sense of the world in crisis. The Chinese character for “crisis” is derived from the characters for danger and for opportunity. Which of these is your stronger motivation as you face the future?
In this chapter I’d like to share a perspective on our times that I’ve come to after being immersed in the sustainability movement and ecovillage development for over three decades. It may surprise you that I’m actually quite encouraged about the future for the Earth, for humanity and for all of life — “encourage” in the sense of filled with courage and drawn forward by the opportunities. Yes, I’m well aware of the dangers and I don’t expect the process to be easy — especially over the next few decades — yet we must take a long view.
The quickest way to understand that long view starts with this “outline of history”:
This image divides human history into three major “eras” with two transitions between them. Here are some of the major changes as we move from one Era to the next.
WE DON’T NEED TO WAIT.
WE CAN START INHABITING THE PLANETARY ERA
IN OUR CONSCIOUSNESS AND IN OUR EXPERIENCE NOW.
The Planetary Era will also need a sustainable relationship with the natural world. How do I get the characteristics for the Planetary Era? By looking at trends and by analogy with natural systems, as I explain in What Time Is It?
Here’s an example based on how an ecosystem, like a forest, develops over time:
The change from the early, reproduction-limited domain to the later, resource limited domain, while gradual, is actually quite dramatic — and best seen in the attributes and success strategies of the pioneer and succession species. They are almost mirror opposites of each other:
How does this apply to our world and our future? Around 1990, the human population shifted from a “pioneer species” time to a “succession species” time.
Old beliefs and pre-1990 experience create a cultural lag, but eventually we will have to adopt succession species’ strategies.
What about climate change or nuclear war or some other threat? Won’t one of these kill off humanity? It’s possible. These are all serious issues. However, they all have well understood technical solutions. The obstacles to implementing those solutions are all human. It is in our hands — and in our power — to avoid catastrophes of our own making.
Rather than despairing about things that may or may not happen in the future, let us choose to work now for the best future possible.
Many of the human obstacles to moving fully into the Planetary Era are subtle and widespread. Our daily life is already more Planetary than Empire but our minds have been shaped by ideas and language that we’ve inherited from the Empire Era.
Here’s a comparison of some of those subtler differences:
For example, the Empire mindset is strongly oriented to categorical thinking — something is either A or B, black or white. So, when interpreting the Outline of History chart above, it is easy to think that each era completely replaces the one before it. The Planetary perspective is more like this:
As each new era comes along, it goes beyond the characteristics of the old era but also includes and transforms the old characteristics. For example, kinship never went away but it lost its dominance in the transition to the Empire Era. Likewise, hierarchy doesn’t go away in the Planetary Era, but it loses its dominance and is no longer violence-enforced. Functional hierarchies are just another form of consensual collaboration.
It will likely take decades, likely generations, for society as a whole to complete the transition into the Planetary Era. We will know we have truly arrived when we have ended warfare as an institution — something that many futurists, myself included, expect will happen in the 21st century.
But we don’t need to wait. We can start inhabiting the Planetary Era in our consciousness and in our experience now.
Much of the material in Reinhabiting The Village points in the right direction. However, if your image of reinhabiting is filled with a sense of going back to a supposedly simpler, happier time in history, you may be quite surprised in the times ahead. Our world is vastly different than it was even a century ago, and even more so than when most of our culture’s ideas were formed:
So how can you start inhabiting your own bright future now? Think like a succession species (see the table above) and then find a way to innovate, implement and/or educate about new cultural forms that increase sustainability, improve connectivity, treat diversity as an asset and/or increase consensual collaboration.
If we do this, we will be working with the momentum of the times, the future will lose it dread, we will be catalyzing a wonderful future for all life… and we will have a lot of fun doing it!
Dr. Robert C. Gilman, Ph.D.
Dr. Robert C. Gilman, Ph.D. is a sustainability pioneer and cultural midwife. He is the President of Context Institute and the Founding Editor of IN CONTEXT, A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable Culture.
Trained as an astrophysicist, Robert decided in the mid-70s that “the stars could wait, but the planet couldn’t.” He turned his attention to the study of global sustainability, futures research, and strategies for positive cultural change.
He was instrumental in the founding of the Global Ecovillage Network in the early 1990s and lived for three years in Winslow CoHousing, one of the first cohousing projects in the US based on this Danish model for community living.
He is the co-author of the Household EcoTeam Workbook and Program, which became a national program in the Netherlands. He served as City Councilman in Langley, Washington, and worked with the American Institute of Architects on issues regarding sustainability and the built environment.
Dr. Gilman is currently immersed in applying the breadth of his knowledge to creating a training program (Bright Future Now) and core curriculum (Foundation Stones) for 21st Century change agents.
