From Rupture to Reconnection

We are the direct descendants of the spark of photosynthesis. We are the continuation of our ancestors, and at the same time ancestors of futures and beings way beyond our imaginations and dreams. 

Billions of years ago our bacterial ancestors invented photosynthesis, turning sunlight into what would become new forms of life—plants, mycorrhiza, fish, insects, birds, mammals and viruses—all completely unimaginable, and seemingly impossible before they existed. 

We now move forward 200 years into the future into a world that once seemed unimaginable and impossible too. This is the world in which all human beings finally recognise how deeply interwoven our lives are: Interwoven with the lives of our ancestors, all other species, and of future generations. 

Human beings are no longer at ‘the top of the tree’, or at ‘the center of the universe’, with dominion over all things. 

Our language has radically changed to reflect this. For example We stopped saying ‘I am’ / ‘Je suis’ / ‘‘أنا / 我是 / Я есть / and ‘Yo soy’ a hundred years ago. We now say ‘I inter-am’ / J'inter-suis / أنا أتداخل مع (literally "I intertwine with") / 我共存 (literally "I coexist") / Я взаимно существую (literally "I mutually exist") / ‘Yo inter-soy’ to reflect our interbeing with everything and everyone else. 

We went through profound collective and individual suffering, loneliness and loss to get here. The climate crisis took so much away, so violently. But it became the crucible in which we forged our way back to living as nature, not separate from it; the crucible in which we found moral beauty and joy. 

With support from artificial intelligence, and by massively slowing down the pace of our lives so we could listen better, we learned the language of viruses, plants, mycorrhiza, fish, insects, birds and all mammals. We began to better understand (remember) how their relationships manifest—as great forests, rivers, oceans, savannas and huge bustling cities—and how much we are part of them and their complex interwebbing.  

Multilinguists no longer speak only human languages. Communication has gone way beyond words. And we dance together differently now that all species are our teachers. Sometimes long and slow over many years - like trees and forests; and sometimes short and fast—just for a moment—like the mayfly and twilight. 

Even walking is taught as a way of weaving the past, present, and future together.

This reconnection—with all that makes us who we are—means we have so much more company, and so much more wisdom with which to take care of each other, and to continuously reinvent our ways of living on this dynamic, always impermanent planet. 

Communities now measure progress based on regeneration, replenishment and renewal metrics (not financial ones), and learnings are shared instantaneously.  

Envision us alive, 200 years into the future. We have fallen on our knees in awe! We have given in to the humility of understanding that we are—all at the same time—little manifestations in a vast web of life and custodians of that sacred web.  

We are now living as nature, in kinship with all life.