Visions For The Future from Our Fellows
This Earth Day, we rejoice in celebrating the wonders of our planetary home. Though we have much work to do to combat the climate crisis, while also addressing social and economic justice issues, the hard work of many devoted individuals and groups around the world brings rays of optimism for healing our planet for a better tomorrow.
Our Fellows each play a vital role in their respective fields, working to bring consciousness and healing the biosphere. In this post, we have collected a few bits of their wisdom and we share this with you on this celebration of our collective home…
Academy Fellows: Visions for our Planetary Future
Below are the visions from two of our Fellows, Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D, and Ravi Chaudhry on their visions for our planetary future.
“My insight, my dream, for a healthy planetary future includes H2 Clippers silently conveying goods, people and emergency supplies all over Earth. I see some of them built in New Zealand/Aotearoa and in Hawai’i, flown around the Pacific as Maori/Maoli Sky Canoes.”
—Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D, evolution biologist and futurist; author of Gaia’s Dance: The Story of Earth & Us.
“Earth Day is an occasion for humans to celebrate our good fortune to be living in this most beautiful planet, with such bountiful nature, together with eight million other species, and never to forget that we exist, because we all exist.
We also rejoice in our being the most intelligent species ever, with the mandate to act for the Good of All. The concern is that our collective intelligence and wisdom is driven by our EGO, which simply Edges Goodness Out.
That is good for no one, not even us. Let us all promise to each other that we shall together usher the dawn of a new planetary civilization based on love and compassion.
This task must begin today.”
—Ravi Chaudhry, business strategy consultant, mentor to CEOs and corporate Boards, a public intellectual, author, and Founder Chairman of CeNext Consulting and Investment Pvt Ltd.
Academy Fellows: Selected Wisdom
Below are selected pieces by our Fellows that emphasize feelings from Earth Day, such as global healing, resilience, and togetherness.
- Hazel Henderson: Poems for the Solar Age
- Not many people know that the wonderful Hazel Henderson — futurist, evolutionary economist, author, and consultant — is also a poet. Take a look at this recent Kosmos interview highlighting Hazel’s dedication to transforming our planet, and the collection of some of her pieces that date back to when she worked in Washington DC advising The Office of Technology Assessment and The National Science Foundation, where she was the only woman at the time “charging around in science policy.”
- Peter Matthies: Feeling Exhaustion or Overwhelm? You’ve forgotten to turn Airplane Mode on
- We all look forward to returning to a more social world, but everything is still in flux. It is important to keep our inner “battery” charged so we can maintain some sense of peace with the uncertainty of global issues. As we confront ecological collapse on many fronts, we realize that the pandemic is just a dress rehearsal for the climate crisis. To keep ahead of personal depletion, consider turning on your own “Airplane Mode” through suggestions from Peter’s October 2020 piece.
- Brother David Steindl-Rast: All in the Same Boat (Interview from 1983)
- This interview from 1983 is over 30 years old, but still holds contemporary relevance, especially in regards to our urgent need to come together to protect our planet. As Brother David says in this article, “This is our time right now. We can’t really waste our time; we have to see that we are all in the same boat and that different religious traditions point in the same direction, and now let’s get moving together, doing something for peace.”
To end this post, please revel within one of Hazel’s Poems:
Cyberspace is Sacred Space
Earthbound humans
Soaring at last,
In cyberspace.
A leap in their long
And painful journey
Upward: from Olduvai,
Altimira’s caves
Catal Huyuk,
Sumer, with waves
Of patient migration
To cover all the lands
On the bosom
Of Mother Earth.Cyberspace:
Entrance to the Mind
Of God.
Sacred Space,
Full of promises
Sung by all our sages
From Nomad Gatherer – Hunters
To Agriculture: Gift
Of all our Mothers.
To Industrialization,
Materialism, Consumerism,
Onward to the vaunted
Information Age.Triumph of Technique
Yet mindlessly playing
Earlier childhood games:
Clicking on trades
In the Global Casino,
Dungeons and dragons.
Escaping from the Sacred Duties
Of Earthbound Life.
More ancient win-lose games,
Netizens crowing
Over Citizens,
Celebrating freedom,
Rights without Responsibilities.
Will we reach
The Age of Knowledge,
Learning at last,
To understand
The mysterious glories
Of Mother Earth
Teeming with Life
Symbiotic with our own?Will we move on
To the Age of Wisdom
Seeing all Life
As inseparable
On our planetary journey?
Will we use our tools
Of Communication
To reach Community,
And a new Communion
With the Cosmos?
