Can we imagine a positive future?
A journey from modern India, through the cycles of time, toward a Golden future
It's been a couple of months since I last published a post here on Oxymoron. I took some time away, mostly offline, including a month in India travelling and visiting family. One of my hopes for the trip was to find new perspectives and positive visions for the future.
Having not been to India for 9 years, I was surprised by the pace of change, with monolithic concrete towers springing up at a staggering pace, enormous infrastructure projects under construction amid the organised chaos, and expensive foreign cars swerving around tuk tuks and cows. The juxtaposition between the old India and the newly emerging India was truly fascinating to witness.
By the end of the month, I had a feeling of a country running so fast to catch up with Western lifestyles that it's almost tripping over its own feet. That’s not a criticism. It’s actually hugely impressive how the country is overcoming challenges at such an unimaginable scale and pace, bringing a growing population more of the material comforts that many of us in the West take for granted. The new India is inevitably rough around the edges, but the majority of people I spoke to seemed genuinely hopeful that things were getting better.
This sense of optimism was nice to see, but from my own perspective it was also challenging to see that the model being adopted is the same form of market capitalism that is now failing in the countries that pioneered it. Now being hyper-scaled to fit a country of over 1.4 billion people, the flaws in the system are clearly being amplified in issues such as widening inequality and environmental destruction. It seems that the opportunity to invent a new economic model fit for the 21st century has been bypassed in the rush to catch up.
Even Auroville, the environmentally focused spiritual community near Pondicherry that promotes itself as a model of an alternative economy, had a strange capitalistic aura that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and the spiritual teacher Sadhguru now has a modern lifestyle brand selling pretty things that you never knew you needed.
And so while my trip was both eye opening and enjoyable, I returned without having found the positive visions of the future that I was looking for.
We can’t give up hope
The reason that I’ve been looking for positive future visions is because I feel that the environmental and social movements here in the UK seem to be increasingly pessimistic, driven more by fear and despair than by hope and inspiration. Naturally these movements always have their roots in the challenges that we face, but when I first got involved as a teenager there seemed to be an atmosphere of genuine hope. That hope was inspiring and energising, a wonderful thing to be a part of and hugely motivational. In the last few years though, I have been disheartened to hear many people I admire and respect confess to me in private that they have given up hope.
And I don’t blame them. I have struggled with hope too. It’s been a very long time since we had a political leader who could inspire us with a meaningful vision for a better future, and despite repeated claims by activists that “we already have all of the solutions“, the elephant in the room is that they don’t seem to be working. Even Patagonia's founder, Yvon Chouinard, when changing the company's mission statement to “We're in business to save our home planet”, apparently also said in private that it’s because he thinks it's already too late for humanity.
To me, this is an untenable situation. Hope is the fuel that drives life forward. It's what gets us out of bed in the morning, enables us to face the struggles of life and gives us all something to aim for. Without hope, there is only darkness.
As we travel through the vast expanse of space on our tiny blue marble called Earth, we must remember that it is the tiny points of light out there in the darkness of the universe that give birth to all the wonders of life. Hope is light, and we only need a little bit for great things to happen.
Look to the stars
Having returned without finding the inspiration that I was looking for, I found it in the strangest place waiting for me when I got home. A friend had been given a book by her husband that she thought was too weird for her to read, and so she passed it on to me thinking that maybe I was open minded enough to give it a go. Challenge accepted!
The Golden Future by Diana Cooper rather took me by surprise. I initially assumed it was a novel but it turned out to be melting pot of future prophecy, life guidance, angels and, um, unicorns.
I have to admit that while I struggled to understand all of it, at its core I found something unexpectedly beautiful and valuable to help inform a positive vision of hope. So please indulge me for a minute while things get weird, and then we’ll loop back to see how this is relevant to the world of sustainable business.
Diana Cooper’s book builds on the concept of the New Earth, which on the surface is a Christian story offering hope of a future free of sin and suffering. In recent years however, the New Earth concept has gained popularity outside of its Christian context as a way of unifying ancient prophecies from cultures across the globe.
For example, the Mayan calendar ended on the winter solstice of December 21st 20121. While some people thought the Mayan’s were predicting the end of the world, others believe they were measuring the end of a major cycle of life on Earth.
The astrological cycles of the Zodiac represent the precession of the Earth about its axis, with a full cycle of 25,920 years being divided into 12 aeons of 2160 years, each represented by a sign of the Zodiac2. While there is no scientific consensus on exactly when each aeon begins and ends, it is accepted that the Zodiac represents measurable time periods in the movement of stars across our sky. We’ve been in the Age of Pisces for most of the past two thousand years and as the 1969 hit single informed us, it’s widely estimated that the shift to the Age of Aquarius takes place somewhere about now, give or take.
(I’ve embedded the music video below for your enjoyment)
And then there is the ancient Indian Yuga Cycle that represents a cycle of world ages “in which we gradually descend from a state of spiritual perfection and material abundance to one of ignorance and scarcity”3. The four Yugas are the Satya Yuga (the Golden age), Treta Yuga (Silver age), Dvapara Yuga (Bronze age) and Kali Yuga (the Iron age). Many Hindu scholars believe that we are currently in the Kali Yuga, the final and darkest of the four Yugas.
In his excellent analysis of the Yugas, researcher Bidhu Dev Misra explains how the ancient Indian epic, The Mahabharata, describes the Kali Yuga as the time when…
“the World Soul is Black in hue; only one quarter of virtue remains, which slowly dwindles to zero at the end of the Kali Yuga. Men turn to wickedness; disease, lethargy, anger, natural calamities, anguish and fear of scarcity dominate. Penance, sacrifices and religious observances fall into disuse. All creatures degenerate. Change passes over all things, without exception”
While there is clearly still much good in the world today and many of us have very good lives, if we zoom out and look at the collective state of humanity and the perfect storm of crises that we face, it does seem to fit the description of the Kali Yuga.
This might sound rather pessimistic, but there is a message of hope here. All of these ancient systems described cycles of time that they believed were significant to the state of humanity, and while it might be uncomfortable for our egos to consider that we could be in the Kali Yuga, it is also comforting to think that the Yuga it precedes is the Satya Yuga, or Golden age.
There is a lot of debate over the length of each Yuga and therefore the date of transition, but Bidhu Dev Misra provides the best analysis that I have come across and places the end of the Kali Yuga at approximately 2025. Suddenly it’s sounding a lot more optimistic!
We should of course be cautious not to expect any miracles. Just as the world didn’t end in 2012, so too we are unlikely to wake up in utopia on New Year’s Day 2025. However, that’s no reason to dismiss these ideas entirely. If there is any truth in the ancient beliefs that the cycles of time have some profound impact on the state of humanity, then instead of seeing ourselves as facing a wall of unsolvable crises, we could instead look at ourselves as in the midst of a painful transition. A transition that may present great suffering as old forces double down in their efforts to hold onto power, but which could eventually lead us to a better future.
Whether you believe any of this or not doesn’t really matter. The reason I am presenting it here is because it provides us with an alternative mental frame to help us break out of the confines of linear thought and imagine new possibilities of hope for the future.
To the Golden Age!
If we embrace this way of thinking, we can then ask ourselves, what do we dream of in a Golden Age? So that’s what I’ve done and I share here an initial attempt for a positive vision of a future society, which I’m calling Harmonium:
Harmonium would emerge when the collective state of human consciousness has elevated to the point that we understand that we are all one and that everything in nature is interconnected. The dominant emotion in this new society is not fear, but love.
In this new society, there would be an inherently deep level of trust between all humans and a genuine respect for everything in the natural world, whether it be plant, animal, mineral or mushroom. With such a high level of trust and respect, profound changes in our behaviour would begin to take place.
We would find that the concept of ownership, whether by individuals, corporations or governments seems increasingly strange and is held lightly. Instead of defending property with contracts and violence, people would naturally respect each other's reasonable boundaries, while at the same time wanting to share what they have with others.
It would be a truly collaborative community where leaders are not driven by power, greed and ego but are those who naturally bring people together for the common good. Existing monetary and legal systems that artificially concentrate resources and power would become intolerable and eventually die off.
Community would be at the centre of everything, as people see themselves as parts of a bigger whole and genuinely want to contribute to the collective good. Arbitrary metrics like GDP would be dismissed as insanity and replaced by a holistic understanding of true wellbeing, both for humans and everything in the living world.
Education would permeate every aspect of life and span all ages, both as students and teachers, focussing on nurturing the unique gifts of each individual, helping them to overcome their weaknesses and developing a deep understanding of the complex world around them. This would naturally make way for greater collaboration between disciplines and cultures, and freedom of thought returning to the sciences, accelerating innovation in essential areas such as health, energy, agriculture, resource management and environmental restoration. Technology would advance with the sole purpose of improving the wellbeing of life.
Local resilience and self-sufficiency of communities would be seen as common sense while knowledge and technology would be shared openly. Waste resources would become the primary source to serve our material needs, with all products becoming recyclable or biodegradable within any community.
Mindless consumption would no longer be craved, meaning that all goods would actually serve a real need in the world or bring genuine joy to the community. As a result, far less production would be needed without a decline in quality of life. In fact, the economy would recalibrate to eliminate unnecessary work, giving people more time and a greater sense of abundance with less. As the sense of scarcity evaporated, people would find purpose in life in their own way and feel valued simply for contributing the best of themselves to the wellbeing of their community.
There would be a natural shift away from the consumption of animal foods and products as needless suffering was no longer seen as acceptable, and in cases where it was truly necessary, great respect and gratitude would be shown. This culture of non-violence would also lead to safety in society and global peace, with historical weapons being decommissioned and neutralised.
Harmonium would bring the era of male dominance to an end, not by swinging the pendulum to the other side but by embracing both masculine and feminine energies, harnessing their potentials in balance and harmony.
What about businesses?
At the recent launch of the documentary film Responsables, business student Oliver West asked one of the panels, “What would the purpose of businesses be in a post transition world?”
While the above scenario is not exactly what was meant, I love this question because it hints at the idea that the “transition” might be more than just swapping out fossil fuels for renewable energy sources within our existing culture and economy. It hints that we could transition to something radically different.
In her book, Diana Cooper suggests that our relationship with money will change as we move through the transition, with new currencies and monetary technologies coming and going until such time in the future that we find that we have relatively little need for money. At that point, the concept of a business as a commercial enterprise would become somewhat obsolete.
What would likely emerge in its place would be something very similar to how I've always described my ideal company - groups of people who choose to come together for a shared objective. Whether that's building a home for a neighbour, caring for an elderly relative, maintaining the water system, entertaining the community, or developing and building new technologies, these groups would self organise to do what needs to be done and amicably share the benefits of their work.
The world of work would therefore shift from being professional, to being predominantly amateur. This might sound like a step backwards, but the word amateur originates in the latin word amare, meaning ‘to love’. The future of business in a post transition world could be amateur enterprises working for the good of society, motivated by the love of their work and genuine need, rather than by money.
Wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?
Tell me I’m dreaming
So there it is, just one possible vision of hope for the future. I don’t think there is anything fundamentally new or radical here. The only really radical thing would be if I suggested that it might actually be possible.
It might actually be possible.
OK, now it’s radical!
But doesn’t it seem unrealistic?
Absolutely. It’s completely unrealistic. But let’s not let the realism police arrest our dreams. Instead let’s ask ourselves why it’s unrealistic and see if there is anything that we can do to change it.
The really interesting thing about this particular vision is that the most unrealistic thing seems to be the idea that we could harmoniously collaborate and share resources openly without some sort of power structure to maintain order and resources. What does this say about us as humans?
Even if we think that we are personally capable of participating in such a world (which I don’t think about myself), we likely believe that others in our society are not ready for it. Just be honest with yourself, do you have enough trust in others to leave your front door unlocked when you’re out, or to lend your bike to a stranger? In fact, do you have things that you wouldn’t even lend to your friends, family or neighbours? For most of us, the answers to these types of questions highlight our ingrained lack of trust in each other's integrity.
I have come to believe that the world we live in is a mirror of our collective state of consciousness and that the challenges we currently face as a society reflect our own weaknesses as human beings. We can invent ground breaking new technology and campaign for political change, but unless we fundamentally change something within ourselves, the same patterns will repeat.
So how can we reignite hope?
It can often feel hard to move forward in creating a better future but I think that we can take some simple steps to ignite the flames of hope and give us a sense of direction, even if the path ahead seems rocky and uncertain.
Step 1 - Allow yourself to dream
Have faith that there is at least a small drop of light at the end of the tunnel and that there is still hope for a positive future. With that hope, allow yourself to dream open heartedly of what you really want the future to be like without getting bogged down in realism. . Share your dreams as widely as possible and allow them to float on the horizon as beacons that we can look to for guidance.
Step 2 - Work on yourself
Use yourself as prototype number one. Invest time to explore the inner depths of yourself to understand what it is about you that isn’t ready for the world that you yourself dream of. Face these weakness and try overcome them. By doing this you’ll not only evolve yourself, but will contribute to the evolution of humanity too.
Step 3 - Move forward
Take steps towards creating your own vision, however small or experimental they might seem. There are already many people taking small but inspiring steps forward and if enough of us continue to do so, we might one day look back and be surprised where we have ended up. We might just have arrived in a positive future.
Perhaps then, a sustainable business is simply one that presents an inspiring vision of a positive future and takes active steps, however small, to keep improving itself and move toward that future. I think that’s something we can all do.
Thank you for sticking with me as I’ve gone out on the edge here. If you’re feeling inspired to dream of a positive future, I encourage you to share your own visions either here in the comments, on LinkedIn or write an article of your own. I would really love to read yours so do let me know.
And of course, I’m always grateful to those of you who like, subscribe, share and comment ♥
Wow!!! Tom. I loved your positive vision of "Harmonium" and above all, the idea of creating groups of people who choose to come together for a shared goal of love, balance and harmony. It's about "creating something inside that creates change outside." Thanks for sharing it!
Interesting, inspiring read... thank you for sharing... here's to igniting the flames of hope (and to unicorns!)