Introduction
by Danamaya
Our Green Sangha group met for a day of practice together a couple of months ago. During our time together, we did this activity. I’d been thinking a lot, lately, that our imaginations can get dented and dulled from worry, bad news and the fatigue all activists encounter.
There is seemingly no end of dystopian views about the future—and we all know how insidious a hindrance our wired-in negativity biases can be. To me, it has become a very rich field of practice to help keep more balanced perspectives and avoid what could be disabling worries and shooting 2nd, 3rd and 4th arrows into my heart. Staying alert to my mind’s propensity for prapancha and catastrophizing, while keeping an open heart with metta has required me to keep re-grounding myself using all the antidotes in my kit bag of practices. But even more, as an entire, though loosely connected, community of humans working to mitigate and heal our world, we have to have visions of what we are moving towards, not just to the dire visions of a ruined planet that we are tryingto move away from.
So we did this nifty exercise—which I encourage all of us to do: to use our imaginal faculties to envision what our lives will look like if we get it right, if we make major progress towards the healing of the planet. Because it is indeed not too late to make significant progress! We imagined being a distant cousin 100 years into the future where technology had found a way to send a letter back to our ‘ancestor’ to tell them how things had changed and to have hope and encouragement to keep working to heal the environment. Here is what we each wrote that day.
Anthony
Dear Anthony --
Take heart. Humanity has survived. Our suffering has opened our hearts and motivated us to cultivate wisdom and compassion. We still have many different religions (and many people have no religion), but we have stopped arguing about our different beliefs and fighting and killing one another because of them. Some of those other religions are pretty out there, but they're basically good people.
We still have libraries, museums, and concert halls. We passed a law that you can only listen to electronic dance music with headphones. I enjoy watching crowds of mostly young people dance together silently.
People live more simply now, but we take better care of ourselves and one another, and we share stuff all the time. The storage locker industry went out of business and we have repurposed those spaces in different ways in different communities. In my town we mostly use them to store tools, art supplies, musical instruments, sporting equipment, drag costumes, etc. that are available for free use, the way people check out books from the library, as you did during your time.
Danamaya
“Dear Cousin: What a thrill it has been for me to receive your name and address, and a brief bio, from our TakeHeart campaign! I hope you are getting along well. Though it’s hard, I’ve been trying to imagine your life, and hope it hasn’t been too hard, and that you also have good things in your life and people who love you. Here’s my ‘message in a bottle’ of hope and encouragement; truly, it’s gonna be alright!
“Let me explain a little more about this. As of the year 2124, where I am living, we’ve got a big project going on. You know that idea of Big Data, in your day? Well, it’s even bigger now, since we have quantum computers and we decided to use it to help each of us find a cousin back in your time that we could write a letter of encouragement to.I want to let you know that things turned out so much better than was hoped, long ago. And I want to tell you a little bit about how life is now. I’m sad I won’t ever be able to get a letter from you—unless you use an old-fashioned time-capsule—but I imagine you smiling as you read this, and maybe you will take a deep breath and feel comforted and inspired to keep doing all the good things I believe you are doing to make this future come into being.
“By 2035, the last remnants of that horrid Project 2025 were finally countered and outlawed. With the media restored to sanity, sensible regulations were put on social and public media. Big Industry and Corporations got regulated, and, after that awful collapse of the big ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the billionaires, who finally realized all their investments were getting flooded out too, stopped fighting and started paying their fair share of taxes. This enabled the Congress of that time to authorize the Great Wetlands Project. Those former TrumpCamps were vastly upgraded (new ones opened all along the Southern Border, which were remade into nature preserves) and became training grounds for anyone who wanted to participate (documented or not) in a grand revival of the CCC. Good living conditions for families with all the services needed, free medical care, schools and food.
“My daughter and I just got back from a volunteer’s vacation where we worked on some habitat enhancements for the manatees in Florida, well, what’s left of Florida. But—Oh!—the fireflies at night! Where we live now, even though it’s a big city, and though we don’t have fireflies, we have all sorts of birds visiting and some nesting in our balcony-garden that wraps around two sides of our flat. The balcony is more like a big, open L-shaped room, and we harvested enough peaches this Fall from our trio of dwarf trees to put up a dozen pints of jam. and we have more tomatoes and zucchini than we know what to do with!
“The Restorative Justice Movement expanded hugely to include ALL communities—plants, animals, insects, the soil and funguses as well as humans. It transformed agricultural and fishing practices so profoundly that there is no hunger anywhere anymore. It’s true that the great migration and pandemics of the later part of the 21st century took a lot of lives. There aren’t as many humans on the planet now and there was much suffering and loss. We have a different relationship with those terms ‘growth’ and ‘progress’ now. But so much vitality in our communities! And so much more kindness day to-day. So I hope you can refresh your sense of possibilities and vision and carry on. I must close now, and go tend my beehive—I think the hive is going to split soon and I want to get a new box set up. My sweetie is due home soon, and I’m on dinner prep tonight. Be well, dear cousin! Sending much love from your future!”
Ethan
Solar-powered water condensation machines enabled people to fulfill their need for water without taking it from rivers and lakes, and even to put some back into the soil. This enabled massive reforestation projects. Even the deserts were fortified, and turned into fertile land where crops could be grown. Food became abundant with no artificial scarcities, and agricultural subsidies went to growers of healthy food, not corn.
Carbon and methane were reclaimed and put back into the soil, and fewer new emissions were generated. The climate cooled again and rising sea levels were reversed. People began to reinhabit the great coastal cities and towns. But in the meantime, the midwest of North America became the center of progressive thought, arts, and culture. The Peoples' Islamic Socialist Republic of Cleveland became North America's cultural center, and its most popular vacation spot.
Jim
We've evolved so quickly, beyond anyone's expectations. It happened so fast that we could not even collectively fully grasp what was happening, until it became all too clear and obvious.
At first they continued with the same dominant war mentality enhanced by AI, but it simply could not withstand the interconnected collective and independent actions of the people on the streets and within groups throughout the entire world. Luckily, people with both hope, foresight, and their own access to AI, helped to pave the way with new systems of collaboration and thinking, so thank you.
Throughout it all, enough people were able to come to deeply understand and agree upon critical solutions to many of the existing intertwined problems. They understood both the benefits and pitfalls of identity, of its cohesive powers to focus and unite and its ultimate deadly and divisive end results. The degree of destruction exposed and made all too clear the many faulty thinking processes, which had for so long, previously interfered with the nature of our perceptions, mostly around hope.
Sorry you had to live through that period, but thanks again, everything is so rosy now!
rodashruti
Hey Cuz,
I'm writing to you from Natural Bridges, where I know from your journals you have been many times. I am one of the researchers who monitors monarch butterfly migration. They are thriving this year, again.
The Pacific Ocean is clean and full of life, cold enough to support the whales passing through and the sea life that supports them.
Next year someone else will be at this post, and I'll move to the wind farm, where we are making sure our efforts to generate clean energy are not negatively impacting birds, bats, and other flying creatures.
And after that I'll have a year to focus on practice, sitting, standing, and lying down, cultivating wisdom and compassion for the benefit of all beings. This will be on a large organic farm where we spend part of the day harvesting grain, fruits and vegetables to feed the community. There are many farms and communities like this, and other ways to contribute to a liveable planet and sustainable ways of life.
We get sick, we grow old, we die. Greed, hatred and delusion still arise. But collectively the will to enlightenment has blossomed with the awareness that we create the world we live in through the stories we tell.