Making Future Communities Real: 20th Century Efforts, 21st Century Projects & Guiding Principles

Fri, May 31, 2024, 11:01 AM · 25:12

The heart of a promising, grounded vision for the future of humanity centers around reconnecting deeply to self, to community, and to nature …if we are to move beyond the hyper disconnection, mass mindless consumerism, and meaningless of post-modern, anti-cultural economies... and in order to sail through the increasingly volatile waves of change brought by global warming and accelerating technologies. But how do these visions for community become real? What can we learn from the principles and approaches underlying past and current efforts? Where is the emerging edge? We will quickly review the proto-experiments of the 20th century and their underlying philosophies: from the Goethenanum to Damanhur; from Black Mountain College to EPCOT; from Esalen Institute to Burning Man. And show how these evolved into current experiments: US and Latin American projects, apocalyptic escapes, psychedelic retreats, and de-centralized communities. We'll use all of these examples to surface and explore the meta-frameworks and long-term thinking that can help guide us into grounding and realizing a reconnected life-way for humanity through our projects.