Vision
Whether we are striving for transformation in our own lives, in our communities or the world at large, it is essential that we create and focus upon a vision of the ideal we’re aiming for. This must be a clear and compelling vision that will both inspire us and function as a compass to guide us in our attempts at making progress.
It is also key that the vision be both ambitious and more or less achievable. If we know deep down that our desired outcomes are unrealistic, it will be effectively impossible for us to sustain the hope and motivation needed to realize them. That said, our vision may well evolve over time as we become more powerful, more resilient, resourced and confident in our abilities.
When it comes to envisioning a better world, free of inequity, violence and oppression, a world in which humans exist in harmony with nature, in which all of our needs are met, we’ve healed all our traumas and the environmental crisis is simply a chapter in our history books, we need to bear in mind that even if this world does ever come to be, it will most certainly not be in our lifetimes, nor in our children or grandchildren’s lifetimes.
That ideal world is, for our intents and purposes, a fantasy. But it is also a powerful reminder of what we hold most dearly as human animals, and what the majority of us would like to strive for, if we truly believed it were possible. Utopia, sadly, will always be a fantasy. There will always be power-hungry, unscrupulous and sociopathic people among us, and our best laid plans will continue to be upended by the vicissitudes of life, whatever form our societies may take. The economy will continue its eternal turbulence, and we will continue to suffer natural disasters and disease.
Even so, the fantasy is valuable, in that it brings us home to our spirits, to our deepest dreams and longings. But again, remember that to achieve real change, we must also have a vision that is more realistic, that does not so fundamentally conflict with the uncomfortable realities of the world we currently inhabit. After all, while we would all like to imagine that our descendants will inherit a far better world than the one we know now, I’m sure we would all like to see our own lot substantially improved while we’re still alive.
And so, I will focus on a relatively achievable vision within the next few generations, hopefully inspiring of action. Keep in mind that this is written by an author whose background is in regenerative land-care, the mental health field and the arts, so my perspective will inform this vision, and I invite you to draw inspiration from it, but also to explore your own vision - consider where it differs, and where it aligns. We can learn a lot about ourselves from this kind of exercise.
My vision is heavily informed by the aspirational world of solarpunk and the more practical road-map that permaculture gives us towards a regenerative and humanistic future. For those who are unfamiliar, both of these frameworks are well worth studying and exploring. They can both provide boundless inspiration for our visions of a better future, as well as some of the resources needed to make progress towards them. I believe they complement each other very well, as each excels where the other falls short.
In any vision of the future we must both emphasize meeting the needs of all people as well as addressing all of the environmental and societal problems that we face. When people are unable to meet their needs by socially sanctioned means, they must inevitably resort to manipulation, crime, and other destructive measures. It is simply impossible to have healthy people without a healthy planet and a healthy planet without healthy people. It is a failing of therapeutic and social services that they ignore environmental and political factors in our lives, and a shortcoming of the environmental movement that it often neglects more human needs. This is why soul and soil emphasizes the integration of these pieces.
To be thoroughly meaningful, our vision must integrate all of the elements that make up human life on Earth. The ecological, the psychological, the emotional, the political, the economical. It must describe work and play, abundance and loss, power and fragility. That said, when it comes to taking action to build a better world, we will find we have more leverage in focusing on certain elements over others. We have to pick our battles and be strategic.
Another important note is that we cannot expect the whole world to change in a linear and consistent way. As the devastation of climate change, late-stage capitalism and political instability unfolds, some parts of the world will fare very badly and others will be relatively unscathed. If we want to meaningfully affect change, we must primarily focus on ourselves, our communities and local ecosystems. No one person or group of people can save the whole world, and it would waste our time and destroy us to try.
With these many caveats out of the way, what key elements can we identify for our vision? Let's start on the scale of the individual and expand outwards from there.
I'm guessing I speak for more than myself when I say that we long to live lives full of passion, purpose, creativity and connection (whether that be social, spiritual or otherwise). We want to be inspired and confident, with a robust sense of self-worth. We would like to be able to express ourselves fully without fear and to access flow without friction. We want to love and be loved securely, to belong in and be accepted by our communities.
We would like to be able to busy ourselves with work that aligns with our deepest passions and is valued by society, and then to rest and enjoy leisure abundantly without worrying about where our next paycheck will come from. We would like to live in artfully constructed homes and communities whose physical infrastructure is intrinsically welcoming, and to be surrounded by the thriving vitality of nature, a beautiful diversity of plants and animals who we know to be our neighbors and our broader family.
We would like to arrive on our deathbeds full of wonder and gratitude at the lives we've lived, without regret, and surrounded by the people we love. We would like to be celebrated and remembered with the utmost fondness by those we leave behind, who will pass down our stories as part of the greater human narrative.
On the level of community, the goals are broadly similar. How wonderful it would be to share our neighborhoods with congenial people who have similar values and a similar sense of purpose. To share spaces for abundant community gardens and to enjoy ample opportunities for open discussion, creativity and play with those around us. And at the same time, for those of us who are introverted and neurodivergent (myself included) to be accepted and valued exactly as we are, allowed our solitude, and welcome to engage as feels comfortable and fulfilling to us.
This kind of awareness and acceptance requires that we vastly augment our focus on social and emotional skills in the education system (and while we're at it, pay teachers way more). The education system that exists today serves solely to produce unimaginative and obedient workers, and offers children little in the way of resources to skillfully navigate the complexities of social and emotional life. One might say that the responsibility of parents to teach these skills to children, but as we should all be aware, the majority of parents also lack these skills and resources. Such is the curse of a cowardly and capitalistic culture mired in the muck of generational trauma. Other currently neglected areas that would be better emphasized in schools would include the political structures of our countries and communities, how to manage money, and the intricacies of health (including mental health) and nutrition.
I would imagine that the vast majority of us would like to have access to high quality universal healthcare, with short wait times and medical professionals who are empowered to actually spend time and invest in relationships with their patients, deeply appreciating their complex circumstances rather than throwing out superficial remedies that rarely do any good. And, recognizing that Western medicine focuses predominantly on symptom management, we would prioritize alternative, evidence-based healing modalities that emphasize the prevention of illness and the maintenance of good health.
Returning to the topic of community gardens and nature, our towns and cities would feature vastly greater green areas, wooded parks, meadows allowed to grow wild with flowers that attract pollinators, trees lining every street and buildings with green roofs and garden terraces. The benefits of this kind of design are too numerous to mention here, but it merits mentioning that the best strategy we have for combating the heat island effect that afflicts cities more and more in the age of global warming is to bring more plants into cities. This makes a vast impact, and can mean the difference between life and death for vulnerable people.
I would also say that a great many of us would like to feel that we have a certain amount of influence within our communities. This may mean the ability to contribute ideas and perspectives in town council meetings, or it may mean making more hands-on contributions to the creation of public spaces in some capacity.
As I move on to society at large, I must be transparent in stating that I have no expertise in economics, political science, or large-scale infrastructure projects. So the reader must bear in mind that my perspectives here on out may be less grounded in practical reality. Nevertheless, the perspectives of common people are ultimately what matters the most, so I feel justified in sharing my thoughts.
I doubt that within our lifetimes we will see any significant changes to our political and economic structures. It seems to me that within the next few generations, the best we might hope for is a peaceful transition towards regionally-centered democratic socialism. Communism is a lovely ideal, but human nature tends to get in the way. I will be frank in saying that I don't believe it's truly achievable. But that being said, I firmly believe that in one way or another we must overcome the capitalist model if we are to survive as a species, and if we are not to utterly trash the world we inhabit, rendering it inhospitable to all but cockroaches and mold. Capitalism explicitly incentivizes greed and exploitation, and alienates the vast majority of people from the value that they produce in society. Furthermore, it alienates us from each other and even from ourselves, as it works us to the Bone and promotes material consumption as the optimal way of dissociating from the discomfort of life within its very own framework. We are left with no time or energy to invest in ourselves or our communities when our worth as human beings is boiled down the vulgar act of producing as much financial Capital for the elites as humanly possible until we drop dead.
Democratic socialism empowers us with agency over our work and roles in society, as well as providing us greater wealth and comfort through the even distribution of profits. This stands in stark contrast with the capitalist model, in which the vast majority of profits are funneled upwards to CEOs, the holders of capital and shareholders, while the productive masses are left with barely enough to survive, if that.
Another essential aspect of the vision of an ideal society must be our systems for producing and distributing energy, given that our flourishing as a species in the modern sense depends on incredible quantities of energy. The finite fossil fuels that remain must be reserved for specific essential uses, such as the production of key medical equipment, until viable alternatives are established. Sooner or later we will run out of petroleum resources, and it is insane for us to be recklessly manufacturing everything out of plastic and burning gas and oil in our cars, boats and airplanes. What we want is a diversity of energy sources, including solar, wind, nuclear (which is vastly safer now than it is ever been) and potentially others such as tidal and geothermal generation. Diversity provides us with security in the inevitable event of system failures from one source or another, and wind and solar are notoriously dependent on the weather, so the more inputs, the better, it would seem. The improvement of battery technology seems inevitable, however, we must find ways of producing batteries that don't rely on such absurdly destructive and exploitative production methods as we have now.
It's virtually a meme at this point that tech entrepreneurs, in their vain efforts to come up with new and Superior modes of transportation, keep reinventing the train, and calling it by different names. It is indisputably the optimal form of mass transportation, and it's unlikely that we will ever do better. We will likely always need some form of individual transportation, as there will always be some portion of the population that lives rurally (myself included) but we must do much better with managing the transportation of urban populations. Especially in North America, all of our infrastructure has been designed around cars, and forces most of us to be dependent on cars, and this has created a hideous, dangerous and unwelcoming landscape that is alienating, depressing, and destructive both to the environment and the human spirit. The ideal vision does not entirely exclude (electric and perhaps hydrogen-powered) cars, but it must focus on trains and bicycle-friendly infrastructure within cities.
Finally, if we are to persist in electing national governments, we must broaden our conception of democracy. Voting every few years is not nearly enough; we must continuously be prodding and holding our elected officials to account. We must establish greater channels of popular power to unseat these officials when they contradict the will of the people, and hold regular referendums for legislative decisions. While reiterating that I'm no expert in political matters, it's my understanding that Switzerland is the only country that has this kind of policy in place at the current time. The government is neutral, but the people sure as hell aren't.
When it comes to artificial intelligence, I will concede that it has its uses, and that we are stuck with it for the foreseeable future, but I do not think it bodes well, and as I write this on the precipice of AI dominating our world, I would not be surprised if it proves to be our downfall as a species. That said, this is another area where I have no expertise, so I will say no more. I will conclude this segment by stating the obvious fact that our ideal vision of the world would be free of war, free of famine, of drought, and of disease. While this may be controversial, my ideal world would also be free of religion, which has been one of the foremost causes of war and suffering for as long as it has existed.
