Current foresight student Monica Jamaluddin recently presented on The Future of Conscious Communities for the Asia-Pacific Futures Network.
What is a conscious community? The working definition Monica uses is:
Communities that aim to create a mutually supportive environment for the growth and development of its members in an environmentally sustainable way.
Her research, interviews, and scanning led her to 6 major drivers including digital slowdown, the search for meaning, and ecological thinking. Using these she explores 4 possible future scenarios, really diving into the baseline scenario – Delusion & Disillusion – and the transformation scenario – Our Shared Stories – within the slides.
After reading the presentation I wanted to know, what does Monica feel is the most important takeaway from her project:
“I think I surprised even myself with the transformation scenario! To dare to imagine how life could look if as a society we were able to shift our perspectives from one of fear and scarcity to one of love and abundance. It seems to me that we could experience a sense of incredible expansiveness as opposed to the contractive, shrinking feeling that is a reality for many of us today. A society where we are taking personal responsibility for our ecological impact, moving out of “I” consciousness into “We” consciousness, and beginning to build a relationship with our environment rather than viewing it as things to conquer for our personal profit / benefit is one I would like to live in and one we have the power to create. There is a lot of wisdom in these conscious and intentional communities that we can stand to learn from, particularly because they are out there experimenting not just theorizing. It was fascinating to get a glimpse into the inner-workings of some of these communities and the concepts and practices they’re working with.”
Check out Monica’s full presentation here: The Future of Conscious Communities
