From May 2013 through December 2018, I have published “The Note”—a monthly essay on sustainable economics and open civics. The purpose was always to provide a concise, focused but nuanced window into the unseen dynamics underlying key events of the moment. In some cases, economics was the needed nuance; in other cases, economic reporting needed to be nested in qualitative examination of the human experience.
A consistent theme of The Note was the need to consider purpose, ethics, poetry, and civics, as core elements of the quality of life question, alongside political decision-making and analysis of macro-economic trends and economy-shaping priorities. Climate, for instance, is not only an issue of energy politics and investment; it is a question of our relationship to nature, to the Earth system, and to our own sense of responsibility to ourselves and to others. This leads to vital questions about the nature of human experience:
- Are we creators of our lived experience? Or accidents of history?
- Or are we stakeholders that have a right to speak, even if what we wish to say is not expert, not technical in nature, not “investable”?
- What constitutes value, and where does value creation occur? Is it a kind of deceit to quantify value while consciously leaving out much of what matters to people?
- If we hope to have agency in our personal lives, in our immediate surroundings, how do we manifest that in our civic life?
We also examined from various angles the question of optimism. Optimists are often treated as irrationally wishful, making claims on the future that cannot be guaranteed. The core insight I hoped to get across in those notes that focused on optimism is that pessimism is false prophecy, sometimes deceiving further still by calling itself “realism”. Critics call it cynicism, but whatever you call it, there is no way for the pessimist to justify the claim that their naysaying has value. By contrast:
Optimism is no-nonsense. Sound evidence, shared knowledge, and outcome-focused collaboration, liberate us to make the best possible world a reality. What, then, stands in the way of our getting it right?
- Information access is at all-time highs, but information inequality is putting human rights and dignity—and democratic systems—at risk.
- Disinformation threatens to block most people’s access to routine science-based understanding of reality, and that prevents best-case problem solving and makes all of us less secure.
- Our industrial civilization is bursting through critical planetary boundaries, putting natural systems at risk, and undermining the viability of the very world we work every day to build.
- The high-stakes projects of COVID recovery, climate resilience, and nature-positive innovation, mean decisions of consequence will be made in this decisive decade that will affect the livability of our societies for generations to come.
As we wrote in the founding report on Principles for Reinventing Prosperity:
“Adaptive, inclusive, resilient prosperity is within reach, if we work to eliminate critical system failures.”
Living Futures will be a window onto the shifting sands, emerging ideas, and transformational tools we must use to reach that better way forward.
Geoversiv Earth Intelligence 