The future is now

As noted elsewhere, we are a recovering planner who spent most of a career focused on envisioning and facilitating the creation of various futures for someone, somewhere. We were pleased when we first came across William Gibson's saying "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed." Then, several years ago, we came across, and read, one of Wendell Berry's essays that argues To Save the Future, Live in the Present . In it, toward the end, he notes:

Or maybe we could give up saving the world and start to live savingly in it. If using less energy would be a good idea for the future, that is because it is a good idea. The government could enforce such a saving by rationing fuels, citing the many good reasons, as it did during World War II. If the government should do something so sensible, I would respect it much more than I do. But to wish for good sense from the government only displaces good sense into the future, where it is of no use to anybody and is soon overcome by prophesies of doom. On the contrary, so few as just one of us can save energy right now by self-control, careful thought, and remembering the lost virtue of frugality. Spending less, burning less, traveling less may be a relief. A cooler, slower life may make us happier, more present to ourselves, and to others who need us to be present. Because of such rewards, a large problem may be effectively addressed by the many small solutions that, after all, are necessary, no matter what the government might do. The government might even do the right thing at last by imitating the people.

dame's rocket: beautiful, fragrant, nonnative, invasive, blooming now

Photo by J. Harrington

We confess that, since we've spent most of our adult life future-oriented, and have become convinced that responding to climate breakdown cannot be done effectively on an individual basis, we have been more than skeptical toward Mr. Berry's insights despite our predilection for Gibson's observation. Then, earlier this week, we started reading a book titled Spiral to the Stars, Mvskoke Tools of Futurity, by Laura Harjo. It was given to us as a birthday present from our son. Imagine our surprise when we read, in the first chapter, the following:

... As community builders, we often ask tactical sets of questions to develop a concrete plan, and then tell people that they are going to have to sit and wait, knowing that conditions will not improve in their time: their dreams will be for someone else. In other words we tell them "not yet." We cannot say "not yet." I am not eschewing a long view of community; I am merely saying that futurity does not have to be limited to a future temporality, in which we have to wait to create and get to the place we want to be. ...

Harjo's perspective is, for our purposes, close enough to Berry's that we were reminded of the old joke about how, if someone calls you a donkey, ignore them. If two people call you a donkey, look for a saddle. We also recall the proverb to the effect that the longest journey is started with a single step. It's possible, no, probable, that we need to give serious consideration to how we can incorporate Berry's and Harjo's guidance into our worldview. Harjo, as far as we know, no relation to one of our favorite poets, Joy Harjo, tells us that one of Joy Harjo's poems offers "a call to action." What do you think?

A Map to the Next World

By Joy Harjo

                  for Desiray Kierra Chee 

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for

those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged

from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It

must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it

was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the

altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our

children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born

there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to

disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to

them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the

map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-

ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s

small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a

spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking

from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh

deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world

there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song

she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you

will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they

entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the

destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our

tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was

once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

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