...a condition having the attributes of a mature ecosystem: stable, diverse, in symbiotic balance again... a community of beings joined in rim and basin, air and watershed, food hains, ceremonies... We will be informed by earthworms and plankton. We will study that authority which resides in place and act out our lives accordingly. There is no separate existence.

Jeremiah Gorsline and Freeman House,
Planet Drum Bundle #3, 1974.

Metahistory.org expands its message via a twin site dedicated to oral tradition
and dialogue on emergent communities in a planet-friendly future.

LISTEN TO JOHN LASH AND JOANNA HARCOURT-SMITH DISCUSS THE PURPOSE OF FUTURE PRIMITIVE.

The name of our broadcasting site, futureprimitive.org, expresses our belief that a sustainable future for humanity depends on the return to lost essentials. We take our name, and the above citation, from the manifesto for deep ecology written by Jeremiah Gorsline and Freeman House, originally published in Planet Drum #3 in 1974.

In the primitive we reclaim the timeless birthright of humanity. We secure the future by owning up to what most endures, the signature wisdom of the human heart. Futureprimitive.org invites a dialogue on how to reinvent society in Gaian terms, planet-friendly terms. So far no Gaian societies exist but we can foresee how they will emerge.

The cultural fibre of community is oral tradition: myths of origins, poetry of place, social dialogue, the expressions of generational learning. As the audio-radio dimension of Metahistory.org, futureprimitive.org will be a touchstone for oral traditions of the past and future.

Community is the setting for the practice of deathless survival skills, creativity, novelty, and ecstatic expression of oneness with the Earth. But community itself must have a setting, a relation to place. Societies dissociated from the Gaian habitat are doomed to fail, but futurity can be found in relation to setting. What can endure must emerge from Gaia, from the living planet.

In futureprimitive.org we propose to go beyond making society better, and consider how to make better kinds of society, alternative social systems. Social improvement and reform are noble aims, but what if the social system we seek to improve is beyond saving? Take the analogy of the Titanic: we can work at improving conditions on board, or we can work on the lifeboats. If the ship is going down, no amount of improvement is going to insure that the journey of the passengers continues.

But if the safe, sane, and sustainable communities of the future will not be improvements of the existing system, what will they be?

Emergence is the current term used in biology and physics for what was formerly called complexity, and before that, chaos. The breakthrough of chaos theory in the 1980s has now led to a growing understanding of emergent systems. The science of emergence recognizes that Gaia is autopoetic: that is, self-organized on a base of infinite potential that continually renews itself. Emergence is the dynamic of coevolving parts in an autopoetic system. No one part of the system drives or causes another part to act, but the parts act congruously, thus allowing the deep innate potential of the entire system to emerge and come to expression in the parts.

To transpose this concept into social terms: emergent communities are social groups that coevolve with the Gaian habitat, allowing for the unique human potential of Gaia´s experiment to come to its fullest expression.

Emergence is twofold: future primitive society emerges within the Gaian setting, and the genius of the human spirit emerges within that society. Emergence involves both the setting from which we grow as a society, and that within us which grows from our innermost resources as individuals.

Emergent communities are intentional communities, some of which are already in the making. (Google "intentional communities" to see what we mean. This is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, futuristic architectural villages, self-sufficient communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, and similar projects.) In part, the aim of futureprimitive.org will be provide a connective base or networking tool for intentional communities around the world. To be, as it were, the "Prairie Home Companion" of the network of emergent global alternative communities.

Marion Institute is the sponsor of Future Primitive.

Click here to donate to help support the goals of Future Primitive.