A vision of the future

Dear friends--

The following piece came out of me all at once today, after a beautiful walk 
down to the waterfront. Feel free to share it; it feels like a prophecy. Also, 
please make your own comments and additions to this tentative vision of what 
a Gaian future, post-apocalypse, might look like. (For the reality of world 
petroleum depletion and a terrifying range of perspectives on its implications, 
see www.dieoff.com)

Here goes:

A Vision of a Possible Future

By Thomas I. Ellis

May 6, 2204
Kecoughtan Ecovillage
Virginia
Republic of Gaia

Today is a magnificent spring day, crisp and pleasant. As I do my careful 
historical research, preparing to teach my students about what life was like 200 
years ago today, I reflect with wonder at how far we’ve come from where we 
were at the twilight of the Industrial Era, back during the (now universally 
reviled) Bush Regime, at the start of the Oil Wars. How far we fell in the Bad 
Years thereafter, and how quickly, all told, we recovered from the great Oil 
Crunch and Die-Off!

No one is alive today, of course, who remembers the Great Die-Off first-hand, 
but many still recall the horror stories handed down by their grandparents, 
and recorded by the few surviving historians of that horrific time. These 
recount how, starting at the turn of the Millennium on September 11, 2001,  a 
ghastly terrorist attack brought down the World Trade Center—the very symbol and 
embodiment of the Global Market Economy at its apex. The once-great United 
States of America, recently hijacked by the Bush regime, quickly degenerated 
thereafter into a belligerent fascist police state, at war with the whole world in a 
desperate last grasp at world empire, known in the Orwellian Newspeak of that 
time as the “War on Terror.” All these military incursions to secure US 
access to oil and other resources only hastened the inevitable decline of fossil 
fuels, and essentially eliminated the possibility of global cooperation to cope 
with the devastating effects of that decline. This was followed by an 
unprecedented global collapse, simultaneously, of the Global Market Economy, of 
political stability, and of Gaia’s sustaining ecosystems: her topsoil, forests, 
fresh water aquifers, and fisheries. The predictable result was a 
self-accelerating maelstrom of social chaos, as the remaining elites battled each other in an 
effort to commandeer remaining vital resources for themselves, and strove in 
vain to insulate themselves from the raging chaos around them. All to no 
avail: in a remarkably brief time, from about 2020 through 2050, the global 
population collapsed in a paroxysm of nuclear warfare, random violence, ecological 
collapse, and starvation, leaving isolated outposts of warring tribes of 
survivors. These warlords would in turn have killed each other off fighting over the 
remaining intact topsoils and water supplies—had it not been for the Gaians.

During the early years of the collapse, the Christian-Muslim holy war started 
by Bush and Bin Laden—two centuries ago today--the Gaians were small, 
scattered band of ecovisionaries left over from the (quickly suppressed) Great 
Awakening of the 1960s and 70s who, anticipating the collapse of the industrial 
world as oil ran out, had the foresight to form innumerable small, 
self-sufficient, permaculture-based ecovillages, not only in rural areas, but in urban and 
suburban areas as well. They had the foresight, not only to establish their own 
ecovillages, but simultaneously to disseminate their message far and wide, 
encouraging other to “pledge allegiance to Gaia”—that is, to shift their 
allegiance upward and downward simultaneously—from their flags, nation-states, or 
ethno-religious affiliations upward toward Gaia as a whole, and downward toward 
their local ecovillages and bioregions. Their slogan was “Think globally, act 
locally.”—a slogan we still find ubiquitously today. The Gaians became, in 
effect, internal exiles in their own countries, withdrawing their support from 
the predatory Global Market Economy and from their parochial flags, and forming 
local cooperatives, learning permaculture, and embracing an ethos to “take 
care of everyone and abandon no one; take care of everything and abandon nothing.”
 

These Gaians were able to disseminate their message through the simultaneous 
skillful employment of (1) an iconic image (the NASA photo-image of Gaia, left 
over from the ancient space program at the height of the industrial era); (2) 
a concept (Gaia as myth, model, metaphor, and movement); and (3) a logo or 
symbol (the solar cross, white on dark blue, with a green “G” and “I” 
superimposed in green, creating an anagram of “Gaia” upon a sacred symbol of 
interconnectedness, recognized as such the world over.

But beyond the image, concept, and symbol of Gaia, these Gaians had an idea 
which, through its self-evident simplicity, won adherents in every religious 
tradition on the planet, for the first Gaians were wise enough not to start a “
new religion” in competition with the others (thus leading to yet more 
religious bloodshed, of which there had already been far too much), but rather to 
disseminate a meme,  a nodal idea free of theological baggage, and based on simple 
logic, which was fully compatible with all authentic religious traditions, 
and anathema only to fanatical unthinking cults. Hence, even today, 200 years 
later, we have Gaian Muslims, Gaian Christians, Gaian Buddhists, Gaian Jews, 
Gaian Hindus, among others. Because Gaianity was based on something compatible 
with any coherent or thoughtful religious ideology: the Scientific Method of 
free inquiry, coupled with an intuitive awareness of the Sacred in all life. As 
Gaian prophet William Blake put it, “Everything that lives is holy.”

But how did this small band of Gaians at the turn of the millennium survive, 
as the Industrial era collapsed into raging chaos and megadeath? Obviously, 
many of them didn’t. Their ecovillages, scattered here and there, were overrun 
by hungry, desperate, marauders, fighting for turf in the ensuing war of all 
against all, as petroleum ran out and the remaining rich receded behind high 
walls, bristling with security guards and lethal weapons, only in turn to starve 
when their money became useless and when their security guards, equally 
desperate, turned on and slaughtered their employers.

But then, like the early Christians after the collapse of Rome, the Gaians 
began converting and educating the marauders themselves. This was very difficult 
at first, but they were sustained by the Dharma Gaia Practice formula we all 
know and practice even today: Breathe, Observe, Let Go, Be Well, Do Good Work, 
Keep in Touch, Learn Gaia, Teach Gaia, Heal Gaia, Create Gaia. Whenever a 
band of desperate, hungry, vicious marauders would approach a Gaian community, 
the Gaians, after trial and error and many losses, developed a workable tec
hnique for dealing with the danger. First, they established a solar-powered 
communication network with neighboring Gaian communities, to alert them to an 
impending attack as soon as they became aware of it. Next, however, they sent 
emissaries to their attackers, with offers of food and peace.  Many such emissaries, 
of course, were tortured, slaughtered, and eaten by the hungry marauders, in 
which case the Gaian communities would send out the alarm signal and cooperate 
to repel the attack. But in other instances, and with increasing frequency, 
the marauders would accept their offer, whereupon they would be fed by the 
combined surpluses of all the surrounding ecovillages, and then they would be 
educated in Gaian practice and permaculture, and encouraged to establish their own 
ecovillages. As this caught on, more and more savage tribes of marauders 
became Gaian emissaries themselves, and saw clearly that their best interests lay 
in cooperating with other Gaians to heal the ecosystems and bioregions that 
sustain them all. 

Between this, and the leagues of amity and mutual protection that arose among 
neighboring Gaian communities and bioregions, eventually a world-wide network 
of such Gaian communities was established—energetically local, yet 
informationally global—all dedicated to learning, teaching, healing, and creating Gaia.  
Because Gaians embraced impermanence, interbeing, and oneness, they were not 
afraid of death, and this lack of fear, coupled with their effortless 
compassion and dedication to personal and planetary healing, quickly swelled their 
ranks among the scattered survivors of the Great Die-Off.

This is how a ravaged world so quickly went into healing mode, as forests, 
prairies, and fisheries were nurtured back to life over time, and as local 
permaculture practices, shared widely but adapted to specific bioregions, 
transformed agriculture from an ecologically destructive practice into a mutually 
sustaining dialogue with Gaia. 

Thus today, 200 years later, even though the health and biodiversity of Gaia 
will take thousands or even millions of years to recover fully from the Great 
Cancer (as the Industrial Era is now known), her human inhabitants have now 
become symbiotic partners, rather than parasites,  content to live modestly 
within our means, but richly in spirit, as a part of, not apart from, our 
planetary Mother. 

Unlike the nation states of the Industrial Era, the Republic of Gaia is not 
centrally or hierarchically organized. It is rather a flexible and adaptable 
network of “nodes”—bioregions and ecovillages—in which local disputes are 
mediated by regional councils, regional disputes by trans-regional councils, and 
so on, up to the Council of Sages, which meets once a year to make broad 
recommendations for the ongoing project of healing Gaia as a whole.