The essay I wrote for the United Nations, The Future We Want is reproduced here with kind permission of the United Nations Organization, having first appeared on the UN website and the UN’s official social media outlets.
Essay for the UN Rio +20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. John Dahlsen
Our immediate and long-term future is full of the promise of a golden age for humankind. We are now on a precipice, at a crossroads in our history where for the first time humanity has a collective enlightened vision…
Science and religion are almost inseparable with their understanding of the sense of Oneness, which connects everything from the smallest organism to the vast expanses of the universe – and, perhaps, beyond.
In the past these understandings and glimpses into such expanded realities have been restricted to the elite few. Up until now we have been able to count the number of stand out visionaries and enlightened sages who have guided, predicted and fashioned our future. Now there are many alive today who exist with this expanded awareness, so many that we are all being touched by it. Regardless of our circumstances, we are all getting a part of this action; we are all becoming part of this global enlightened consciousness that is hastening us towards this glorious positive future. The future we want. The future we must have is essentially one of co-operation, not competition.
This new future depends upon communities forging together to create balanced lifestyles. This is already happening on a grass-roots level in some of the more advanced communities worldwide, where people are beginning to farm and to share their freshly grown produce, whether it be vegetables or fresh-baked bread and eggs. People realize that the way we have been treating this planet is unsustainable. It’s also unsustainable for us to treat our bodies with neglect by eating overly processed foods. We don’t need to revert to becoming cave dwellers, however we do need to safeguard our future by planning to become more natural in just about every way.
Unsustainable ways of living have been at best a misunderstanding, through accepting this reality for so long, and at worst a sign of enormous greed on the part of big business and ourselves. The future we want will bring a natural end to these outdated modes of living.
The future will have love and awareness of higher consciousness as the basis of our interconnectedness.
This will be the future we want, a world where business develops safeguards for consumers that ensure only products with awareness and have expanded consciousness at the core of their inception are offered for use and sale created and offered for use, which have an expanded consciousness at the core of it’s inception.
In places of greatest population concentration for example, the future we want will have in all buildings, freshwater captured from their surfaces; energy needs will be generated only from renewable sources including solar and wind. Our future methods of transport will of course also be transformed, as a result of the cessation of carbon emitting modes of transport. Bicycle-ways and walkways will be prevalent and more popular people wish to stay healthy and fit through regular daily exercise. In the future there will be no poverty and all nations will join together as a global, borderless reality to ensure all people of the earth have adequate food and a balanced, prosperous lifestyle.
All forms of visual and airborne pollution will be nonexistent so that once again we will be able to visit and walk amongst our cities and enjoy street-scapes with beautiful gardens and terraces complemented by contemporary art, architecture and design, all of which will be created with ecologically friendly intention.
As a way of further achieving these future wants, we need to take note of organizations such as ‘Transition Towns’ organization for example, a grassroots network of communities dedicated to building resilience in response to peak oil, climate destruction and economic instability. We will all benefit by looking at this model, where innovators are using across-the-board creative adaptations of energy production, health, education, economy and agriculture as road maps to a sustainable future.
We are entering a golden age where it will be no longer possible for outdated beliefs and structures to exist. The future we want across our planet will be a reflection of these ideas and everything that does exist into the future will only exist because humanity has embraced this new way.
All structures and concepts, which lag behind this enlightened approach, will disintegrate. They will cease to operate as functional entities and associated living environments will no longer be habitable for humans. This can only be seen as a positive direction for humankind as we see everything we love restored to us.
It is natural evolution that our future will evolve this way. It will be appropriate that the very best that we are able to offer in terms of our collective consciousness will create the type of golden future that we want.
As humankind makes the shift into the golden age, with the necessity of being intelligent and enlightened in our hearts, all else will follow. We will see the future we want to develop and grow and blossom, a future, which will nourish and support all life on this planet.
This essay first appeared on the UN website and UN’s official social media
Outlets in the lead up to the Rio+20 – United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development
Throughout your life as a professional artist, career challenges will thankfully be many and varied. I say thankfully because of the huge benefits that will inevitably come your way as a result of these challenges. The insights you have will no doubt provide revelations that will propel your work forward and will naturally from time to time also include an ongoing surrendering of your artist ego. These challenges will open more doors and pave the way for a natural expansion into the next stages of your professional life. As you learn to embrace new visions, overcome obstacles and discover the ways of success, you will navigate your opportunities with awareness and maturity and your career will flourish, taking on dimensions you never dreamed possible.
