Another future

Abstract

This essay discusses the macrodynamics of cultural change. Drawing on the history of science, I offer an analysis of revolutionary transformation in terms of the waxing and waning of traditions of practice, in which marginal traditions become mainstream and vice versa. I apply this model to the Anthropocene, identifying dualist traditions of mastery and domination as currently mainstream and nondualist traditions of acting-with, exemplified by indigenous approaches to the environment and by cybernetics, as marginal. My concern is with the growth and unification of the latter as a path to another future, and I point to the need for the establishment of symbiotic relations between them, which has yet to come to pass.