A Symbionmentalist or perhaps, a symbionist?

A person who supports the idea of the Symbionment (the organic and symbiotic interconnections of life that we are active participants in), through active engagement with others and creative acts that promote sumbiosity in the form of ecoculture, ecoagriculture, ecotechnologies and ecodesign in all aspects of our lives. Through sumbiosic development, we maintain our connections within the symbionment and help create The Symbiocene.

We have now got rid of some very difficult concepts that are part of the reason why we have failed to achieve the end state we have historically called sustainability.

An environmentalist = no wonder it is a word that generates disagreement in people. There is no such thing as 'the environment' (see below) so there cannot be an environmentalist!

The environment = if it is defined as all that is outside us, then the fact that the environment is also inside us and that we are inside the environment invalidates its common use as a concept.

Sustainability = has always implied a degree of stability, even rigidity in the human-nature relationship. Sumbiosity by contrast implies process and creative change ... just as we see in natural systems governed by the rules of entropy, evolution and ecology.

Sustainable Development = yes, it was always a dangerous oxymoron. Sumbiosic Development, by contrast, only permits those forms of development that promote endlessly creative sumbiosity.

The Anthropocene = time for this era to end before we do ourselves and the rest of the Earth's biota in.

Creating The Symbiocene

In order to have hope and to be able to convert that hope into meaningful change we must imagine a new meme, one that clearly signposts and paves the way to a good future beyond The Anthropocene. Let us try and imagine The Symbiocene. The Symbiocene will be characterised by a form of human intelligence that replicates in society the symbiotic and life reproducing processes to be found in life and natural systems. The vital elements of The Symbiocene might include, full recyclability of all inputs and outputs and the elimination of all forms of toxic pollution, safe and socially just renewable energy (preferably produced from that safe and distant nuclear reactor, the sun), full and harmonious integration with physical and living systems at all scales and the minimisation of entropy in all aspects of human enterprise. Such imagination includes all of our cultural and artistic responses to the challenge of creating The Symbiocene.

Once our children are empowered with this vision of the future, they will have the emotional energy to create it.