How an Idea Whose Time Had Come Brought in an Era of Ice Cream for Everyone
by David Gardener

In the year 2050, the green revolution of the past 25 years had established a new way of being on planet earth. Let’s listen in on a typical family conversation from this new era of applied intelligence…

“Grandpa, grandpa, tell us about the old days again.”

“You mean back when the big banks and corporations ruled everybody’s lives by controlling all the money?” OK children, gather round…”

“Many years before you were born life was very different. Not everyone had a place to live or enough to eat in those days and the weather was getting worse and worse with terrible floods and huge fires and gigantic tornadoes because humanity was in the throes of something called late-stage capitalism. In fact, things got so bad in the mid to late 2020’s that it was doubtful that we humans could even survive at all anymore because of the widespread toxic chemical use and industrial air and water pollution caused by the corporation’s greed.”

“I’m so glad that you kids don’t have to worry about anything like that today. It was really scary there for a while. Grandma and I had to eat cans of beans because it was all we could afford when I lost my job to something called AI. But thank goodness, a couple of things happened that really turned things around for people everywhere.”

“Now we refer to it as “the great awakening” but back then we were just happy to see some positive changes happening. One thing that really helped was that the vast majority of politicians who were helping the corporations to control all the money got old and died. Back then the life expectancy was only around 75 or 80 years old. I’m now 102 and still running a few miles every morning.”

“So that fact of life certainly played a big part in new ideas coming to the fore, ideas about fairness and care for all people. It didn’t exactly happen overnight, but as the government became populated with younger and younger people who thought more clearly about the terrible costs of a capitalistic society, the pursuit of the almighty dollar (that’s what it was called back in the day) became less and less almighty and the quality of daily life for all people was the new priority. The new younger politicians worked towards making sure that the income equality gap was not only closed but eventually became reversed.”

“Grandpa, what does that mean- income equality gap?”

“Oh, yes, I understand that you have never experienced the misfortune of directly knowing what that was but there was a time when only a few people controlled all the money and most of the people didn’t quite have enough to live comfortably and pursue their creative potential like you do today. Back in the day, most all people had to have what were called jobs just to keep a roof over their heads and food on their tables. We were kind of like your pet hamster running around on his wheel, but unlike Fuzzy Boy, if we got off the wheel we wouldn’t be able to live in our houses anymore. You and I are fortunate today to have a system of wealth distribution that makes sure everyone can be warm and safe and fed and has enough free time to be creative. We are so much more healthy today because of art and literature and music and dance and theater, natural medicines, organic gardening and good laws that prioritize people over profits. In the days of the income inequality we were so concerned about just surviving that we had to have a word for what we didn’t have- that word was thriving. Now we don’t need that special word anymore because what we used to call thriving is just what we call normal life today.”

“But grandpa, what was life like for you back in those days when banks and corporations were making sure that everyone was stuck on a hamster wheel? Were you able to do anything about it?”

“For a long time, I wasn’t, but in 2024 I learned of a very wise man from Australia who came to America with a brilliant idea he had to help people get out from under the power of the big banks and corporations. Part of his plan depended upon everyday people telling everyday people about his idea and asking them if they wanted to join in to spread the word also and get paid to do it. Since AI had put me out of my job I was ready for anything that could help grandma and I keep our house and I joined up to become an emissary of his brilliant idea… and the funny thing is, his company used AI to enable its inner workings, so in looking back I see that AI wasn’t really a bad thing if it was used for good reasons.”

“This man created a company to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat of social impact by helping small community owned banks thrive by bringing them more online customers; and in exchange for bringing these minority and community owned banks more depositors, these small banks happily agreed to send his company half of the interchange fees that they would collect every time a customer of those small banks used a specially programmed debit card they issued. And when this man’s company received those interchange fees, his company in turn shared them with us, the people who were getting the word out about a new way to accomplish financial literacy and well-being.”

“What are interchange fees, grandpa?”

“Well, you kids know what credit and debit cards are, right?”

“Yes, grandpa, we have our junior cards with points on them that we earn for doing creative projects and having good ideas. We can get stuff with them that we like.”

“It’s kind of like that for grown-up cards too. Every time grandma and I, or your parents buy something with our cards, a certain amount of the price we pay goes to the banks that issue us our cards as a fee for the service of having their card. Those are called interchange fees and about 3% of every card tap goes to the bank.”

“Well, this man’s revolutionary idea was, that for the first time in history, the banks would agree to share half the interchange fees with the man’s company and the company would pay we emissaries a portion of those fees if we helped him find customers for the small banks. This was very easy to do because owning this specially programmed debit card doubled people’s buying power without them having to make any more money, and over time, it grew their financial well-being to the point where they would always have enough money to keep their rooves over their heads and for grandpa (and the other company emissaries) I was able to earn a little bit on every tap of thousands and thousands of people’s everyday purchases that I didn’t even know. And I wasn’t the only one. This brilliant Ausie man recognized that because there are billions and billions of card taps daily, just a little bit of which, if directed towards a central purpose, could easily house and feed every needy family in America, he built a company expressly in order to do this; and today his concept has spread all over the world and there are now many millions of emissaries just like your grandpa.”

“With this kind of passive income, I was eventually able to become a philanthropical contributor to our government’s Central Well of Abundance program that makes sure that all Americans have a place to live and enough to eat today.”

“We didn’t know it at the time, but over the years this man’s social impact concept and mechanism of empowering small banks caused the gigantic late stage capitalism banks to change their ways and prioritize human well-being over just making profits, no matter at what terrible cost; and this is why we live in a world today where everyone’s basic needs are taken care of. And because the big banks underwent this transformation, all the corporations that depended on their funding had to stop polluting and start doing things that were good for the environment, and now we don’t have such terrible natural catastrophes much anymore.”

“What do you say, kids? Shall we go out and get some ice cream now? I’ll pay for it with my special card that automatically contributes to the Well of Abundance program so that when we eat our ice cream we can know that little boys and girls all over the world can be safe in their homes tonight when they go to bed. And I’ll be that a lot of them had ice cream for desert too.”

 

I didn’t know it at the time, how far reaching this change in my life would be. No one could see it. Not right away. It was not a new hoodie, not a new fitness routine. The change began inside of me. It began when I woke up March 1st, 2024. The world looked the same— until I looked at everyone in it differently.

I looked at my son not as my son, but as a person who had me for a father, a person whose inner life I could only guess at—and yet still appreciate. The woman walking her dog past my front door was not a prop whose existence ended when she disappeared stage left; she was a wholly formed and living person who encompassed and created her own valid and thriving universe, as real and as valuable as mine.

These experienced realizations were glimpses of something new to me, though they did not occur by accident. They came with effort.

Then the work really began. I wanted to treat every person I encountered in this way, without reverting to turning them into objects. I wanted to see my Uber driver, my restaurant server, my wife—all as the sparkling, world-enveloping individuals they are. I did not have to like or condone every choice they made or all the things they said, but I could understand how they came to those decisions and to say those words. And so, in this way, I could value these people, loved ones and strangers alike.

From the start it was hard. To engage in a single conversation—even a single interaction without words—and not retreat to my habit of putting all lives in the context of my own life. To treat each person in my life as an individual, not conceptually at a convenient later time and date, but right then and there, in real time, when engaged at that moment with another living human.

There had to be a first time. It happened with my son, and I felt like a champion. Lighter, stronger, free. But the process didn’t get easier. Each time, I had to start at zero, had to fight the same bad habits and the same lazy comfort zones. Only with persistence—and, I think, a little bit of love—did I wear away those habits and comfort zones. I eventually got through a day where I brought this awareness and respect to most of my interactions.

I did the same thing the next day. And the next. And the world began to change.

At first, my wife experienced the change in me. Then my son. They couldn’t pinpoint what was different, but they felt different when they were with me. More there. More loved. It was in their expressions, in their willingness to talk, in their demeanors. It was in the face and body language of our grocer, the teller at the bank, the young woman striding past me with her earbuds in. In the wake of my work to understand others something unexpected happened. Others began to try to understand me.

I would have died happy if that was the extent of it. I was living life as though my sixth sense was fully turned on. Life was more meaningful, the connections with the people in my life more powerful.

But life is dynamic.

This appreciation for others, and for our vast differences, continued to develop. At times, I spoke of it, explained to friends and acquaintances and people I just met what I had purposely changed in my life. Other times, I said nothing of it and yet discovered people who’d reached the same destination by a different route. We found each other, I believe, because our shared demeanor to the world attracted us to each other like planets around a sun. All of us in our way embraced the recognition and the understanding of our individuality, and in so doing our numbers rose.

As did our challenges.

For ours was a far from a full picture. If we were to be true to our humanity, we had to do more than embrace our innate individuality. We also had to embrace our sameness. When we gazed into the nighttime sky, we had to admit the twinkling stars that awed us were us. I had to admit my atoms were your atoms, and our inherent human need to strive and explore had enriched us with such insight. We had to admit the questions of our origin and our fate remained unanswered. We had to admit, in fact, we were all questions.

In the face of the unknown before us, it would have been easy to despair, to concede that as far as we’d come in our understanding, we were like snails who’d moved an inch in a marathon.

Instead, we let in our humility. We gave our humility space to grow so we could acknowledge and give respect to all that was still a mystery. We had to concede our science did not explain nature, it helped us know the rules of the game—but the game was not reality.

With humility, we admitted that nothing in the universe was predetermined, that as far as we knew the future of the universe might be shaped by its parts, not the other way around. We embraced the fact that thus far we had no indication the universe had a teleology. Yet we could welcome the freedom to act like it did.

We didn’t agree on all the details of a teleology. But we adopted the idea that if a teleology existed, it could be grounded in what united us—us humans, but also all pieces of the universe. Atoms? we wondered at first. No, not atoms, for those had a start date. Consciousness. It preceded all matter, all data, all designs. We moved forward as though the teleology of the universe was consciousness aspiring to more consciousness.

A growing number of us took up this embrace of our sameness and difference, of our knowing and ignorance, of our separation and communion. Not, mind you, as an intellectual exercise or a theoretical lens through which to observe the world. Rather as a daily comportment to the world, as a way to live in the moment. Through this approach, we both viewed and experienced the fractal nature of consciousness, where we each contained discreet universes and were at the same time part of a larger, singular universe.

This took time, and the road was not without its bumps and setbacks. But as we stuck with it and as people joined our approach, things got easier.

We cooperated more. In our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our committees. We had more sympathy, for those who struggled, those who asked for help, those who challenged us—intentionally and simply by being different. Our knowledge grew and our understanding of what that knowledge pointed to grew deeper, more relevant.

Our creativity thrived.

Discoveries in the quantum world strengthened our technological capabilities and the meaning of the bonds connecting our lives, all lives—past, present, and future.

Our technology improved and opened new pathways for us to be in two places at once. Not any two places, but behind the eyes of another, so we could see through each other’s eyes at the same time. Once we managed two places, we then managed several, and many more.

This opened to us new levels of empathy. It wasn’t a thought experiment but a true simultaneous experience of self and other. Seeing both sides, and with practice then seeing all sides. It was beautiful and challenging and difficult and boundary opening.

It wasn’t limited to humans. This was a jarring discovery, though it should not have surprised us. After all, consciousness is not limited to humans. So it was with awe, at first, then joy that we began to look through the eyes of animals. And we again took hold of humility.

We had already realized at least some of our faults and our triumphs. But through the eyes of animals, we learned that in spite of the structure we placed on our concept of the world, in spite of the insights we amassed from that structure and the progress we’d made enriching our consciousness, the plants and animals of the world didn’t really need us.

Yes, we brought music and stories and questions into the world, but the world with all its other creatures would go on without us. In fact, the world might be better off without us, for along with the good we brought so much degradation and waste. The world didn’t need saving. We did. Through the eyes of a fish, a chicken, a cow, a dog, a baboon this was all too clear.

Our priorities changed.

This was not inevitable, but once we’d attained the ability to live the world through the eyes of our brethren and sistren, not changing felt impossible. They were no longer objects, no longer food measured in pounds. The other living creatures on our planet joined in our endeavor to know ourselves, in the world’s endeavor to know itself. The bonds between us, from the atomic to the microscopic and beyond, were brilliantly obvious, dear, and worth fighting for.

In the radiance of this revelation, which we could not forget even if we tried to erase it from our minds, we extended legal rights of equality to all of nature. The voiceless won a triumphant and urgent voice. Meanwhile, as our thoughts and perspectives gained complexity and nuance, our need to accumulate things dropped away, our urge for buying sloughed off our reignited spirit like a discarded cocoon.

The sun and the wind and the water powered our lights and our computers for a time, and then the power came from the energy in atoms, quietly, while swaths of our former cities and our scarred countrysides rewilded. Pockets of our oceans re-flourished. Our soils regained nutrients, our waterways flowed free of garbage and poisons. By 2040, we’d set aside half the Earth for non-human creatures. We visit and study these wild lands and seas, marvel at and give thanks for them.

Concepts we recently considered infallible became the biases and superstitions of a bygone era. The imagined realm of corporations, where arbitrary figments could earn and own but never be held responsible, faded into memory like a childhood game.

The worshipers of money-driven economies, which had thrived on the misconceived idea that they represented reality, fought back for a spell. Egalitarianism went a long way, however. When occupants of the c-suite and the boards of directors had to eat their own food, live in the shadow of their own smokestacks, bath in the water of their own settling ponds, the tunes they sang and the history they quoted changed.

Mantras centered on productivity and profit went silent as the meaning of growth morphed into something other than “growth at all costs”. The financialization of every aspect of life generated decreasing returns, as the things we valued defied quantification. Unbounded wealth accumulation became a gross artifact of the past, inconceivable to most and, at any rate, outlawed and futile in a world of flat taxes.

National boundaries lost their cachet in the face of transborder cooperation. Investor-state disputes went extinct. Wars based on greed and prejudices dwindled. Squabbles between states are more and more settled among diplomats educated in our expansive consciousness. We recycled the war machines, and the funds that once poured into weaponry is now supporting life.

When the calendar flipped to 2050, we were right to congratulate ourselves for the barbarity we left behind over the last couple of decades. We have much to be proud of.

Yet we cannot deny we haven’t figured out everything. Not most things. Not all the physical and spiritual diseases. Not the meaning of evil. Not the nature of time. Not the ease with which we resort to violence. Not the still nagging questions at the heart of our existence.

But our lives have become multidimensional and vastly richer in science and art. We continue to discover corners of the universe, internal and external, that we’ve never seen before. Life is evolving before us in ways unimagined in the 2020s, still precious and unique here on Earth and nowhere else.

The questions of life remain, but in increasingly refined and beautiful forms. And more importantly, we all have the luxury to pursue answers both as individuals and as members of a greater and complete consciousness.

The journey goes on.

It is 2050 in America, and I’m happy to say that the corporatization of America is finally over. The connection between that fact and the current American atmosphere—where people work cooperatively in all kinds of creative and productive ways—is now clear. I’m way too old to talk in front of audiences anymore, but my remaining years are golden with happiness because I’ve seen the world come to its senses—and I know I had something to do with it.

I didn’t know I was becoming an activist. I just knew that the story in front of me was breaking my heart so I had to tell the world about it. I started writing What the HOA Is Going On?  in 2023 and it was published in 2026. Most people thought my suggestion—that individual people resist the corporate culture—was naïve. “You can’t fight City Hall,” said a politician pal. “It’s human nature,” said my friend the attorney. “That’s just the way we humans are built, we’re selfish.” But my takeaway from a long life is that people are capable of almost anything. Sometimes it seems that goodness is a shy, beautiful animal that scares easily, so you have to make a safe home for it. What kind of environment, I often wondered, would bring out the good in people?

Certainly not HOAs (Homeowner Associations), I concluded, after a number of years living inside one, where decent, intelligent people behaved cruelly and foolishly, due to the inhumane HOA system. I learned that HOAs harmed people financially and psychologically but that harm went unrecorded; as corporations, HOAs are protected. Some years of study later, I learned that the HOA system is just a big scam where corporate entities make profits from ordinary people. I wanted, badly, to spread the word. The few books that hinted at the unfair situation were densely worded textbooks that no one read. And HOA  homeowners didn’t seem to have a clue. What would break through?

A story, I realized. The emotion of a story would penetrate the layers of obfuscation.

Breaking the norms of corporate secrecy, I told the story of my own HOA. I described real people and showed how the system ground them down. I shared financial records to show how corporate management wasted our money. When my book first got published, in 2026, neighbors shunned me. They said I’d “betrayed my community.” But I knew it was the HOA—like all corporations—that killed any sense of community, by imposing corporate values on top of human values.

Like putting a snake on top of a small, beautiful animal.

For years, there had been a growing unease inside America. A wrong turn had been taken. Something had been lost. By 2012, when I moved into my condo, corporate culture, like a growing stain, had seeped from the business world into every part of American life: health care, education and our homes.  This is what’s wrong, I realized. We were being taken over by an invisible, mindless army. I was 68 years old in 2012 and far more interested in resting than protesting. But the astonishing unfairness of HOA life –a corporate culture imposed on unsuspecting purchasers who just thought they were buying a home—hooked me. Why do my neighbors accept this new culture—where a woman could lose her home if she paints her door red—so readily? If a band of thieves began stealing cars, I knew everyone would fight back. But it wasn’t cars or money that was being stolen. It was people’s souls. Corporate culture was diminishing souls, all over America. How to fight back?

The corporate culture uses the same words we do—“school,” “home,” “neighbor,” “community.”  But the meaning of those words changes—subtly but seriously—the moment the corporate door clangs shut. Most people are too focused on everyday tasks to notice or articulate the difference. I wanted my book to show people what was being done to them, without blaming them. I wanted to show how ordinary people became part of an oppressive system—not because they were bad—but because they were, like all of us, hard wired to be inside, rather than outside, the “group.” And until we saw that—and learned to not cave to group pressure—we were at the mercy of the behemoth corporations. We had to fight back.

I had studied psychology; I knew about group dynamics. But I never knew how strong the pull of the group was. I studied the social experiments where people did crazy and awful things they would never do in real life, just because the group was doing them.  I looked at my own behavior and saw how I had caved to group pressure. I put those examples in the book. If human beings were ever to break out of this cycle of madness and misunderstandings, we would have to evolve.  And one of the  most important places to evolve was to learning how to resist group pressure so we could become our best, whole selves.

When my book was first published, I didn’t hear much reaction. Then a library in Oregon invited me to talk. The library had also invited a psychology professor. That night, the professor conducted one of his exercises that allowed people to experience the scary feelings of going against the group. “We have this instinct leftover from being in a herd,” he explained. “But we don’t need it anymore.” The professor authored a book about his evolving experiments. An Oregon teacher read the book and tried out the exercises in her classroom—and after two months, she announced amazingly, bullying had just about disappeared! And empathy had entered her classroom. “The kids are learning better too,” she wrote.

Other teachers copied what the Oregon teacher had done. Then another book came out. An HOA attorney, his conscience bothering him after a career of pushing people out of their homes, wrote a tell-all called One Lawyer Repents. His book was turned into a movie. So was mine. A Netflix series based on a memoir from inside the insurance company was the top TV show for months. Then a new media company did a reality show on resisting group pressure. It became fashionable to resist group pressure. It became fashionable to be good. By 2035, the American people—previously so divided—were on the same page.

The books and movies and podcasts about resisting group pressure and understanding the harm that corporate culture was doing to the soul of America were selling like hotcakes. Following the money, corporations sold all those books and promoted all those movies that urged people to replace corporate values with human values. People took them seriously and began to change the shape of their lives. Valuing their own spirits, people chose products and activities and legislators that fed those spirits. And then—ironically, delightfully—we saw that the corporate culture had eaten itself alive.

The truth-telling books, articles, and movies kept coming. So did the ideas for resisting group pressure. No one wanted to return to the stale old culture where money was king. Once that spell broke, the interest and excitement in preventing such a thing from happening again was huge. Architects and social scientists began studying how to create environments that allowed the good in people to flourish. And a whole new era began.

It is January 1st, 2024, and Wilma Fields just lost her father in a car accident. She is having trouble concentrating on the miles of work she has to do on her computer. Just waking up, on her third cup of coffee, still wearing pajamas, just trying to get through the day. Wilma turns the TV on to see so many bad news stories coming from different places worldwide. She takes another sip of coffee, avoiding this massive heartache that is burning in the center of her chest. Her phone beeps, to find 100 voicemails coming from friends and family, with no energy to call back.

Wilma looks out the living room window to see an endless grey haze. Suddenly hearing a knock at the front door. A glimmer of curiosity pulls her slowly to the door and opens. No one is there.

“Well that is strange,” Wilma says out loud.

She looks down to see a sparkly golden thread, immediately mesmerized to pick it up. She touches the thread and bam, eyes close, suddenly seeing bright colors. A few seconds later, her eyes open back to the grey day. She picks up this thread, and goes back inside her house, with a strange feeling of comfort. She walks back to her computer with this thread, suddenly transported to a place where people are dancing and singing in harmony. She throws the thread down, and is back at her computer, breathing fast.

“What did I just see?” Wilma says out loud, sweaty and energized.

A headache she has had for days slowly slips away from her clenched temples. She closes her computer, uninterested in her work and is completely taken by this mysterious thread. She just stares at it for a while. A sliver of the sun is shining through the clouds, illuminating the golden thread and her face. Wilma brings the sparkly thread to her heart, where a heavy sadness sits since her father’s accident. The thread softens her chest, and an invisible warmth flushes over her whole body.

“What is going on?” Wilma asks herself.

A hum of light fills the room. Wilma has surrendered to a loving embrace, never feeling this embodied experience before. She is being held by something kind, tears fall, her body sways from side to side, and tension melts away.

Another knock is at the door. This time the golden thread is held in her hand while she walks to the door, feeling calm. She opens the door and sees a Unicorn! The Unicorn bows and a magical orb of loving light surrounds the horn.

Wilma smiles and says, “Hi.”

“Greetings Wilma, I am CosmicJoyLight Unicorn, and I am here from 2050, a time when all the prophecies of peace through unity have been completed. This is when magical beings, nature, and humans live in optimal harmony. Would you like to see this place with me?”

Wilma’s jaw drops to the grey door mat, seeing how this golden thread is from the mane of CosmicJoyLight. Wilma sees the Unicorn’s vibrant pink, turquoise, purple, blue, and golden hair flowing in the soft breeze. The weather outside has transformed into a sunny blue sky birds chirping day.

Wilma closes her eyes for a few seconds and knows she will go and responds, “Yes I would love to go to 2050 with you.”

Wilma looks down at her body which seconds ago was wearing muted pajamas, has transformed into a beautiful flowy dress in CosmicJoyLight’s inspiring colors, and places the golden thread in the perfect side pocket. She feels beautiful inside and out.

CosmicJoyLight is here to take Wilma Fields on an unforgettable ride into the future to January 1st, 2050 where dreams and hidden peace-making prophecies have been fulfilled. Bowing her sparkly horn towards Wilma’s face, CosmicJoyLight lifts her wings high, flapping back and forth. Magically, 8 rainbow steps appear to step up to Cosmic’s back for the ride. Wilma holds on with full body thrills in anticipation flying into 2050, CosmicJoyLight counts to 8 and makes 8 slow sacred circles with her mesmerizing horn, rising up and away they go.

Embracing the moment, Wilma hugs CosmicJoyLight heart and flows through starlit purple wormholes, as many dimensions zoom pass in super galactic speeds. Her eyes blink for a brief moment and suddenly CosmicJoyLight has landed 26 years into the future. As the Unicorn’s wings come down and land on all four hooves, Wilma feels equal wonder and trust in what she will find here. CosmicJoyLight Unicorn guides Wilma to her neighborhood which looks vaguely familiar. She sees lush forests, gardens, a freshwater river, and circular dome homes. As Wilma descends the 8 rainbow steps, she sees her home with a new floral entryway.

Wilma shares, “This must be my home in 2050. Wow, it is so different here. The air feels more fresh to breathe in. The neighborhood is so peaceful and well cared for. This is amazing to see! Thank you so much CosmicJoyLight!”

CosmicJoyLight offers a wellness elixir to Wilma from her left wing, “You are so welcome. Please enjoy this joyful hydrating beverage made by your future self. She has left you a letter in your mailbox. You are welcome to open and read.”

Wilma enjoys this effervescent beverage, turning on her aliveness. She walks over to the mailbox which is a flower that blooms open as she arrives to it. She sees a sparkly envelope made from the stars in the center of the flower. She opens it and begins to read:

Dear Wilma,

This is your future self. I am so glad you came to see your beautiful life on January 1st, 2050. I have been looking forward to this for a long time. I have a New Year party I am co-hosting with many friends, gardeners, unicorns, and family. What a special day to arrive on Earth. 2024 has been a tough time, we had just lost Dad and we were in a dark chapter of life. The world was also dealing with a lot of loss, and change too. There was something else unfolding then, it was just hard to see it. A magical chapter awaits you!

I am going to remind you, Wilma, once upon a time when you were 8 years old, you were on a walk on a beach and there was a forest. You were playing and off in the distance you did see CosmicJoyLight. You ran home to tell Mom and Dad. Mom did not believe it and Dad hugged you and said, “I believe you honey. One day when you need a sign that this world is magical, that unicorn will come again.”

Dad was right, CosmicJoyLight is back. Most of your life up till 2024 has not been aligned with your joy. You forgot that you had wonderful dreams of being a gardener who planted seeds that would help others in the community and that would bring all voices together to care for the Earth. When you were little there was a dream, often talked about, to care for each other and to ultimately make peace on earth just like Rainbow Bright and the Care Bears.

You forgot about your dream and went into Computer Science in College to make more money. The spark was lost and you fell asleep. When you follow your dreams again, you heal pain and open your heart to kindness inside you. Dad wants you to know, he always believed in you!

Open your eyes to the world now around you. See all the gardens you have planted, and now are blooming generosity to all of your community. Look at the land where your house once was now a fully regenerative living circular home. Your welcome mat is no longer grey, it is the color of the sun, reminding you of this day the light found you, when you felt life had no meaning. You have inspired neighbors to also become gardeners planting seeds that nourish everyone, and bloom more joy. The more joy, kindness, and nourishment you grow has changed the way everyone relates with each other and how we relate with the land. The veil between spirit, life on other planets, elemental beings, and angels has all become visible again. The Earth has become a peaceful place. Those that still resonated with war, and hate found love again within and became the leading forces for good. The weapons transformed into gardening tools across all lands and seas.

By January 1st, 2030 the grief on Earth transformed into purpose. January 1st, 2040 humankind stopped extracting all resources and learned to live regeneratively and found freedom in this way of life. The first peoples of all lands became leaders in being thoughtful and othering stopped. Today is January 1st, 2050, and we are all celebrating the prophecies led by Hummingbird, Quetzal, Condor, Eagle Birds with many Indigenous Communities in joyful ceremony with all our ancestors past, present, and future. Unicorns and many thoughtful mystical allies, now coexist alongside humankind. CosmicJoyLight, my Unicorn Friend, will also take you for a spin around Earth today and see all the flowers blooming and harmonious dances all over Planet Earth listening to the same song together. Let this day soak in, Wilma. Dad is always with you. Listen deeply and trust the light in your heart is guiding you to see Peace On Earth.

Love Your Future Self,

In Our Garden Of Joy

Wilma in 2050

PS I have gathered some precious seeds from our Garden Of Joy to plant back home in 2024. It will be part of your new beginning. Remember this magical day is always inside guiding you forward.

Wilma has the light of all colors in the Universe flowing through her as she finishes reading this letter, medicinal tears flowing down her cheeks, a smile rises from head to toes. She finds inside the sparkly envelope the 8 seeds. She gathers the seeds, folds up the letter, and puts it all right next to the golden thread in her side pocket with a perfect golden zipper to make sure she does not lose her gifts from 2050.

Wilma rides on CosmicJoyLight around Earth seeing all the circles of ceremonies unfolding together as ONE World in peace, joy, and unity. She flew over many places that are revived with abundance, health, and beauty. She and CosmicJoyLight orbited around all of Earth and flew through a magnificent double rainbow where a flash came over them both.

Wilma blinked her eyes to find she was back in her house, January 1st, 2024, TV on, pajamas back on, and the Unicorn was gone. She looked down with joy on her face to find in her pocket, the sparkly envelope, the letter, 8 seeds, and the golden thread from 2050. She went outside with her seeds, dug a hole with her bare hands, and planted each seed into the Earth.

As I celebrate my 56th new year, I am overwhelmed with love. I walk outside and take in the night sky. It is incredible how crystal clear it is. I remember when I was young, living in the city of Denver, I hardly ever noticed the dimly lit constellations through the fog of light pollution. It is almost humorous to recall the way we treated the mountains, as some sort of escapist entertainment, to be visited only on weekends. We would sit in cars for hours on the interstate in ski traffic, the exhaust of tiny metal boxes curling up into the mountain air as far as the eye could see. I sometimes wish I could go back and tell my younger self how badly she needed to see the stars. She certainly thought about them alot. She was so passionate about astrology and the cosmos. If only she knew back then the deeper desires of her heart. But time was kind to her—more kind than she could ever have fathomed.

Taking in the stars, I think of the planets, the wandering stars. I have studied astrology for so many years now, it is second nature to me. As is the cosmological worldview I so hoped to embody when I was young. I was desperate for connection then, we all were. I remember the way we had distanced ourselves from the earth. The way we all were mystified at the onslaught of mental illness, the way every young person was continually diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it more clearly then—my own inner vision had not yet escaped the light pollution. It was our separation from the earth that was making us sick, our separation from each other, from the stars, from the entire cosmos. The answer was so simple, it was never mental illness. It was homesickness. 

I grab my Telelens glasses from their wooden case. I remember being concerned and hopeful when Apple revealed the Vision Pro in 2023, back when Pluto first entered Aquarius. Back then, I truly couldn’t fathom what the next 20 years would hold for the future of technology and humanity. I trace the curves of the roses on the hand carved wood. The spectacles inside looked timeless. When new technologies first made their debut, I remember they all looked so clunky and silly, in an attempt to appear chic and futuristic. Now the future has seamlessly integrated into the present, achieving a certain timelessness and appreciation for beauty. The wooden box is from my little brother. When we were younger, he was a financial advisor for a wealth management company, but with the collapse of the economic system, he followed his passions to become a carpenter. 

I put on my glasses and find Pluto in the night sky, so easy to see now that we’ve eliminated light pollution. I overlay a lens of my natal chart and see that she is hovering over my natal Saturn placement in the sign of Pisces, the fishes. I think back to when I was 29, when Saturn was there, at the same degree, returning, and ushering in my adulthood. Back then, I could have never fathomed the work that Saturn was calling me to. I remember being so disconnected from nature and terrified of what the age of artificial intelligence might bring. Little did I know that we were collectively on the brink of incredible breakthroughs that really did save the world. As a child, saving the world was always one of my favorite literary tropes—I loved to imagine that every day someone somewhere saved the world and we didn’t even know it. Honestly, that idea feels more true to me now than it ever did. I think about the way the world is saved, every day, by every person. The prolonging of human existence, the regeneration of the planet eternally sustained. 

I think back to my own stained glass tile in the mosaic of our sacred salvation story. I was never a scientist and lacked a lot of hard skills when it came to enacting the much needed changes on the planet. I didn’t know how to write code or develop augmented realities. I was not a politician or a celebrity. My platform then was small but ever growing. I had never wished for fame, but as the suffering on the planet increased, I found within me the courage to desire an audience. I was a philosopher—a seed planted in me in my youth, ever eternally sprouted into the belief that thought was at the heart of action. Maybe I couldn’t be the one to build the technology to reverse climate change, but I could help inspire and cultivate a spirit of care within the people who could. (It ended up that artificial intelligence and technology were the true conduits of societal change and creative solutions to the planetary crisis. We simply needed to wield technology as a tool of positive social change.)  And so I poured my heart into changing the way we conceived our relationships to technology, to the earth, and to each other. I focused my efforts in instilling seeds of self-belief and change in every person. As a young astrologer, I looked for the absolute best in each person and tried to find threads of social change in their chart. By encouraging individuals to tap into their unique gifts and talents, every day I wanted to contribute to individual momentum that would lead to collective momentum in creating a cooperative society. But I knew I had to do more than that. People needed support from their communities, which had been close to decimated at that point, the pandemic delivering a nearly fatal blow. 

The way I saw it, we desperately needed community, but we also needed communities that connected around what caused our hearts to cry out in the deep pain of disconnection. I started the Denver Consciousness Group as a first step in gathering people together to discuss the problems facing our society, and come up with creative solutions together. It was so wonderful watching that group flourish, and the way it inspired other similar groups to spring up around the country, as well as around the globe. People coming together in think tanks, quickly turned into people creating communities together, buying land together, rallying and opposing oppressive systems together. Right thinking really did lead to right action. Together, we moved past the postmodern ideas that had kept us from seeking this rightness and restorative justice. We saw the way our modern structures lacked beauty and sustainability, and found our voices on the world stage to advocate change that changed the way we existed within nature. 

Together, we dismantled the hold that capitalism had over our society. Back then, so many people were stuck in survival mode. So many gifts left untapped, so many lives and dreams left unlived at the hands of corporate greed. I realized that in order to dismantle capitalism on a collective level, I had to first dismantle the spell it had over my own life. This required grueling shadow work for me, as I had always struggled with deep insecurities of not having enough and not being enough. For me, like many others, buying things secured a certain sense of safety in the world. I had to create a system of safety for myself that had nothing to do with appearances or material items. Once I did, I was able to share and inspire others to do the same. To reject materialism and societal beauty standards, and advocate for more fulfilling and wholesome uses of our time and money. This was one stream in a river of voices that convinced billionaires, and even millionaires, of the cost to their own health and wealth to hold so much of the world’s resources. With a spirit of profound and hard wrought compassion, everyone began to see their own inner and wounded child, and the way they subconsciously tried to protect themselves at the expense of others. 

In 2025, after finishing my dissertation, I launched the Saturn Project. My studies had led me to understand psychedelic integration as a powerful tool of restructuring our lives and internal narratives. Integration provided the structure after the experience, the way of making meaning and giving form to the formless, body to spirit. There were two massive concurrent movements at that time—psychedelics and artificial intelligence. I played my part in the movement by encouraging people to see the movements as complimentary. Integration became a process I advocated for beyond making sense of a psychedelic experience. Integration would be the process that helped us wield technology into the natural world in a way that created a thriving society and planet beyond our wildest dreams. By increasing access to psychedelics, the earth was able to communicate with people at unprecedented rates with extraordinary levels of understanding. The insights the collective gained from our shared experiences with ancient earth wisdom were really what changed the world. I served as an advocate for proper use and integration and created communities that would support the tangible implementation of the lessons taught to us by the mycelium networks. Like the mushrooms, we strengthened our own networks and together learned what we needed to do to restore balance and harmony to the ecosystem, ushering in a deep, collective healing. It was an honor to witness. 

I had started the Saturn Project as a way of naming and bringing further attention to systems of integration and support for people in a world that so desperately needed new structures. Back then, capitalism had pushed everyone into studio apartments and single family homes, extracting the most money from every individual by isolating them from communities. The system we were in advocated against shared meals, shared bills, shared housing, shared childcare. Families were left to whatever resources they had time to gather and often fought to make ends meet. The Saturn Project was an initiative against this system. The archetype of Saturn represents restriction and contraction, as well as time and tradition. It is the material world, the reality principle, and the governing consequence of our actions. This initiative was designed to harness the powers of the Saturnian archetype and gather people with the specific mission of creating tangible change in the way we structure and define our society and roles within it. It was an encouragement around personal responsibility and autonomy. So many people had given up their sense of duty with taking care of each other and the planet because of the disempowerment we experienced at the hands of mega-corporations and corrupt political systems. The Saturn Project helped re-empower people through redefining the role they might play in improving their own condition as well as the planetary condition. Through community funding and efforts, we were able to purchase communal spaces and land that served as sacred spaces where new structures could be implemented. Like the consciousness group, the reach of the Saturn project spread globally, bringing wisdom, tradition, and structure to communities around the world. 

One of the main tangible actions of the Saturn Project was the implementation of the wisdom councils. This was our counter move to the systems of government that operated on pure economics. The wisdom councils were formed as Pluto moved through Aquarius, the sign of the collective, and brought power back to the people. With respected elders and leaders in each community, people were more inspired than ever to mature into radiant, compassionate, and effective human beings. The shining example of people who were conscious and took deep responsibility for their community and the planet was truly what saved the world. It created a spirit and age of care and cooperation, that no advancement in technology, space, or time could hold a candle to. It was a resurgence of the honoring of the human heart. The beauty of the human experience now uplifted in such a way, that the apocalyptic fears of the past could not touch our resiliency. 

Today, we are not without challenges, and there are many things facing our species that demand our attention. But the spirit of the age feels so vastly different and empowered, I am overwhelmed with confidence in our resiliency, creativity, and compassion for all beings, so very different from how I felt at 29. I was so depleted from trying to effect change in a system where I felt so little power and autonomy. I was not at peace with the passage of time. My mental health was suffering, and I was overwhelmed with loneliness and grief. There were times I wanted to give up, but I didn’t. Celebrating this new year, I am so beyond grateful that I didn’t. I have always fought to find the beauty in the world, but in 2050, it is hardly a fight. I pull my blanket tighter around me. The winter air is bone-chilling and beautiful, the earth happy to be returned to her optimal temperature for sustaining life. I am so grateful to all the kind souls who gave their all so that I could be here, we all could be here today. Home. Each of us, like wandering stars, somehow wandered into our perfect alignments. I have come to trust my own alignments with others, to put full faith in human connection and our great romance and alignment with the cosmos. I have a deeper friendship with Father Time and Mother Earth than ever before, and feel so held in the entirety of existence. Every step of the way, their guidance has led us into profound healing in accordance with an unfathomable yet perfect timing. Each year, I understand their cycles more, and feel more gratitude to have caught the unique passage of time that I did—the time the world saved us.

How We Saved The World

 

Today, January 1, 2050, living in our healed, egalitarian, collaborative, peaceful world, we reflect on the dark, disintegrating, militarised world of 2024, when the survival of humanity was in question. At that time, I’d been feeling tired of hearing apathetic statements like,’ I don’t like what’s happening to the planet, but I can’t do anything about it.”. This highlighted the underlying raw emotional vulnerability in the tone of collective discussions. There was a general agreement that entrenched aggressive capitalist systems would keep dishing out the same crises while perpetually searching for solutions that produce the same crisis. As Albert Einstein said, “Problems cannot be solved with the same mindset that created them.” 

Back in 2024, I felt that the crisis ultimately stemmed from a male-centred worldview and its values, attitudes, and practices associated with the patriarchal, aggressive, out-of-control materialism of the capitalist global system. Patriarchy had produced one-sided, toxic masculine values that excluded the feminine part, the source of wisdom and connectedness. It created hierarchical, exploitative structures of power and an egotistic mentality based on competition, aiming for unlimited growth on a planet with limited resources. The domination of men over women, the rich over the poor, and the exploitation of Mother Earth.

I had asked myself: Am I capable of becoming an effective catalyst for change? We were each called upon to resist the forces of destruction and to give our gifts. But I was only a storyteller with no influence. Then I thought about how Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, greatly influenced public opinion in the 1850s, laying the groundwork for the elimination of slavery. 

Realising that the tipping point was reached for human evolution to be accelerated, I wrote a fantasy fiction story, “The Dismantler of Men’s Toxic Creations,” which I started in 2016 and completed in 2024. The manuscript novel explores creating a feminist utopia within the prevailing entrenched global capitalist market/state systems. 

In the story, I show how the very foundations we have built our institutions on may be deconstructed, as an old male-centred mentality and materialist paradigm surrender to a new era of feminine-centred social, ecological life-enhancing value system. Could it start a little movement, giving ordinary people permission to do the same?

 

In my manuscript novel, a survivor of genocide, after her initiation into the Divine Feminine Wisdom Council of 12 awakened females, together with other women, quietly start a rapidly expanding grassroots, non-heirarchical, ecological, social revolution led by women and underpinned by the feminine values of empathy, connectedness, and peaceful mindset. They operate a collective, cooperative economy, establishing a self-sufficient society run through participatory, consensus-based direct democracy that replaces patriarchal structures in the region. In their social contract, even trees and the natural world have legal rights. Skipping the events and details, some of the new ideas shown include empathy labs, run by trained volunteers, to facilitate groups at the neighbourhood level, learning empathic listening, and how to create a safe, nonjudgmental climate for everyone traumatised by the brutal system of established patriarchal, hierarchical power structures. Their non-violent approach to those resisting change is through education. Those who still doubted that an alternative to the prevailing capitalist state system could ever work were encouraged to search for the truth by involving them in self-directed learning groups called `The Searchers’. They discovered for themselves that around 5000 BC, matriarchal values existed. The hierarchical relationships that led to dominance were absent. With a collective, sharing economy, people collaborated and cared for each other. The matriarchal mode of consciousness was grounded in the feminine values of empathy, sharing resources communally, and living in harmony with the natural world. It perceived the interconnectedness of all living beings. Mother Earth was sacred and perceived to be alive, just like them. So there were no feelings of alienation from nature or fellow humans. Then a transition was made to a masculine culture, which destroyed and replaced matriarchal culture. It replaced the communal, egalitarian society with a hierarchical one, based on the dominance of one over the other. This led to inequality, oppression, and injustice. The patriarchal mode of consciousness established a masculine culture that built the foundations for a society based on egoistic greed to acquire, conquer, and dominate. People lost their sense of interconnectedness with others and nature. The environment became the soulless other, an object to be exploited and destroyed. It led to the global patriarchal structures of aggressive, testosterone-driven market capitalism and state socialism. Both patriarchal creations wreaked havoc on people and Mother Earth. 

Men in my story engage in special training sessions to transform the destructive inherited patriarchal values within themselves. More integrated, fully human men in touch with their feelings and able to express compassion, become collaborators with women folk as they integrate matriarchal values with positive masculine values, to create a new caring society in harmony with the natural world where everything is seen as being interconnected. Characters in my fictional story, agree on eradicating violence against people and Mother Earth for good. They lay the foundation for an ecological civilization led by women and their male allies. planting the seed for eco-sanity instead of ecocide. The prototype for a newly transformed world gradually unfolded in the real world, outside my fictional story. 

A story of hope that contains detailed ideas about how we could take charge of our destiny and the possibilities that could emerge out of a crisis. A Model in Societal self-direction.

 

As in my fictional story, back in 2024, at first, the progress appeared to be slow, as the darkness of ignorance had to be brought into light through inner work to increase self-awareness to remove barriers to the expression of love for oneself and others. To produce more integrated, whole individuals who are in touch with their feelings and able to express compassion, inner work is needed. Conscious awareness applied towards healing the collective, ran alongside being activists for change.

The alternative future became possible because people built direct democracy in their neighbourhoods through communes. They first started with monthly street barbecues where people living in a particular street started to get to know everyone in their neighbourhood, and gradually, as they built trusting relationships and a sense of mutuality, they started talking about issues and problems of concern affecting them and then exploring solutions and ways of moving forward together with whatever resources they had instead of relying on the government and cooperations. For example, if there was a water leak in the street affecting residents, people used the services of a professional in the neighbourhood or the community with plumbing skills to fix the communal problem. People exchanged skills and services to help each other in the street. Other ideas used: building a tool-borrowing scheme; gardening scheme; setting up volunteer networks to help older folks or those in need in the neighbourhood; and establishing local communes made up of committees: health committee, peace and consensus committee, collective economic committee, education committee, women’s committee, youth committee, etc. When the alternative lives were successfully built in the community, people discussed ways of defending themselves, taking turns learning self-defence and community defence strategies to defend themselves and the community, instead of relying on the brutal police force.

 

To build an ecological world, we needed new mindsets. Benjamin Franklin said about education: Tell me, and I will forget. Teach me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I learn. Involving people at the grassroots level in creating a new society was seen as the way to educate and change the old belief system. Even the sceptics who only believed in materialistic capitalism and believed in it as the only system capable of growth, changed their mindset, reinforced by people making and witnessing real changes on the ground.

Things started to change, people thriving, growing in freedom experientially discovered that they have enormous power when working together at the grassroots level, nurturing each other and Mother Earth, developing their collective economy based on need, and maintaining people’s wellbeing. People gradually became self-sufficient, relying on each other to meet their needs in community spaces, sharing knowledge, skills, and resources, within decentralised participatory decision-making self-sufficient communities. The process of social change evolved with the community. Through building the building blocks of the communes and civil society organisations, people could govern their own lives, slowly building their cooperative economy from the ground up.

 

With people caring for each other and enough community cohesion, the sense of alienation, and isolation was lessened, so individuals who previously resorted to crime, felt more held and valued within the community, therefore less inclined to lash out against it, in the same way that, in a participatory grassroots, consensus-based, direct democracy, people never voted to pollute their environment. As offenders felt integrated and nurtured in the community, crime rates fell gradually. Those committing crimes were dealt with through restorative justice. The community, through the engagement of the peace and consensus committee, and mediation-based non-violent conflict resolution, decided on rehabilitation rather than punishments that lead to reoffending.

Other community educational projects run by people-power assemblies for the public, to instill new values included regular encounter groups for men to explore how one-sided toxic masculinity had harmed them too. It destroys men’s humanity, blocking their compassion, as it leads men to suppress their emotions and kill their inner feminine, causing them to split off and become alienated from their spiritual essence. Men gained insight that only destructive power junkies create wars and violence and that authentic, non-violent communication is the way of resolving conflicts, not through wars that aim to conquer others’s land and subjugate them. The community project programme, facilitated by the peace and consensus committee within the established communes, offered opportunities for men and women to learn communication that was centred on compassion, healing, and protection. This included non-violent communication skills. Gandhi, Mandela, and many others became positive role models for men to follow, producing more integrated, whole men in touch with their feelings and able to express compassion. People learned that the intention to kill leaves a stain on the soul of the person and their descendants. An imprint of perpetual patterns of violence in their future lives.

Other ideas included:

Using social media, the people committed to change reached out to people, who in turn were encouraged to raise their voices, creating a critical mass for positive change. The movement’s approach developed through conversations with like-minded people from across the world.

– Lawsuits against fossil fuel producers (oil and gas, which are the biggest sources of planet-warming gases.) in the civil justice systems of the US and EU, holding them accountable for the harm they’ve caused and the misrepresentations they’ve made, which has slowed adaptation to those problems.

These ideas of self-sufficient neighbourhoods spread to nearby neighbourhoods through education academies that promoted a more conscious, empowered mindset. People themselves, managing the society they lived in together, gradually became the new normal. It spread into other parts of the world like wildfire, making governments redundant. The power-hungry elite rulers and greedy cooperations, without the people under them to breadcrumb and rule, could no longer dominate people who had gained self-sufficiency through the collective economy of cooperatives. Gradually, Mother Earth recovered and healed when those who had exploited, abused, and plundered her, causing catastrophic damage to all life, lost their dominance and influence, becoming redundant, along with a central ‘managerial’ or ‘owning’ government. As Richard Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”