Nature reveals the most intu­itive, dynam­ic, and mas­ter­ful designs. Mys­ter­ies hold truths. How might we come to under­stand that which is unknow­able? For starters, look with­in at what’s always been present.

“In this peri­od of the end of the world, how do we sow the seeds of a pos­si­ble world? The first: every young per­son should rec­og­nize that work­ing with their hands and their hearts and their minds, and being inter­con­nect­ed, is the high­est evo­lu­tion of our species.” — Van­dana Shiva

We are fun­da­men­tal­ly con­nect­ed to the earth beneath our bod­ies as much as we breathe in the air of our skies. Lev­els of puri­ty and pol­lu­tion affect how we process and inter­act with our envi­ron­ment. Recon­nect­ing with the nat­ur­al world will guide the way toward pure life.

A big part of the future we envi­sion involves a much more nat­ur­al inte­gra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy into our lives. In the future, we will bet­ter bal­ance our use of tech­nol­o­gy only for when it serves us. Right now, the lit­tle com­put­ers in our pock­ets can sum­mon a phone call, video chat, or mes­sage, and they can even run an app to help us med­i­tate. But we don’t need

them to breathe. And to con­trol one’s breath is per­haps the best exam­ple of attain­ing con­trol over some­thing so auto­mat­ic it might be deemed uncon­trol­lable. Yet, there it is, a sense of calm and ease with the release of a deeply drawn and held breath…

We must be mind­ful to look away from the screens that cap­ti­vate our atten­tion, return to the root func­tions of our own liv­ing sys­tems, and learn from what our own bod­ies tell us. This approach is no dif­fer­ent from how ancient sci­en­tists looked to the plan­ets to under­stand what they could not yet see on a micro­scop­ic lev­el yet intu­it­ed to be true.

In won­der­ing from where the next great spark of inno­va­tion will emerge, we’d like to pro­pose that we already pos­sess the answer. We need only to look with­in to acti­vate humanity’s nascent pow­er to inno­vate. This idea is well cap­tured with­in a Hopi poem:

Cre­ator said: “I want to hide some­thing from the humans until they are ready for it. It is the real­iza­tion that they cre­ate their own reality.”

The eagle said, “Give it to me. I will take it to the moon.”

The Cre­ator said, “No. One day they will go there and find it.”

The salmon said, “I will bury it on the bot­tom of the ocean.”

The Cre­ator said, “No. They will go there, too.”

The buf­fa­lo said, “I will bury it on the Great Plains.”

The Cre­ator said, “They will cut into the skin of the Earth and find it even there.”

Grand­moth­er, who lives in the breast of Moth­er Earth, and who has no phys­i­cal eyes but sees with spir­i­tu­al eyes, said, “Put it inside of them.” 

And the Cre­ator said, “It is done.”