Soulcraft Musings

Friday, September 18, 2026

A Map to the Next World, Part XXI

This is Part Twenty-One of a 25-plus-part essay on making and following a map that might get us to the Next World, and on what it means to leave one world and eventually reach another, and on what it’s like for a community or a society to be between worlds, perhaps walking that long road for several generations. Think of this as a draft of an essay I’ll be working on for a while — or eventually a short book. Let me know — through Substack — what resonates with you. To fully understand or contextualize today’s part, you might want to read, reread, or at least scan the first three parts. Link Below.

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The First of Two Phases of the Journey to the Next World: Ecocentric Communities, Part II

Last week, I wrote about how, over the next several generations — beginning with us now! — we’ll have to create transitional social structures and systems that will enable us to reconnect with and support the health and diversity of the greater web of life. These structures and systems will form the core of life-sustaining communities that will serve as lifeboats or as bridges between our current life-destroying societies and the eventual life-enhancing cultures of the Next World. The two common themes with all these systems and structures are ecocentrism and localism. Here, rather briefly, are a dozen core examples:

First and foremost, because a society is only as healthy and mature as its citizens, we will need a variety of initiatives that support nature-based full-spectrum human development (aka, eco-soulcentric human development) facilitated by those who we, at Animas, call professional human development guides (PHDGs) who work in schools, universities, clinics, health centers, community organizations, and individual practices (within contexts such as education, ministry, life coaching, psychotherapy, psychiatry, counseling, ecotherapy, rites of passage, parenting education, mentoring, outdoor education, and community development). This is the “inner” dimension of future life-sustaining societies most commonly overlooked by contemporary agents of cultural change, and yet I believe it is the most foundational dimension. This is, of course, the central topic of this current multi-part essay.[57] Our capacity to create the other structures and systems in the following list will largely depend on our success with this first set.

Nature-based full-spectrum human development encompasses our full lifespan, from our time in the womb through late elderhood, within a multi-generational and community context. This includes the psychospiritual and somatic health of parents before conception and during pregnancy as well as the health of their relationship and their connection to both their human community and their greater local Earth community. And it, of course, includes the way children are raised, the ways teenagers are supported to grow whole, and methods and principles for guiding the journey of soul initiation for those among us who manage to reach the stage of life I call the Cocoon.

One essential aspect of nature-based full-spectrum human development to emphasize in this context is ecocentric parenting or nature-connected parenting. We’ll need to collectively get good at this during the long transition period between our current time of mostly egocentric parents and a future time of largely soul-initiated parents as well as soul-initiating mentors, guides, and elders. Ecocentric parenting does not require soul-initiation. Caregivers who are in ecocentric versions of early or late psychological adolescence have the capacities to raise children who never lose their innate animate consciousness and to support the ecological awakening of those who have.[58]

A second essential aspect of nature-based full-spectrum human development is ecocentric support systems for teens that include but go beyond puberty rites and other rites of passage. For their psychological health and social development, teens need the regular experience of being truly seen as the unique individuals they are by mature ecocentric people (including the rare true adults and elders). They need support in discovering and cultivating their authentic individual nature, including their true values, interests, styles, emotions, sexual orientation, and gender identity. And teens need to experience themselves as participants in the more-than-human community of Earth, participants who receive their existence and sustenance from the Earth and who can and will contribute to the health and wellbeing of that wider community.[59]

A third aspect, among many, of nature-based full-spectrum human development that will be essential to attend to during our bridge time between egocentric and soulcentric societies is universal support for eco-awakening for those who reach early adolescence without their innate animate consciousness intact, which is the vast majority of contemporary humans. I’ll discuss eco-awakening in some depth next week.

Eco-seniors: This will be a vital social role in transitional societies between those with very few true elders (as in modernity) and future Next-World societies in which approximately 25% of the population will be true elders. Eco-seniors are ecologically awakened older people who are dedicated to activities such as teaching eco-literacy, guiding “nature-immersion experiences,” environmental stewardship, climate action, and serving in professional and volunteer roles of biodiversity support.[60]

Ecocentric religions — transitional ones — will be of great value for many individuals and communities until humanity regains the deep, culture-wide, daily-lived, every-moment experience of the sacred as existing in and as every being and every place and in and as the relationships between all things, as well as in and as the Whole (the Universe). In the Next World, there will no longer be a dimension of life called “religion” that people would experience as separate from any other dimension. Everyone will live every day, all-day, grounded in the recognition and celebration of all lifeworlds as holy. And all places. Between now and then, we’ll need transitional eco-religions with structures and content (such as symbols, liturgy, rituals, celebrations) that bridge between current egocentric religious communities[61] and the eventual post-religion-based eco-spirituality of everyday life in the Next World.

Within eco-religions[62], the liturgy of the more-than-human world is at least as important and sacred as that of any written texts. The holy is celebrated in and as what modernity dualistically calls “nature” (which ought to refer to the whole world, not just a part of it). In eco-religions, there is no desire for any kind of transcendence that would disconnect us from the enfleshed, embodied, wildly diverse world of species and habitats. Plainly said, eco-religions re-enchant the world. Better said, eco-religions reveal the natural world as being and as having always been enchanted. They cultivate animate consciousness — through which we live and experience as if everything is alive, intelligent, and sentient (because it is), recognizing that the world is full of many varieties of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in respectful relationship with these other persons.[63] Eco-religions remind us that humanity can once again fully participate in what Thomas Berry referred to as a “communion of subjects” (in contrast to “a collection of objects”).[64] Rather than adhering to linear man-made histories, the art of worship follows the natural rhythms of the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days. Institutionalized hierarchies and centralized authority are blessedly rejected in favor of decentralized, autonomous local circles.

My understanding is that healthier cultures of the past did not have religions in the sense that we have them now. Anthropologists from egocentric societies may see it otherwise, perhaps because they project their dualistic worldview (e.g., sacred and profane) onto the societies they study. When members of indigenous cultures do or say what, for modern humans, would be in the realm of “the sacred,” anthropologists might understand this within the contemporary frame of “religion.”

In our transitional bridge societies, we will need ecocentric governing structures somewhere between true democracies/ biocracies (essentially nonexistent on the state level in current Dominator societies) and the councils of (true) elders of intact nature-based cultures. In the Next World, Councils of elders will replace many features of what we would now call democracies. Genuine elders are not nominated, elected, or appointed; they are recognized — by the whole community when that community is eco-soulcentric.

One example of a transitional governing structure is sortition, in which public officials are chosen by random lottery from the general population. Related are citizen assemblies in which randomly selected people study, debate, and recommend policy solutions on community issues, supported by input from subject-matter experts, advocates, and stakeholders from all sides of any given issue. The assembly votes on a set of policy recommendations, which are then submitted to the government (which is perhaps chosen by sortition) or put directly to a public referendum. Alternative governing structures of this sort already exist within the realm of Dominator societies.[65] Two of the features that will change in the coming transitional societies is that these alternative systems will become common and primary and their central embodied value will be to support the diversity, health, and resilience of the local watershed or bioregion within which that human community strives to be a well-mannered participant.

True economics: ecocentric, sustainable, local, fair, and wise methods for producing and distributing goods and services, with economic models rooted in ecological limits, social justice, and systemic equity.[66] These will be interim, transitional methods on the way to eventual gift economies — Next-World-versions of Indigenous economies based on giving and cooperation, not money and profit.[67]

Eco-technologies are designed, fashioned, and utilized with the health of the Earth community foremost in mind. To generate transitional societies, we’ll need to modify or eliminate our current technologies that are too risky ecocentrically or too easily abused in catastrophic ways. In transitional life-sustaining societies, technologies, both ancient and modern, are prized — but, unlike the contemporary world, are used only in ways that support life, the health of all habitats, and the diversity of the more-than-human community.

Regenerative agriculture is an ecocentric approach to farming and ranching that restores and enhances the health of ecosystems. It actively rehabilitates the soil, maximizes biodiversity, protects local watersheds, and increases climate resilience by drawing atmospheric carbon back into the ground. Strategies include minimizing soil disturbance (no-till farming), covering soil year-round with vegetation or mulch, maximizing crop diversity, and the integration of crops and livestock grazing. Regenerative agriculture reduces dependence on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides while generating productive, climate-stable, and economically viable food-producing systems.[68]

Eco-science and traditional ecological knowledge: Eco-science doesn’t merely minimize human harm but actively enhances, restores, and collaborates with natural ecosystems. Rather than viewing the natural world as a resource to manage, eco-science treats the biosphere as a complex, living partner.

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) refers to place-based bodies of practices and beliefs developed by Indigenous and other communities over many generations of living sustainably with their local ecosystems. While eco-science focuses on quantitative data and modeling, TEK offers a holistic worldview that situates land stewardship, cultural values, and spirituality in the context of the greater Earth community. Combining these complementary frameworks enhances land management, biodiversity, and climate resilience.

Earth law: The Rights of Nature movement is a core component of the transition to life-sustaining societies. This is the global effort to grant legal rights to rivers, mountains, and other ecosystems, recognizing Earth as a living entity, not as “property.” Key elements include legal personhood for nature, community-led local governance, and traditional ecological knowledge. There are many current legal efforts of these sorts and some major successes (for example, with the Whanganui River in New Zealand, and Ecuador becoming the first nation to constitutionally recognize nature’s rights) alongside significant challenges, especially with enforcement. We are currently seeing an encouraging proliferation of Rights of Nature organizations around the world driving legislative change and cultural shifts, groups such as the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, the Earth Law Center (with their main office in the Animas Valley, in Durango, CO), Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, and Center for Earth Jurisprudence. From Durango’s Earth Law Center:

Earth jurisprudence is an Earth-centered philosophy of law, emphasizing the legal recognition of nature’s rights and the interdependence of all living systems. This philosophy asserts that humans are not separate from the Earth but integral to its living systems, and laws should reflect this interconnectedness. At ELC, we translate this philosophy into actionable law, called Earth law, which shifts the legal framework from a human-centered to an ecocentric approach.

Traditional nature-based cultures did not and do not need “Earth jurisprudence” within their own communities because their entire way of life is/ was grounded in a bedrock understanding of the world as sacred and of all other species as our human kin. The emphasis is on relationship, on multispecies reciprocity and honoring, on our responsibility to care for the world, not on “rights” (which is one of modernity’s most egocentric and anthropocentric concepts).[69] Our transitional ecocentric societies of the future will be grounded likewise but to get there we’ll need widespread human eco-awakening (which will heal modernity’s eco-alienation). In the interim, we will need Earth jurisprudence and the leadership and guidance of organizations such as the Earth Law Center.

Eco-justice: Our transitional eco-societies must be built with an understanding of the intersection between environmental degradation and social inequality. Marginalized groups — low-income communities, Indigenous peoples, and communities of color — are disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards such as pollution and toxic waste, and by climate change, despite contributing the least to these problems. We need environmental laws, regulations, and policies that fairly treat and meaningfully involve all human communities. By framing environmental deterioration as a human rights violation, eco-justice dismantles systemic discrimination, ensures the equitable distribution of natural resources, and protects vulnerable human communities as well as the natural ecosystems we all rely on.[70]

Eco-depth psychology: Contemporary mainstream Western psychology is neither nature-based nor depth-oriented, the latter alluding to the dedicated exploration of the unconscious, the soul, mythology, and the inherent meaning or “secret kinesis” of things, creatures, and places. (In the realm of psychology, “depth” might be thought of as a version of “local.”) During the coming transitional times, we will need a widely adopted eco-depth psychology and a multitude of nature-based underworld guides (in addition to psychotherapists). In future healthier Next-World societies, eco-depth psychology will be known simply as psychology, which is to say that healthier societies will be rooted in our human relationship with the mysteries of nature and psyche. There will no longer be such a thing as an eco-illiterate adolescent or adult, or a psychologically healthy human alienated from the greater Earth community or unaware of the hidden depths and meanings of things.[71]

Eco-mythology: We will need to gradually transition from (1) myths being largely perceived as anachronisms or merely symbolic systems (as in the current mainstream of Dominator World) to (2) transitional collections of myths gathered from many nature-based traditions around the world, with each myth a support for deep insight into what it is to be human in a more-than-human world[72] to (3) the eventual Next-World appearance of new myths and new variations of old myths arising out of the collective unconscious of humans living together eco-soulcentrically for several generations or more in one particular place or bioregion.

Here are some opportunities and prompts for our collective creation of transitional social structures and systems:

· Develop a map for the kinds of local, ecocentric social structures and systems needed and why they are needed.[73]

· Develop plans and strategies for creating such structures and systems. (For example, what are some ecocentric and local actions and organizations that can help bridge the multi-generational gap from where we are now to Next-World communities?)

· Experiment and implement prototypes.

References:

[57] See, also, my books Nature and the Human Soul, Wild Mind, and The Journey of Soul Initiation.

[58] For some specifics of raising children in this way, see, for example, Nature and the Human Soul — chapters 4, 5, and 6. Also see Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2008) and David Sobel, Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education (Great Barrington, MA: Orion Society, 1996).

[59] See, for example, Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education and Darcy Ottey, Rites and Responsibilities: A Guide to Growing Up (Lost Borders Press, 2022).

[60] See for example, Third Act, Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement, Grandparents for Climate.

[61] See Nature and the Human Soul, p. 221 – 222, for a few characteristics of egocentric religious communities, including prescribed conformity to a narrow vision of social acceptability (a vision that is patho-adolescent, egocentric, ethnocentric, anthropocentric, and usually androcentric); disciplinary systems; tyranny, codependency, and other forms of arrested human development; insider/ outsider statuses; and religious imperialism (aka, missionary projects).

[62] There are, of course, many eco-religions or Earth-based spiritualities extant in the world now and there have been for centuries even within Dominator societies. But eco-religions will become primary in the coming eco-societies. See, for example, Bron Taylor, Dark Green Religion (University of California Press, 2009).

[63] See, for example, Graham Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).

[64] Thomas Berry, Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community (Sierra Club Books, 2006, p. 17).

[65] See, for example, David Van Reybrouck, Against Elections: The Case for Democracy (London: The Bodley Head, 2016); and Hélène Landemore, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).

[66] See, for example, Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (White River Junction, VY, 2018); Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (Holland, OH, 2021); Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013); Tim Jackson, Post Growth: Life After Capitalism (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 2021).

[67] Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies by (New York: Norton, 1954); Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (New York: Vintage, 1983); and Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (New York: Scribner, 2024).

[68] See, for example, Charles Massey, Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, A New Earth (Chelsey Green, 2018).

[69] See Aseem Shrivastava, “Beyond the Rights of Nature: Toward an Ecosophy of Belonging,” accessed on 9-16-26 at https://radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/beyond-the-rights-of-nature-toward-an-ecosophy-of-belonging-part-i/.

[70] Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (New York: Routledge, 1990); Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock (Boston: Beacon Press, 2019); Leah Thomas, The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet (New York: Little, Brown, & Co, 2022).

[71] See Nature and the Human Soul, Wild Mind, and The Journey of Soul Initiation for more on eco-depth psychology. Also see, Mary-Jayne Rust, Towards an Ecopsychotherapy (London: Confer Books, 2020).

[72] See Rosalind Kerven, Myths, Legends and Tales for a Greener World (London: Batsford, 2026); Sharon Blackie, Foxfire, Wolfskin and Other Stories of Shapeshifting Women (London: September Publishing, 2019); and Martin Shaw, Liturgies of the Wild: Myths that Make Us (New York: Sentinel, 2026).

[73] There are, of course, many other authors envisioning systems and structures for healthier, more mature, ecocentric, life-sustaining societies. These take the form of ecotopian or thrutopian fiction as well as deep-ecological philosophy. The following short, selective list are books I have found inspiring — even though most seem to neglect or underemphasize the foundational need for what I call nature-based full-spectrum human development. See, for example, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013); Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing (New York: Bantam, 1993); Richard Powers, The Overstory (New York: Norton, 2018); Manda Scott, Any Human Power (London: September Publishing, 2024); Jeremy Lent, Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All (London: Melville, 2026); Jeremy Rifkin, The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2022); Duane Elgin, Choosing Earth: Humanity’s Great Transition to a Mature Planetary Civilization (self-published, 2020); Daniel Christian Wahl, Designing Regenerative Cultures (Axminster, England: Triarchy Press, 2016).

Photo: WCollective Sustenance [Collage]. Doug Van Houten

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