What Might Cultures Look Like a Thousand Years from Now?

New research finds we’ve just finished the first year of temperatures beyond 1.5°C warming, and that without radical change, it was the first of many. But instead of taking urgent action, we’re denying climate change exists, or saying it’s too hard to fix, or in some cases, investing in ways to make the damage less—at least for the investors—instead of addressing the problem. But if climate change spirals out of control, is adaptation really possible? And what does adaptation really mean? Hardening assets or shifting to life in an unprecedented new climate reality? What will that reality do to communities? To vulnerable peoples? To entire cultures?

This talk will explore the potential of peoples to make it through the coming polycrisis, with their humanity intact, and steps that might make that pathway more probable. It will explore Erik’s work on cultural change, as well as his efforts to cultivate a philosophy that reconnects people with the living Earth they’re part of and utterly dependent on.

Could this type of philosophical reorientation be key for surviving as the consumer-industrialist systems falter and fail? And perhaps even for creating new civilizations where humans and non-humans are once again living in a mutual, respectful relationship. Where humans use their creative energy and technologies to heal Earth rather than undermine it, and to celebrate Gaia, through music, arts, even architecture--growing living buildings over decades rather than building them from materials extracted from deep within the Earth. Join us to find out.


Erik Assadourian is a sustainability researcher, an ecophilosopher, and director of the Gaian Way, an eco-spiritual philosophy, an organization, and a community. From 2001 to 2017, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Worldwatch Institute where he studied cultural change, sustainability education, consumerism, degrowth, ecological ethics, corporate responsibility, religion, and sustainable communities. During that time, he authored and directed several of the institute’s State of the World reports, exploring the impacts of consumerism on communities, culture, and the environment. Erik’s writing has been on our reading list since 2010. Erik also served as an adjunct professor with Goucher College’s Environmental Studies masters program from 2015 to 2020.