By Alexandra Whittington and Teresa Inés Cruz

Futurist Alvin Toffler famously said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” It is time for the foresight community to take Toffler’s sage advice, starting with one basic assumption of the Western futurist perspective that dates back to the Victorians: progress.

The concepts of learning, unlearning, and relearning belong in every futurist’s repertoire in the sense that we need to learn our bias for progress, unlearn its primacy as a societal objective, and relearn that the human condition is best served by achieving homeostasis–steady equilibrium. Homeostasis can be relearned because it’s inherent to worldviews within many indigenous and ancient societies, including the Law of Origin, which instructs people that living in balance with nature must be the driving force behind our decisions.

For Indigenous peoples in the Andean-Amazonian region in South America, living according to the principles of “Buen Vivir” translated as “good living,” is a worldview and an ancestral foundation based on living in harmony. Similar to the concept of Ubuntu, “I am, because you are” from South Africa, Buen Vivir places critical importance on collective wellbeing and living in harmony with the wider community, Nature, non-humans, ancestors and cosmological networks.

According to Eduardo Gudynas, Uruguayan Director and Senior researcher at the Latin American Centre for Social Ecology (CLAES), “Buen Vivir is a new paradigm of social and ecological commons — one that is community-centric, ecologically balanced and culturally sensitive. It’s a vision and a platform for thinking and practicing alternative futures based on a “bio-civilization.”