The future sees the markers of extinction in the erosion of our aquifers and the acceleration of the planet’s droughts and floods. The future sees the greatest loss of life is not from the pandemic but from the droughts, floods, food insecurities and coming ice age. The present believes an age of extinction is a preposterous silly myth, similar to the discredited middle age notion that the sun orbited the Earth.

In the 16th century when every government, university, church and ordinary person knew for certain the sun did orbit the Earth, one man—Nicholas Copernicus—made the argument that everyone on Earth was simply misinformed. A Renaissance-era mathematician and astronomer, Copernicus placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe. His “theory” was hard to swallow in his own time, but we know he was right today. In the same way, through the looking glass of hindsight, the future knows that today’s sweeping pandemic, global depression, rumors of war and nonstop calamities are going to shake our civilization to its core.

A tale of two realities is the story of the present time that wants to believe the pandemic ends quickly, the economy fully recovers, and everything returns to normal and the future that knows more severe calamities are arriving in 2022 for the many.

Climate scientists who have studied the evidence and sages who honor the Earth understand the urgency for all hands-on deck, but humanity has chosen to sleepwalk into a change that is sweeping and not modest at all.

The new humanity is preparing for the coming food insecurity and the diseases that accompany an unhealthy species. The new humanity is cutting the Gordian knot on an unsustainable unwinding civilization to create the future of our world.