Ancestral Future

This writing was largely inspired by seeing some of Ailton Krenak’s work on display in Mexico City and subsequently reading his book Ancestral Future, which has clearly moved me...

With all my travels over the past few years, I’ve seen how much of the world lives inside a bubble they inherited (myself included). Modern countries are insulated from the realities of how they get their food, and those that aren’t are gaslighted through poverty into believing that the nations exploiting them hold the answers and the life they’ve always dreamed of—forsaking the abundance they already live within. Abundance is natural and is by design self-sustaining, unlike the many fragile technologies that underpin our world.

And yes, I recognize the hypocrisy in typing this and posting it online. I’m as integrated into this world as anyone else. The point I’m making is best posed as a question: how much of our lives have come to serve technology, rather than using technology in service of ourselves—or better yet, the Earth and all life? Aren’t we supposed to be God’s shepherds? These days, most people seem preoccupied with money and how to get more of it—but do they care where their potatoes came from? Do they care how the chickens they consume were raised and slaughtered? How often do we sit down for a family meal? How often do we maintain deep, non-superficial relationships with our neighbors—or even with the animals in our neighborhoods that aren’t “ours”? Modern life moves so fast. When do any of us give ourselves the time to truly care?

This is tied with the concept of Krenak's necrocapitalism, where humans place themselves at the center of everything, ultimately forced into a state of consumption to recreate worlds. Always needing more to build the next thing that will supposedly “get us there,” we miss the truth that we’ve always been here. Our obsession with the virtual world exemplifies this: the illusion of limitless creation pulls us away from the tangible world. We become heroes on the internet, but spectators in real life. Social media exemplifies this, and doomscrolling—we continue down this spiral. Disconnected from the present, we buy into the narratives others place upon us, feeding a mass psychosis, crippling anxiety, and attention deficits. Some call it analysis paralysis; Chomsky called it manufactured consent. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely intentional, but our global interconnectivity leaves us vulnerable to accidentally creating, as Krenak references from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “a world with a single story.”

Determinism sounds quite dystopian, doesn’t it? Much of this stems from the competition baked into our education systems. But does it have to be so bleak? Whatever happened to just being—doing nothing? Productivity is not life.

Here I am, advocating for data privacy and blockchain technology, while also encouraging people to touch grass and forget about their day jobs. My writing suggests that individuals must prioritize themselves for the sake of the collective. So, which is it? This world is full of contradictions, and our language doesn’t always help. I know I don’t have the right answers—and I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking a definitive solution exists. It really depends on how you look at it. The truth probably lies somewhere within the paradoxes—and perhaps, it’s not as complicated as we think.

Some of the ancient wisdom that still exists in our modern platitudes was passed down through generations without texts or so-called "knowledge." No preoccupation with forgetting, which I too succumb to. The world doesn’t need to be built for the future—it already exists. Krenak said, “Indigenous children are not educated, but guided.” Our children do not need to be indoctrinated to build our future—they are already inherently a part of it. From an early age, they learn “to put their hearts in the rhythm of the Earth”—something most of the world’s cultures have long forgotten. The way forward might not be something we can plan explicitly. Perhaps the future really does need to be ancestral.