Ecocentric
Future Lab

Human-centric thinking is causing us to damage our planet and other forms of life in ways that can’t be repaired. As the Anthropocene rampages, our challenge for the next decade will be to reimagine how we live through the lens of the environment; to shift our perspectives from human-centered, EGO-centric, profit-driven post-industrialist thinking to a multi-species, ECO-centric worldview. This requires a fundamental perception change, rewiring our views of nature and hierarchies of intelligence.

There are numerous types of intelligence beyond human intelligence, such as distributed intelligence of octopuses, swarm intelligence of ants, bees, and birds, collective intelligence of mycelium, and microbial intelligence. Co-create with non-human species helps us probe into different intelligences, shift perspectives, and interrogate ourselves. To collaborate, we need to go beyond passive looking and deeply understand the non-human intelligence, behavior, and agency. We need to respect, learn, connect, share the umwelt, and embody each other. Finding connections reveals how we are part of many continuums of intelligence.