The Peoples' Institute for Re-thinking Education and Development

Ecoversities Prophecy

THE ECOVERSITIES PROPHECY (AND INVITATION TO ALL THE EDUCATORS IN THE WORLD)
When science and rationality become ready to enter into liminal spaces,
When rivers and ready-made formulas run dry,
When technological utopianism runs out of silver bullets and salesmen,
When institutions and experts have run out of answers and don't know what to do anymore,
When mainstreaming feels like a suffocating strait-jacket,
When the Global Market understands the invisible hand has been cut off,
When communities realise that they cannot survive without vibrant local economies,
When borders, rules and disciplinary categories want to exhale deeply and relax,
When the strategic plans start to remember that diverse contexts and terrains matter,
When data becomes warm and promiscuous and excel spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations can no longer hold complex realities,
When money grows tired of being the bully,
When the bulldozers and tanks are ready to revolt,
When the air-conditioners refuse to cool our industrialized egos,
When competition and the label of success feel like an unnecessary burden to wear,
When people start craving authentic relationships, radical trust and an expansion of our notions of Self,
When wisdom is tired of being strangled,
When AI starts claiming it is more powerful than II (indigenous intelligence),
When poisoned food systems and oceans full of plastic refuse to be hidden from the overly romanticized narrative of progress,
When children are ready to make the experiential world their classroom again,
When the the ancestors, forests, the deserts and the mountains are ready to sing and dance again,
When Mother Nature wants to give us one last chance.

There is an ancient prophecy that ecoversities of all shapes and sizes will rise again out of the cracks, the chaos, the muck, the shadows, the undercurrents, the informal, the seemingly invisible, the ashes, the pain and the collective trauma.
Ecoversities will rise again to help us liberate our collective imaginations (from trying to reform or fix the existing system).
Ecoversities will rise again to invite back the sacred intelligence of our hearts, hands and bodies.
Ecoversities will rise again to remind us how to listen to the profound wisdom of our more-than-human planetary co-inhabitants.
Ecoversities will rise again to help us unlearn and uplearn.
Ecoversities will rise again to help us regenerate the gift culture, the commons and solidarity economies.
Ecoversities will rise again to help us find our way back Home to who we really are.
Ecoversities will rise again...

Ask yourself, were you born at this time to BE this wild and playful prophecy of uprising?

- Manish Jain, Swaraj University and the Ecoversities Alliance www.ecoversities.org