An encouraging, perhaps surprising, view of the global shift we're in

A futurist’s views of our probable alternatives, including a naturally flourishing future

Dr. Ruth Miller is an internationally recognized futurist who is best described as a synthesist of all things relevant to consciousness, human potential, and culture.

On Aug. 16, 2025 she gave a presentation titled “A Global Shift Is Happening—Where We Are” to the Vancouver WA Community Group of IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences). If there is any trouble with the website link, here are the links for the YouTube and the pdf of her slides.

In this presentation Dr. Miller shares very different perspectives than the usual thinking about what’s happening in the world today and what we can do to move through it, individually and collectively. 

Her presentation asks and answers these essential questions:

·       What are the alternatives unfolding now?

·       What are the current pressures/processes?

·       What are the emerging possibilities?

·       What do we intend—for ourselves and future generations?

She describes four probable scenarios with their associated quality of life factors:

1)     Transformation of consciousness

2)     Green

3)     Technological success

4)     Distress

Dr. Miller demonstrates how the empire culture approach, in which we’ve been living for about 6,000 years, always plays out over time, everywhere. It results in the death of the culture. She contrasts that with the paradigm and experience of sustainable, earth-honoring cultures, which have been life-giving, life-enhancing and (re-)generative for thousands of years.

Then she gives examples of how this life-aligned approach looks in different arenas of living: food, water, houses, earth and eco-system awareness, roads and transportation, governance, education, and new ways of thinking/spirituality.   

She describes the larger-scale, multi-level transformation process we’re in, followed by frameworks for more consciously and powerfully co-creating our experience to fulfill the following intention for ourselves and future generations:

“I don’t want to protect the environment. I want to create a world where the environment doesn’t need protecting.”  

In my view, this is an inspiring, grounded, empowering approach and a very important read.