Council on the Uncertain Human Future

In the Council on the Uncertain Human Future
we slow down, come present, and listen deeply.

We share our understandings of the social and political context in which we meet,
the planetary changes underway, and the human behaviors that brought us here…
and stay with the implications for all living beings, including ourselves.

With open hearts and minds,
we acknowledge the conditions and losses underway.

We ask… what matters from here?
Given what we know, how do we live now?
How might we serve, individually and together…
with and for the Earth?

Listening together, collective wisdom may arise
between us, further seeding empathetic, earth-based,
life-affirming ways into the new realities…

These practices of listening, steady presence and reckoning,
and the trust, insight, community and evolutionary visioning
that may grow from them, are path for these times… mycelial and emergent.

Please explore our practice stream, readers and films…
Learn more of our intentions, the ongoing contributions of CUHF members,
and how you might join us.

…and shifting the paradigm.

In the Council on the Uncertain Human Future…we slow down, come present, and listen deeply.

We share our understandings of the social and political context in which we meet, the planetary changes underway, and the human behaviors that brought us here…and stay with the implications for all living beings, including ourselves.

With open hearts and minds, we acknowledge the conditions and losses underway.

We ask… what matters from here? Given what we know, how do we live now? How might we serve, individually and together…with and for the earth?

Listening together, collective wisdom may arise between us, further seeding empathetic, earth-based, life-affirming ways into the new realities…

These practices of listening, steady presence and reckoning,and the trust, insight, community and evolutionary visioning that may grow from them, are path for these times…mycelial and emergent.

Please explore our practice stream, readers and films. Learn more of our intentions, the ongoing contributions of CUHF members, and how you might join us.

…it shifts the paradigm, sustaining us.

FEATURED STORIES

A Mindful Circle

A number of CUHF conveners are longtime Buddhist practitioners. On Sunday, May 22, they came together via Zoom to reflect,...

Growing CUHF Community at MIT

Will the future be humane and livable? What knowledge and values will guide and sustain us? For nearly two years,...

The Language of Trees

On Tuesday April 26, CUHF National Council members Kathleen Dean Moore and Mary Evelyn Tucker were featured in the online...

Elm Dance Healing Ceremony

On April 9, CUHF National Convener, Nastasia Lawton-Sticklor, and eight New England activists held a Healing Ceremony at the ash...

There is an urgent need for people to bear witness, to truly take in and process what is happening; and do so in community where new insights and collective intelligence can emerge.

CURT NEWTON | Massachusetts Institute of Technology CUHF Steady Council Anchor
It is in these quiet and contemplative spaces, sitting in intentional conversation with others, that the wisdom, strength, and seeds of change we so desperately need to bring about cultural transformation can begin to take root and emerge.

LILY SWANBROW BECKERCUHF Associate Director
A Council is a circle. It has no beginning and no end. It has no leaders and no followers, no hierarchy of power or privilege. There are no limits to its revolutions. What a circle has is a center. The center holds honesty, which is a kind of beauty, which is a source of truth.

KATHLEEN DEAN MOORE | Oregon State UniversityNational CUHF member
By listening open-heartedly to one another, we can allow new, unanticipated insights to arise. In this way, Council is a path to an emancipatory way of being with the world and with each other. It is a model for the world we are trying to bring into being.

WALTER WRIGHTCUHF National Convener
There is a spaciousness in our councils—a time-out-of-time—in which we can pause and trust that insight will arise from our creative depths. One insight sparks another and another until we find ourselves seeing possibility and light through the fog of despair. Like an ecosystem, we are generating new ways of being and collaborating for the benefit of all.

KIRSTIN EDELGLASSRando Partnership Council Member
The Council experience rattles the crumbling foundation of a defunct dualistic paradigm, one that demands our choice between mind and body, thought and feeling, matter and energy, self and other, individual and community, human and nature, the mundane and the sacred. It offers instead a vision of the world rooted in interdependence.

KEVIN GALLAGHERCUHF Core Team and National Convener

CUHF IN HIGHER ED

CUHF Community at MIT

Since the summer of 2020, faculty and staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been convening in small circles to build and deepen collective reflection on the planetary environmental crisis, as an Affiliate of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future.

Read the full article on MIT’s website

It’s Time for Higher Education to “Get Real” about the Climate Crisis

Learn about the history of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, and our work in A new Earth conversation (NEC) at Clark University, in a new piece by CUHF Core Team member, Diana Chapman Walsh.

Read the full article on Medium

A new Earth conversation Brochure

The initial Council on the Uncertain Human Future (2014) inspired Clark University faculty and staff to join the process (2015-2019); a vision for A new Earth conversation emerged from those Councils and has grown into a campus-wide climate initiative, enabling deeper conversation and cultivating possibility with students.

View the brochure on Issu

a new film from cuhf

The Council on the Uncertain Human Futureinvites reckoning, collective insight and creative possibilitiesfor the climate realities ahead

FEATURED STORIES

CUHF IN HIGHER ED

From its origins in 2014, the CUHF network has grown steadily – including climate scientists, students, artists, medical professionals, academics, activists, attorneys, environmental professionals, spiritual leaders, writers and more.

INTERNATIONAL CUHF EVENTS

Beginning in December 2020, CUHF members and conveners from around the world have gathered in Council circles, via Zoom, to address issues related to our Uncertain Human Future. Recordings of each event’s opening remarks are available below.

From its origins in 2014, the Council network has grown steadily – including climate scientists, students, artists, medical professionals, academics, activists, attorneys, environmental professionals, spiritual leaders, writers and more.

INTERNATIONAL CUHF EVENTS

Beginning in December 2020, CUHF members and conveners from around the world have gathered in Council circles, via Zoom, to address issues related to our Uncertain Human Future. Recordings of each event’s opening remarks are available below.

CUHF AFFILIATES

The Council on the Uncertain Human Future
invites reckoning, collective insight and creative possibilities
for the climate realities ahead