An Exploration of the Elementary Forms of Religious Integration and the Futures of the Gynocene’

Elsewhere (Van Der Bly, 2021) I coined the term the Gynocene, whilst strongly rejecting the idea of calling the next phase of humanity’s relationship with Earth the Anthropocene. Following the Greek singular ‘anthropos’ referring to ‘man’ and the plural ‘anthropoi’ to ‘humanity’, the term the Anthropocene effectively semantically excludes over half of the world’s population from our collective future. Yes, there is a new epoch dawning for humanity, let’s call it the Gynocene.

In this presentation, I explore pathways towards of a non-war world society within the Gynocene. I do so by exploring a common cause of war, religion, in a society free of religious strife. This is a society not free from either war or conflict, and not Utopian in any way – yet free from religious conflict. I present the preliminary findings of a longitudinal research study and I do so on film, democratizing the idea to whom futures studies are accessible.

Yet, paraphrasing Durkheim, I am not describing this society for its own sake, my interest is primarily the present, the practical, the global: scenarios for the future. I attempt to show how sociological futures research can engage with broader publics through the medium that drives our imagination, namely film. While our history has widely demonstrated our talent for war and terror – I argue that the scientific study of a multi-religious society that nonetheless is characterized by an absence of religious strife, offers us valuable insights into developing scenarios to futures of global solidarity within the Gynocene, through the sociological construction of a ‘collective global totem’, within one society, on one earth - under one sky.

References

Van Der Bly, Martha C.E. (2021) ‘Welcome to the Gynocene’ Great Transition Initiative (February 2021) https://greattransition.org/gti-forum/ anthropocene-van-der-bly.