Symbiocene

RELATED TERMS: Anthropocene – Capitalocene – Chthulucene; Plantationocene

Glenn Albrecht (2021) argues that we must rapidly exit the Anthropocene, an era marked by its non-sustainability, its perverse resilience, its authoritarianism and its corrupt and destructive political economy. There can be no ‘good’ Anthropocene, he insists. 

To break with the Anthropocene, Albrecht suggests that a new foundation, built around a new meme, is needed. He proposes the term Symbiocene for the next era in human history, derived from the Greek sumbioun, to live together. It also invokes the notion of ‘symbiosis’, that is, living together for mutual benefit. As a core element of ecological thinking, symbiosis affirms the interconnectedness, or we might say entanglement, of all living things.

Characteristic of this new era, Albrecht argues, will be human intelligence that replicates the symbiotic and mutually reinforcing life-reproducing forms and processes found in living systems. Human development will arise through creative actions using the best of biomimicry and symbiomimicry alongside other eco-industrial, eco-technological, eco-agricultural and eco-cultural innovations.

As the Symbiocene is built, a new political system, which Albrecht calls sumbiocracy will emerge. Albrecht defines sumbiocracy as political rule or governance committed to the types and totality of mutually beneficial or benign relationships in a given socio-[techno-]biological system at all scales.

Reference

Albrecht, G. (2021) Enter the symbiocene, Next Nature. Available at: https://nextnature.net/magazine/visual/2021/symbiocene (Accessed: 24 November 2022).