一個小地球人的展望：下一個100年

A Little Earthling Looks Ahead: The Next 100 Years

—From the Anthropocene toward the Earthopocene

錢宏（Archer Hong Qian）

2026年8月19日於溫哥華

剛剛，《將AI升格為AM》和《共生經濟學概論（修訂版）》終於殺青。

我突然想起“下一個100年”這個題目。十多年前，喬治·弗里德曼寫過一本《下一個100年》。

政治家、經濟學家、軍事戰略家也總喜歡預測未來：哪個國家崛起，哪個國家衰落；誰將成為第一大經濟體；下一場戰爭可能發生在哪裡；人口、能源、科技和資本將怎樣改變世界力量的座次。

這些預測當然有意義。

可是，我翻過來想：人類其實一直在倒退着走向未來。

我們總是臉朝着過去。已經發生的事情留在視野里，成為經驗、知識、理論、概念、公式和歷史記憶；未來卻在身後。我們看不見它，只能一邊倒退着走，一邊根據已經看見的風景，小心判斷下一步可能踩在哪裡。

於是，我們很容易把過去的變量向未來延長。

地理還是那個地理，國家還是那個國家，權力還是那個權力，戰爭還是那個戰爭，只不過重新排列組合。

美國還是中國，東方還是西方，左還是右，資本還是勞動，國家還是市場，哪個黨上台，哪個族群得勢，哪一種制度獲勝……我們甚至會把過去製造問題的概念，繼續拿去占領未來。

然而，真正改變人類生活的東西，往往並不是這樣來的。

飛機沒有從馬車的速度曲線里長出來。

互聯網也不是郵政系統把信件越送越快的結果。

AI更不是算盤一路提高計算速度以後自然抵達的終點。

未來真正令人心動的地方，常常來自那些尚未發現、尚未命名、尚未進入既有邏輯閾值的可能；也來自已知與未知突然發生交互，讓昨天還不可想象的事情，今天變成日常生活。

所以，如果今天我也寫一篇《下一個100年》，我不想預測2126年的世界第一是誰。

我更想問：

一百年以後的人回望2026，會看見我們正站在什麼地方？

1926年的人，大概很難想象今天。

那時，飛機成為普通交通工具還是4年之後，青黴素尚未被發現，電視尚未普及，更沒有計算機、互聯網、智能手機和人工智能。人類沒有登上月球，也從未從太空回望自己生活的地球。

100年過去，一個普通人手中的手機，已經擁有1926年整個世界都不存在的信息能力。

今天，一個普通人又開始擁有另一種過去不可想象的能力。

他可以隨時調用幾乎整個人類積累下來的知識。

一個十人的小企業，可以調用過去只有跨國公司才擁有的翻譯、設計、計算、市場分析甚至研發能力；一個鄉村醫生可以得到世界醫學知識的輔助；一個孩子面對的老師，不再只是自己學校里的幾個人；一個農民偶然發現的種植經驗，可以在極短時間內傳播到另一個大陸；一個獨立思想者，也可以坐在自己的書桌前，與不同語言、不同專業、不同文明的人和AI交互。

這件事情的意義，恐怕遠遠超過“AI提高了生產率”。

因為在人類漫長的歷史中，有一個極其重要、卻很少被單獨提出來的事實：

人與人之間的連接，一直很昂貴。

一個人的需要要找到另一個人的能力，需要搜索。

一個人的創造要抵達需要它的人，需要傳播。

陌生人彼此合作，需要辨識、認證、談判、契約和孞托。

知識要從一個地方抵達另一個地方，需要學校、出版社、媒體、專家和漫長的學習過程。

所以，人類不斷創造組織。

家庭、部落、城市、市場、企業、銀行、學校、國家、跨國公司、國際組織……

組織極大地擴展了人的能力。

一個人做不到的事情，一百個人可以做到；一百個人做不到的事情，一百萬人可以做到。

於是，“大”逐漸成為人類世最強烈的文明想象之一。

大國家。

大城市。

大工廠。

大銀行。

大企業。

大政府。

大平台。

大數據。

直到今天的大模型。

可是，當“大”成為習慣以後，我們慢慢忘了一個最初的問題：

組織究竟為什麼發生？

組織原本是生命擴大自身可能的受託者。

然而，組織也會自我繁殖。

層級越來越多，規則越來越複雜，維持組織本身的成本越來越高；信息經過一層層傳遞不斷衰減，權力越來越集中，責任卻越來越容易遠離行動後果。

於是出現了一個很有意思、其實也很殘酷的歷史悖論：

人類創造組織，本來為了降低生活成本；後來，人類卻不得不用越來越昂貴的生活供養組織。

更麻煩的是，一旦這些龐大組織形成，人們便很容易把組織之間的衝突，當成人類生活本身不可避免的衝突。

國家必須與國家競爭。

階層必須與階層鬥爭。

黨派必須壓倒黨派。

族群必須爭奪更多份額。

市場與政府只能此消彼長。

東方與西方仿佛註定要爭一個中心。

於是，人類花費越來越多的生命能量，處理由龐大組織本身製造出來的摩擦，再把這些摩擦解釋成不可逃避的歷史命運。

我們有沒有可能把一些本來屬於組織成本的問題，誤認成了生命必須彼此鬥爭的問題？

今天，這已經是一個再也無法迴避的追問。

問題已經不只是組織大還是小、國家多一點還是市場多一點，也不只是換一種制度、換一個主義、換一批人來重新組織世界。它觸到了一個在《共生簡史》、《將AI升格為AM》和《共生經濟學概論（修訂版）》中反覆出現的哲學主題：

人類觀察世界、理解世界和改變世界的方式，本身正在發生一次歷史性轉換。

兩千多年前的軸心時代，為人類留下了至今仍然偉大的思想遺產。無論從“一”理解“多”，從本體把握現象，從終極真理統攝紛繁世界，還是追問一個社會究竟應該按照什麼最高原則組織起來，人類長期努力的方向，都是在紛繁複雜之中尋找這種整體統一。

哲學（Philosophy，智慧之愛）由此展開了兩千多年輝煌的思想旅程。

可是，生命從來不是完成整體統一之後才開始生活。

生命自組織首先發生在關係具體的連接之中。

你、我、他，人與自然，生命與環境，需要與能力，支出與收入，價值與價值，組織與受託，始終處在發生、連接、交互、反饋、調整和動態平衡的過程之中。

如果我們仍然執着於先找到一個唯一正確的整體、一個最終正確的主義、一個必須居於中心的主體，再按照它重新安排其他生命，那麼再高明的理論，也可能重新製造中心與邊緣、支配與被支配、勝利者與失敗者，最後把本來可以調整的關係問題，推向不可調和的對抗與生死之爭。

所以，從軸心時代走向共生時代，更深處的躍遷，是：

從追求整體統一，走向發現關係過程。

這並不是拋棄哲學，而是讓哲學重新進入生命正在發生的地方。

於是，Philosophy——智慧之愛，開始向 Amorsophia——愛之智慧敞開。

智慧不再只是站在生命之外認識世界、解釋世界、設計世界；智慧進入生命關係，在交互中辨識，在連接中生成，在行動後果中修正，在共生中湧現方向。

由此看今天正在發生的一系列變化，它們也就不再是彼此孤立的技術、經濟與組織改革。

人工智能（AI），升格為人藝心智（AM）；

組織強權，還原為組織孞托；

生產，回歸生活；生活，呈現生態；生態，激勵生命。

它們指向的是一種共通變化：

人們將不再首先追問誰統攝誰、誰取代誰、誰戰勝誰，而是回到生命之間真實發生的關係過程，看見連接怎樣發生、成本怎樣形成、價值怎樣承兌、孞托怎樣約定、生命怎樣彼此賦能。

這也正是為什麼，下一個100年的關鍵詞可能發生變化。

過去100年，我們已經把規模的力量發揮到了驚人的程度。

下一個100年，輪到另一種力量登場了：

連接。

過去、現在、未來：組織衝突 → 鬥爭哲學 → 整體統一 → 關係過程 → Philosophy / Amorsophia → AI / AM → 組織強權 / 組織孞托 → 生產 / 生活 / 生態 / 生命 → 規模複製 / 交互連接。

於是，我重新想起舒馬赫那句著名的話：

Small Is Beautiful——小即是美。

過去說“小即是美”，很容易被理解成一種浪漫情懷：回到鄉村，回到手工業，回到雞犬相聞的小生活。

我想說的恰恰不是這個意思。

未來的“小”，可能連接整個地球。

當知識和創新能夠極速抵達地球每一個角落，當AI乃至未來的AM能夠被一個普通人隨時調用，“小”第一次獲得了過去只有“大”才擁有的能力。

一個五個人的團隊，為什麼一定要長成五百人的機構？

一個社區自己可以解決的問題，為什麼必須層層上報？

一個人能夠直接找到另一個人的服務，為什麼一定要經過七八層中介？

一種知識可以瞬間抵達需要它的人，為什麼必須被某個龐大組織壟斷以後才能使用？

這些問題過去常常只能作為理想提出來。

今天，它們第一次開始成為技術問題、組織問題，也成為現實選擇。

大當然不會消失。

飛機製造、基礎科學、重大公共安全、全球性事務和深空探索，仍然需要大規模協作。

真正會發生變化的是：

“大”不再天然等於“強”。

規模複製本身不再能夠自動證明組織存在的合理性。

一個組織究竟有多少人、有多少層級、有多少資產，也許越來越不是它最值得驕傲的事情。

未來更值得問的是：

你用多小的組織成本，釋放了多大的生命能量？

如果這一變化真的發生，那麼過去兩百年經濟學的一些基本觀察方法，也會跟着發生變化。

經濟學研究了很久的供給和需求。

到了宏觀經濟學那裡，又變成兩個龐大的總量：

“總供給與總需求”。

可是，Economy究竟在哪裡發生？

回到生活現場看看，其實很簡單。

我需要一樣東西，你恰好能夠提供。

我願意支付，你願意承兌。

事情就這樣發生了。

一個人的支出，就是另一個人的收入。

這個人的收入，又成為他的支出、儲蓄、投資或者新的創造能力；新的創造又連接另一個人的需要。

億萬人的經濟生活，拆到最後，就是無數這樣的連接。

需要尋找能力。

能力回應需要。

支出連接收入。

收入孕育新的創造。

價值發現價值，價值承兌價值。

所謂“總供給”和“總需求”，當然仍然可以統計。

但它們越來越可能退回到統計結果，而生命之間正在發生的連接，重新回到經濟現場。

這可能是下一個100年經濟學非常重要的一次視角變化。

工業文明擅長通過擴大規模降低生產成本。

地球世（Earthopocene）將越來越通過改善連接降低組織成本。

這句話的意義，也許遠遠超過“哪一個國家將在2126年成為第一大經濟體”。

因為如果連接成本發生數量級下降，我們今天習以為常的許多經濟問題、社會問題乃至政治問題，都可能改變發生方式。

並不是所有衝突都會消失。

而是一些今天看上去非斗不可的問題，可能突然失去“非斗不可”的技術與組織前提。

一旦這樣理解，貨幣也會重新顯出它原來的樣子。

錢為什麼能夠成為錢？

因為有人接受。

為什麼接受？

因為人相信，當自己接受這張紙、這個數字、這段代碼以後，別人還會繼續接受。

所以貨幣從來不只是一個“東西”。

它發生在人與人的關係之中。

一個人創造價值，另一個人承認這種價值；這種承認又得到更廣泛的社會承認，於是價值可以跨越陌生人、跨越時間、跨越空間繼續流動。

價值承兌的是價值。

貨幣，不過是這種價值承兌能夠普遍流通的憑證。

於是，我們又回到了那個被現代經濟學遮蔽很久的東西：

孞托。

國家、銀行、企業、平台，以及未來各種數位貨幣、穩定幣、共生幣，都逃不過幾個最簡單的問題：

你承兌了什麼？

誰相信你的承兌？

這種孞托能不能繼續生成？

沒有孞托，再漂亮的制度也會越來越昂貴。

沒有價值承兌，再先進的貨幣形態，也不過是新的記賬工具。

走到這裡，我們再回頭看過去100年，就會發現另一個有趣的變化。

國家主義、社會主義、資本主義、集體主義、個人主義、平等主義、自由主義、民族主義，乃至東方中心主義、西方中心主義……

這些“主義”曾經讓無數人激動、爭論、革命甚至戰爭。

它們當然有各自不同的思想來源和歷史作用。

可是，從更長的文明尺度看，它們大都在回答同一個人類世（Anthropocene）的問題：

如此龐大的社會，究竟應該怎樣組織？

國家多一點，還是市場多一點？

個人優先，還是集體優先？

自由重要，還是平等重要？

誰擁有資源？

誰組織生產？

誰承擔分配？

這些問題不會突然消失。

國別利益、族裔差異、階層矛盾、黨派競爭和程序正義的分歧，也不會因為技術進步便自行蒸發。

真正值得警覺的，是人類太容易把這些現實問題進一步抽象成不可調和的概念戰爭，然後讓生命為概念殉葬。

一個本來可以通過降低成本、改善連接、調整規則解決的問題，一旦被翻譯成“你死我活”，解決問題本身就退居其次了。

人們開始捍衛標籤。

捍衛陣營。

捍衛自己曾經說過的話。

最後甚至需要不斷製造敵人，才能證明自己的立場仍然正確。

這正是鬥爭哲學最頑強的地方：

它不僅解釋衝突，還會繼續生產衝突。

可是，當一個普通人可以直接接觸不同文明的知識，直接比較不同生活方式，直接調用過去只有專家和大型機構擁有的能力，當AI不斷擊穿信息不對稱，AM進一步進入心智、價值與組織孞托，人們會越來越自然地問一些更加樸素的問題：

生活怎麼樣？

成本降了嗎？

能力增加了嗎？

身體和心靈更健康了嗎？

人與人之間更值得孞託了嗎？

戰爭少了嗎？

孩子有沒有更多可能？

青年和老人能不能有尊嚴地生活？

我能不能成為我自己？

到了那一天，生活本身重新獲得對理論的檢驗權。

一種主義也許不需要被另一種主義打敗。

億萬普通人的生活，會慢慢穿透它。

理論若不能改善生活，概念再正確，也不能替生命生活。

2018年，我在《共生簡史》中提出四個相互連接的文明世代概念；2021年再版時，書名改為《SYMBIOSISM·共生——The Mind Power to Agree on An Innovative Lifestyle·一種約定創新生活方式的精神力量》：

自然世（Naturalopocene）、人類世（Anthropocene）、地球世（Earthopocene）、太空世（Spaceopocene）。

今天重新看這四個詞，我越來越覺得，它們並不是四個整齊排列的歷史階段。它們更像是我們倒退着走入未來時，逐漸顯現出來的四層風景。

自然世（Naturalopocene），共生是起源。

生命從發生的第一天起，就沒有孤立存在過。

一株植物向陽生長，一個細胞與環境交換物質與能量，菌群彼此依存，森林通過無數看得見和看不見的連接生長。

生命本自具足，又非獨存。

人類從這裡走來。

然後進入人類世（Anthropocene）。

人開始以自己的智慧和欲望“人為自然”，創造城市、國家、市場、工業、資本、科學和技術，把組織能力推向此前任何生命都沒有達到過的高度。

過去100年，正是人類世空前加速的100年。

它創造了巨大的財富，也留下巨大的組織成本；創造了核能，也創造了毀滅地球的能力；創造了互聯網，也創造了數位鐵籠的可能；今天又創造了AI。

人類世的偉大與危險，其實來自同一個地方：

人的能力空前放大到足以影響地球生靈的地步。

所以在人類世：

共生是底線。

人可以創造，可以冒險，可以突破，可以犯錯，卻不能無限突破生命存在的底線。

突破地線，鬥爭方便可能連累他者，同歸於盡。所以，有人寫出了《第六次大滅絕》。

而今天，我們已經站到了另一道門檻前。

地球世（Earthopocene）。

地球世並不意味着人類退回自然。

人類當然會繼續創造。

AI會繼續發展，AM（Artificial Mind & Amorsophia MindsField / Network）可能出現，量子技術、生命科學、新材料、能源技術會打開今天無法想象的世界。

真正改變的是人的尺度。

我們開始問：

一種技術究竟給生命增加了什麼？

一種組織究竟降低了多少生活成本？

一種經濟增長究竟增加了多少健康、孞托與和平？

一個文明究竟釋放了多少生命本來具有的可能？

這時候，“增長”不再擁有自動豁免權。

“大”也不再擁有自動正確性。

一種制度叫什麼名字，不再足以證明它值得存在。

一切都必須重新接受生活的檢驗與價值重估。

於是：

地球世（Earthopocene），共生由底線顯現為靈魂。

而就在這裡，太空世（Spaceopocene）也已經開始。

因為地球從來沒有離開過太空。

人類只有真正看見地球，才會真正看見太空；當我們從太空回望這顆藍色星球，才突然意識到：我們過去劃出的許多邊界，對地球和宇宙而言原本並不存在，甚至完全沒有意義。

國家邊界是真實的人類制度。

黨派邊界是真實的人類組織。

族裔身份也是真實的歷史生活。

但如果我們把這些邊界進一步想象成宇宙本身的邊界，就會忘記一個最簡單的事實：

我們首先生活在同一顆正在太空中運行的地球上。

所以，地球世並不是太空世之前的一站。

真正進入Earthopocene，本身就是Spaceopocene的開始。

這也使我重新理解AI。

下一個100年真正重要的問題，決不是：AI最終會有多聰明？

更值得問的是：

如此強大的智能，將進入什麼樣的生命關係與組織關係？

AI可以讓“小”獲得前所未有的能力，也可以把“大而無當”推向人類從未見過的極致。

它可以幫助一個普通人調用世界知識，也可以讓幾個超級平台掌握前所未有的知識權力。

它可以降低組織成本，也可以把每個人變成可預測、可分類、可誘導、可控制的數據對象。

它可以幫助政府改善公共服務，也可以幫助政府建造一個比過去任何時代都更加精密的數位鐵籠。

如果AI只是讓原來已經過大的組織變得更強、更快、更無孔不入，那麼人類得到的未必是一個新時代，也可能只是一個被技術放大的人類世。

所以，我提出AI升格這AM。

Artificial Intelligence繼續發展智能。

Artificial Mind & Amorsophia MindsField / Network則把問題繼續向前推進：

它為什麼做？

為誰做？

與誰交互共襄生成？

產生什麼後果？

由誰受託？

如何進入真實的生命關係？

技術能力重新連接生命目的。

智能進入心智。

權力連接責任。

組織重新成為生命的受託者（Trustee）。

這就是我所說的：

LIFE–AM–TRUST交互契合共生秩序。

它不是給2126年設計的一張制度藍圖。

它一直都在那裡。

在自然世（Naturalopocene），它潛在於生命發生與連接之中；

在人類世（Anthropocene），它成為文明不可無限突破的存在底線；

進入地球世（Earthopocene），它開始成為人的自覺、自律而自由，成為文明的自在靈魂；

而當Earthopocene向太空世（Spaceopocene）敞開，人類才可能真正理解：

地球人的生活，本來就是宇宙中的生命生活。

所以，如果一定要問我：

2126年會是什麼樣？

我不知道。

我不知道，當小即是美，成為現實，那時誰是世界第一大經濟體，又有什麼意義？不知道美元是否仍然是世界主要儲備貨幣？不知道今天那些炙手可熱的AI公司，還有幾家留在歷史記憶里？也不知道國家邊界會發生怎樣的變化，幫派政治，政黨政治、地緣政治是否完全失去存在理據？

我曾預測過，10年20年以後，地球一年365個自轉，每一個自轉日都是某一個國家的“國慶節”！

但我現在更想知道，2126年的一個“小地球人”回望我們，會不會覺得有些事情不可思議：

物質已經如此豐富，為什麼2026年的人還生活得那麼昂貴？

知識已經如此豐富，為什麼教育還讓孩子們那麼痛苦？

一個五個人可以解決的問題，為什麼要養一個五百人的機構？

一個人的需要和另一個人的能力明明可以成為差異互補性存在，為什麼要經過如此漫長、昂貴的組織過程才能相遇？

人類已經擁有如此聰明的AI，為什麼還曾經差一點把自己關進更加精密的數位鐵籠？

也許那個小地球人還會笑我們：

你們那時候，怎麼那麼喜歡爭誰第一？

地球在太空中已經轉了幾十億年，誰排過第一？

也許他還會感到奇怪：

為什麼那時候的人那麼喜歡先問你屬於哪一邊，然後才決定要不要聽你說話？

為什麼一個問題一旦被貼上左或右、東方或西方、資本或勞動、這個黨或那個黨的標籤，人們就很難再看見問題本身？

為什麼大家明明都說自己追求正義，卻常常為了證明自己的正義，比對方更加正確，不惜製造新的仇恨？

也許他最終會明白：

那就是Anthropocene（人類世）留下的一部分慣性。

我更願意想象另一幅圖景。

2126年的地球上，仍然有不同國家、不同語言、不同宗教、不同生活方式、不同審美、不同價值選擇。

有人喜歡紐約。

有人願意住在山裡。

有人探索火星。

有人一輩子守着自己的菜園。

有人研究量子和蟲洞。

有人做木匠。

有人喜歡與幾百萬人交互。

有人只願意和幾個朋友喝茶。

差異沒有消失。

差異反而更加自由地生長。

真正發生變化的是：

差異不再那麼容易被組織成敵意。

一個人的詩和遠方，越來越不需要以另一個人失去詩和遠方為代價。

知識被一個人獲得，並不會因此被另一個人失去。

思想與思想交互，會生成此前不存在的思想。

創新傳播得越快，越可能成為更多人的能力。

價值越承兌，越能夠流動。

孞托越兌現，越可能繼續生成。

一個人的支出，成為另一個人的收入；

收入又孕育新的需要、新的創造；

需要尋找能力，能力回應需要；

價值發現價值，價值承兌價值。

就這麼簡單。

那些龐大的組織依然存在，卻不再那麼費勁地擋在生命與生命之間。

億萬不同的生命，各自生長，又彼此抵達，各自揚帆，又彼此為岸。

這時候，“財富”本身也許已經悄悄改變了含義。

財富不只意味着我占有什麼。

它越來越意味着：

我擁有多少時間？

多少選擇？

多少創造的能力？

多少進入未知世界的可能？

重要的是，我能不能愛？

能不能創造？

能不能幫助別人？

能不能在需要的時候，停下來看看星星？

這就是我今天能夠預見的“下一個100年”。

當然，我仍然是倒退着走的。

2126年在身後。

我看不見。

我只是一個站在2026年的小地球人，面前是已經走過的自然世（Naturalopocene）和仍在轟鳴的人類世（Anthropocene），腳下卻已經開始出現地球世（Earthopocene）的道路。

而當我抬起頭來，太空就在那裡。

它從來都在那裡。

自然世（Naturalopocene），共生是起源。

人類世（Anthropocene），共生是底線。

地球世（Earthopocene），共生是靈魂。

太空世（Spaceopocene），從我們真正看見地球的那一刻開始。

所以，“下一個100年”真正值得期待的，也許並不是我們還能夠把世界改造成什麼樣子，也不是終於有誰戰勝誰、取代誰、統一誰。

經過漫長的人類世，人類真正需要學會的，可能只是一個看上去極其簡單、實際上至今仍然艱難的問題：

擁有如此巨大的創造能力以後，我們能不能少一點彼此絞殺，多一點彼此成全？

更進一步：

怎樣讓如此豐富的世界，不再那麼費勁地妨礙生命成為自己？

人非牛非馬，也不是寵物豬！

什麼投資、消費、進出口，人不是任何一架馬車。

生產回歸生活。

生活呈現生態。

生態激勵生命。

小即是美。

生命本自具足，又非獨存。

當凡事交互主體共生秩序自在顯現之日，便是地球生靈自美其美、美人之美、美美與共，共生吉祥之時！

於是，每個人的詩和遠方，成為所有人的詩和遠方的條件。

A Little Earthling Looks Ahead: The Next 100 Years

—From the Anthropocene toward the Earthopocene

Archer Hong Qian

Vancouver, August 19, 2026

Just now, Upgrading AI to AM and An Introduction to Symbionomics (Revised Edition) were finally completed.

I suddenly thought again of the phrase “the next 100 years.” More than a decade ago, George Friedman wrote a book called The Next 100 Years.

Politicians, economists, and military strategists have always liked to forecast the future: which country will rise and which will decline; who will become the world’s largest economy; where the next war may break out; how population, energy, technology, and capital will reshuffle the hierarchy of global power.

Such forecasts certainly have their value.

But I found myself turning the question around: human beings have, in fact, always walked backward into the future.

Our faces are turned toward the past. What has already happened remains within our field of vision and becomes experience, knowledge, theory, concepts, formulas, and historical memory. The future, however, lies behind us. We cannot see it. We can only walk backward, judging each next step cautiously from the landscapes we have already seen.

That is why we so easily extend the variables of the past into the future.

Geography is still geography, nations are still nations, power is still power, war is still war—only recombined in different configurations.

America or China, East or West, left or right, capital or labor, state or market, which party takes power, which ethnic group gains the upper hand, which system prevails… We even carry concepts that helped create yesterday’s problems forward and use them to occupy the future.

Yet the things that truly change human life seldom arrive that way.

The airplane did not grow out of the speed curve of the horse-drawn carriage.

The Internet was not the result of postal systems delivering letters faster and faster.

Nor is AI the natural endpoint of an abacus whose calculating speed kept increasing.

What is truly exciting about the future often comes from possibilities not yet discovered, not yet named, not yet admitted into the threshold of existing logic. It also comes when the known and the unknown suddenly interact, turning what was unimaginable yesterday into ordinary life today.

So if I were to write my own “Next 100 Years” today, I would not try to predict who will be number one in the world in 2126.

I would rather ask:

When people a hundred years from now look back at 2026, where will they see us standing?

People in 1926 could scarcely have imagined today.

Commercial air travel was still four years away from becoming an ordinary means of transportation. Penicillin had not yet been discovered. Television was not yet widespread. There were no computers, no Internet, no smartphones, no artificial intelligence. Humanity had not landed on the Moon, nor had anyone ever looked back at the Earth from space.

A hundred years later, the smartphone in an ordinary person’s hand possesses information capabilities that did not exist anywhere in the world of 1926.

Today, an ordinary person is beginning to acquire another capacity that would once have been unimaginable.

At any moment, one can call upon something close to the accumulated knowledge of humanity.

A ten-person company can use translation, design, computation, market analysis, and even R&D capabilities once available only to multinational corporations. A rural doctor can draw on the assistance of worldwide medical knowledge. A child’s teachers are no longer limited to the few people in one school. A cultivation technique discovered by chance by a farmer can reach another continent in a very short time. An independent thinker can sit at a desk and interact with people—and with AI—across languages, disciplines, and civilizations.

The significance of this is probably far greater than the claim that “AI raises productivity.”

For throughout the long course of human history, there has been one enormously important fact that is rarely singled out:

Connection between people has always been expensive.

For one person’s need to find another person’s capability requires search.

For one person’s creation to reach someone who needs it requires transmission.

For strangers to cooperate requires identification, authentication, negotiation, contracts, and trust.

For knowledge to travel from one place to another requires schools, publishers, media, experts, and long processes of learning.

And so human beings kept creating organizations.

Families, tribes, cities, markets, companies, banks, schools, states, multinational corporations, international organizations…

Organizations enormously expanded human capability.

What one person cannot do, a hundred may be able to do; what a hundred cannot do, a million may accomplish.

Thus “big” gradually became one of the most powerful civilizational imaginaries of the Anthropocene.

Big countries.

Big cities.

Big factories.

Big banks.

Big corporations.

Big governments.

Big platforms.

Big data.

And now, big models.

But once “big” became habitual, we slowly forgot the original question:

Why do organizations arise at all?

Organizations were originally trustees through which life could enlarge its own possibilities.

Yet organizations can also reproduce themselves.

Layers multiply. Rules grow more complex. The cost of maintaining the organization itself rises. Information decays as it passes through layer after layer. Power becomes increasingly concentrated, while responsibility becomes ever more easily detached from the consequences of action.

A fascinating—and rather cruel—historical paradox follows:

Human beings created organizations in order to reduce the cost of living; later, human beings had to sustain organizations through lives that became increasingly expensive.

More troubling still, once these enormous organizations have formed, people easily mistake conflicts among organizations for conflicts inherent in human life itself.

Nation must compete with nation.

Class must struggle against class.

Party must defeat party.

Ethnic groups must fight for a larger share.

Market and government can only advance at each other’s expense.

East and West seem destined to struggle for the center.

Human beings then spend more and more life-energy dealing with frictions generated by large organizations themselves—and afterward interpret those frictions as an inescapable historical destiny.

Could it be that we have mistaken some problems that are really problems of organizational cost for problems requiring life to struggle against life?

Today this question can no longer be avoided.

The issue is no longer simply whether organizations should be large or small, whether there should be more state or more market, nor whether we should replace one system, one ideology, or one group of people with another and reorganize the world all over again. It touches a philosophical theme that recurs throughout A Brief History of Symbiosis, Upgrading AI to AM, and An Introduction to Symbionomics (Revised Edition):

The human way of observing, understanding, and changing the world is itself undergoing a historical transformation.

More than two thousand years ago, the Axial Age left humanity an intellectual inheritance whose greatness endures. Whether seeking to understand the “many” through the “one,” grasp phenomena through ontology, bring the diverse world under an ultimate truth, or ask according to what highest principle society should be organized, humanity’s long intellectual effort was directed toward finding an overarching unity amid complexity.

Philosophy—love of wisdom—thus began its magnificent journey of more than two millennia.

But life never waits for an overarching unity to be completed before it begins to live.

Life’s self-organization begins first in concrete relational connections.

You, I, and others; humanity and nature; life and environment; need and capability; expenditure and income; value and value; organization and trusteeship—all are continuously occurring, connecting, interacting, feeding back, adjusting, and entering dynamic balance.

If we remain determined first to find one uniquely correct whole, one finally correct doctrine, one subject that must occupy the center, and then rearrange other lives around it, even the most sophisticated theory may once again manufacture center and periphery, ruler and ruled, victor and loser—until relational problems that could have been adjusted are pushed into irreconcilable confrontation and mortal struggle.

So the deeper leap from the Axial Age to the Symbiotic Age is this:

From seeking overarching unity to discovering relational process.

This does not abandon philosophy. It lets philosophy re-enter the place where life is actually happening.

Philosophy—love of wisdom—thus begins to open toward Amorsophia—wisdom of love.

Wisdom no longer merely stands outside life to know the world, explain the world, and design the world. Wisdom enters living relationships: discerning through interaction, generating through connection, correcting itself through the consequences of action, and allowing direction to emerge through symbiosis.

Seen from here, a series of changes now under way no longer appear as isolated technological, economic, and organizational reforms:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is upgraded toward Artificial Mind (AM);

organizational domination is restored to organizational trusteeship;

production returns to life; life manifests ecology; ecology empowers life.

They point toward a common transformation:

Instead of first asking who governs whom, who replaces whom, or who defeats whom, people return to the relational processes actually occurring among lives: how connections happen, how costs arise, how value is redeemed, how trust is covenanted, and how lives empower one another.

This is also why the keyword of the next 100 years may change.

Over the past 100 years, we have developed the power of scale to an astonishing degree.

In the next 100 years, another force may take the stage:

connecting.

Past, present, future:

organizational conflict → philosophy of struggle → overarching unity → relational process → Philosophy / Amorsophia → AI / AM → organizational domination / organizational trusteeship → production / life / ecology / living beings → copy scale / connecting.

This brings me back to E. F. Schumacher’s famous phrase:

Small Is Beautiful.

In the past, “Small Is Beautiful” could easily be heard as romantic nostalgia: back to the village, back to handicraft, back to a small world where neighbors know one another.

That is precisely not what I mean.

The “small” of the future may be connected to the entire Earth.

When knowledge and innovation can reach every corner of the planet almost instantly, and when AI—and perhaps future AM—can be called upon by an ordinary person at any time, “small” acquires for the first time capacities once possessed only by “big.”

Why must a team of five grow into an institution of five hundred?

Why must a problem a local community can solve by itself be reported upward through layer after layer?

If one person can directly find another person’s service, why must seven or eight intermediaries stand between them?

If knowledge can instantly reach the person who needs it, why must it first be monopolized by a huge organization before it can be used?

Such questions could once be raised only as ideals.

Today, for the first time, they are becoming technological questions, organizational questions, and practical choices.

The large will not disappear.

Aircraft manufacturing, basic science, major public safety, global affairs, and deep-space exploration will still require large-scale collaboration.

What will change is this:

“Big” will no longer naturally mean “strong.”

Copying scale will no longer, by itself, automatically justify an organization’s existence.

How many people an organization employs, how many layers it has, or how many assets it controls may become less and less worthy of pride.

The more important question for the future is:

With how little organizational cost have you released how much life-energy?

If this change really occurs, some of the basic ways economics has observed the world for the past two centuries will change with it.

Economics has studied supply and demand for a long time.

In macroeconomics, these became two enormous aggregates:

“aggregate supply and aggregate demand.”

But where does Economy actually happen?

Return to the scene of living and it is quite simple.

I need something, and you happen to be able to provide it.

I am willing to pay; you are willing to redeem the value.

That is how it happens.

One person’s expenditure is another person’s income.

That income becomes expenditure, saving, investment, or new creative capability; new creation then connects with another person’s need.

Reduce the economic life of billions of people to its elementary events and what remains are countless connections like these.

Need seeks capability.

Capability responds to need.

Expenditure connects with income.

Income nurtures new creation.

Value discovers value; value redeems value.

“Aggregate supply” and “aggregate demand” can of course still be measured.

But they may increasingly return to being statistical outcomes, while the connections actually occurring among living beings return to the economic scene itself.

This may be one of the most important shifts of perspective in the economics of the next 100 years.

Industrial civilization excelled at reducing production costs by expanding scale.

The Earthopocene will increasingly reduce organizational costs by improving connections.

The significance of that sentence may be far greater than the question of which country will be the world’s largest economy in 2126.

For if the cost of connection falls by orders of magnitude, many economic, social, and even political problems we now take for granted may change the very way in which they arise.

Not every conflict will disappear.

But some problems that today appear to demand a fight may suddenly lose the technological and organizational conditions that made the fight seem unavoidable.

Once we see this, money too begins to reveal its original form.

Why can money be money?

Because someone accepts it.

Why accept it?

Because people trust that after accepting this piece of paper, this number, or this string of code, others will continue to accept it.

Money, then, has never been merely a “thing.”

It happens in relationships among people.

One person creates value; another recognizes that value. That recognition is in turn recognized more broadly by society, allowing value to continue moving across strangers, across time, and across space.

What value redeems is value.

Money is simply the generally circulable credential of such value redemption.

And so we return to something long obscured in modern economics:

trust.

States, banks, corporations, platforms, and the digital currencies, stablecoins, and symbiotic currencies of the future cannot escape a few elementary questions:

What are you redeeming?

Who trusts your redemption?

Can that trust continue to be generated?

Without trust, even the most elegant institution becomes increasingly expensive.

Without value redemption, even the most advanced form of money is only another accounting instrument.

From here, if we look back over the past 100 years, another interesting change comes into view.

Statism, socialism, capitalism, collectivism, individualism, egalitarianism, liberalism, nationalism, even Eastern-centrism and Western-centrism…

These “isms” have inspired countless people to passion, debate, revolution, and even war.

They have, of course, distinct intellectual origins and historical roles.

But viewed on a longer civilizational scale, most were answering the same Anthropocene question:

How should a society of such enormous scale be organized?

More state or more market?

Individual first or collective first?

Freedom or equality?

Who owns resources?

Who organizes production?

Who bears responsibility for distribution?

These questions will not suddenly disappear.

National interests, ethnic differences, class tensions, party competition, and disagreements over procedural justice will not evaporate simply because technology advances.

What deserves our vigilance is how easily human beings abstract such real problems into irreconcilable conceptual wars, and then sacrifice life to concepts.

A problem that might have been solved by lowering costs, improving connections, or adjusting rules is translated into “you or me, life or death”—and solving the problem itself becomes secondary.

People begin defending labels.

Defending camps.

Defending what they once said.

Eventually they may even need to keep manufacturing enemies in order to prove that their own position remains correct.

This is where the philosophy of struggle is most tenacious:

It does not merely explain conflict. It continues to produce conflict.

But when an ordinary person can directly encounter the knowledge of different civilizations, directly compare different ways of life, directly call upon capabilities once monopolized by experts and large institutions; when AI keeps breaking through information asymmetries and AM moves further into mind, value, and organizational trust, people may increasingly ask much simpler questions:

How is life?

Have costs fallen?

Have capabilities grown?

Are body and mind healthier?

Are people more worthy of one another’s trust?

Is there less war?

Do children have more possibilities?

Can young people and old people live with dignity?

Can I become myself?

When that day comes, life itself regains the right to test theory.

One “ism” may not need to be defeated by another.

The lives of billions of ordinary people will slowly pass through it.

If a theory cannot improve life, no matter how correct its concepts may be, concepts cannot live life in our place.

In 2018, in A Brief History of Symbiosis, I proposed four interconnected concepts of civilizational generations. When the book was republished in 2021, it was retitled SYMBIOSISM: The Mind Power to Agree on An Innovative Lifestyle:

Naturalopocene, Anthropocene, Earthopocene, and Spaceopocene.

Looking again at these four terms today, I increasingly feel that they are not four neatly separated historical stages. They are more like four layers of landscape gradually coming into view as we walk backward into the future.

Naturalopocene: symbiosis is the origin.

From the first moment life arose, it never existed in isolation.

A plant grows toward the sun. A cell exchanges matter and energy with its environment. Microbial communities depend upon one another. Forests grow through innumerable visible and invisible connections.

Life is self-sufficient in itself, yet never exists alone.

Humanity came from here.

Then came the Anthropocene.

Human beings began to “human-make nature” through their own intelligence and desire, creating cities, states, markets, industry, capital, science, and technology, and pushing organizational capability to a level no other life had ever reached.

The past 100 years have been a century of unprecedented Anthropocene acceleration.

It created immense wealth, and immense organizational costs; it created nuclear energy, and the capacity to destroy the Earth; it created the Internet, and the possibility of a digital iron cage; and now it has created AI.

The greatness and danger of the Anthropocene come from the same source:

Human capability has been magnified to the point where it can affect living beings across the Earth.

Therefore, in the Anthropocene:

Symbiosis is the bottom line.

Human beings may create, take risks, break through, and make mistakes—but they cannot endlessly violate the bottom line of life’s existence.

Once that line is crossed, one side’s struggle may engulf others and end in mutual destruction. Hence books such as The Sixth Extinction.

Today, however, we have reached another threshold.

The Earthopocene.

The Earthopocene does not mean that humanity retreats back into nature.

Human beings will of course continue to create.

AI will continue to develop. AM—Artificial Mind & Amorsophia MindsField / Network—may emerge. Quantum technology, life sciences, new materials, and energy technologies may open worlds we cannot yet imagine.

What truly changes is the human measure.

We begin to ask:

What has a technology actually added to life?

How much has an organization reduced the cost of living?

How much health, trust, and peace has economic growth actually generated?

How much of life’s inherent possibility has a civilization released?

At that point, “growth” no longer receives automatic exemption.

Nor is “big” automatically right.

The name attached to an institution no longer proves that it deserves to exist.

Everything must once again submit to the test of life and to a revaluation of value.

Thus:

In the Earthopocene, symbiosis rises from the bottom line and becomes the soul.

And right here, the Spaceopocene has already begun.

Because the Earth has never been outside space.

Only when humanity truly sees the Earth can it truly see space. Looking back at this blue planet from space, we suddenly realize that many of the boundaries we drew in the past do not exist for the Earth or the universe at all—and may have no meaning there whatsoever.

National borders are real human institutions.

Party boundaries are real human organizations.

Ethnic identities are real historical lives.

But if we imagine those boundaries to be boundaries of the universe itself, we forget the simplest fact:

We first of all live on the same Earth moving through space.

The Earthopocene, therefore, is not a station before the Spaceopocene.

To truly enter the Earthopocene is already to begin the Spaceopocene.

This also makes me understand AI anew.

The truly important question of the next 100 years is definitely not: How intelligent will AI ultimately become?

The more important question is:

Into what kinds of living relationships and organizational relationships will such powerful intelligence enter?

AI can give the “small” unprecedented capability; it can also push the bloated “big” to an extreme humanity has never seen.

It can help an ordinary person call upon the knowledge of the world; it can also give a handful of super-platforms unprecedented power over knowledge.

It can reduce organizational costs; it can also turn every person into a data object that can be predicted, classified, induced, and controlled.

It can help governments improve public services; it can also help governments construct a digital iron cage more precise than anything in previous history.

If AI merely makes organizations that are already too large stronger, faster, and more pervasive, what humanity receives may not be a new age at all. It may only be an Anthropocene magnified by technology.

That is why I propose upgrading AI to AM.

Artificial Intelligence continues to develop intelligence.

Artificial Mind & Amorsophia MindsField / Network pushes the question further:

Why does it act?

For whom?

With whom does it interact and co-generate?

What consequences does it produce?

By whom is it entrusted?

How does it enter real living relationships?

Technological capability reconnects with the purpose of life.

Intelligence enters mind.

Power connects with responsibility.

Organization once again becomes the trustee of life.

This is what I call:

the LIFE–AM–TRUST order of interactive, congruent symbiosis.

It is not an institutional blueprint designed for 2126.

It has always been there.

In the Naturalopocene, it is latent in the arising and connecting of life;

in the Anthropocene, it becomes the existential bottom line that civilization cannot violate without limit;

in the Earthopocene, it begins to become human self-awareness—self-disciplined and therefore free—and the immanent soul of civilization;

and as the Earthopocene opens toward the Spaceopocene, humanity may finally understand:

The life of Earthlings has always been life in the universe.

So if you insist on asking me:

What will 2126 look like?

I do not know.

If Small Is Beautiful becomes reality, what meaning would it even have to ask which country is then the world’s largest economy? I do not know whether the dollar will still be the world’s principal reserve currency; how many of today’s celebrated AI companies will remain in historical memory; how national borders will change; or whether factional politics, party politics, and geopolitics will have completely lost their reason for being.

I once predicted that ten or twenty years from now, of the Earth’s 365 rotations each year, every rotation-day would be the “national day” of some country!

But now I am more curious whether a “little Earthling” in 2126, looking back at us, will find certain things almost unbelievable:

Material abundance was already so great—why was life still so expensive in 2026?

Knowledge was already so abundant—why did education still cause children so much pain?

Why maintain an institution of five hundred people for a problem five people could solve?

If one person’s need and another person’s capability could plainly exist as complementary differences, why did they have to pass through such a long and expensive organizational process before they could meet?

Humanity already possessed AI of such intelligence—why did it once come so close to locking itself inside an even more elaborate digital iron cage?

Perhaps that little Earthling will laugh at us:

Why were you so obsessed with who was number one?

The Earth has been turning through space for billions of years. Who ever ranked first?

Perhaps the little Earthling will also wonder:

Why did people then so often ask which side you belonged to before deciding whether to listen to you?

Why, once a question was labeled left or right, East or West, capital or labor, this party or that party, did people find it so difficult to see the question itself?

Why, when everyone claimed to pursue justice, did they so often create new hatred simply to prove that their justice was more correct than someone else’s?

Perhaps the little Earthling will finally understand:

That was part of the inertia left behind by the Anthropocene.

I prefer to imagine another scene.

On the Earth of 2126 there are still different countries, languages, religions, ways of life, aesthetics, and value choices.

Some people love New York.

Some choose to live in the mountains.

Some explore Mars.

Some spend a lifetime tending a vegetable garden.

Some study quantum physics and wormholes.

Some are carpenters.

Some like interacting with millions of people.

Some prefer tea with only a few friends.

Difference has not disappeared.

Difference has become freer to grow.

What has truly changed is this:

Difference is no longer so easily organized into hostility.

One person’s poetry and distant horizon increasingly need not be purchased at the cost of another person losing theirs.

Knowledge acquired by one person is not thereby lost by another.

When thought interacts with thought, it generates thoughts that did not exist before.

The faster innovation spreads, the more likely it becomes the capability of more people.

The more value is redeemed, the more freely it can flow.

The more trust is fulfilled, the more trust can continue to be generated.

One person’s expenditure becomes another person’s income;

income nurtures new needs and new creation;

need seeks capability, capability responds to need;

value discovers value, value redeems value.

It is that simple.

Large organizations still exist, but they no longer laboriously stand between life and life.

Billions of different lives grow in their own ways and reach one another—each setting sail, each becoming a shore for others.

At that point, the meaning of “wealth” itself may already have quietly changed.

Wealth no longer means only what I possess.

Increasingly, it means:

How much time do I have?

How much choice?

How much capacity to create?

How many possibilities for entering unknown worlds?

More importantly:

Can I love?

Can I create?

Can I help others?

Can I stop, when I need to, and look at the stars?

This is the “next 100 years” that I can foresee today.

Of course, I am still walking backward.

2126 is behind me.

I cannot see it.

I am only a little Earthling standing in 2026. Before my eyes lie the Naturalopocene we have already traveled through and the still-roaring Anthropocene; beneath my feet, however, the road of the Earthopocene has already begun to appear.

And when I lift my head, space is there.

It has always been there.

Naturalopocene: symbiosis is the origin.

Anthropocene: symbiosis is the bottom line.

Earthopocene: symbiosis is the soul.

Spaceopocene begins the moment we truly see the Earth.

So what is truly worth anticipating in “the next 100 years” may not be what else we can remake the world into, nor the final victory of one side over another, one replacing another, one unifying another.

After the long Anthropocene, what humanity truly needs to learn may be a question that sounds exceedingly simple yet remains exceedingly difficult:

Having acquired such enormous creative power, can we do a little less mutual destruction and a little more mutual fulfillment?

And further:

How can we make this abundant world stop working so hard to prevent life from becoming itself?

A human being is neither an ox nor a horse, nor a pet pig!

A human being is neither an ox nor a horse, nor a pet pig!

Investment, consumption, imports, exports—human beings are not horse-drawn carriages of any kind.

Production returns to life.

Life manifests ecology.

Ecology empowers life.

Small Is Beautiful.

Life is self-sufficient in itself, yet never exists alone.

When an order of intersubjective symbiosis freely manifests in all things, the living beings of Earth may each delight in their own beauty, appreciate the beauty of others, and let all beauty flourish together—in auspicious symbiosis.

Then each person’s poetry and distant horizon become a condition for the poetry and distant horizons of all.

Past 100 Years: COPY SCALE  →  Next 100 Years: CONNECTING