INSIGHTS
Allan Savory: “I may be dreaming, but that has never stopped me before.”
“We’ve made great progress this year regenerating the world’s grasslands, as this report makes clear, but the mountain we’re climbing got steeper. The human population increased, as did Earth’s temperature, and pollution; droughts and floods were even more frequent; the drift toward authoritarian governments increased due to citizen dissatisfaction with the previous government’s policies; and the belief in technology providing the answers to our problems only strengthened. This isn’t happening because people are stupid or because we lack good will. It’s happening because there is a root cause underlying all these problems that is linked to our obsession with technology and our ecological illiteracy, both of which inform the policies developed by all governments. Savory Institute is working to change this.
Our obsession with technology and our ecological illiteracy are a byproduct of the Industrial Age. In a famous TED Talk Al Gore gave more than a decade ago, he illustrated the rise in climate-changing greenhouse gases with a hockey stick curve that matched the expansion of the Industrial Age and our use of fossil fuels. The steepest part of the curve also happened to match the launching of Nobel prizes a century ago that were awarded for the endeavors providing “the greatest benefit for mankind.” The best minds of a century ago saw these endeavors deriving from physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature (economics and peace were added later). This resulted in the best scientific minds gravitating to physics and chemistry and it fueled our obsession with technology. Tragically, the new science of ecology was not recognized, when it should have been the most prestigious prize of them all because it is essential for understanding and managing our environment, or habitat, and for producing our food in a way that can be sustained. We are paying the price today with accelerating biodiversity loss and desertification everywhere – including in our national parks – and with agriculture having become the most destructive industry ever. We are attempting to address climate change, not through ecosystem management but mainly through technology – from planting trees on the ground to planting machines in Space.
A little over a year ago the U.K. Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences ran a joint workshop to assess the economic value of biodiversity. To understand just how alarming this is, think of the most educated fish in a drying lake discussing the value of water. It’s rather pointless to put a value on something you can’t exist without. Once higher life forms had developed from microbial anaerobic life, they created a shallow earth-covering atmosphere containing 21% oxygen, a percentage that continues to be maintained by biological life. That life is diverse and maintaining its diversity is key to our being able to breathe air that contains 21% oxygen. Decrease the percentage and humans cannot survive, increase it and even green plants burst into flame. So, we cannot put a value on biodiversity, or believe that its place is only in preserves when our existence depends upon it.
I genuinely believe that politicians, and the staff of government agencies, universities and other institutions do not lack the will to tackle the problems that have arisen due to our obsession with technology and our lack of ecological literacy. Most are caring and capable people who simply don’t know what to do to keep that mountain from growing ever steeper. So why not try to do so by developing policies within a holistic context, one which incorporates an ecological awareness and that can help eliminate the obsession with technology. It would also be one that addresses the interests of citizens primarily, rather than the interests of impersonal, often inhumane, institutions, which, although made up of people, take on a life of their own. I believe we can start to overcome this challenge by having institutional policy advisers show up as people first, and representing their institutions second. We have the way to develop such a policy and we will be training facilitators in the process.
My personal desire is to find one government willing to work with Savory Institute to develop a national agricultural policy and to do so in the presence of a group of international observers who report back to their own constituencies and countries on just how effective a policy can be when citizen-led and developed in a national holistic context. It would sure cut down on the precious little time we have to turn things around.
I may be dreaming, but that has never stopped me before.”
Allan Savory
Allan Savory was born 1935 in Rhodesia and educated in South Africa at the University of Natal with a BS in Zoology and Botany. He pursued an early career as a research biologist and game ranger in the British Colonial Service of what was then Northern Rhodesia (today Zambia) and later as a farmer and game rancher in Zimbabwe.
In the 1960s, while working on the interrelated problems of increasing poverty and disappearing wildlife, Allan made a major breakthrough in understanding why his country and the African continent was degrading and why the landscapes were rapidly desertifying and, as a resource management consultant, worked with numerous managers on four continents to develop what is now known as Holistic Management.
Allan identified key insights critical to the regeneration of land, people, and individual and national prosperity. He went on to work as a resource management strategist on four continents, developing sustainable solutions to land management problems. His work and profile led him to serve as a Member of Parliament in the latter days of Zimbabwe’s civil war where, for seven years, he became the leader of the combined opposition parties o the ruling party headed by Ian Smith. Exiled in 1979 as a result of his opposition, he immigrated to the United States, where he continued to work with land managers through his consulting business. The growth of that business, a desire to assist many more people and the need for furthering his work led him to continue its development in the nonprofit world.
In 1992, Savory and his wife, Jody Butterfield, formed a non-profit organization in Zimbabwe, the Africa Centre for Holistic Management, donating a ranch that would serve as a learning site for people all over Africa. In 2009, Savory, Butterfield, and a group of colleagues co-founded the Savory Institute in Boulder, Colorado to serve the world through an international network of entrepreneurial innovators and leaders committed to serving their regions with the highest standards of Holistic Management training and implementation support. In 2013, the Africa Centre became the first of the Savory Institute’s locally led and managed “Savory Hubs.”
Savory’s book, Holistic Management, Third Edition: A Commonse Revolution to Restore Our Environment (Island Press, 2016), describes his effort to find workable solutions ordinary people could implement to overcome many of the problems besetting communities and businesses today.
In 2003, Allan Savory received Australia’s International Banksia Award “for the person or organization doing the most for the environment on a global scale,” and in 2010 Savory (and the Africa Centre) received the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s Challenge award for work that has “significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.” A TED talk Savory gave in 2013 has received 8 million views and in 2014 was voted one of the 50 most intriguing TED talks of all time.
As the U.S. approaches the 250th anniversary of “Declaration of Independence” only 61 days away, it’s past time we consider the most damaging word in American history. It has led to more deaths, environmental destruction, and hate than any other. The word is independence.
By Chuck Woolery, Rockville, Md.
A careful reading of the 1776 Declaration reveals something transformative. The noun “independence” appears nowhere in its text or original title “The unanimous Declaration of thirteen United States of America”, the world’s most profound document. It rightfully and justly declared the colonies desire to be “Free and Independent States,” and used the adjective “independent”, not the noun “independence” a thing. A thing that Albert Einstein later called a “delusion”.
This distinction is the difference between true freedom (the Declaration’s original intent) and the mass murdering chaos that both the U.S. Constitution and the U.N. Charter unleashed globally.
An independent state (or states) can possess political autonomy existing within a web of relationships, responsibilities, and be mutual dependent on other states (or nations). Unfortunately, the word “Independence” has evolved in our mind’s imagination as something absolute: self-sufficiency, exceptionalism, immunity from consequences beyond our borders, and worth mass killing and dying for, as well as ignoring nature, the basis of all human health, wealth, and other life on earth.
This could have – should have stopped immediately after the invention and use of nuclear weapons. Einstein warned about it, yet the UN Charter was founded on the same delusional concept as the U.S. Constitution. Both ignored the wisdoms offered in the 1776 Declaration based on “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” (in common speak, ‘take care of nature and each other’ because everything is interdependent and vulnerable).
Ironically, we annually celebrate our illusion of independence every July 4th using explosives and eating nitrate loaded meats that cause cancer. Then over 250 years of repetition, celebration, and civic mythology, that single word blunder has hardened into our minds a global worldview that has shaped our perception of reality and killed hundreds of millions of people. Because independence exists nowhere in known universe except as a word on paper, in sound, or as a delusional concept in our mind.
No human being is independent of oxygen, food systems, ecosystems, microbes, gravity, family, trade, or civilization itself. No nation is independent of climate systems, oceans, pandemics, financial networks, or global stability. Even stars depend upon relationships with gravity and matter. Interdependence is not a political opinion; it is the architecture of reality.
And yet our governing systems still behave as if independence were achievable. Ironically, both the U.S. constitutional framework and the United Nations Charter are rooted in sovereign independence as their organizing principle. We continue attempting to solve planetary-scale crises — climate disruption, pandemics, cyberwarfare, nuclear risks, migration, and ecological collapse — with governance structures designed around fragmented and delusional sovereignty.
Then wonder why the systems fail and things are getting worse.
Perhaps the deepest challenge of our species is to accept our irreversible interconnectedness and interdependence. And learn to govern everyone and nature wisely, fairly, and ethically. Thus, the most important word in America’s founding document may be the one that was never actually written into law.
Every tool can be used for good–or bad.
- A hammer can build a house.
- A hammer could kill a person.
We should not be afraid of AI.
We should be afraid of unaccountable power using AI without ethics, oversight, or public understanding.
By Steven Jay
AI is a tool.
Like fire, electricity, television, money, medicine, or the internet — it can help people heal, learn, organize, create, solve problems, and see patterns.
It can also be used to manipulate, exploit, surveil, replace, divide, and control.
The question is not whether AI is good or bad.
The question is:
- Who controls it?
- Who benefits from it?
- Who is harmed by it?
- And how do we make sure it serves life — not power alone?
The Big Question
Should we be afraid of AI?
- Not exactly.
- Fear alone does not help us understand change.
- But blind excitement is dangerous too.
AI is moving into every part of life:
- Media.
- Education.
- Health care.
- Finance.
- Transportation.
- Government.
- War.
- Work.
- Art.
- Search.
- Science.
- Everyday decision-making.
That means AI is not just a technology story.
It is a systems story.
- It affects how we know what is true.
- How we make decisions.
- How we organize society.
- How power moves.
- How people work.
- How communities respond to crisis.
- How the future is designed.
Why It Matters
AI can help humanity do things we badly need.
- It can detect patterns humans miss.
- It can help doctors diagnose disease earlier.
- It can help farmers use less water.
- It can help communities prepare for floods, fires, and storms.
- It can translate languages.
- It can help small organizations produce media, maps, research, and learning tools.
- It can make knowledge more accessible.
But AI can also make existing problems worse.
- It can spread false information faster.
- It can deepen surveillance.
- It can automate discrimination.
- It can replace workers without a plan for human dignity.
- It can concentrate power in the hands of a few companies and governments.
- It can make people dependent on systems they do not understand.
AI reflects the values of the systems that build and deploy it.
That is the real issue.
The Mobilized View
- AI is not magic.
- AI is not a god.
- AI is not a replacement for human wisdom.
- AI is a tool created by people, trained on human information, shaped by human choices, and deployed inside human systems.
So, the future of AI depends on the same thing every major tool depends on:
- Governance.
- Ethics.
- Transparency.
- Education.
- Accountability.
- Public participation.
- Human purpose.
The danger is not intelligence itself.
The danger is intelligence without wisdom.
The Better Question
Instead of asking:
“Will AI destroy us?”
We should ask:
“How do we design AI so it helps us restore health, dignity, democracy, and well-being?”
- That changes the conversation.
- It moves us from fear to responsibility.
It asks whether AI can help us:
- Spot risks earlier.
- Strengthen local communities.
- Improve public health.
- Support teachers and students.
- Expose corruption.
- Translate complex issues into clear action.
- Help people understand systems.
- Connect solutions across the world.
- Make better decisions faster.
Used wisely, AI can help people see the whole picture.
Used recklessly, it can distort the picture completely.
What AI Can Help Us Do
1. Make Complexity Easier to Understand
- The world is overloaded with information.
- Most people are not lacking data.
- They are lacking clarity.
- AI can help organize complex information into patterns people can understand.
- That matters for climate, health, energy, food, democracy, economics, and crisis response.
Signal → System → Solution → Action.
- That is where AI can be useful.
- Not as the source of truth.
- As a tool to help people ask better questions.
2. Help Communities Act Faster
- AI can support local problem-solving.
A community group could use AI to:
- Map local food needs.
- Find clean energy options.
- Translate public documents.
- Create emergency plans.
- Compare policy models.
- Build public education campaigns.
- Identify partners and funding opportunities.
- Summarize public meetings.
- Turn expert knowledge into action guides.
This is where AI becomes useful.
Not as a replacement for people.
As a support system for people trying to get things done.
3. Expand Access to Knowledge
- For too long, useful knowledge has been locked behind institutions, paywalls, jargon, and professional gatekeeping.
- AI can help translate expert knowledge into plain language.
- That can help students, workers, organizers, journalists, small businesses, local governments, and citizens understand what is happening and what they can do.
- But access must be paired with accuracy.
- A fast answer is not always a true answer.
That is why human verification still matters.
4. Improve Public Interest Media
AI can help journalists and media makers:
- Track signals.
- Summarize reports.
- Compare claims.
- Organize research.
- Find patterns across sectors.
- Translate stories into multiple languages.
- Build explainers.
- Create accessible formats for different audiences.
But AI should not replace journalism.
It should strengthen journalism.
The public still needs editors, reporters, investigators, community voices, source verification, and moral judgment.
AI can support the work.
It should not become the newsroom’s conscience.
Where the Risks Are Real
Misinformation
- AI can produce convincing falsehoods at scale.
- That means people need stronger media literacy, better verification tools, and trusted public-interest information systems.
Surveillance
- AI can be used to monitor people, predict behavior, and control populations.
- This is especially dangerous when used by governments, employers, platforms, or private firms without transparency.
Bias
- AI systems can repeat and amplify the biases built into their data.
- Bad data creates bad decisions.
- That can harm people in hiring, housing, policing, lending, health care, and education.
Job Disruption
- AI will change work.
- Some jobs will disappear.
- Some will change.
- Some new ones will emerge.
The issue is not whether work changes.
The issue is whether people are protected, trained, included, and respected during the transition.
Power Concentration
- If only a handful of corporations control the most powerful AI systems, the public loses leverage over the future.
- AI must not become another tool for extracting wealth, attention, and control from people.
The Bottom Line
We should not fear AI as a machine.
We should question the systems around it.
- Who owns it?
- Who trains it?
- Who audits it?
- Who profits from it?
- Who gets access?
- Who is left out?
- Who decides the rules?
AI can help us build a healthier world.
But only if we build the guardrails first.
Technology does not create a better future by itself.
People do.
What We Can Do Now
For Citizens
- Learn how AI works.
- Question what it produces.
- Check sources.
- Use it to learn, organize, and create.
- Do not outsource your judgment.
For Journalists
- Use AI as a research assistant, not a truth machine.
- Disclose when it is used.
- Verify everything.
- Protect human sources and editorial independence.
For Educators
- Teach AI literacy early.
- Help students understand bias, evidence, authorship, and ethics.
- Use AI to expand learning, not replace thinking.
For Policymakers
- Require transparency.
- Protect privacy.
- Regulate high-risk uses.
- Support public-interest AI.
- Prevent monopoly control.
- Defend human rights.
For Communities
- Use AI to strengthen local resilience.
- Map needs.
- Share knowledge.
- Connect solutions.
- Make participation easier.
Mobilized Takeaway
- AI is not the future.
- The future is what people decide to do with AI.
- It can become another system of control.
- Or it can become a tool for collective intelligence.
- It can deepen confusion.
- Or it can help create clarity.
- It can serve extraction.
- Or it can serve life.
- The choice is not automatic.
- The choice is ours.
Final Word
We do not need to be afraid of AI.
We need to become informed enough to shape it.
Because a well-informed public is still the most powerful and valuable natural resource of all.
We are entering a new era of healthcare based on a categorically different kind of medicine whose purpose isn’t just to save us from illness, but to help us be the best version of ourselves.
Discover Mobilized’s interview with RethinkX Co-founder, James Arbib
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About Rethink X
RethinkX is an independent not-for-profit research organization that analyzes and forecasts technology-driven disruptions and their implications. We produce impartial, data-driven analyses that identify pivotal choices to be made by investors, policymakers, civic leaders, and other decision-makers.
Our research team uses the Seba Technology Disruption Framework( TM) to understand the dynamics of disruption and their associated interactions among technology, business models, and market forces.
We then leverage this understanding to forecast the scope, speed, and scale of a disruption’s impacts across social, economic, geopolitical, environmental, and other dimensions, and their implications for market sectors, industries, and geographic regions.
RethinkX aims to facilitate a robust global conversation about the threats and opportunities of technology-driven disruptions, and highlight choices that could lead to a more equitable, healthy, resilient, and stable future for all of humanity
