The recognition that humanity needs to develop a fundamentally different way of living on Planet Earth is slowly gaining traction. Differences lie both in the scope of change and the metaphors used to describe and explain it.

One popular metaphor suited to our technological age is that we need to upgrade our operating system and hack the code – the fundamental assumptions underpinning how we see, understand and behave.

Another is that we need a new narrative, story or set of collectively shared living myths that paint pictures in our hearts and minds about a better word we sense is possible. 

A third is that we need to journey across the chasm that separates one way of being in one land to a very different way of being in another.

Because Conscious Travel serves the travel sector, we have chosen to work with the Journey metaphor but are comfortable with all three  and sometimes will shift between them. 

The Journey metaphor is rooted in one of the most frequently expressed patterns in nature – the cycle of birth, life and death as pictured in the S-curve to the left. It can be applied to people, ideas, empires, trees, landscapes, tourism destinations, institutions, mobile phones, political parties, ideologies  – in other words, virtually any living system etc.

The process starts with an idea (thought), the birth of something new that gradually takes hold and matures. In humans we shift from babies into adolescence, maturity, and then a period of aging prior to death. In tourism, Dr. Butler applied this model to the life cycle of a destination. Only recently have we begin to recognise that the S-curve also applies the core operating model on which tourism has been based.

We’re at that point in history when two journey paths overlap. We’re shifting the fundamental paradigm – our consciousness, the basic assumptions, beliefs and values about how the world works. One way of being is becoming obsolete, another is rising to replace it. This has happened many times before (e.g. the emergence of a modern science at the end of the Middle Ages or when the Information Age replaced the Industrial Age based on manufacturing). But it’s different this time. Different because many are conscious participants in what is an evolutionary, quantum leap. Our choices will determine the trajectory of LIFE on earth. The planet will survive our choices, regardless of what they may be, but many other life forms, including ourselves, may not.