Welcome!

Do you long to live in a world where cultures around the globe are truly humane and sustainable; cultures that support our full human potential in partnership with the needs of all life? I share that longing. That's my ideal of a bright future on this beautiful, small, highly interconnected planet.

And would you love to be part of making a real difference to bring that future into being; to be part of a viable, realistic way for us to move toward a culture where the people and their institutions embody a deep, authentic harmony within, with others and with nature?

Yet does this longing seem out of reach in our crisis-filled times, where mainstream modernist culture is clearly struggling to cope with the world it has created and authoritarians, on the rise, pose as the only alternative?

How do we move beyond both modernism and authoritarianism and unlock our potential, in practice, to bring that thriving future into being – for us personally, in our communities and organizations, in the culture at large, and in our relationship with the planet? That’s what this site is all about.

Evolutionary scouting

I'm Robert Gilman, co-founder of Context Institute, an independent 501c3 non-profit organization. These questions have been at the heart of our work for over 40 years as we’ve pursued the mission of accelerating the transition to a humane and sustainable world.

Over that time we've cast a wide net to get to a practical, whole-system sense of what's possible, drawing on areas like global sustainability, human dynamics, complex systems, the built environment, neuroscience and strategies for positive personal and cultural change.

We've also witnessed and been part of many initiatives for a better world, both in terms of personal growth and for social change.

Starting in 1983 with our award-winning journal, In Context, we've been evolutionary scouts: distilling, discerning, synthesizing, adding our own innovations and testing it all by putting it into practice. This process has been further refined and amplified since 2016 through our Bright Future Initiative.

Beyond the cultural blindspots

One of our core discoveries is about why most well-intentioned efforts for a better world so often produce disappointing results: the reason is that these efforts are undertaken with mindsets and skillsets that are mostly still embedded in the surrounding culture. Yet it's hard to solve problems with the same mindsets that created them. Unfortunately, it’s challenging to see those prevailing assumptions and blindspots from the inside, since our cultures are the water we swim in. And without being able to see these constraints, it’s very difficult to go beyond them.

We've taken this learning to heart. To get beyond these limiting assumptions and blindspots, our core approach goes beyond critique to what we can do instead. We focus at the level of building and exploring new cultural DNA, to upgrade the fundamental mindsets and skillsets to new ways of being, living and working together. This includes embodying changes of behavior as well as adopting ideas since culture evolves out of our lived experience, not just a vision of what could be.

At this level, the personal and the cultural are deeply intertwined. Because of this, a thriving future can best be shaped by doers who are always learning and growing, who consciously co-evolve: evolving themselves at the same time that they lead the evolution of the culture around them.

Keys to co-evolving

The framework we use to support this co-evolutionary process weaves together Foundational Literacies and Essential Capabilities in support of the Embodied Harmony that is our human birthright.

The three Foundational Literacies provide the knowledge base

• System literacy

• Human Operating System literacy

• Cultural-Evolution literacy 

The three Essential Capabilities provide the practices and skills

• Savvy about psychodynamics

• Skillful with diverse modes of cognition

• Adept at win-win-win collaboration 

All of which enable

• Embodied Harmony for us personally, in our groups and eventually in the culture

These are the "keys" that unlock our potential for building the new cultural DNA that makes the old cultural patterns obsolete. They’re introduced in Foundational Keys and explored in depth throughout this site.

What emerges from all this is our experience, in CI’s Bright Future Initiative, that a viable pathway to a thriving future for humanity and the Earth is indeed possible, and the practical steps we can take along that pathway are more accessible and doable than you might imagine. At a personal and small group level, many aspects of such a future are within reach right now.

Step into a new world

The evolutionary scouting we've been doing for over 40 years continues to yield new information, insights and connections, illuminating the way forward. Your subscription to this Substack site is your doorway into this evolving world. 

As a free subscriber, you'll stay current with this journey and get access to the core concepts of our Bright Future Initiative and co-evolutionary framework. As a paid subscriber, you'll get more depth and detail about these concepts, including specific practices that can help you integrate the new keys more fully into your daily life.

At whatever level you choose, we look forward to sharing this journey with you as you live into your own bright future and play your part in birthing that future with and for us all.

Benefits of Subscribing

Free subscriptions give you an ongoing connection to:

• Regular posts and a growing archive that bring the Foundational Literacies and the Essential Capacities to life as practical tools

• All of the Bright Future Now course material, including the experiential practices, and support for using that material for self-study

Paid subscriptions also enable you to:

• Receive a discount – $50 for annual subscriptions, prorated for monthly – on any of the new Bright Future courses now being developed

• Receive posts with greater depth on the concepts plus posts that introduce you to new personal and group skills and practices

• Comment on posts and join the co-creative, culturally-engaged community of commenters

• Know that your financial support is enabling this work to continue to serve both you and the world

Sustainer subscriptions bring the additional benefits of:

• Participating in quarterly group Zoom calls with me on topics of shared interest

• Knowing that your financial support is enabling this work to continue to serve both you and the world

At whatever level you subscribe, you have my deep gratitude for engaging with this nonprofit work and enabling it to thrive and spread. 

My story

I've been blessed with a full and varied life. Here are some of the experiences that have shaped the perspective I'm sharing in this Substack.

I got my PhD in astrophysics from Princeton with a thesis that extended Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Yet after a few years of doing research and teaching, I decided that "the stars could wait but the planet couldn't." I turned my attention to global sustainability, futures research, social innovation and strategies for positive personal and cultural change, and that's been my focus ever since.

My on-the-ground cultural co-evolution efforts have included: 

• Co-creating Context Institute in 1979, one of the first NGOs to focus on sustainability, approaching it as a whole-system concept.

• Founding editor/publisher of the award-winning journal In Context, A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable Culture for its full life from 1983 to 1995

• Citizen diplomat to the former Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991

• Co-founder of the Global Ecovillage Network starting in 1991

• National consultant to the American Institute of Architects on sustainability and the built environment from 1991 to 1996

• Co-author of the Global Action Plan's Household EcoTeam Program in 1991, which was used in multiple countries and became the primary demand-side-management program in the Netherlands.

• Lead organizer and author for creating the Findhorn Community's New Findhorn Association as its first community-wide governance structure in 1999

• Teaching Whole-System Economics at Antioch University, Seattle in 2001 & 2002.

• Elected City Council member from 2004 to 2011, including leading a multi-year innovative community-based land-use planning initiative. Also elected state-wide to the board of the Association of Washington Cities.

• Creating and stewarding Context Institute's Bright Future Initiative, starting in 2016 and ongoing.

• Plus frequent keynote speaker at conferences around the world.

I'm also the father of two wonderful (now adult) children and grandfather to three lively grandchildren.

I've known loss and grief, including losing my first wife, Diane, to a brain tumor when we were both age 52. I was her primary caregiver for the last six months of her life and then became a single parent.

I've known the grace of a second chance, including being happily remarried, now to Lianna.

I've hand-built a solar-heated home and designed and constructed custom solar heaters to retrofit two other homes.

All of this and more contributes to the synthesis of vision and action you'll find in this Substack. 

Subscribe now for paradigm-shifting perspectives and effective culture-change skills that you can use to move more easily toward a bright future for yourself and the world.