Humankind’s Impossible Future
World building is a term often used to describe JK Rowling’s construction of the wizarding universe, Hogwarts, and the rules of magic in the Harry Potter Series. An author is successful in world building if their vision is conveyed with totality, style, and conviction. When communities engage in world building, their success is measured not only by creating a vision, but by materializing that vision. No other community tests the limits of world building like the North Italian community of Damanhur. An ecovillage and a global Federation of Spiritual Communities, the Damanhurian slogan is, “Make the Impossible, Possible.”
This slogan may sound like a motivational poster in a corporate break room, but Damanhurians are serious about breaking concepts of possibility. In Damanhurian lore, the community’s founders time traveled to the civilization of Atlantis and brought back lost secrets of technology and progress to model the future of humanity. This is not the lore of gnomes and faeries, not science fiction - Damanhurians claim that their leader, Falco Tarassaco, actually time traveled to Atlantis.
Founded in 1975, the main campus of Damanhur is located an hour outside of Turin, Italy in the Piedmont foothills of the Chiusella Valley with the Alps cresting on the horizon. The world-building of Damanhur reflects their Atlantean lore vividly. Fanciful murals, mythical statues, and stained-glass details decorate hundreds of structures in the village. Community houses and artisan buildings instantiate their communal values. The Temples of Humankind, an underground network of hand-excavated rooms, are elaborated with the skill of Renaissance Duomos and Egyptian ruins. Members conduct rituals and pilgrimages with elaborate, well researched techniques of esoteric divination.
Damanhurians breathe life into their unbelievable lore with jaw-dropping craftsmanship, fueled by devotion. Any why? Because Atlantis, to the Damanhurians, represents a time of peace. Atlantean technology and institutions are truly for the collective benefit, with richness and wealth that is enjoyed by the masses. Atlantis is hope, a guiding light, a Greco-Deco world of ornate beauty and shared equanimity.
After a week of touring temples and workshops, holy sites and cooperative businesses, I was simultaneously pleased and perturbed. On one hand, the Damanhurians I met were intelligent business people, hard-workers building alternative modalities of communal living. And they are successful by any measure - they live communally in groups of ten or more, with abundant art and beauty, and have hundreds of permanent residents spanning multiple generations. On paper, it’s the highest functioning, largest ecovillage in the world. On the other hand, I couldn’t stop questioning, “Do they actually believe in time travel? What is this obsession with the myth of Atlantis? Did they actually time travel to Atlantis?” I was stuck in the nerve-wracking purgatory of disbelief and wanting to believe.
But the teachings of Falco finally became clear. It wasn’t about time travel, or magic, or needing to believe in Atlantis. This is a culture with one core teaching: exercise your free-will for a pure purpose. I imagine Falco asking, “Do you want to settle for the world as-is, or do you want to live in Atlantis? If you choose Atlantis, help me build it. It will not build itself.” That’s what drives the art, the culture, the world building of Damanhur - belief that individuals can change the world only if they choose to materialize their vision. The more Damanhurians exercise their free will, the more tangible Atlantis becomes, the greater faith is rooted in the possibility of realizing a world as spectacular as Atlantis.
Beginning construction in 1978, twenty-four Damanhurians began working in secret to excavate and decorate the subterranean Temples of Humankind. The project continues to this day. They didn’t tell their families what they were up to. Tens of thousands of square feet of murals, sculptures, stained-glass and mosaics animate the teachings of Falco, and the collective vision of Atlantis. I have visited St. Peter’s Basilica by Michaelangelo, I have seen the Sistine Chapel. I have seen heaven and earth bridged by the hands of man. Faith, and only faith, can motivate volunteers to give their time and talents in service of such an audacious project.
And, a deafening realization washed over me as my visit drew to a close: I didn’t have that kind of faith in my own mission.
My life’s mission of building sustainable cities and restoring balance with the Earth was sitting on a swampy foundation. My imagination had been hampered by the practicalities of market forces and profit maximization and resource constraints and political alignment. Looking back, I’ve never truly allowed myself to fathom a circular economy or a zero-carbon city, because, deep down, I believed these were truly impossible. And I am not alone. My generation of business-oriented change-makers are settling for less. Stuck in the rut of greening the supply of goods and services because it’s ‘impossible’ to change human behavior. Bold visions are in short supply because imagination has been cut off at the knees.
But communities are not settling. Everything is on the table. Communities facilitate the transformation of lifestyle choices, economic dynamics, food systems, and education. Communities experiment with behavior change while nurturing the heart and soul of each member. Communities are alchemical laboratories where human happiness is no longer mutually exclusive with true ecological balance.
Imagining Tomorrow
Falco gave me the gift of time travel. He broke my cage of limiting beliefs by asking me to entertain the seemingly outlandish and impossible. He showed me a glimpse of Atlantis in the world-building of Damanhur. Now I have faith that humankind can build whatever world we desire. A zero waste economy? Possible. World peace? Doable. Shared wealth and abundant beauty across the globe? Let’s make it happen.
Over the last year, I have dreamed up my own version of Atlantis, a patchwork of qualities from the communities I visited across the globe. My Atlantis is a simple and profoundly nourishing place: we’ve reduced our cost of living by half, so we work half the time at our money-driven jobs, about 3 days per week. We spend more time teaching our children and ourselves how to grow food, share assets, and beautify our houses. We prioritize celebration and music and art in the circle of our extended family. We demand less of Mother Earth as a byproduct of joyful, purposeful world building. The theatrical plays, music rehearsals, and soccer matches happen in our shared backyard where tall fences once separated our isolated kingdoms. We wake without the worry of a brutal daily schedule, we support each other in a state of perpetual gratitude for the small blessings of everyday life. We’re close enough to the abundance of blackberries and apple trees that we never feel the need to work a half-pleasing job. We elected our politicians, we shaped our economy, and we scaled back our consumerism to make this happen. We have peace of mind because we have more unprogrammed time, we treat each other with true kindness and love. And with each generation, it only gets better.
This Atlantis is not impossible. With alignment, we can steer this ship in any direction we please. It is our economy, our government, our world. Together, we are stronger than any inertia that appears to block this future. There is enough space, money, and time to make this Atlantis a reality in our generation. The transformation starts within, but materializes with your hands. I imagine Falco asking, “Do you want to live in Atlantis, or not?”
We would be wise to elect our future presidents and finance ministers from communities like Damanhur. They will make a bold vision come to life because they have birthed myths into reality, and, in times like these, they are exactly the world-builders we need.
This text is an excerpt of an essay that originally appeared in Kosmos Journal in Fall of 2022. The original article can be found here: What I Learned Visiting Intentional Communities – Kosmos Journal
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