The Henoscene: A Call to Emerge from the Wreckage of the Anthropocene

The Anthropocene, a term meant to define our current epoch, marks an era in which humanity has become the dominant geological force shaping Earth’s systems. Its very name is steeped in arrogance, lacking in compassion and context. Naming it after a careless, self-serving ignorance only further alienates humanity from its natural roots, undermining any chance of respecting it. It is, rather, to diagnose a pathology: the age of the self-exiled human, who, severed from nature, spirit, and one another, has wrought a legacy of disintegration masked as development. The Anthropocene is not a neutral descriptor; it is a claim of authorship, a signature carved into stone by a particular hand: one that is patriarchal, extractive, and rooted in a Global North-West centric worldview that has historically conflated dominance with progress and exploitation with prosperity.

To be clear, not all of humanity authored this paradigm or consented to the era's equally egregious naming; rather, it was a narrow strand of humanity, the ones whose self-ascribed “development” has come at the cost of everyone else’s health, happiness, and healing. What does development mean if it results in ecological collapse, loneliness, inequality, and spiritual famine? Is it truly development if it leaves most behind, extinct, enslaved, or devoid of nurture? What we have inherited is not a triumph, but a festering wound.

It is in response to this estrangement that I coined the term Henoscene, a portmanteau of the Greek words Henosis, meaning unity or oneness, and kainos (καινός), meaning new, the root of -cene, used to describe geological time periods. The Henoscene, in intentional contrast, represents the age of oneness, a proposed epoch that reclaims humanity’s place within the living web of existence, rather than above or outside it. It is a conceptual and spiritual countercurrent to the Anthropocene: not an age we dominate, but one we consciously co-create and cooperate within. It's an era that allows us to return, not to a state of primitivism, but to being fully present. I had to forge a new term because none of the existing words spoke into existence a more conscious, holistic, integrated world reality.

In the Henoscene, the age of unity, we are no longer patching up the crumbling facade of extractive capitalism or greenwashing its decay. Instead, we are composting the entire logic of dominance, disconnection, and disposability that birthed it. Regenerative capitalism in this epoch would not simply be capitalism with a conscience; it would be a root-to-branch reinvention of what we value, how we exchange, who we serve, and why we create. It is the economy, not as machinery, but as ecology, that is fluid, reciprocal, and alive.

The Henoscene does not arise from one discipline or domain, prioritise one gender above all others, or externalise value and worth. It is not a scientific inevitability but a civilizational invitation that can only be realised through a systems lens. It is an eco-spiritual transformational, emergent, regenerative, and transdisciplinary philosophy. It is a convergence point at which humanity chooses to shed its illusion of separateness and remember that we are not individuals adrift in a hostile universe but expressions of a single, intricate, living whole.

From a systems perspective, the Anthropocene has been marked by exponential feedback loops (where a system's output amplifies its initial input, resulting in a swift and escalating effect), linear extraction, and externalised costs. It is a broken design architecture, endlessly mining the outer world to fill an inner void. The Henoscene, by contrast, proposes a circular, interdependent, and integrated system of being. It dissolves the binary between self and other, subject and object, nature and human. Within the Henoscene, the boundaries we've established between species, disciplines, economies, and ecologies are recognised not as fixed truths, but as temporary constructs that are likely to collapse.

This epoch of unity requires ecological regeneration and psychological integration. Arriving in the Henoscene means taking accountability for how far we’ve wandered, not with shame but with sobriety and self-forgiveness. We must grieve, not just for the forests, oceans, and species we have lost but for the parts of ourselves we abandoned in the name of survival, ambition, or belonging to a broken system. Only through that grief can we begin to re-inhabit the whole of our being.

Politics in the Henoscene transcends tribalism, nationalism, and binary gridlocks. The present and future are not governed by artificial borders but by relational proximity, networks of interbeing, and shared stewardship. This modality supports translocal alliances focusing on climate equity, resource balance, and cultural pluralism, overcoming geopolitical stalemates and volatilities. Politics would finally be driven by environmental regeneration objectives and international cooperation agreements, rather than military-industrial interests. Political boundaries would be redrawn as bio-regional democracies, with ecological watersheds defining territorial integrity rather than colonial cartography. Decision-making would be influenced by a region's land, culture, and climate, rather than by short-sighted capitalist interests.

Governance in the Henoscene would no longer be hierarchical, anthropocentric, or extractive. It would be polycentric, participatory, and planetary. Power is not concentrated but distributed like mycelium, which is intelligent, adaptive, and responsive. Governance would cease to impose authority; rather, it would focus on nurturing agency. Initiatives like rites of renewal, storytelling, seasonal reviews, and deep listening assemblies would mark the beginning of a new era of openness and mutual respect. These would place community engagement at the heart of our approach, rather than treating it as an occasional or superficial activity. Transparency, deemed indispensable, would impart valuable use cases for blockchain and open data systems. These technologies would be employed to track impact, rather than merely evade liabilities and ensure compliance. Citizens would have unfettered access to trace the ripple effects of every policy, decision, and action.

The Henoscene renders obsolete the idea of needing discrete days, such as Earth Day, World Environment Day, or World Oceans Day, not because these elements are unworthy of reverence but because reverence becomes a state of being, not a calendar event. In this epoch, every action becomes ceremonial, every exchange a recognition of reciprocity, and every innovation rooted in stewardship rather than supremacy. The sacred is no longer confined to temples, treaties, or designated days; it pervades everything, always.

Development, in the Henoscene, is redefined. It no longer measures GDP or market share, but well-being, coherence, and biocultural flourishing. Value flows are built upon natural, social, and spiritual capital, not just financial metrics. Progress is measured in how well we listen to the world, not how much of it we conquer. Intelligence is not the capacity to dominate, but to discern relational consequences across time and space. The human is not the hero of the story, but the storyteller learning how to speak with the voice of the Earth.

A society in the Henoscene would heal the core trauma of the Anthropocene: separation from nature, from others, and from self. Culture would become a space of remembering, of mending the relational fabric. Instead of capitalising on human attention to reward shareholders through intrusive targeted adverts, we would create meaning that restores individual focus, allowing human potential to thrive while growing more accountable to stakeholders. Art, fiction, and ritual would help us process grief, uncertainty, fear, and transformation, making a society flexible enough to cherish transitions like birth, adolescence, elderhood, and death as sacred phases. In such a culture, ageing becomes a journey of ascent, rather than decline. Collaboration, compassion, intuition, and nurturance become central to how we lead, not sidelined as soft skills. Children learn not through rote learning, but through a biocentric, experiential approach, which combines systems literacy, empathy, ancestral traditions, and somatic intelligence.

To get to the Henoscene is not to flee the Anthropocene, but to metabolise it. We cannot leapfrog the wound; we must compost it into wisdom. This necessitates a systemic transformation of governance, economy, culture, and consciousness; however, it also requires something profoundly intimate: the return to self, the reclamation of our capacity to be whole, to be present, to be enough.

It will take radical accountability, not just of institutions but of individuals. And yet, the path is already visible in the margins, in the rewilding of landscapes and leadership, in the voices of Indigenous and ancestral wisdom keepers, in the grassroots movements weaving community-led care economies, and in children who refuse to inherit a planet on fire. These are not signs of collapse; they are signals of emergence.

The Henoscene is not utopia. In this new era, capitalism is not abolished; it is composted, re-rooted, and reborn. The market transforms into a network where needs are met by gifts. Governance becomes a sacred choreography between agency and accountability. Politics becomes the art of tending the commons. Society becomes a story of collective coming home. It is not perfect, but it is possible. It asks us not for purity but for participation. It invites us to live as if the Earth were alive, because it is. It urges us to treat one another as if we are kin, because we are. It proposes that the future is not something we await but something we choose. We are not far. We are just unfamiliar with this frequency, this immersive field of wholeness. But it has always been here, beneath the noise. And now, we can choose to remember ourselves, our lineage, our true centre.