On being is brought to you by the John Templeton Foundation, harnessing the power of the sciences

to explore the deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind.

Learn about the latest discoveries in the study of forgiveness, generosity, and free will

at templeton.org.

As a scientist on frontiers of how humans behave and function together and change together,

Agustín Fuentes brings spacious perspective to what I've taken to calling our species

moment.

There are many ways to begin the story of 2020, and one of them would be this.

All together, we remembered that civilization is built on bodies, breathing, and proximity

to other bodies.

Enough of us started asking human questions of our life together.

We started experiencing that the way we've done much from the economy to race to work

could be done radically differently.

What Agustín Fuentes knows is refreshingly creative and practical fodder for the necessary

reinvention ahead.

For we have been modeling our life together on survival of the fittest long after science

itself moved on from that.

We have been organizing around parts, even as we're learning to see that in every sphere

of life, we inhabit ecosystems.

This great ecosystem dynamics, these different processes pushing, pulling, melding, shifting

across the landscape.

It's messy, it's actually hard to explain, but once you start to get into it, it makes

...