The Five Factions
BATTLING FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY
The Source Framework / The Five Factions
Within the Future Now Universe, five worldviews will most shape humanity during the 21st century. These Five Factions, as we call them, are frameworks that evolved to help people make sense of an increasingly complex, uncertain and scary world. They grew out of things like the left/right political spectrum and have evolved to engulf entirely new human phenomena like climate armageddon, super intelligent AI, and the push to secure a place for humanity in the stars. By understanding the five factions, you will be able to understand the cultural forces that will shape our near future.
The factions are diametrically opposed, but only one vision for the future can be realized. Will the factions be able to find common ground or destroy each other and us in the process of achieving their vision for humanity's future? This is the question at the core of the Future Now project.
Watch an overview of each of the Five Factions on our YouTube channel
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DIVE DEEPER
Fault Lines: The Battle For The Future Of Humanity
What if five factions were steering society in a race to define the future of humanity? What if each of these castes had a distinct vision for what humanity would become? Each believes their vision will result in humanity's salvation - at least, how they define it.
The ECCLESIA believe that technology in the hands of an enlightened elite will see us through. Just don’t let the masses know who’s truly in power - they’ve shown they can’t be trusted to govern themselves. Dive deeper on the Ecclesia web-page
The TRANSHUMANISTS believe we are just one step on the evolutionary ladder. Don’t worry the machines WILL save us, because WE will be the machines. Dive deeper on the Transhumanists web-page
The PARADISIANS believe we have the technology to save the world RIGHT NOW - we just have to agree that saving the world, not greed, is our biggest priority. Dive deeper on the Paradisian web-page
The OFF-WORLDERS believe we were never destined to live forever on one planet. The stars are our true home. Those who stay behind will burn when the Earth does. Dive deeper on the Off-Worlder web-page
The TRADITIONALISTS believe the solutions to our problems reside in our traditions, a simpler, more pure life -- and a strong hand. Order conquers all. Dive deeper on the Traditionalist web-page
Take the sci-fi faction poll and discover your sci-fi persona.
Political Compass & The Geopolitics Of The Future
The Five Factions are diametrically opposed to one another as they represent a cross-section of human culture in 2084. By understanding the five factions and their unique worldviews, you can understand the forces that will affect human life throughout the 21st century. This section aims to help you understand the relationship between the five factions by aligning them into a simplified 3D compass.
The Capitalist Off-Worlders VS The Socialist Paradisians:
As the 21st century progressed, the colonization of the solar system accelerated with the aid of trillions of drones. The Off-Worlders harvested tremendous amounts of minerals that made many people on Earth fabulously wealthy. With the world's economies soaring, there was fear that long-entrenched inequalities would be exacerbated. The Paradisians worried that if the underlying system was not fair and ethical, then we might find ourselves enslaved within it instead of the system working for us.
The Technologically Forward Transhumanists VS The Backward-Looking Traditionalist:
The 21st century will see an exponential rate of technological progress that could threaten humanity's existence. Genetic engineering & artificial intelligence will create the possibility for an entirely new species of intelligent life. Biotech enhancements will help those who can afford them live longer. Artists will make designer modifications that re-imagine what a human can be. Pushing back against these Transhumanist developments is a global movement of Traditionalists that seeks to slow down technology's impact on humanity and return us to our roots.
The Powerful Ecclesia VS The Powerless:
Throughout the 21st century, the global elites got more organized to combat a rising tide of natural disasters that threatened to collapse the civilizations that produced their power. The Ecclesia coordinate their activities through a non-sentient algorithm that removes human bias from decision-making and is a pure meritocracy that allows anyone regardless of class or creed, or wealth an opportunity to make decisions. Yet despite the fact that the Ecclesia represents a broad cross-section of society this relatively small collective has an outsized influence over the lives of billions.
Note: Like all visual aids this alignment of the factions to simple ideals does not perfectly represent the factions themselves.
Five Factions In Practice
The Five factions are not monolithic groups; instead, they are more like schools of thought that capture the zeitgeist of their age. In practice, people often identify with more than one faction and shift their faction allegiance over time. Below are examples of characters from our world and their faction allegiance.
Note: A character in the Future Now Universe is assigned a total of ten faction points to indicate their faction allegiance. For example;
Paradisian: 6
Off-Worlder: 3
Ecclesia: 1
Total: 10
You can try creating your own Future Now character using our Creator resources.
The ExtremistS
Rarely do people align themselves to just one faction. And those “purists” that do would be considered extremists even by members of their own faction. For example…
A Paradisian purist could be a revolutionary leader
A Traditionalist purist might be the ruler of an authoritarian regime
Those Ruled By Opposing Factions
Characters that share a high level of traits from diametrically opposed Factions (see the Faction Compass above) can make for interesting personal struggles. For example;
A Paradisian Off-Worlder might be somebody who wishes to bring the Paradisian world view to a lawless frontier town on Mars.
A Transhumanist Traditionalist could be somebody born with sophisticated body enhancements who longs for inclusion in a more traditional society that outlaws their kind.
The Faction Mutt
In practice, most people identify with or share a plurality of Faction traits. For example;
Ecclesian/Traditionalist/Off-Worlder: might be Corporate CEO living on the Moon
Transhumanist/Paradesian/Traditionalist could be a heavily modified organic farmer
See a full list of Future Now characters and Dossier Candidates or those who are most important to the Unraveling.
Have your say
Which faction do you most align with? Do you think they will win the battle for the future of humanity?
Let us know in the comments below
The Five Key Virt Techs
The Future Now Universe is set in a period where powerful virtualization technologies (known as Virts) are ubiquitous and utilized by the factions in many ways. How these technologies have been designed and used represents the factions that produced them. Learn more about the factions through the tools that they use.
FUTURE NOW: Designed to be the perfect prediction engine, Future Now is the technology that will end all technologies. If the Ecclesia perfects it, their rule will last forever. Learn more about Future Now
THE MESH: The Mesh will tie all our minds together. A networked humanity, linked to the production power of machines will conquer every problem the universe can throw at us.
GLOBAL MIND PROJECT: A digital-era Library of Alexandria- the Global Mind Project spawned Paradisia - an incredibly detailed simulation that could show humanity what we could accomplish together.
VIRT MINING: Virt mining allows almost anyone to participate in the colonization of our solar system from the comfort of their home all within a perfect virtual replica of our future homes in the stars.
THE MIRROR: The Mirror is everywhere, every device in every nook and cranny is watching you and using that information to make sure you consume and conform. The Mirror sees all. Learn more about the Mirror
The Future Now Timeline
From the vantage point of 2084 historians have broken the 21st century into five two-decade eras. These are moments when massive technology /social /political /environmental change occurred, more so than in an entire century prior. As a result, the world would be almost unrecognizable between generations. The five factions most identify with one of these ages as being formative and/or inspirational to their movement.
2000-20 Traditionalists & The Internet Age: Traditionalists look back to the turn of the millennium as a simpler time when humanity wasn’t threatened by divergent new intelligent biological and synthetic species. The globally coordinated surveillance apparatus fed by social media data that emerged during this time laid the foundations for The Mirror.
2020-40 Paradisians & The Neo Age: The Paradisian Movement grew out of a coordinated attempt to prevent the worst expressions of climate change resulting in a globally connected supercomputing facility known as the Global Mind Project (GMP). The technology produced by the GMP was less capitalistic in its ambitions. It was designed to lessen the destabilizing impact of near constant Climate Armageddon.
2040-60 Ecclesia & The Age Of Austerity: The Ecclesia formed in the wake of the collapse of the Global Mind Project but with the same mandate, to guide humanity safely through the worst expression of an increasingly hostile climate. But the Ecclesia chose a more covert approach centered around a purely results-oriented decision-making process (see Future Now Systems). They successfully kept the world order from collapsing, but it came at the cost of deep and punishing austerity measures.
2060-80 Off-Worlders & The Space Age: The colonization of the solar system remained the fantasy of the highly wealthy for much of the century. But with the underlying drone supply chain in place and Fold rigs in most people's homes, it was now possible for nearly anybody to participate in the construction of humanity's future in the stars. Soon everybody had bought a plot of land on the moon and was being paid to harvest precious minerals and/or plan the next hot Mars settlement decades in the future.
2080-2100 Transhumanists & The Hyper Age: The Transhumanists are the faction that most represents the future of the future. With the rise of Traditionalist governments banning the most extreme body enhancements, Transhumanists find themselves on the fringes of most societies. But they are challenging the notion of what it means to be human and experimenting to find new ways of living to combat our biggest challenges. Are they our salvation or the shortest path to extinction?
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Press Kit
Below are Five Faction related assets you can share with your community.
What if five factions were steering society in a race to define the future of humanity? What if each of these castes had a distinct vision for what humanity would become? Each believes their vision will result in humanity's salvation - at least, how they define it.
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From Future Now, is a web series telling the story of the battle for humanity’s future.
Watch now on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thisisfuturenow