The word transformation means a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance. Indeed, the world as we perceive it, is in flux and changes can be detected in every realm. From ecosystem degradation to the extinction of nearly half of the 6,909 extant languages to the disappearance of 0.1% of all species on our planet, at 2 million annually, transformation in many cases is taking a dire turn, and increasingly associated with transmogrification.

However, in its purest form transformation is really about an alteration of shape and demeanor, with less contextualization over time, or a necessarily weighted negative value.

Given that societal, cultural and economic change is slow to observe, the issue of time is not my primary concern. Yes, we have a quantifiable Moore’s law and the accelerated, unstoppable pace of globalization, homogenization, and technological innovation assaulting our quotidian senses. Yet when we speak of transformation of culture, society, worldviews, and even narrative, it is quite challenging to quantify the change in relation to time. What we notice are the minutiae, the material debris of how we now tell our stories in fragmented 160 character tweets or texts that leave no room for grammatical integrity or comprehensible communication. We decry the disruption of time-honored familial ties, wherein our roles as parent or child are brought into contention with the disintegration of the fabric of our once intact nuclear family lifestyles. Cricket chirps are less vociferous whereas traffic sound pollution is deafening; the hum of a bee buzzing is scarce while horn honks abound, and the V-shape of migrating birds a rarer sight in certain corridors in comparison to jet contrails and vapors. We experience the daily subtle erosion of kindness and constant assault of aggression and disdain on our consciousness. We notice change one grey hair at a time.

While living abroad in a small Yucatecan town, the dirt road into the village was paved for the first time. It brought commerce, trade, transportation, tourism and much needed connection with the outside world. It also brought Coca-Cola, the staple sugar drink replacing milk for poor person’s nourishment and other high fat snack foods. These dietary temptations caused increased diabetes and dental complications. I noticed the change as shelves in tiny stores became crammed with junk food instead of fresh vegetables, fruit, and local products.

As an individual who has worked in the quarantined ivory-tower of academia for decades, I feel the transformation of my student’s ability to concentrate and their irresistible urges to borrow from the internet. I hear their plagiarized translations of texts instead of the difficult stilted measure of their own attempts to speak in a foreign tongue. I sense their restlessness in the broken antiquated pedagogical models that do not respond to their way of learning or thinking. I wonder if it is frustration with a failed modernist project, broken promises, a questioning of Western epistemology or simply an inexorable product of the expectation of immediate gratification.

Similarly, my experience in the classroom as a pedagogue has been transformed by the ready access to information, plentiful data and archival material, and the upshift into interdisciplinarity from rigid silos of specialization. For me, the way I teach, how and what, and even where, shapes my consciousness. I am online—alone in virtulandia—where are the students and brick and mortar, chairs and whiteboards? Reciprocally, my changing consciousness of our interconnectivity allows room to examine problems in new unimagined ways.

In the outer world beyond my restricted blinders, the changes are revolutionary. The Ecuadorian and Bolivian constitutions actually inscribe and grant Nature constitutional rights, juxtaposed to the US constitution that decries corporations as people. These legalistic triumphs assure me that our Occidental consciousness is coming into profound contact with alternative knowledge production, the practices and epistemology of Indigenous peoples, and non-scientific ways of knowing. The insertion of alternative knowledge producers and public intellectuals into our collective conversations, even if perfunctorily, assuages the overriding sense that there is no way out.

These legal and political validations of Kawsay (Buen Vivir/ Good life) and the people who uphold these principles is a recent phenomenon. They are the erased, displaced, colonized and oppressed whose worldview is seeping into our mindset. They suggest that economic measures and GDP are not the entire formula in the equation for human sustainable survival and existence. Nobel Prize winners in economics like Sen or Stiglitz, or Peace Prize winner Quich’é Rigoberta Menchu as well as others now posit alternative gauges for the well-being, development, growth and most importantly, sustainability of our system. They ask us to take a more diverse and compassionate approach and consider everyone, not just the privileged elite.

In my small world of research and knowledge dissemination I see transformation. The real question is how can that transformation of our individual and collective consciousness lead to meaningful change? Will this altered consciousness find its realization for the hu(woman) world before time catches up and we can’t take it into account?