I\u2019ve been putting myself to sleep at night by envisioning the kind of future world I\u2019d like to see. Being a science fiction writer as well as someone who has spent much of my life doing work toward social change, I\u2019m always thinking about better systems.<\/p>\n
But the combination of the polycrises we face (I\u2019m deliberately using the plural of crisis here because we not only have multiple crises that affect each other \u2013 thus the poly \u2013 but each crisis has its own set of multiple components) with the forthcoming grifter\/broligarch\/religious and right wing extremist government has urged me more in that direction.<\/p>\n
Given that the government will not only not be addressing the polycrises but will in fact be doing things that make them much, much worse, I cannot be satisfied by resistance. And given that the status quo was already shaky \u2013 very little being done about climate change, inequality, and the cost of housing, not to mention protecting the country from insurrectionists \u2013 I\u2019m not feeling pumped up about trying to get back to that.<\/p>\n
Yeah, we need the rule of law and the Constitution here in the United States, but both those things have some big flaws that should have been addressed a long time ago. Most of the resistance will be focused on keeping political things from getting too much worse, but it won\u2019t be fixing any of the underlying problems.<\/p>\n
So I am trying to envision what we could have. I recently read an essay Donella Meadows wrote in 1994, \u201cEnvisioning a Sustainable World<\/a>,\u201d and it inspired me to do more imagining of what kind of world we could have.<\/p>\n Meadows was one of the authors of the 1972 work Limits to Growth<\/i>, which provided a guide to the problems we\u2019re facing right now. You can find out more about her work here<\/a> and download a free copy of Limits to Growth<\/i> here<\/a>:<\/p>\n Of course, I\u2019ve been working on envisioning futures all along.\u00a0 Lately, I\u2019ve been reading some futurist thinking to help expand my ability to do that. You have to be careful with futurists, since many of them are tied in with tech bro thinking, but there are some very useful skills in that area that help you get past the \u201cthere\u2019s no way that could happen\u201d point.<\/p>\n You have to get past the \u201cthere\u2019s no way that could happen\u201d point before you can open your mind to anything new.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019ve also been reading as much of David Graeber\u2019s work as I can get my hands on \u2013 damn, it\u2019s a shame that both Graeber and Meadows died young, though it is also fortunate that both left us with a lot of material to work with. Reading Graeber is a constant reminder that things don\u2019t have to be this way.<\/p>\n I was very affected by Kate Raworth\u2019s Doughnut Economics<\/i>, which was the first book for our economics book club and which we re-read about a year ago. It lays out an excellent way of looking at the kind of systems we need, as opposed to the ones we have.<\/p>\n In addition to all that, I\u2019m exploring complexity thinking as applied to economics \u2013 our book club\u2019s current book is J. Doyne Farmer\u2019s Making Sense of Chaos<\/i> \u2013 and backing into some of that thinking by also reading about physics and complexity thinking, since that\u2019s where it started.<\/p>\n The reading I\u2019m doing makes it clear that we\u2019re not actually short on ideas of how to make a better world, but it also shows that too many people are afraid to imagine anything better. So it\u2019s important for all of us to start imagining what a better world would look like, particularly those of us who write science fiction.<\/p>\n As I keep saying, anyone can write a dystopia these days. What we need are people who can recognize the dystopic elements we\u2019re dealing with and point us in a better direction.<\/p>\n Way too much science fiction sets up worlds of empires or ones run by the corrupt and powerful. Just as it is said \u2013 by both Frederic Jameson and Kim Stanley Robinson (I think Jameson said it originally and Stan quotes it a lot) \u2013 that \u201cit is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,\u201d it also seems to be hard to imagine a world that isn\u2019t run by those greedy for power and money.<\/p>\n But of course, if you read Graeber \u2013 his book with David Wengrow The Dawn of Everything<\/i> is a great starting place \u2013 you realize that it doesn\u2019t have to be like this.<\/p>\n The only thing about this exercise that really annoys me is that I\u2019m not going to live to see any of the positive change. I\u2019m not going to get to live in the kind of world I can envision, the kind I know is possible.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll be sharing my ideas on here from time to time and I\u2019ll be delighted if others chime in. One key element in envisioning the future is that it\u2019s a collective enterprise.<\/p>\n We\u2019re social creatures, after all. We don\u2019t need one person deciding what\u2019s best for everyone, and we really don\u2019t need the current crop of people who are trying hard to cram their ideas down our throats.<\/p>\n Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been putting myself to sleep at night by envisioning the kind of future world I\u2019d like to see. Being a science fiction writer as well as someone who has spent much of my life doing work toward social change, I\u2019m always thinking about better systems. But the combination of the polycrises we face (I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,122,181,7],"tags":[987,992,989,988,991,990],"class_list":["post-3783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-future","category-science","category-sciencefiction","tag-envisioning","tag-farmer","tag-graeber","tag-meadows","tag-raworth","tag-wengrow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3784,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3783\/revisions\/3784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}