Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When the high-energy authoritarian political centres fail, which ultimately they will, my hope is that some of these ‘irrelevant’ places will have forged resilient material cultures and mature political institutions that will enable them to usher our descendants into the next chapter of human history.
The best we can do is have lots of ideas, lots of tools, lots of ways of thinking, all ready at hand when crises of whatever flavor come barreling down that hill.
I am always on the lookout for new tools to use in helping people to imagine a different future, in helping people to cultivate nostalgia for a future that turned out as well as it possibly could have done.
The time is now or never. Cooperation is fundamental to our success, and only by uniting as a human family, on all levels from local to global, can we hope to achieve an equitable and concordant future on our Mother Planet.
What would a city where people, children, goods, tools, food and so much more are moved around the city in a fossil fuel-free way, and in a way that promotes health, clean air, and conviviality, actually sound like? I’d always wondered.
Why is the financial community so complacent about peak oil and the relationship between increasing energy scale and growth? Can we make predictions about the future by looking back at history?
Diamond helps us imagine the future in an uncertain time. How can we create robust strategies to help us plan? How can we avoid thinking only of worst-case scenarios?
Set in the eastern United States in the late fall of 2040, the novels chronicle five crucial weeks in the lives of migrants fleeing climate-driven hardships and political leaders doing their best to manage America’s tumble into history’s dustbin.
The future will be a series of shifting baselines, where perhaps the gift of a spare bedroom will be an incredible act of generosity. But without members of a community working together, supporting one another, future wellbeing will collapse like a poorly made bridge.
The future on this planet depends on each one of us — alone and together — and our capacity to realign attention and intention on the level of the whole.
How can dreaming up futures which might never happen help communities to build resilience and address the challenges of a changing world?
Instead of getting two people, for and against, to debate something, how would it be to take two people who were both really excited about an idea, who dedicated their lives to its realisation, and invite them to imagine that it’s 2030 and that idea has already been part of our lives for several years.
