Raphael Thys
My grandfather’s farm. A different vision.
I’m not sure we have a vision for the future. I’ve come to call this problem(and I don’t know where I stole this from), the “crisis of imagination”. The dire lack of a clear picture of what we’re struggling towards.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t movements and organizations putting forward a vision of the change that they’re making in the world, or even that there isn’t some set of threads tying those individual organizational objectives together. There are threads, and they usually take the form of buzzwords.
The buzzword filled tagline that I’m the most guilty of using instead of thinking about the future I want to build is this: a just and habitable world. I work in communications for social change and climate action —so I’ve written at least 100 versions of that exact same phrase. It’s supposed to be a stand in for everything that we think a better world would look like. It’s almost like passing the responsibility to someone else. Thinking: “There are other people who have vision. They’ll fill in the blank”.
You’re right, there are people who have a vision for the future: the rich and powerful. They don’t need an immense amount of imagination. They don’t need to overcome the mental blocks put in place by years of living under this particularly threatening variation of capitalism. All they need to do is look around, and perpetuate the status quo.
Humanity is already burning fossil fuels, depriving people of shelter, and ending lives through unnecessary violence. It doesn’t take much vision to keep doing that.
In our world, we can’t afford to have a “crisis of imagination”—because that emptiness gets filled with cynicism, unkindness, and continued march towards ecological collapse.
But, I have hope.
That’s the thing about working with social change and climate action activists. You start to uncover different pieces of a beautiful mosaic. Each little piece in the picture represents a solution, and a vision attached to it.
We’re not devoid of people who care about this. I’d guess that most of humanity would—given the option—like to avoid total ecological collapse. We’re not devoid of solutions. There are more people working on these issues than ever. Things like social innovation and clean-tech didn’t even exist 25 years ago! We’re not even devoid of vision. Everybody has a little inkling in their heart about the life they want to live.
THERE IS IMAGINATION! We just need to socialize it. We need to get talking. We need to align. If you read this entire article, please share it with someone and with that share YOUR VISION. I think that’s how it starts.
Nobody’s got the whole vision in their head. It emerges like cities, and ant colonies, and the entire economy—micro-interactions creating a macro-outcome.
So, what would be my quick solutions to helping you think through you vision?
- Think outside your career. Since we were kids we’ve been asked “What do you want to be when you grow up”. For most of us, that became the frame through which our entire future was envisioned. Since childhood we’ve been on a journey towards a career endpoint. But we’re more than astronauts, lawyers, and princesses. I’ll ask you a different set of questions: What kind of space do you want to live in when you grow up? How often do you want to see your friends? What kind of relationship to learning, or art, or athletics do you want to have when you grow up?
- Think in terms of a day. Do you know what a day in the life of someone living in your ideal future is? Me neither. But a day is a pretty powerful narrative device—filled with repetition that you can anchor your imagination to.
- Think outside of history. History has become the story of what’s possible. But history is an imperfect, colonialized, mess of conflicting narratives. There is more to the future than what history can teach us. I believe that wholeheartedly.
So, that’s my rant for the day. Please, let me know your vision. Share it. Hit me up for a Zoom or in-person coffee. I just want to understand what is being thought out there.